Chicago World Columbia Exposition: A Clash of Visions

[David Morris]

https://www.archdaily.com/873081/ad-classics-worlds-columbian-exposition-daniel-burnham-and-frederick-law-olmsted

Daniel Burnham, a noted Chicago architect, was chosen to serve as the
project’s director. At his disposal were 686 acres of land along the city’s
southern lakefront, a vast swathe of land which he developed with the help
of famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. A team of architects
from Chicago, New York, Boston, and Kansas City was gathered to produce the
Fair’s individual buildings. Their individual efforts were united by a
stylistic mandate: rather than the metal-and-glass pavilions that had
characterized World’s Fairs since the Crystal Palace, this new exhibition
would take on the appearance of a real and permanent “dream city” realized
in the Beaux-Arts style.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Sullivan

In 1890 Sullivan was one of the ten U.S. architects, five from the east and
five from the west, chosen to build a major structure for the "White City",
the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Sullivan's
massive Transportation Building and huge arched "Golden Door" stood out as
the only building not of the current style, Beaux-Arts, and the only
multicolored facade in the entire White City. Sullivan and fair director
Daniel Burnham were vocal about their displeasure with each other. Sullivan
later claimed (1922) that the fair set the course of American architecture
back "for half a century from its date, if not longer." His was the only
building to receive extensive recognition outside America, receiving three
medals from the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs the following year.