City - Chicago, IL - Fair - The Midway Plaisance 1893 - Side by Side
by Mike Savad
Title
City - Chicago, IL - Fair - The Midway Plaisance 1893 - Side by Side
Artist
Mike Savad
Medium
Photograph - Colorized Photo
Description
Colorized photo from 1893
Original title: Trained animals lined up, with trainers, clowns and others, the Midway
Photographer: Frances Benjamin Johnston
Location: South Cottage Grove Ave and Midway Plaisance, Chicago, IL
I've always wanted to see a world's fair, but they aren't where I am now, or around when I'm not, oh well. This is the midway in the Columbian exposition of 1893. They weren't going to have one at first because they felt it was low class. But after seeing how much money France made they said, yeah, lets do it. But it has to be educational.
So they set up exhibits highlighting racism mostly. Putting what they considered least evolved in the back, which were people of color, and all the white people in the front. This classification stuck for a long time. They set up fancy little city like exhibits, each one charged a fee to get in, usually around 25 cents. There were even girlie shows of sorts.
They made a lot of money from the midway as the vendors each charged admission and had to share 25% of the profit to the fair.
They built the first Ferris Wheel which stood 264ft tall, and charged 50 cents to ride it, which is about $15. They had a balloon ride too for $2.00, which is $61 today). And of course they had animal shows, which mostly involved stacking animals of different sizes on top of each other.
For the editing, I had to clone out that thing on the left. I assume a finger or something, there was actually detail under it but not much, I just added soft colors, though looking at it more, I think it was another person, I can see the brim of the hat near the sign.
There was a color plate of this, they must have sold books at the fair because there are a lot of colorized images of the fair. The one for this though lacked punch. They used a lot of green and blue. I chose my own colors. Partly based on how I would attract attention. And partly based on Bostock's amusement park setups, which had a lot of gold in it.
There was also a band in the alcove, even a parrot on the rail. I wasn't sure what kind, so I went with the red kind.
The term Midway came from this expo, as the name of the street was called Midway Plaisance, if you have always wondered if the street was named after the midway, it was the other way around. People simply called it the midway and it stuck.
With that history out of the way, it was pointed out to me that this wasn't actually in Chicago at all, apparently it was labeled wrong and its actually from Buffalo, NY. It's the Pan-American Exposition, Bostock and his animals. I was wondering what that AP stood for on the poles, it's actually a PA.
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May 16th, 2022
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