America at the Fair

by Chaim M. Rosenberg

  14. LOFTY THOUGHTS AND LOW DOWN FUN

  During the last third of the 19th century, Paris exercised a profound influence on American creative life. Many American artists and sculptors, including Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, James McNeil Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Frederick William MacMonnies, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens journeyed to the City of Light for training and to imbibe the creative ambiance. Those with money attended the École des Beaux-Arts and all dreamed of displaying their works at one of the major salons. The artists were followed to Paris by budding American architects including Richard Morris Hunt, Charles Follen McKim, and Henry Hobson Richardson. On their return to their homeland the Americans carried with them their love of Paris and its beaux arts style. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was appointed artistic director of the World’s Columbian Exposition; his sculptures and works by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and Frederick MacMonnies were prominently displayed at the Fair. The beaux arts–trained architects and their disciples designed the Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library, and also the major buildings at the Chicago Fair. Harlow Higinbotham, Daniel Burnham, and the other powers of the World’s Columbian Exposition used the occasion to firmly root fine art, classical music, scholarship, and great architecture into the soil of American life and values.

  The Palace of Fine Arts

  Around the time of the 1889 Paris exposition, wealthy Americans journeyed to France, met the artists of the day, and bought their paintings. In this manner, outstanding Impressionist paintings were acquired for their private collections. Charles L. Hutchinson, chairman of the Fine Arts Committee, and his friend Martin Ryerson, were determined to mount a world-class display of fine art in Chicago to compete with what they had seen during their visits to the salons of Paris. The Fine Arts building, designed by Charles B. Atwood, was located at the northern end of the fairgrounds, facing the North Pond. Built in the Grecian-Ionic style, the building was 500 feet long and 320 feet wide. Attached to the main building were two annexes, each 200 feet by 120 feet. The Fine Arts building and annexes contained 74 galleries of varying sizes, offering four acres of floor space to hold the crowds and display hundreds of sculptures. On the walls, with 150,000 square feet of space, hung thousands of paintings borrowed from private and national collections. There were 2,000 paintings by American-born artists, including the works of Charles Wilson Peale and Peale’s artist sons, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and Mary Cassatt. The great Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins showed his Portrait of Dr. Gross and Winslow Homer his Sailors Take Warning. Art treasures from 20 nations were brought to Chicago, with Germany contributing 900, France 800, England 600, and Holland 300 paintings. There were artistic contributions from Austria, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan. The French were represented by Eugene Delacroix, the realist Jean-Francois Millet, and the up-and-coming impressionists Claude Monet and Camille Pissaro. Josef Israels represented Holland and John Constable and Lawrence Alma-Tadema represented Britain. The elite of Chicago society offered choice pieces from their private collections. Potter Palmer and his wife Bertha loaned 12 paintings. Charles T. Yerkes, the railroad magnate, loaned 11 of his favorites. Mrs. Henry Field loaned six and Martin Ryerson loaned four. Many of these paintings were later bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, where Charles Hutchinson served for years as president.

  The Palace of Fine Arts, which was built of steel and brick, is the only one of the grand palaces of the Fair to have survived. The building now houses Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

  Pianos and the Piano War at the Fair

  In colonial times, pianos were imported from Europe. Following independence, James Chickering and others made pianos on American soil. Chickering was born in 1798 in Mason Village, New Hampshire, where he apprenticed to a cabinetmaker. At age 20 he moved to Boston and became one of America’s early piano builders. A Chickening grand piano won a coveted medal for excellence at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851. On the strength of this success Chickering built a large piano factory powered by steam. Henry Mason, Emmons Hamlin, James Vose, William Emerson, and others in Boston established parlor organ and piano factories to meet the increasing demand. New York became the nation’s largest piano center, led by Henry Steinweg who moved from Germany in 1849 and changed the family name to Steinway. Some 25 American companies were building pianos before 1860. After the Civil War piano playing became increasingly popular in middle-class homes and many factories were built, especially in the Midwest. At the time of the 1893 Fair, Chicago was competing with the eastern cities as a major piano center. Hundreds of American piano manufacturers planned to exhibit their wares in Chicago in the hope of winning one of the prizes, which would be invaluable for their advertising.

  A number of the leading eastern manufacturers protested against the space allotted to them in the Manufactures Building and complained that the organizers had given preference to the Chicago piano companies. Their suspicions were heightened when Dr. Florenz Ziegfeld, the director of the Chicago Music College, was chosen as the sole judge of the merits of the competing pianos. In response Steinway and other major eastern piano makers announced that they would not exhibit in the Manufactures Building but would instead showcase their pianos in their respective state pavilions. Their decision provoked intense argument, pitting the new city of Chicago against the older cities of the eastern seaboard. In an editorial written on February 18, 1893, the New York Times thundered against the “Napoleonic-style” decision by George R. Davis, the director general of the Fair, who threatened to prevent the disgruntled Eastern piano makers from installing their pianos in their state pavilions.

  The Great Piano War troubled the good citizens of Chicago, who were hoping to show their city both as a center for manufacturing and for fine music and culture. Charles Norman Fay, who in 1890 had assembled 50 fellow Chicago businessmen willing to finance a symphony orchestra, persuaded America’s leading conductor, Theodore Thomas, to leave New York for Chicago. Maestro Thomas was also appointed musical director of the Fair and in this role was caught up in the Piano War. Thomas had invited the Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the most flamboyant and exciting pianist of his time, to perform at the Fair. His handsome face and flowing red hair drew attention everywhere he played. Irving Berlin, in his song “I Love a Piano,” wrote:

  I know a fine way to tickle a Steinway

  I love to run my fingers o’er the keys, the ivories

  And with the pedal I love to meddle

  When Paderewski comes this way

  I’m so excited if I’m invited

  To hear that long haired genius play.

  The trouble was that Paderewski was under contract with Steinway and only played on Steinway pianos during his American tours. The directors of the Fair demanded that he switch to a Chicago-made piano, but Paderewski insisted on a Steinway. The standoff was resolved when Fair officials decreed that the Music Hall was separate from the official World’s Columbian Exposition. Paderewski played on a Steinway and both he and his instrument were vilified in the Chicago press. A few days later Paderewski sailed for Europe. Ironically, the coveted piano prize went to Wallace Kimball, who began his life on a farm in Oxford, Maine, and later moved to Chicago. Kimball sold Chickering, Hallet & Davis, and other Boston-made pianos, but after the Fire of 1871 he went into manufacturing his own. Twenty years later the Kimball Piano Company of Chicago was making 30,000 pianos a year, and was one of the largest manufactures in the country.

  Dr. Florenz Ziegfeld, the piano judge of the Fair, was father to Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (1869–1932). The father and son later opened a variety hall in Chicago featuring the strongman Eugene Sandow. The showman Ziegfeld Jr. moved to New York where he staged such spectacular hits as his Ziegfeld Follies, Show Girl, and Bitter Sweet.

  Visitors to the Fair could enjoy a rich diet of classical music. The Music Hall faced the lagoon and stood between the Transportation and Horticult
ural buildings. Statues of Handel and Bach graced the entrance and on panels above the doors were relief portraits of Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven. The enormous interior had space for a full orchestra, a chorus of 2,500 voices, and seating for 6,500 people. The Boston Symphony Orchestra played in the Music Hall on May 15 and 16. The New York Symphony Orchestra visited on May 19 and 20, and the Kneisel Quartet played on May 22. Handel’s oratorio “The Messiah” was performed on June 14 and Bach’s “Passion” on June 16. The musical congress started July 3 and the Cleveland Vocal Society performed July 11. The French composer Camille Saint-Saens directed a concert of his works on September 25.

  Antonín Dvorák, the Czech composer, visited the Fair on his way to Spillville, Iowa. That summer he wrote his enchanting “American” String Quartet and his best known work, the Symphony no. 9, better known as “From the New World.”

  The great organ was built especially for the Music Hall by Farrand & Votey Organ Company of Detroit. It was later moved to the University of Michigan, where it was renamed the Frieze Memorial Organ. Theodore Thomas, unhappy with the limited public response to serious music and the controversy over Paderewski, resigned as musical director of the Fair to concentrate on his beloved orchestra.

  In 1892 the great Czech composer Antonín Dvorák accepted an invitation to come to the United States to serve as music director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Although deeply nationalistic and identified with the music of his own country, he admired the sounds and sights of the New World. In the summer of 1893 Dvorák and his family journeyed west from New York by train to vacation among a colony of Czech immigrants who had settled in Spillville, Iowa. On the way he spent some time in Chicago, visiting the Fair and enjoying dinner with imported beer at the Austrian restaurant at the Midway Plaisance. While in Iowa he wrote his enchanting “American” String Quartet and completed his most famous work, the Symphony no. 9 in E Minor, better known as the symphony “From the New World.” The premier of the new symphony was set for the World’s Fair but the performance was canceled due to financial difficulties. Instead Dvorák introduced his ninth symphony and his new string quartet at Carnegie Hall in New York on December 16, 1893.

  Dvorák had a profound impact on American music by encouraging an American musical style. His students included Will Marion Cook (1869–1944) and Rubin Goldmark (1872–1936). Cook, an African American, wrote an opera based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin as well as many musicals and songs. Goldmark was an important music teacher in New York, with Aaron Copland and George Gershwin among his students. Antonín Dvorák and his family returned to Europe in 1895 (Peress 2004).

  The high point of American piano making was not far off. By the start of World War I, the United States, with 350,000 pianos a year, was making half of all the world’s pianos (Germany and England were the only two other large producers). The introduction of the mechanical player piano, the gramophone, and the radio rapidly replaced piano playing in the home. Many of the 400 American piano companies were in financial difficulties and were taken over by trusts, such as the American Piano Company and the Aeolian Piano Company. The American industry suffered further crippling blows as Japan, Korea, and China became the new centers of piano making.

  World’s Parliament of Religions

  After 200 years of settlement, Protestantism still dominated American religious life. In the Northeast, the Anglo-Saxon elite controlled politics, trade, shipping, and industry. In the 19th century, the same group assumed leadership in the Midwest of politics, agriculture, livestock, lumber, and banking. The terrible potato famine of 1845–1849 brought hundreds of thousands of Irish Catholics to the United States. These impoverished newcomers took unskilled work in the factories, dug canals, and built railroads. The Irish were followed by French Canadians, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Jews, Greeks, and others who brought with them their own culture, religion, and habits. These immigrants changed the character of the United States and, by the close of the 19th century, the American melting pot was challenging the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon elite.

  In 1850 Catholics were only 5 percent of the American population, but with large-scale immigration from Ireland and Italy, the percentage of Catholics began to increase. The 30,000-square-foot Catholic educational exhibit in the Manufactures Building heralded the church’s achievements in the New World. It displayed the life of Christopher Columbus and the success of the Spanish and Portuguese in converting the indigenous peoples of Central and South America to Catholicism. The exhibit described Catholic influence in early Florida and California as well as the church’s concern for the wellbeing of “the Negro race” and the “Indian tribes.” The exhibit stressed the integration of Catholics into the mainstream of American life and described the role of the church in charity, fighting the evils of alcohol, the involvement of women, and the importance of missionary work (Feehan 1895). Other religious groups, including Jews, Protestants, Muslims, and Hindus also held their religious conferences in Chicago that year.

  The first serious dialogue about the role of faith in American life took place at the Fair. Charles C. Bonney (1831–1903), a prominent Chicago lawyer with Swedenborg convictions, suggested that the Fair display mankind’s spiritual achievements alongside its material accomplishments. Bonney’s idea evolved into the World’s Parliament of Religions, aimed at mutual understanding and respect and uniting all religions against the forces of atheism and anarchy. The Parliament of Religions, held from September 11 to 18, 1893, was a milestone in the history of inter-religious discussion in America. Attending were representatives from the major Protestant faiths, James Cardinal Gibbons for Roman Catholicism, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise for Reform Judaism, Mary Baker Eddy for Christian Science, and Annie Besant for Theosophy (Grossman 2004). The small Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim communities in the United States also sent representatives to the inter-faith meeting.

  The Congress of Women

  Five hundred delegates from 128 organizations and 27 countries attended the Congress of Women, held on May 15, 1893 in the Women’s Building at the Fair. The congress was sponsored by the Board of Lady Managers, under the leadership of Bertha Palmer. Some 200 women addressed the conference and their contributions were recorded in an 824-page hardcover book (Eagle 1894). Like Palmer, the other delegates and speakers were drawn from the privileged classes. In her opening address, Palmer welcomed all the delegates “notwithstanding differences in race, government, language, temperament and external conditions.” She commented briefly on the harsh realities of industrialization that led to overcrowding and pollution but set the tone by stating that “the sphere of women is in the home [and] that every woman, who is presiding over a happy home, is fulfilling her highest and truest function.” Women should be encouraged to seek a thorough education “to fit her to meet whatever fate life may bring [but] more important than all else, to prepare her for presiding over the home.” Many other speakers discussed the role of women in education, child rearing, keeping a clean and tidy home, and in literature, music, and the arts.

  There were a number of ardent suffragettes among the delegates who railed against the inferior legal status of women, “classified with minors, idiots, Indians, and criminals” (Agnes M. Manning), and suggested that “the ballot [be] placed in the hands of women” (Maria P. Peck). Eliza Stowe Twitchell described the dire effects of the Industrial Revolution in which machinery replaced craftsmanship, stripping people of their dignity and concentrating wealth in the hands of the few. Twitchell noted that the family farm was disappearing as mighty corporations bought up the land. While agreeing that the woman’s primary role was to care for her home and family, several speakers looked toward the time when women would receive an education equal to men, be given the vote, and be able to go out into the world as educators, doctors, lawyers, and even bankers. Overlooked was the fact that women had entered the American marketplace in great numbers early in the 19th century. These women, American-born and imm
igrant alike, comprised over a third of the labor force, worked long hours in the textile and shoe mills of New England and on the farms of the Midwest, earning less than men for equal work. As early as 1860, some 5,000 women shoe workers of Lynn, Massachusetts, staged a dignified strike demanding a living wage. The delegates at the Congress of Women in 1893, however, were more interested in the choices for the well-to-do than in the struggles of working women.

  Dozens of other conferences were held in conjunction with the Fair. These included the Congress of Education, the International Congress of Anthropology, the International Congress of Engineers, the International Meteorological Congress, The World’s Congress of Homeopathic Physicians, the Fifth Universal Peace Congress, the World’s Congress of Bankers and Financiers, and the World’s Railway Commerce Congress. From September 10 to 15, 1893, the American Chemical Society brought 3,000 scientists to Chicago. These conferences gathered delegates from near and far, arranged banquets, and rented space for their meetings. The delegates toured the Fair, stayed in Chicago’s hotels, and frequented the restaurants and theaters. Speeches at the conferences were long, earnest, and technical. These speeches were collected and issued in book form, but it would require a very dedicated researcher to read through the many ponderous volumes, each 600 pages or more, issued after the Fair to commemorate the many conferences, congresses, and parliaments that were held in Chicago between May 1 and October 30, 1893.

  Many colleges eagerly used the Fair to showcase their achievements. The southeastern section of the Manufactures Building (a total of 175,000 square feet) was set aside for educational displays. Harvard University used its 5,000 square feet to display the books and scientific discoveries of its leading scholars. Tufts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Clark, Williams, Amherst, Yale, and Johns Hopkins colleges were all represented, as were the four elite schools for young ladies, Wellesley, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe, and Smith. The colleges displayed photographs of their buildings, portraits of eminent professors and famous graduates, and extolled the benefits of attending college (Hovey 1894).