A 1900 Description of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Five stunning oil paintings included.

An exhibition of the scientific, liberal, and mechanical arts of all nations was held in Chicago between May 1 and October 31, 1893. The project had its inception in November 1885, in a resolution adopted by the directorate of the Chicago Inter-State Exposition Company. 

On July 6, 1888, the first well-defined action was taken, the Iroquois Club of Chicago, inviting the cooperation of six other leading clubs of that city in "securing the location of an international celebration at Chicago of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus." 

In July 1889, a decisive step was taken in the appointment by Mayor Cregier, under the resolution of the City Council, of a committee of 100 (afterward increased to 256) citizens, who were charged with the duty of promoting the selection of Chicago as the site for the Exposition. New York, Washington, and St. Louis were competing points, but the choice of Congress fell upon Chicago, and the act establishing the World's Fair in that city was signed by President Harrison on April 25, 1890. 

Under the requirements of the law, the President appointed eight Commissioners-at-large, with two Commissioners and two alternates from each State and Territory and the District of Columbia. Col. George R. Davis of Chicago was elected Director-General by the body thus constituted. Ex-Senator Thomas M. Palmer of Michigan was chosen as President of the Commission, and John T. Dickinson, of Texas, as Secretary. This Commission delegated much of its power to a Board of Reference and Control, who were instructed to act with a similar number appointed by the World's Columbian Exposition. 

The latter organization was incorporated with a directorate of forty-five members, elected annually by the stockholders. Lyman J. Gage of Chicago was the corporation's first President and was succeeded by W.T. Baker and Harlow N. Higinbotham.

In addition to these bodies, certain powers were vested in a Board of Lady Managers, composed of two members, with alternates, from each State and Territory, besides nine from the city of Chicago. Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer was chosen President of the latter. This Board was particularly charged with supervising women's participation in the Exposition and the exhibits of women's work.

The Board of Lady Managers funded and ran the Children's Building at the Fair. Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer was the catalyst of innovation, and the progressive ideals paid off for the students being taught in the Children's Building. 

The supreme executive power was vested in the Joint Board of Control. The site selected was Jackson Park, in the South Division of Chicago, with a strip connecting Jackson and Washington Parks, known as the "Midway Plaisance," which was surrendered to "concessionaires" who purchased the privilege of giving exhibitions or conducting restaurants or selling booths thereon. 

The site's total area was 633 acres, and that of the buildings - not reckoning those erected by States other than Illinois and foreign governments - was about 200 acres. When this was added to the acreage of the foreign and State buildings, the total space under the roof was approximately 250 acres. 

These figures do not include the buildings erected by private exhibitors, caterers, and vendors, which would add a small percentage to the grand total. Forty-seven foreign Governments made appropriations for the erection of their own buildings and other expenses connected with official representation, and there were exhibitors from eighty-six nations. 

The United States Government erected its own building and appropriated $500,000 to defray the expenses of a national exhibit, besides $82,500,000 toward the general cost of the Exposition. The appropriations by foreign Governments aggregated about $86,500,000, and those by the States and Territories, $6,120,000 - that of Illinois being $8,800,000. The entire outlay of the World's Columbian Exposition Company, up to March 31, 1894, including the cost of the preliminary organization, construction, operating, and post-Exposition expenses, was $27,151,800. This excludes foreign and State expenditures, which would swell the aggregate cost to nearly $845,000,000. 

Citizens of Chicago subscribed $5,608,206 toward the capital stock of the Exposition Company, and the municipality, $5,000,000, which was raised by the sale of bonds.

The site, while admirably adapted to the purpose, was, when chosen, a marshy flat, crossed by low sand ridges, upon which stood occasional clumps of stunted scrub oaks. Before the gates of the great fair were opened to the public, the entire area had been transformed into a dream of beauty. Marshes had been drained, filled in, and sodded; driveways and broad walks constructed; artificial ponds and lagoons dug and embanked, and all the highest skill of the landscape gardener's art had been called into play -to produce varied and striking effects. 

But the task had been a Herculean one. There were seventeen principal (or, as they may be called, departmental) buildings, all with beautiful and ornate designs in many sizes. They were known as the Manufacturers' and Liberal Arts, the Machinery, Electrical, Transportation, Woman's, Horticultural, Mines and Mining, Anthropological, Administration, Art Galleries, Agricultural, Art Institute, Fisheries, Live Stock, Dairy and Forestry buildings, and the Music Hall and Casino. Several of these had large annexes. 

The Manufacturers' Building was the largest. It was rectangular (1687x787 feet), having a ground area of 31 acres and a floor and gallery area of 44 acres. Its central chamber was 1280x380 feet, with a nave 107 feet wide, both hall and nave (accommodates the congregation) being surrounded by a gallery 50 feet wide. It was four times as large as the Roman Coliseum and three times as large as St. Peter's in Rome; 17,000,000 feet of lumber, 13,000,000 pounds of steel, and 2,000,000 pounds of iron had been used in its construction, involving a cost of $1,800,000.

It was initially intended to open the Exposition, formally on October 21, 1892, the quadricentennial of Columbus' discovery of land in the Western Hemisphere. However, the magnitude of the undertaking rendered this impracticable. Consequently, while dedicatory ceremonies were held on that day, preceded by a monster procession and followed by elaborate pyrotechnic displays at night, May 1, 1893, was fixed as the opening day - the machinery and fountains being put in operation, at the touch of an electric button by President Cleveland, at the close of a short address. 

The total number of admissions from that date to October 31 was 27,530,460 - the largest for any day being October 9 (Chicago Day), amounting to 761,944. The total receipts from all sources (including National and State appropriations, subscriptions, etc.) amounted to $28,151,168.75, of which $10,626,330.76 was from the sale of tickets and $3,699,581.43 from concessions. The aggregate attendance fell short of that at the Paris Exposition of 1889 by about 500,000, while the receipts from the sale of tickets and concessions exceeded the latter by nearly $5,800,000. Subscribers to the Exposition stock received a ten percent return on the same.

The Illinois building was the first of the State buildings to be completed, and it was also the largest and most costly but was severely criticized from an architectural standpoint. The exhibits showed the internal resources of the State, as well as the development of its governmental system and its progress in civilization from the days of the first pioneers. The entire Illinois exhibit in the State building was under the charge of the State Board of Agriculture, who devoted one-tenth of the appropriation, and a like proportion of floor space, to the exhibition of the work of Illinois women as scientists, authors, artists, decorators, etc. Among the special features of the Illinois exhibit were the following: 

State trophies and relics, kept in a fire-proof memorial hall; the display of grains and minerals, and an immense topographical map (prepared at the cost of $15,000), drafted on a scale of two miles to the inch, showing the character and resources of the State, and correcting many serious cartographical errors previously undiscovered.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lost Towns of Illinois - Hardscrabble and Unionville, Illinois.

Hardscrabble was in LaSalle County, situated on the Vermilion River approximately 80 miles southwest of Chicago in the prairie and farm land of north-central Illinois.

In 1824, Samuel D. Lockwood, one of the first commissioners of the Illinois and Michigan Canal project, was given the authorization to hire contractors to survey a route for the canal to follow. This canal connected Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, greatly increasing shipping traffic in the region. Land speculation in areas lining the canal and rivers ensued, and towns sprouted quickly.

The settlement of Bruce Township began when George Basore moved to the fertile State of Illinois and settled on section 24 in Bruce Township in 1831. Among the others who settled in the township in the 1830s may be mentioned William Morgan, Gayler Hayes, John Morgan, John and David Sotter, Norton Mackey, Rush, and Benjamin Mackey, Norton Gunn, William Reddick, Reuben Hackett, William Donnell, Isaac Painter, and William Bronson. (Bruce Township was organized in the spring of 1850, and Samuel Mackey was elected the first township supervisor. The City of Streator is situated in Bruce Township.)

In 1861, John O'Neil, a miner, established the first settlement in what was to become the city of Streator, Illinois, when he opened a small grocery and trading post. O'Neil is credited with giving today's town of Streator its first name, "Hardscrabble" (ironically an early name for the Bridgeport neighborhood), after watching two teams labor to pull a loaded wagon up the hill from the landing on the Vermillion River. O'Neil remarked that it was a hard scrabble (hard struggle) and then stenciled "Hard Scrabble" on the front of his store.

The Civil War led to Streator's second name, Unionville. Stories vary as to whether the name represented simply the community's devotion to the Northern cause or whether it symbolized the accord of Democrats and Republicans as soon as war actually broke out. Evidently many people regarded the change as merely symbolic and continued to call the settlement by its original, more descriptive name of Hardscrabble.

Both Unionville and Otter Creek had bazaars and community meetings where they engaged in work similar to that done by the Red Cross volunteers during recent wars; picking lint and making bandages and underwear for the hospitals.

All during the Civil War, the post office (named "Eagle") was about two miles from Unionville. The school children usually went from school to Squire Painter's house for the mail. It came twice a week. And when the spring or fall rains came, the road was full of water in places, and you had to walk on rail fences to get to the post office. Overholt and Holmes had a general store at Reading, but when the Vermillion River was past fording, you could not get to Reading, and the road to Ottawa was nothing but mud and water, so supplies got quite limited.

The men who returned to Unionville after the Civil War found little change. There were probably a few new settlers and a few new shanties along the river where Water Street is now; the Springer and Painter store had opened for business in 1864. But when the town was platted on April 27, 1865, scarcely six square blocks were encompassed by its boundaries: Main Street on the south, Bloomington on the east, Kent on the north, and the river on the west. James Campbell, John O. Dent, Clark S. Dey, and Isaac A. Rice signed as owners of the land.

Dr. Worthy Stevens Streator (1816-1902)

In 1865 some coal samples from the area were sent to Worthy Streator, a prominent railroad promoter, physician, industrialist, and entrepreneur from Cleveland, Ohio. Streator was immediately struck by the quality of the coal and financed the region's first mining operation, forming the Vermillion Coal Company. Streator approached his nephew Colonel Ralph Plumb at a railway station in December 1865 about overseeing the mining operation in central Illinois for him and several investors. Col. Plumb agreed and arrived in the town, then called Unionville, in January of 1866 with instructions to purchase and develop 4000 acres of coal lands as acting secretary, treasurer, and resident manager of the Vermillion Coal Company. He wasted no time. Under his supervision, miners went to work and sank the shaft of the company's first mine, the "Old Slope." Located east of the river, at the foot of Adams Street, and just north of Cedar, the mine reached a depth of fifty feet and eventually covered about sixty-five acres. (It never became a large operation, in its heyday employing only between fifty and a hundred men and averaging seventy tons of coal a day.)

While miners worked below ground, workmen above laid track for the first railroad into Unionville, the fifteen-mile "Stub End Road" that led westward to Wenona and a junction with the Illinois Central line. (It later became part of the Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio roads.) Halfway between the two towns grew up a small community which Plumb named Garfield after his Civil War commander.

With the new mine and the new railroad, Unionville gained more settlers. A row of wooden shacks sprang up along the railway near the mine. Overholt and Holmes moved their store from Reading to Unionville and put up a two-story building at Main and Bloomington - a site later occupied by the Plumb Hotel. Just back of the store and fronting Main Street was a three-story frame structure erected by Dr. E. E. Williams; its top floor was the chief place for entertainment prior to the construction of Oriental Hall. Zephaniah Schwartz, one of the earliest settlers in Livingston County, moved to the growing community and built a large rooming house called Streator House on the southwest corner of Main and Bloomington.

Unionville was obviously growing beyond the boundaries drawn for it in 1865, so Colonel Plumb and other residents arranged to have it replatted. In the meantime, they gave the town its third and present name, commemorating the efforts of the Ohio doctor who believed in its possibilities. Unionville officially became Streator, Illinois, on November 26, 1867. Less than three months later, on February 10, 1868, Ralph Plumb as secretary, together with James Huggans, Albert McCormick, and William Rainey - signed the second plat, which extended Streator's boundaries south to Wilson Street, east to Wasson, and north to Morrell. In the spring, a meeting was called to "determine by vote the question of incorporating the town of Streator." On the night of April 9, a group of about seventy landowners and businessmen met above the Overholt and Holmes store. There they voted, 56 to 5, for incorporation, and later that month, the townspeople chose five trustees for the village council: H. R. Stout, R. P. Smith, Robert Hall, A. J. Baker, and George Temple. The new village was formally incorporated in 1868, with a population of 1486.

Worthy S. Streator served as an Ohio State Republican Senator from 1869 to 1873.

In 1870 the Vermillion Coal Company opened its № 1 mine, with a shaft located just north of Grant and east of Vermillion Street. This mine, the largest in the entire Streator area, spread over about 930 acres at an average depth of 80 feet in its thirtieth year of operation. With a vein of coal between 4½ and 5 feet thick, the mine at its peak yielded more than 2500 tons a day, to make a total of approximately 5,000,000 tons. 

The Vermillion Company united with the Chicago and Wilmington Coal Company to form the Chicago, Wilmington, and Vermillion Coal Company in 1871; simply called "Vee Cee" by local residents.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.