Two books starring the 1893 World’s Columbian Expo have been on my favorites list for some time – and have shaped my understanding of Chicago ahead of my move there next month. Sunday’s Sun-Times reports that both Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth and Eric Larson’s The Devil in the White City are being made into feature films (via Gapers Block).
If done right, the Expo could be a perfect subject for the big screen. It was itself a sort of fleeting fantasy that was (mostly) destroyed after its six-month run. It is unlikely that any other event did as much to craft the American cityscape of the 20th Century (for better or worse, I suppose). Most fascinating to me is the monumental scale of the Expo. Quoting Chris Ware in the Sun-Times:
“Ironically, to the modern mind, the whole fair seems a wondrous and practically inconceivable ‘folly,’ something I think people today unconsciously hunger for, though they might not be willing to admit it… The scale and expenditure that went into the 1893 Exposition is really only matched today by Hollywood blockbuster movies, and is just about as transitory, but there’s still something so much more reassuring, dignified and hopeful about it being a real place to visit and encounter rather than simply a brief flickering of colored shadows on a screen.”
It would be great if Hollywood could do a good job recreating the 1893 Expo, but it would be better if cities were inspired to take more risks with fantastic architecture. In these conservative times, would any city take on something like a Statue of Liberty or a Mount Rushmore? On that note, Mayor Street has still not commented on my proposal for 8th and Market.
Pictured: vintage playing cards from the World’s Columbian Exposition
