Ann-Marie

The Columbian Exposition was to commemorate and celebrate the United States from its discovery to 1892.  Wanting to show the world how great the United States had become from the Christopher Columbus discovery in 1492, the Columbian Exposition was to showcase all of the improvements both politically and socially that have taken place through the years.  And although the Exposition was to show the advancements and positive sides of the country, yet there were still many set backs that would prove that there were still many hurdles that needed to be faced by the country.   “American blacks stood beyond the gates, petitions for an exhibition, a building, or a separate department all rejected.  They were denied participation in the Fair, in its administration on the National Commission, even on the construction force and ground crews (except as menials)” (Trachtenberg, 220).  I find it very interesting that the Columbian Exposition was to celebrate the improvements in the country and yet there was still a lot to be done.  African Americans, a large part of the United States history, were banned from the Exposition.  Also when it came to Native Americans in the Exposition, they were used to show the primitive form of early Americans.  And although they were considered to be a “wild west show” but they were to show somewhat of a savage side.  Although the Columbian Exposition did show some what of the progressive side with women’s rights, the arts, and technology, they still had a long way to go. 

Jeff

The World's Fair was declared, by New York senator Chauncy M . Depew, to be the seminal cultural event not merely for the United States of America, but also for the world. How was the World's fair this big of event?

How can Blacks be not allowed in White City?

Tony

1. Did White City have any influence or impact on the people or government to expand beyond its borders and Imperialize?

2.  Did White City actually have a positive effect on the capitalistic Economy? why was it so Racist in its creation?

Frank

1. On pages 219-220, Trachtenberg states:

"Chicago had represented to him, subliminally at least, the defeat of the "simply industrial," the final victory of the centralizing, mechanical, and incorporated society of capitalism.  Indeed, if capitalism "were to be run at all, it must be run by capital and by capitalistic methods; for nothing could surpass the nonsensity of trying to run so complex and so concentrated a machine by southern and western farmers in grotesque alliance with city day-laborers."

This particular area in the reading confuses me.  Is Trachtenberg arguing that the farmers should remain working on the farms and stay out of governing or working in the financial aspects of a city? Rather, could he be arguing that the city and farms are dependant upon one another (such that they are intertwined) and the farmers are necessary to the financial success of a nearby city?

2. Tractenberg notes "the fair has seemed not only a culmination of the efforts of ruling groups since the Civil War to win hegemony over the emerging national culture but a prophetic symbol of the coming defeat of Populism and its alternative culture, the alternative "America" it proposed (231)."  I do not understand why he makes this argument.  If Populism holds that the common person's interests are oppressed or hindered by the elite in society, is he arguing that the White City would suppress the "American Dream" so to speak?

Cait

"Not Matter, But Mind; Not Things, But Men". the art of White City took the same motto. The distinctions in the motto were critical, reinforced everywhere in White City as part of the exposition's basic message. By itself, matter stood at a distance from art; the products of labor and science occupied a realm of their own. But art provided the mode of presentation, the vehicle, the medium through which material progress manifests itself, and manifests itself precisely as serving the same goals as art : the progress of the human spirit.”
            Art comes in many different forms. It also integrates itself into every aspect of modern life.  By combining art and matter, the ‘human spirit’ was free to be expressed. 

“The crux of Darrow's losing argument lay in his joining this familiar notion of mutuality with a developing concept of collective rights which lay "beyond equality." He put the issue pointedly. "Politically and theoretically the laborer is now a free man, the equal of the employer, the equal of the lawyer or the judge. But freedom does not consist alone in political rights, or in theories of government, or in theories as to man's relations with the state." Effective freedom lay in the right of workers to combine and act in union, in solidarity.”

This stood out to me because even though the argument didn’t come out on top, it still applies today.  The line “Effective freedom lay in the right of workers to combine and act in union, in solidarity.”  In an ideal situation, having workers work together creates a strong bond, and shows the management that the masses still have a say

Kerri

What was Olmstead’ unifying ground plan?

What exactly was the white city?

Why was Chicago the first expression of American thought as unity?

Jon

"How shall we take this event, which lasted but a summer-an oasis of fantasy and fable at a time of crisis and impending violence? Given its time and place, the Fair invites ironic scrutiny as few other events and objects in the age. Not the gesture alone of planting a new "city upon a hill" for the world to admire, but the accidental setting of that gesture between the financial panic of 1893 and the strike of 1894 makes White City seem a fitting conclusion of an age. The fruition of the alliance between "the word Culture" and corporate powers, it closes out an era. But it also inaugurates another. It lays bare a plan for a future. Like the Gilded Age, White City straddles a divide: a consummation and a new beginning."

     - Was the transformation to the "White City" a drastic one, or did it slowly begin to arise as the 20th century approached?

"as a model city it taught a lesson in the coordination of spaces and structures. some 400 buildings covering almost 700 acres of once swampy land dredged and filled and inlaid with canals, lagoons, plazas, and promenades, and a preserve of woods. Based on Olmsted's unifying ground plan, it taught the public utility of beauty, the coordination of art with the latest mechanical wonders: railroads, dynamos, electrical bulbs. It was, of course, a city without residences, though it offered advice in great detail about how families might live in cities of the near future: the model electrical kitchen, for example. How did its manifest harmony of parts (and in the central Court of Honor, of architectural style, height of buildings, color: a uniform whiteness) come about?"

    - How exactly were families supposed to live in this new city?

Luke

1. In the model city at the Chicago Fair in 1893, why weren’t residences displayed and not just model electrical kitchens to show how people might live?
2. Did many people agree with Sullivan’s idea of a tall, office building being “capable of transformation through art into a spiritual expression”(Trachtenburg, 228)? 
   
   

Kevin

1.) On June 15, 1920, police arrest several young black men accused of raping a white woman. That evening, three of them Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie are taken from jail by a mob and lynched.  Since there had been racial tensions in Duluth for quite some time up until then, why weren’t there any extra precautions taken to protect the men who were arrested.  Why didn’t previous examples of vigilantism and lynchings cause any concern for what could happen and did happen to these African American men?

2.) In the case of The Hetch Hetchy Dam Controversy, a reoccurring argument that even reappears again in the issue of oil drilling in 2001 is that of nature’s beauty versus its use.  Since, in both of these examples, the argument of use seems to hold more weight, is it fair to say that Pinchot’s argument was truly more valid and beneficial overall?  Also, I think that part of nature’s beauty is that iy can be of great use.  Did idea ever come up or was it more black and white?

Cristi

“White City would display just how wonderful America had become.”

“White City would show how a place like Chicago might be governed as well as how it might look. Just as the ground plan of the Fair implicitly rebuked the monotonous grid of Chicago's streets, so the Department of Works and its master plan rebuked the rule of mere competition, of commercial domination over beauty and order. By model and example, White City might thus inaugurate a new Chicago, a new urban world.”~ White City was not a real city? It was just a model city that no one lived in? How would that show Chicago how to govern themselves in a better fashion?

“More important than the battle of styles between the New York and Chicago schools is the conception embodied in the total design of White City of how space might be ordered and life organized.”

Jen

1.) Is White City still around today in its original design?

2.)  Do they still custom make cities in America today like Pullman?