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BOOK REVIEW: 1933 Century of Progress Exposition
by Marie J. Kuda
2007-12-05

This article shared 4031 times since Wed Dec 5, 2007
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Two of the four stars on the City of Chicago flag represent two world fairs. The 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition was filled with statuary and featured the neo-classical buildings that earned its nickname 'White City'. Louis Sullivan felt that the architecture of that Fair set the art back fifty years. On the other hand, the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition was a paean to the future. While both were trade fairs in the broadest sense bringing the goods of the world to the marketplace of the American mid-West, the 1933 Fair was a showplace not only for what was, but for what was to be in homes of the next generation of consumers. For a country still in the throes of the Great Depression the image of the future offered by the Fair was a carrot of hope, an escape into a dream world of possibilities. Its popularity extended the Fair for a second year. 38,000,000 fairgoers paid not only for a glimpse of the future, but saw the towering Skyride, Sally Rand's fan dance, the Silver Chalice of Antioch, and rows of premature babies in incubators.

The 1893 Fair's neo-classical buildings constructed of plaster were intended to be temporary and most were lost to fire at the Fair's end. The Century of Progress, situated on a strip of landfill 500 feet wide and 3-1/2 miles long stretching from what is now the Museum Campus to 37th Street, was exempt from existing zoning and building codes. Materials used in the construction of the Century of Progress were again dictated by the temporary nature of the buildings. The construction boom of post-World War II America would utilize the many innovative building materials, processes and techniques introduced at the 1933 Fair: Sheetrock, Masonite, Formica, glass brick, plastics, neon lighting, fiberboard, and prefabricated housing elements.

Lisa D. Schrenk in her new book, Building A Century Of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago's 1933-34 World's Fair ( University of Minnesota Press ) , catches the excitement generated by that promise of the future, compares and contrasts the 1933-34 Fair with other great commercial fairs and expositions from London in 1851 to New York in 1939, but focuses extensively on the architects and architecture of the Fair. Coverage is given each structure and its designers; but those in absentia whose influence was unmistakable like Norman Bel Geddes, Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright are given ample treatment. The book is an invaluable resource with 158 black and white illustrations, 26 color plates, a 16-page bibliography of over 400 entries, 50 pages of notes, two appendices: one listing the architects of each major building at the Century of Progress, and the second, the color schemes the Fair used in various buildings, the Avenue of Flags, the Skyride, and the exhibition halls ( noting where they differed between 1933 and 1934 ) .

The 1933-34 Fair, with its Art Deco imagery, has long captured the fancy of enthusiasts and collectors. The Burlington Zephyr locomotive that made its first appearance at the Fair in 1934 reflected the streamlined design that would set the tone in appliances, automobiles and furniture in succeeding decades. The Fair touted the new gadgets that would soon be in every home. Labor saving and environmental devices like air conditioning, vacuum cleaners, television, dishwashers; electricity and technology as the servant of man was one overriding theme. Travel was another; from the romance of the rails and steamships, the widening horizons for automobile trips, to the shrinking world of air travel. These themes were explored in the Travel and Transport building with its radical design: the Railroad Hall had a huge rotunda ceiling supported by cables from the outside like a suspension bridge. One highlight of the Fair was the non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from Italy of Balbo's bevy of seaplanes, landing on Lake Michigan in July 1933. [ The Roman column erected to commemorate this feat was recently moved from the Fair site after complaints about it being a monument to Facism. ]

Ms. Schrenk, formerly with the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation in Oak Park, offers some interesting asides on why Wright was passed over by the organizers for a seat on the planning commission ( does not play well with others ) , then refused an invitation to design a house for exhibit. She also tells us his son, John Lloyd Wright inventor of Lincoln Logs, made a killing selling the popular toy at the Fair.

Schrenk explores many other aspects of the fair: its creative funding and creative advertising, its aim to encourage public consumption of mass produced products, the concepts of prefabricated and disposable architecture as a solution to obsolescence, how the Fair stimulated design and influenced corporate consumer culture, why there were no skyscrapers, the 'major icon of modern American architecture' at the Fair, and more. This book can well grace any coffee table, but is much more than just a pretty face.

Copyright 2007 Marie J. Kuda


This article shared 4031 times since Wed Dec 5, 2007
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