The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was the site of a rather large folly created by a successful bridge engineer and roundly excoriated by the culture leaders of the day, who said it would ruin the city. The temporary tower, named after its creator, had some problems going up, especially with elevators (the French, being French, wanted to use local talent rather than hire that upstart
American Otis company), but once it was erected, Eiffel was very clever giving those excoriating cultural leaders personal guided tours, and before long the tower was the toast of Paris. They even decided to leave it up until the next exposition! While the fair—commemorating the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the birth of the revolution—was happening around the tower, Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley were wowing them down the road with their Wild West Show, while those pesky “Impressionists” artists were being told that there was no place for their ugly crap at the fair. A marvelous moving sidewalk transported the tired feet of visitors from one site to another on the Champ de Mars.The World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 (it was a year late for the 400th anniversary) was, among other things, Chicago’s
announcement that it was a world-class city. The White City was a belle époque paradise that inspired, among others, L. Frank Baum and, probably, Walt Disney whose father, as we said, worked on its construction. Because the Eiffel Tower had been so successful, the fair folk decided that they, too, need an engineering marvel. They turned to George Ferris, who created a giant wheel from which hung large gondolas in which you could hold quite a reception. Tweet the mob! The wheel was not permanent, although it was seen again a decade later at bit further south at the Lousiana Purchase Exposition (the “Meet Me in St. Louis” fair). Midway between the fair and, if I’m not mistaken, one of 
the railroad stops, was an amusement area named the Midway Plaisance where you could see, in addition to displays of funny-looking foreigners, Little Egypt dance the hootchy-kootchy; eventually amusement areas became known as midways. The Columbian Exposition also brought us the hamburger, Cracker Jack, alternating current and, arguably, our first famous serial killer.For students of fairs, the treatment of those “exotic” people is a real issue. One must, of course, consider the times, but there is no question that, for all practical purposes, we corralled these folks for public display not too unlike zoos, and didn’t take particularly good care of them. You can track down these stories for yourself. Of course, some of these wild natives were anything but, although from our perspective… I mean, the Japanese may have fairly recently had a closed nation, making their presence unusual in downtown Chicago in the 1890s, but they had what one can only call, for lack of a better word, a civilized society, so their reactions to their display was quite different from, say, tribal Africans. Some fairs brought out local tribals for their displays, for instance in the American Northwest, and there is give and take between the integration of their culture into that of the anglos versus their marginalization at the same time, that makes for interesting study. Ultimately there is no question that we did not, at our fairs, display, say, the French and their bizarre ways as we did display, say, the Eskimos. You can answer for yourself if times, and the way we look at others, has changed.
Sticking to an American viewpoint, we sort of reach a fair apotheosis in 1939 in New York. For fair buffs, this is the Big One. We'll do that next.
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