Chicago World’s Fair of 1893: Marketing the modern imaginary of the city and urban everyday life...

First Monday, Volume 18, Number 11 - 4 November 2013

Held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, the Chicago World’sFair of 1893 has been one of the first events of a kind later defined as ‘media events’ (Susman, 1983).Set up in a liminal period for American life, this ‘event’ was a ‘rite of passage’ paving the road tomodernity out of traditional life, as Henry Adams recognized when he defined the Fair as “the firstexpression of American thought as a unity.”I suggest the Columbian Exposition is a worthwhile case study for this special issue from a historicalpoint of view. The Fair was indeed one of the first cases in which the interplay among urban planning,communication technologies and marketing strategies — a mark of the contemporary production ofurban space (McQuire, 2008) — can be observed. I would also suggest it is important from agenealogical point of view because it contributes to unveil the conditions of emergence of suchinterplay as the outcome of a process of interactions among several social actors which had the task ofmarketing an imaginary of the city adequate to the new economic and social conditions of America(Harris, 1990).I will therefore attempt to show how the Chicago World’s Fair was both a place where to trace back thegenesis of modern American urban life and an opérateur of such emergence, given the fact that theexperience of its ideal city life contributed in shaping the imaginary at its foundation. Through adescription of the Fair I show how the representation (a literal ‘staging’) of a temporary ideal city — aland of enchantment freed from pain and poverty, with beautiful marble–like buildings, basins,theatres, palaces of consumption, spectacles, entertainments and wonders — was strategicallyconceived to produce actual effects on the imaginary of the public. As Lewis Mumford (1934) andLouis Sullivan (1949) recognized, the ‘liminal’ characters of the fair became ‘permanent’ features ofmodern cities and their everyday life through the staging of illusory (but with real consequences)effects.ContentsWorld’s fairs and modernityChicago World’s Fair as rite of passage‘White City’ and Capital CityThe innovation of the Midway PlaisanceChicago World’s Fair and the imaginary of the city: Or making the ‘liminal’ permanent throughrepresentation

World’s fairs and modernityWorld’s Fairs — later defined as International Expositions — are specific types of mega–events (Roche,2000). They are those with the longest history, with the first World’s Fair held in London in 1851. Thenext fair, Expo Milano, will take place in 2015. They are almost two centuries old and have exerted adeep impact on our modern history since the beginning. In particular, world’s fairs introduced to theirpublic — a veritable mass audience — the new imaginary of “world—society”, considered as the ripefruit of progress and Western civilization (Rydell, 1989; Harris, 1993; Taylor, 1991). Such vision was —literally — displayed through images, representations and spectacles that solicited fairgoers’ eyes andsenses in a new and effective manner.A genealogy of international exhibitions goes beyond the limits of the paper, but I need to brieflymention their link with medieval fairs, a central background issue for my main argument. Medievalfairs were half–religious and half–carnivalesque (Bakhtin, 1984), a mix masterfully captured by

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Bruegel’s painting The Fight between Carnival and Lent (1559). Fairgrounds were liminal spaces(Turner, 1967; Susman, 1983), that is in–between places and out of ordinary situations where theexchange of luxuries and exotic goods took place once or twice a year in a colourful, licentious, evenviolent context which revitalized the ancient ‘techniques of ecstasy’ (Ehrenreich, 2007). The fair wasnot the place where household goods or goods for family subsistence were exchanged: they wereexactly the opposite of the permanent, local market. Within fairgrounds, strangers met and set up aneconomic performance, acting as functions of buyers and sellers outside the ordinary social context.Medieval fairs were a temporary break of medieval city and village life tempo. Such out of ordinarysituations, being exciting and risky at the same time, eventually reinforced the desire of going back tothe ordinary community life. International Expositions partake with medieval fairs the liminal andout–of–ordinary structure, and, as we shall see in studying the Columbian Exposition, even thecarnivalesque and festive aspects.With this background in mind, we can now inquire into what was special about the Chicago World’sFair. Certainly it was peculiar; Henry Adams defined the Fair as “the first expression of Americanthought as a unity” [1] and Lewis Mumford stated that the Fair was the first manifestation of “the riseof a new order in America’s economic life” [2].In order to properly answer this question we need a deeper insight into a description of the event. Iwill first summarize my main thesis for purpose of clarity: the Chicago World’s Fair was a truly epoch–making event as it marketed and shaped an imaginary of the city and of urban everyday life adequateto the new economic and social conditions of America. The exact manner by which organizers of theFair tried to accomplish this task had a lasting effect on the content of that very imaginary, as ‘thespectacle of the city’ contributed to promote the ‘city as spectacle’.

Chicago World’s Fair as rite of passageThe Fair was visited by about 25 million people and many more had a mediated experience of theExposition thanks to newspaper coverage, public discussions all over the country, and images printedin many magazines and journals. Moreover, the circulation of the first souvenirs prolonged theexperience of the Fair both in personal and collective memory far beyond its closure on 30 October1893. Objects, from silver trays to paper cutters and powder boxes, were stamped with the Fair’smark or logo and sold as a remembrance of the exhibit [3]. These artifacts were tools to promote amodern social imaginary of America and eventually were permanently displayed in museums [4].Picture postcards, too, were used to spread images of the Fair and, as urban marketing evolved,became instruments to advertise the city and create its brand identity (Amendola, 1997).Following the suggestion of Susman (1983) we can define the Columbian Exposition one of the firstkinds of ‘media events’ (Dayan and Katz, 1992). Such identification is accurate not only for themediated experience made possible by media coverage but also, and more significantly, because theorganizers recognized ‘event potential’, exploiting it through the Department of Promotion andPublicity, directed by Moses Handy.A division dedicated to the organization of communication and public relations was set up with thetask — in a very contemporary marketing language — of ‘creating the event’, of selling the excitementof participating in an event and transforming the public into actors and actresses in the event (Harris,1994). The idea here was that the fairgoer, being a spectator, was at the same time an actor in thespectacle, as the public was an essential part of the event (Bennett, 1988; Roche, 2000). Thereforethe fairgoer must be involved in order for the event to be a hit.Handy and his colleagues recognized that a purposive and professional handling of advertising andpublic relations would have been decisive for the success of the Fair as much as its inner features. TheDepartment planned the Fair as a very special epoch–making event. We can say that Chicago World’sFair was an event in itself — its inner potential — as much as it was strategically constructed as anevent by the Department, being a pioneer experiment in urban and experiential marketing. It was apseudo–event (Boorstin, 1992) because it was strategically planned in order to become somethingworth experiencing and remembering. The inner potential of this ‘event’ was rationally exploited,empowered and nurtured through a managerial handling of advertising and public relations [5]. Asepoch–making, it became a national rite of passage to modern urban life for rural and traditionalAmerica (Downey, 1981; Susman, 1983; Harris, 1990).Here we come close to the aim of the ‘event’ and the means by which the organizers tried toaccomplish it. Such aim and means made the Columbian Exposition different from previous fairs. TheExhibition was not only a modern, industrial version of medieval fairs, where buyers and sellers fromall over the world could meet, present their products and exchange them — as in the past. It was notonly an opportunity to celebrate and showcase to the world the achievements reached by theorganizing nation — like previous exhibits. For the first time the Exposition was constructed topromote a new ideal of urban planning, as Daniel Burnham, the architect who coordinated works atthe fair, explicitly stated:

“The World’s Fair came, and disclosed what all were


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unconsciously waiting to receive, a lesson in landscapearchitecture. What the matter was with our publicimprovements, the Columbian Exposition made forever plain.Here, studied on the spot by millions, and by millions morethrough the activities of the Bureau of Publicity andPromotion, a great truth, set forth by great artists, wastaught to all our people. This truth is the supreme one of theneed of design and plan for whole cities.” [6]

It was the exact manner by which this aim was realized — through the staging of a representation ofan ideal city — that had a stamping effect on the content of that very imaginary. It was ahalf–purposive, half–unintended outcome of a colossal performance set up by the Fair’s organizers.

‘White City’ and Capital CityUnder the supervision of Daniel Burnham, a group of architects built an ideal Chicago, in directcomparison with the real one; very interestingly they called the Fair’s city the ‘White City’ in contrastto the real black and grey, industrial city of Chicago. Thus, the Fair became “a controlled experiment ofa larger urban planning movement” [7]. The City Beautiful Movement stemmed from the experience ofthe White City and exerted a deep impact on American urban planning and landscape architecture foryears to come. More broadly, the Fair’s organizers were an active part of that turn-of-the-centuryprogressive movement that wanted to foster progress and reformation through social planning andrationalization (Schlereth, 1981; Hines, 1974).The controlled experiment was built south of Chicago along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Its focal pointwas the Court of Honor (see Figure 1), bounded west by the Transportation Building and east by thelake. At its center, the Administration Building, with its huge dome, stood out against a beautiful basin.The main buildings were grouped around the court: among them, the monumental Manufacturers andLiberal Arts Building, where new American brands and products were presented to the nation and theworld; the Anthropological Building, where visitors were educated about new anthropological andethnological findings; and, the Electricity Building, dedicated to the display of the revolutionary powerof electricity. Every place was well connected by avenues and boulevards and many canals and basinscrisscrossed the fairground, giving a Venetian atmosphere to the whole complex.


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Figure 1: Court of Honor, image courtesy of Drawings and Documents Archive, Ball StateUniversity.

The important point to underline here is that the purpose of planning an ideal city, in comparison witha real one, was performative in itself, because it contributed to molding the imaginary of the modernAmerican city. I will support this statement with three specific examples. The first one has to do withthe extensive use of bird’s eye views at the Fair. These perspectives made possible something specialthat we can define as a new mode of observing the city: it shifted the sight line from an internalposition, the position of participation — the position of the actor — to an external position, the positionof separation — we could say the position of the spectator. This perspective was neither natural norusual at that time. Hence, the city was experienced as a spectacle. Here we face a careful and fullypurposive staging of a (theatrical) representation, aimed at promoting a new vision of the city, a veryideal. We could dare to suppose it is not by chance that the first Ferris Wheel in history was built atthe Exposition (see Figure 2) [8]. It was built in order to make possible the experience of the Fair andthe White City from an external, vertigo–inducing and breath–taking perspective [9]. We may alsonote that for many fairgoers the first sight of the Fair were the magnificent vistas opened up once theAdministration Building was ascended through one of its elevators, where the outer open colonnade,surrounding the whole dome, was reached.


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Figure 2: Ferris Wheel, image courtesy of Drawings and Documents Archive, Ball StateUniversity.

Here we approach the second example which regards the careful disposition of the buildings, an urbanlandscape realized in order to produce specific effects on fairgoers. The Fair’s entrances are verytelling is this respect. People were forced to enter the Fair only from two entrances, from theTransportation Building or from the Lake Michigan shore. They were both planned to produce an effectof monumentality. The first was directly connected to the Administration Building with its beautifuldome. Built in the style of the French Renaissance and enriched by many statues and decorations, thebuilding was intended as an “ouverture” [10] for visitors reaching the Fair by land. The secondentrance by the Lake opened up the most beautiful vistas on the basin and the Court of Honor (seeFigure 3). They were therefore strategically planned in order to impress the visitor, as the Handbook ofthe Fair explicitly stated:

“It does not matter by which of its entrances you approachthe Fair — whether you come by water [...] or whether youcome by rail and, passing through the splendid vestibulewhich this building forms, stand in the Plaza, with thefountain in the foreground and the Basin beyond [...]. Itdoes not matter, for in either case your point of view willhave been carefully planned for as a first point of view. Firstimpression always count for much; and the way in which ourFair builders have thus provided only two great entrances,but have given each of them monumental magnificence, andopened in front of each the most splendid and harmonious oftheir vistas, is certainly one point where they have provedtheir superiority to the builders of any previous exhibition.”[11]

Figure 3: White City, Entrance from the Lake, image courtesy of Drawings and DocumentsArchive, Ball State University.


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It was, in Weberian terms, a rationalization process: something studied and realized in order toproduce an intended effect. Since the beginning, the sight of the fairgoer was prepared to face and beastounded by a masterful representation, as the spectator in a theatre (Harris, 1993).The third example regards the use of electric illumination as a tool for producing an effect ofenchantment. At the Fair, over 90,000 lights were used and the electric power for night illuminationwas three times more than that used for evening illumination of Chicago (Barrett, 1894; Adams,1995). Electric illumination at night was a “wondrous enchantment” and “the most spectacular sight atthe fair” [12]. Nightly illumination sharpened the contrast between the white of the buildings and thedark of the sky, making the great Basin of the Court shimmer like a dream (see Figure 4). The electricfountains, too, contributed to the enchantment as visitors stood “at points of vantage about the greatcourt each evening to watch the ever–changing beauties of these fountains”; they gazed at how theprojector lamps illuminated “in the most pleasing manner the ever–varying streams of water projectedthrough the nearly 400 apertures provided.” [13]In brief, the White City with its Court of Honor was strategically planned as a monumental staging ofan ideal city (Trachtenberg, 1982). It was a land of enchantment free from pain and poverty, withbeautiful marble–like buildings, basins, avenues, palaces of consumption, spectacles, entertainmentsand wonders. Its monumental urbanism contributed to promote the primacy of urban vista overarchitectural coherence, which is a mark of the modern imaginary of urban space since “Haussmann’sundertaking” [14].

Figure 4: Nightly illumination at the Fair, image courtesy of Drawings and Documents Archive,Ball State University.

The important point to stress here, however, is that the White City was a temporary construction akinto a theatre set. All buildings were constructed knowing in advance they would have been dismantledat the end of the Fair. They were made by a new construction material called ‘staff’ — made of amixture of plastic, cement and other materials — which was marble–like, but not real marble. Its usenot only made possible the neo–classical effect desired by the architects, but it also produced theimpression that the buildings were permanent constructions of high architectural value (Hines, 1974;Ewen, 1993). They were not, as one of the architect of the group, Henry Van Brunt, made clear:

“It must be borne in mind, however, that all this is notarchitecture in its highest sense, but rather a scenic displayof architecture, composed (to use a theatrical term) of


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‘practicable’ models, executed on a colossal stage, and witha degree of apparent pomp and splendor which, if set forthin marbles and bronze, might recall the era of Augustus orNero.” [15]

In taking the form of a colossal representation, the White City ‘staged’ an ideal city and made itscomparative function very effective. Yet, in the eyes of the visitors the illusive representation wasaccepted and the Fair was experienced as something real. Being temporary, the architecturallandscape was constructed in order to appear and to be experienced as something permanent. Thus,the reality of the city was compared to the reality of the Exposition that, being a plannedrepresentation, was relieved of all negative aspects which are always present in an inhabited urbanspace. All this was not without effect from an architectural point of view, as both Mumford and Sullivanacknowledged when they defined the Fair’s buildings as ‘simulacra’. Such undertaking promoted acosmetic vision of architecture and “reduced the work of the architect to that of putting a pleasingfront upon the scrappy building” [16]. Furthermore, the comparison of a represented ideal–city with areal city had consequences that went far beyond the vision of the architecture, first and foremostsuggesting a very modern vision of reality as a (social) construction.This tendency was empowered by the idea that the whole exhibition should impart an “object lesson”,a form of education which depended less on language than on pictures and images, thus stimulating anotion of a visual vocabulary as the most effective medium for knowledge (Bronner, 1989; Harris,1993). Through the mixture of expositions and spectacles, the Fair taught a lesson about civilizationand progress: from the ethnological displays of the Anthropological Building to the showcase oftechnologies in the Machinery and Electricity Buildings, through the exposition of industrial products inthe Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building to the American Court of Honor at the centre, everythingwas part of a great lesson for the eyes. Even the carnivalesque Midway Plaisance, with its wonders,entertainments and exhibitions of customs and traditions of other civilizations was intended toreinforce the narrative of the Fair’s world–image.

The innovation of the Midway PlaisanceFor the line of investigation followed in this paper, the Midway Plaisance was much more than acounter melody intended to enhance the imperialistic and ethnocentric score of the Fair. With its“picturesque exotica” [17] the Midway was either an empowerment of the Fair’s illusive nature and adecisive force in marketing a modern imaginary of urban space and life through representationresulting from the Fair. I will support my argument with a brief description of the Midway and itspeculiarities.First of all, the Midway Plaisance of Chicago was the first modern International Expo in history with anexplicit link to its roots in medieval and carnivalesque fairs. The organizers took some of the festiveaspects of the previous world’s fair — in Paris in 1889 — and went a step further. They incorporated onthe border of the fairground, but within the site, an avenue a mile in length “lined on both sides withso remarkable a collection of shows of one sort or another that one man could never hope to findthem all in a lifetime were he compelled to search through the world for himself” [18].This strip of land was composed of rationalized staging of entertainments, spectacles and simulationsconceived and perceived as places of multi–sensual stimulation and enchantment. In the Midway youcould find the representation of tribal life from the most exotic places from the Pacific to the IndianOceans. You could walk through Algerian and Tunisian villages (a representation, a simulation)towards ‘Old Vienna’ and into a Chinese village or Turkish village. You could look at the most beautifulsimulations made possible by the joint use of electricity, theatrical display and mechanical devices,such as the simulation of the Italian ‘Capri Grotto’, the Cyclorama of an Hawaiian volcano or therepresentation of ‘A day at the Alps’ inside the Electric Scenic Theatre, from the sunny morningthrough an afternoon thunderstorm and then into the silent night, with stars brooding over it all.The Midway Plaisance was a controlled space of wandering and experiences that made possible a safesolicitation of the senses; a carnival freed from violence and the elements of uncertainty alwayspresent in the past. Technology and savagery, past and future, far and near, familiar and exotica wereall mixed in an architectural, musical and cultural patchwork very close to postmodern taste. Elementsfrom different epochs and distant countries were brought together in the same space and at the sametime. Such time–space compression, together with the theatrical nature of the Fair, loosened theaccent of reality and ignited the power of imagination by stimulating senses and emotions, being afirst step towards the society as spectacle (Debord, 1967). The display of customs, traditions andcivilizations, with their achievements or primitiveness became therefore an experience ofdivertissement and entered into the everyday life of the masses (Rydell, 1984; 1989). The MidwayPlaisance was indeed a direct source for the development of theme parks and luna parks, such asConey Island in New York (Kasson, 1978).As a matter of fact, we can trace here the distant root of that mixture between spectacles andbusiness that would become a must for contemporary “experience economy” (Pine and Gilmore, 1999;Ritzer, 2005). The first is a case strikingly similar to present–day example of mixture between


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spectacle and restoration, the “Hungarian Orpheum”:“The exhibit consists of a café and concert pavilion [...] witha covered garden on the roof. The theater is in the lowerpart, and concerts are given every half–hour. The performersare Hungarian artists, brought directly from Budapest,Hungary’s capital city. The native costumes and modes of lifeof the different nationalities which compose this empire areshown. The roof–garden is filled with chairs and tables wheremeals, lunches, etc., are served. The guests are waited uponby seventy–five Hungarian maidens, dressed in their richnational costumes; and at intervals Hazay Natzy’s famousHungarian band discourses choice music. There is also agipsy band under the leadership of Paul Olah.” [19]

Manufacturers, too, displayed their new brands through spectacular and entertaining shows, evenoutside the Midway Plaisance. For example, within the Baker’s Cocoa and Chocolate Pavilion, breakfastcocoa was served by young maidens dressed in the costume of Liotard’s ‘La belle Chocolatiere’, chosenas the trademark logo of the brand few years before (Wade, 1893). Within the Agricultural Building,the American Cereal Company realized the panorama ‘The Procession of the Seasons’ which waspainted by H. Bolton Jones and Francis C. Jones of New York and showed “in poetic art the story of theold and new way of Agriculture” [20], following the course of grain from seed to manufacturedproduct, ready for breakfast. The Lever Brothers, British soap manufacturer, realized a reproduction ofthe Windsor Castle as the main attraction of its exhibit [21].The autonomous works of young impresario Sol Bloom and the Harvard anthropologist Frederick WardPutnam, who was the appointed supervisor of the anthropological expositions at the Fair, put theMidway Plaisance at the centre of the Fair, even if the intentions of the organizers were to keep itseparated from the dignified and solemn lessons of the White City. The Midway indeed demonstratedhow information, entertainment and spectacles could be joined together as a pleasurable publicexperience. Far from remaining a sideshow, it joined the White City in shaping the imaginary emergingfrom the experience of the Fair.

Chicago World’s Fair and the imaginary of the city: Or making the ‘liminal’ permanentthrough representationLouis Sullivan, one of the architects of the Fair, later recognized that the Fair produced an effect ofoverstimulation on the public [22]. Such overstimulation was in part intended as a tool for promotingthe ideal city architects had in mind, and was in part the unintended outcome of a perfect mixtureemerging from the staging of an ideal city centre in the White City and a land of enchantment in theMidway Plaisance.Through the colossal staging of a representation which showed something temporal as permanent, theFair “created an over–empowering emotional impression” [23] that molded a vision of what an idealcity should have been. The “most illusive piece of scenic architecture” ever built — as criticMontgomery Shuyler [24] defined the Fair — made a dream–like and fairyland environment real forvisitors. As in theatre, the staging of an illusion, an enchantment, had real effects on people whoexperienced it — fairgoers looked at the Fair, a staging, a representation, as a concrete possibility for areal city. They thought the city could be the enchanted city of the Fair with all its wonders andspectacles, freed from negative elements always present in real cities and real life. As Lewis Mumfordrecognized: “The World’s Fair suggested to the civic enthusiasm that every city might become a fair”[25].The imaginary of the modern American city was shaped by the experience of the Fair with its mixtureof divertissement, spectacles and fairyland environment; a place where dreams come true and thepersonality of the citizen can be expressed through every kind of stimuli and experiences. TheColumbian Exposition of Chicago was strategically staged in order to produce effects on the public. Intrying to promote “the full acceptance of a new way of life, new values and a new social organization”[26] through the staging of a representation of an ideal city at the Fair, the temporary characters offairs as liminal and out–of–the–ordinary situations were shifted into the imaginary of urban space andeveryday life, making permanent and ordinary in the city what was liminal and out of ordinary in fairs.

About the authorCesare Silla is research fellow in sociology at Catholic University of Milan. He is currently working onthe topic of consumer capitalism and modernity at the ARC Centre (Centre for the Anthropology ofReligion and Cultural Change).E–mail: cesare [dot] silla [at] unicatt [dot] it


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AcknowledgementsThis paper is published with support from the ARC Centre (Centre for the Anthropology of Religion andCultural Change), Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan.

Notes1. Adams, 1946, p. 343.2. Mumford, 1934, p. 124.3. My genealogical perspective is largely based on the theoretical and empirical works of ÁrpádSzakolczai (1993; 1998; 2012), who has connected Nietzsche and Foucault to Max Weber, arguing thathistorical sociology should be ‘genealogical’ in order to properly question the taken for granted ofsocial phenomena in the present. I tried a ‘genealogy of consumer capitalism in America throughmarketing’ (Silla, 2013).4. Rydell, 1989; Bronner, 1989. See, for example, the curent exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicagoentitled “Wonders of the 1893 World’s Fair” (http://worldsfair.fieldmuseum.org/); the Field Museumwas originally the Columbian Museum of Chicago at the Fair (see http://www.fieldmuseum.org/about/history-museum).5. Here we notice the seeds of a modern trend towards urban marketing which frames into a strictlyeconomic category the classic ideal of ‘civic improvement as the task of urban development’ (Rydell,1989).6. Burnham, 1902, p. 619.7. Hines, 1974, p. 74, see also Ross, 2013.8. As additional evidence of the growing importance of aerial view for the new imaginary of the city,the Department of Promotion and Publicity sponsored a competition for a bird’s–eye view of thefairground. The prized image was printed in 100,000 copies and distributed around the world toadvertise the Fair (Rydell, 1989).9. At the Paris 1889 Expo, something similar was realized in the form of the view of Paris from thetallest structure humans had ever built: the Eiffel Tower. The difference between the Chicago FerrisWheel and the Paris Eiffel Tower is that the former was built in order to view a representation of anideal city while the latter gazed at a real city. On the vertigo–inducing perspective, see de Cauter(1993). On the relation between cultural enthusiasm for viewing the city from above and the birth ofthe city planning profession, see the Ph.D. dissertation of Rebecca Ross, “All above: Visual culture andthe professionalization of city planning, 1867–1931” (Harvard University, 2012;http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/10288472).10. Van Brunt, 1892, p. 90.11. Wade, 1893, p. 60.12. Platt, 1986, p. 20.13. White and Igleheart, 1893, pp. 306–307.14. McQuire, 2008, p. 35.15. Van Brunt, 1892, p. 88.16. Mumford, 1934, p. 131; see also Sullivan, 1949.17. Hines, 1974, p. 73.18. White and Igleheart, 1893, p. 561.19. Wade, 1893, p. 212.20. Booklet ‘At the World’s Fair — 1893’, Vertical Files Box 1 Cereals Folder 2 Quaker Oats, WarshawCollection of Business Americana, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, SmithsonianInstitution, Washington D.C.21. See Vertical Files Box 6 Soap Folder 3 Lever Brothers, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana,Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.22. Sullivan, 1949, p. 324.23. Lewis, 1983, p. 44.


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24. Schuyler, 1961, p. 204.25. Mumford, 1934, p. 130.26. Susman, 1983, p. 7.

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Editorial historyReceived 20 October 2013; accepted 27 October 2013.

Copyright © 2013, First Monday.Copyright © 2013, Cesare Silla. All Rights Reserved.Chicago World’s Fair of 1893: Marketing the modern imaginary of the city and urban everyday lifethrough representationby Cesare Silla.First Monday, Volume 18, Number 11 - 4 November 2013http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/4955/3787doi: 10.5210/fm.v18i11.4955.


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