ATDTDA (1): Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Presently they had come within view of the searchlight beams sweeping the skies from the roof of the immense Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building -- a miniature city, nested within the city-within-a-city which was the Fair itself -- and began to see caped Columbian Guards on patrol, a reassuring sight, to Lindsay at least" (p. 24).

http://images.library.uiuc.edu:8081/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/tdc&CISOPTR=1622


[...] The Columbian Exposition was the venue for the debut of consumer products which are so familiar today--including Cream of Wheat, Shredded Wheat, Pabst Beer, Aunt Jemima syrup, and Juicy Fruit gum. The Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building was a showcase for American products, and showed them to advantage. To debut at the Fair, and possibly win a Columbian medal in product competitions, was a perfect way to win product recognition and a boon for the advertising department--advertisements in the months following the Fair prominently displayed ribbons and proudly pointed out, for example that this product was, "1st place, Bicycle Division." The Fair also introduced picture postcards to the American public, as well as two staples of the late-twentieth century diet--carbonated soda and hamburgers. 
But it was not merely the Fair's product introductions which have had an impact on the face of modern America. The Exposition provided the United States with a new holiday, Columbus Day, and a new method of inculcating patriotism in schoolchildren-- the Pledge of Allegiance. Yet nothing "says more about the power of the White City than that it inspired the Emerald City. Children's writer L. Frank Baum never forgot the fair and transmuted it into Oz." (Patton, 38) Other artists and writers, as we have seen, were heavily influenced by the Exposition. Popular novels, such as Burnham's Sweet Clover and Burnett's Two Little Pilgrims' Progress took the Fair as their backdrop and theme, while sections of W.D. Howells' Letters from an Altrurian Traveler and Henry Adams' Education focused on the meaning of the huge cultural event they had just experienced. [...]

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/WCE/legacy.html



Oh, I stumbled onto this: Here are some vintage tickets that were used during the Fair:

http://www.1893columbianexpo.com/1893_Worlds_Columbian_Expo_Ride_Tickets.html




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