The 1893 Midway: More Than a Ferris Wheel
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
H VoL. 3y2 d N0. 4 e PublishedPa by ther Hydek Park H istoricalH Society istoAuTuMNr 2010y The 1893 Midway: 2010 N utum A More than a ferris Wheel ILES f N o HNS C. Jo Permit No. 85 No. Permit IL Chicago, AID P HS 37 6 60 IL Chicago, U.S. Postage U.S. Avenue Park Lake S. 5529 HP Org. Non-Profit Society Historical Park yde H This Newsletter is published by the Hyde Park Historical Society, a Hyde Park Historical Society not-for-profit organization founded Collecting and PresErving Hyde PArk’S History in 1975 to record, preserve, and Midway scene Time for you to join up or renew? promote public interest in the history Fill out the form below and return it to: with Ferris of Hyde Park. Its headquarters, Wheel in background The Hyde Park Historical Society located in an 1893 restored cable car 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue • Chicago, IL 60637 station at 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue, Frances S. Vandervoort and sometimes lived, during the duration of the great fair, in carefully constructed replicas of buildings from ✁ houses local exhibits. It is open to n Saturday, July 17, a sizeable group of their native lands. Enclosed is my new renewal membership the public on Saturdays and Sundays stalwarts braved withering temperatures and Carolyn Johnson, anthropologist, musicologist, and in the Hyde Park Historical Society. from 2 until 4pm. high humidity to enjoy a bit of Java at the program director in the Department of Ecology and headquarters of the Hyde Park Historical Evolution at the University of Chicago placed the Student $15 Sponsor $50 Web site: hydeparkhistory.org OSociety. No, not coffee, but a taste of the 1893 Midway exhibits in an oddly familiar context. A Studebaker Member $30 Benefactor $100 Telephone: HY3-1893 of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, where exhibits map from 1893 clearly delineated Woodlawn and Ellis from around the world drew millions to gawk over Avenues, and the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, and Name President: Ruth Knack oddly-dressed people from exotic cultures who talked other markers. A photo of Java Village showed, in the Editor: Frances S. Vandervoort in strange languages, and who danced to cacophonous background, the original Del Prado Hotel at 59th Address Membership Coordinator: music in unusual, if not minimal, costumes. On the Street and what is now Dorchester Avenue. Claude Weil Zip mile-long Midway of the Columbian Exposition, Why did the Midway become such a success? Why Designer: Nickie Sage people from Java, Egypt, Turkey, Dahomey, Samoa, did this remarkable showing of cultural diversity Ireland, and numerous other exotic locales performed attract throngs of people from all over the country? ➤ 2 2 7 ➤ 1 A major reason, claims Carolyn, was the influence to exhibit their talents and wares. of a young entrepreneur, Sol Bloom. Born In Pekin, Recouping the cost of the Exposition was a challenge oral History Project frederick Douglass Illinois, in 1870 to Polish-Jewish immigrants, he grew in even the best of circumstances, and the U. S. up in San Francisco where his family moved when he had been experiencing financial woes for more than Takes a Big Step Chronicle Available to was an infant. He became enamored of theater business a decade. Unemployment in the early 1890s was in his early teens, and when only nineteen, found his between 12 and 16 percent. How could the Columbian forward HPHS Members way to France to see the 1889 Paris Exposition. While Exposition pay for itself? admiring the brand new Eiffel Tower, he planned his Sol Bloom, then a brash 22-year-old, saw Chicago The goal of the Society’s new oral history Barry Rapoport, next adventure, which this time would take him to as an opportunity not to be missed. He persuaded project is to produce a permanent electronic HPHS member and Chicago, the burgeoning city on Lake Michigan in his Exposition organizers to allow him to develop the history easily accessible to students, scholars, and former English teacher home state of Illinois. mile-long Midway Plaisance in a way that was bound the community at large. Over the past years the at South Shore High Chicago was selected for the Columbian Exposition to make money. While in Paris, he had cultivated Society and HydePark community have shown School, announces that enthusiasm in preserving local history through an the Chronicle he prepared oral history program. Ideally, the program would in honor of abolitionist bring documents and other materials to life by and statesman, individuals who can place them in the context of Frederick Douglass, the times in which they were written. At present, is available to HPHS the Society has 35 tapes and transcriptions of oral members and other histories recorded on audiocassette tapes, and 10-15 interested individuals. untranscribed tapes. The booklet contains Proof of community interest in oral history many photos, essays, lies in the attendance at a community seminar and reflections on the at the Blackstone Library last August: more life of this great man. than 75 history lovers overflowed the meeting It details efforts by ILES HAN g f N room. Recently, the Society received a generous Barry, his students, NA o contribution of $500 from the Hyde Park Bank to and his friends to Mo HNS C r support this project. Also, at the July 20 HPHS preserve Douglass’s A C. Jo M board meeting, members voted approval of the memory by installing a marker Ticket to Java Village Morgari image of Columbia with entourage overall Oral History Project as outlined in a document in Jackson Park immediately south of the Bowling presented by the Oral History Committee. Green on the site of the Fair’s Haitian Pavilion where, contacts with performers and Funding is needed for equipment that includes on May 15, 1893, Douglass gave a speech opening the entrepreneurs from around a digital tape recorder, a flip camcorder, and such 1893 Columbian Exposition. Send an e-mail to Barry the world who had produced a supplies as cabling and add-on electronic equipment. at: [email protected] for a digital copy of the huge variety of crowd-pleasing Also, funds would be needed for training workshops Chronicle as a gift. FSV activities. Surely this kind and the preparation of transcriptions. The start-up of entertainment could be cost for ten oral histories is estimated to be $5000. replicated in Chicago. And The Oral History Project Committee plans to seek Bloom was the one to do it. support from local businesses and individuals as well UPCOMING EVENTS He introduced visitors to the as from sources beyond the Hyde Park Community. Saturday, September 11, 2-4 pm, at Streets of Cairo, where belly FSV Headquarters. Dr. Mindy Schwartz dancers in the Little Egypt will give an illustrated talk about ILES exhibit titillated throngs Camp Douglas and the Confederate f N of visitors by dancing the o Monument in Oak Woods Cemetery. “hootchy-kootchy.” Young HNS Obituaries women from Java in colorful Sunday, October 3 Annual House Tour. C. Jo Details forthcoming. Java Village with old Del Prado Hotel in background silks and sculptured headdresses The Society regrets to announce the deaths of two performed sensuous dances to of its members. Yaffa Draznin passed away June 23, in 1890, besting New York City, St. Louis, the seductive music of a gamelan. Javanese and Samoan and Harold Moody passed away earlier this year. November (date tBA) Oral History Washington, D. C., and other cities for the honor of men performed drumming ceremonies. And, of course, Project program. presenting the United States to the rest of the world. towering over all was the 264-foot-high Ferris Wheel. Answer to Mystery Quiz: December (date tBA) Holiday party. Organizers decided that Jackson Park, then 600 acres A high point of Carolyn’s presentation was the of sandy swales and marshland, would be the best site playing of recordings of music from the 1893 Midway The gamelan, actually an assemblage of various Saturday, February 26, 2011 Annual for most of the Fair’s exhibits, but Midway Plaisance, recorded on Edison wax cylinders by Benjamin Ives instruments, including bells, gongs, woodwinds, dinner at the Quadrangle Club. Details the strip of land between Cottage Grove Avenue and Gilman of Harvard University, commissioned by drums, and bowed instruments. Gamelans are used in forthcoming. the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, would become the Mary Hemenway, a wealthy philanthropist. They were musical performances in Java, Bali, and other places in location for diverse ethnic groups from around to world played with the permission of the Peabody Museum the East Indies. A u t u m n 2 0 1 0 A u t u m n 2 0 1 0 6 3 Metro History fair Program a Success ILES f Frances S. Vandervoort N o Not long ago I chanced to meet a fellow alum of HNS Kalamazoo Central High School, the school from which C. Jo I graduated in 1953. Each of us had been reasonably at Harvard. The recordings were of music from Fiji, like figure dressed in a star-embossed robe, stands in good students, and had been accepted at the University Samoa, Wallis Island in the South Pacific, Java, Turkey, front a multitude of white American leaders including of Michigan on the basis of good grades and our and Indian music from Vancouver Island of British George Washington, General Ulysses S. Grant, school’s outstanding reputation. We loved our school Columbia, People listened with rapt attention to Abraham Lincoln, President Grover Cleveland, all of and appreciated the superb education it provided.