The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in 9 beautiful coloration images

Get the Popular Science each day e-newsletter💡

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY suggestions despatched six days every week.

On May 1, 1893, Chicago was abuzz. Two hundred thousand folks jostled for a glimpse of the model new metropolis inside the metropolis, the so-called “White City.” Dignitaries, civic leaders, and politicians had all traveled far and extensive to attend the day’s spectacle. Even President Grover Cleveland joined the festivities. 

After President Cleveland gave a triumphant speech about American progress, he pressed a single golden telegraph key at precisely 12:08 p.m.—a small act that ushered within the “electric age,” The Salt Lake Herald later reported. “President Cleveland, by pressing a button, started the mighty machinery, rushing waters and revolving wheels” all through the large advanced of buildings that lined greater than 630 acres. The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was formally open to the general public!

Often known as the Chicago World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition was filled with firsts—the primary Ferris wheel, the primary industrial movie show, the primary large-scale use of electrical lights, the primary automated dishwasher, even the primary brownies. 

Today, little stays of the honest that modified historical past. Chicago’s primary artwork museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, was the only permanent building built for the fair. Some of the honest’s buildings have been later rebuilt, such because the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts that at the moment homes the Museum of Science and Industry. In Jackson Park, the place a lot of the honest occurred, all that’s left from 1893 is a small, wooded island and a 24-foot reproduction of the Statue of the Republic. Both of which many individuals cross each day with out figuring out their full significance or ties to one in every of historical past’s most spectacular spectacles. 

Despite this, the honest’s legacy continues in small methods; each time you activate the lights, use a zipper, or even have a piece of Juicy Fruit gum. And then there’s the images. These uncommon, colorized pictures (click on to increase pictures to full display screen) of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition assist us think about the true scale of the Chicago honest that modified historical past.

 

2025 PopSci Best of What’s New

The 50 most essential improvements of the yr