Horace Mann - Spring 2017 - 23

HM Alumni Address "The Issues" in Their Work and Lives

first employed here, coined by the Exposition's lofty-minded
planners to designate the "fun" part of the Fair. The Exposition's
midway served as a model for Coney Island and amusement
parks since. Eadweard Muybridge showed animal animation
in the Midway's Zoopraxographical Hall, the world's first movie
theater. A carpenter and Exposition contractor named Elias
Disney would inspire his son Walt with wondrous stories of time
spent at the Fair. L. Frank Baum, a young aspiring writer, would
visit The White City often before imagining his own "Emerald
City of Oz."
Resonating still today are ideas articulated during the
Exposition's influential lecture series. Featuring the reformer
Jane Addams, suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, future President Woodrow Wilson, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Clarence Darrow and Samuel Gompers, this was also
where historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his theory
on the closing of the American frontier.
The Exposition impressed its visitors in significant yet differing ways. The crusading journalist and author Theodore Dreiser
worried about what would come after, while Wellesley College
Prof. Katherine Lee Bates celebrated how The White City
glistened under the night sky, illuminated by the first wide-scale
use of outdoor electricity. Prof. Bates immortalized that image
in the line "Thine alabaster cities gleam" of her poem "America
the Beautiful."
For Dr. Sheppard, "an archaeologist ... digging in the sands
of world culture" from not one, but an international array of excavation sites, it's essential that relics of this historical moment
be reassembled in one location to convey a cohesive message
from which all can learn.
One additional aspect of the World's Columbian Exposition
makes Dr. Sheppard's goal particularly timely. An overwhelming highlight of the Midway Plaisance was its international
exhibit area featuring "recreations"
of streets in Istanbul and Cairo, an
East India bazaar, "villages" from
the South Seas, Persia, Algeria,
India, China, Ireland, Germany,
Austria, Lapland and the Aztec
civilization. Hungarians, Brazilians
and Native Americans showcased
aspects of their cultures in restaurants and theaters built for this purpose. Quaint, kitschy and colonialist
as these installations were they
provided the Exposition's 27 million
visitors from around the world a
glimpse into one another's cultures,
and opened a vast public mind.
As important as the inventions,
innovations and inspiration that the
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893
offered was its message of inclusiveness-a message Dr. Sheppard's act
of preservation so valuably conveys,
nearly 125 years later. $
Photo by Ruth Seligman

that depict a Fair favorite: the 264-foot high Ferris Wheel with
gondolas that could hoist 60 people in one car and over 2,160
riders in one rotation to views beyond Chicago-to Indiana,
Michigan and Wisconsin. George Ferris created this engineering feat in response to Burnham's call for a Chicago rival to the
Eiffel Tower of the Paris Exposition of 1889. Enumerating, in random order, just some of the advances and cultural touchstones
the Exposition unveiled, Dr. Sheppard mentions: the first moving
walkway; school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance;
Pabst beer winning its iconic Blue Ribbon; Frank Haven Hill's
device for printing books in Braille; the first indoor ice-skating
rink; Milton Hershey buying chocolate-manufacturing equipment from a European exhibitor for Hershey's own caramelmaking business; an electrical kitchen, complete with automatic
dishwasher; small Libbey Glass tumblers people purchased
for a penny to drink the potable water Burnham piped in from
Wisconsin via 100 miles of tunnels designed for the Fair. This
engineering feat has been replicated for transporting water
ever since. Also introduced here were phosphorescent lamps-
fluorescent lighting's forerunner-and clasp lockers-the
zipper's precursor.
Dr. Sheppard's files include dozens of engraved menus for
the Fair's elegant dinners, along with single sheets announcing
more humble hotel lunches, or the choices available from the
automat vending service that was premiered here. The alum's
extensive collection of Exposition advertising material announces such new products as Quaker Oats, Shredded Wheat
and Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix. The latter was introduced by
expert cook, raconteur and Civil Rights activist Nancy Green.
Born a slave, Green popularized the mix as she flipped pancakes
at the Exposition's Midway Plaisance in the persona of "Aunt
Jemima"- the country's first "living trademark." Green's success helped make her a wealthy philanthropist.
Along with Keller, Bell and
Douglass, the Columbian
Exposition drew boxing champ
James Corbett, Harry Houdini,
and artists Augustus St-Gaudens,
Childe Hassam and Mary Cassat,
who painted her "Modern Woman
Mural" in the Palace of Fine Arts
Building. Buffalo Bill Cody set up
his popular Wild West Show, with
its hundreds of rough riders and
sharp shooters, including Annie
Oakley, just outside the Exposition
after being denied a permit to
perform within its boundaries.
"Little Egypt" brought belly dancing
to the West here, but to less-thanauthentic accompaniment. Rather,
she swayed and swirled to that
ear worm melody of the "hootchykootchy"-a tune first whistled
by Midway impresario Sol Bloom.
The term "midway," itself, was

Horace Mann Magazine Spring 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Horace Mann - Spring 2017