The Influential Plan That Sought to Make Chicago Beautiful
Daniel HautzingerNovember 19, 2020
The 1909 Plan of Chicago recommended the lakefront be public parkland, extensive parks and forest preserves throughout the city, and other proposals that helped make Chicago the city we know today.
Frederick Douglass's Defiant Stand at Chicago's World's Fair
Daniel HautzingerFebruary 14, 2018
Although Frederick Douglass did not know his official birth date, he celebrated it on February 14. Late in his life, he spent a year in Chicago serving as the most prominent advocate for African Americans in a World's Fair that largely excluded them.
Dreaming of a World's Fair
Daniel HautzingerNovember 14, 2017
The Joffrey Ballet's new Nutcracker is set at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. How was the Joffrey's creative team inspired by the epochal World's Fair, and what aspects of the real-life Fair made it into their new production?
A Break in the Clouds: Chicago's 1933 World's Fair
Daniel HautzingerMay 27, 2017
84 years ago today, in the midst of the Great Depression, Chicago opened an extravagant World's Fair. The exposition celebrated "A Century of Progress" in the city and highlighted technological innovations such as the twelve-sided House of Tomorrow, which featured an electric dishwasher and air conditioning, and a Sky Ride that ferried visitors over the entire fair.
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