This is a view east along the Midway to the White City beyond, taken from on top of the Ferris Wheel. On the left are the Irish village, Javanese village, and German village. On the right are the attractions we walk by now.

This apartment building at 60th and Woodlawn is now graduate student housing. It's an example of typical apartment buildings in the area, many of which were built to house fair goers. It may be torn down in the new South Campus Master Plan.

This is now an administration building for the day to day operations of the university. These were once handled inside the Administration Building on 58th and Ellis, until students protesting the Vietnam War occupied the President's office and managed to shut the university down--including the payroll. After that the offices were moved far from campus 10 blocks away and above a grocery store. After a number of decades of student inactivism, the offices finally migrated back here to the edge of campus. I believe this building was built to house study centers for public policy and economics originally.

This location could have been a particularly grand center for the study of art and art history. Max Epstein, who was a trustee of the Art Institute and collected Old Masters, gave a million dollar pledge to build an Institute of Fine Arts at this location as part of an undergraduate residential quadrangle between Kimbark and Woodlawn. Max Epstein wrote that the university "should offer to its students the opportunity of learning the significance of Art, both as a history of the life of the past and as a living and inspiring force in the present." Unfortunately that pledge was made August 30, 1929. In 1931, the university shifted his gift to the medical center, but the plan had gone so far that Mrs. Frances Crane Lillie had had two ornamental doors by artist Alfeo Faggi made for it--The Dante Door and the Door of St. Francis. It is an interesting road not taken for the university, which didn't have much of an arts presence on campus until Cochrane-Woods and the Smart Gallery 45 years later.

However, fine arts were represented during the fair across the street. This was the location of the Panorama of the Bernese Alps. It was a 360 degree painting that was 6000 square feet, making one feel that one was standing on the Maennlichen Alp and regarding a whole range of Alps, including the Jungfrau. Ten artists camped out for the summer of 1891 to sketch the view. Then even more spent a year painting it in Paris.

It was called Switzerland's only contribution to fine art at the fair.

Although it's called New Graduate Residence Hall now, it was designed as the Center for Continuing Education. It had hotel rooms, conference rooms, lounges, and a nice dining area--great for a nice lunch back in its day. It was paid for by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, which financed a number of these hospitality centers on campuses. The thin columns reaching up several stories to the cantilevered roof are an instantly recognizable style of Stone's, especially at the campus of the State University of New York at Albany, where they formed nasty wind tunnels. The patterns wrap up the underside of the roof, but it does seem that limestone ages better than concrete.

The Merriam building houses several city, state, and national organizations involved with public policy and administration. It's a somewhat Art Moderne take on the Gothic, still using the Indiana limestone that dominates the quads. The main donor was the Spelman Fund of New York.

Charles E. Merriam was a professor at the university in 1905 who was asked to do a study of the city's municipal revenues, the city's water and shipping facilities and was part of the movement in the early days of the university to fuse town and gown in progressive reform. He got so involved in public policy that he was elected alderman in 1909.

This is an odd combination of a renovated Georgian church and a three-story residential wing with an arcade in between. The Orthogenic School was founded by the controversial psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who applied his theories of autism and childhood development to resident children.

In the arcade, there's an untitled ceramic sculpture created in 1965 by Jordi Bonet.

Since I posted this page, D. Patrick Zimmerman, Psy.D., Assistant Director, The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago, wrote in to say "That building now houses both the Hyde Park Day School and the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School (residential school). They are both supported by the same non-profit educational foundation."

The University of Chicago Steam Plant was located here to be near the railroad tracks so that coal could be delivered in bulk.

On a cold sunny winter's day, it fills the sky with clouds, creating swooping shadows across the snow. Steam ducts carry the heat from the plant across the Midway and into the buildings of the quadrangles. On the quads, grilles attract birds all winter and paths of melted snow trace the tunnels' underground progress. The university had wanted to locate the steam plant on the north side of the Midway at Harper Avenue, but it was unsuccessful in getting the land from the owners of the Rosalie Villas.

The University of Chicago Press building is a rather successful commentary on the Gothic style while still being contemporary. It is supposed to define the southeast corner of campus. There is a nice coffee shop on the east side of the ground floor where you can sit and look out at the Midway. It's open from 8 to 3 on work days. There are also restrooms available in the lobby, past the security desk. The Press editorial, marketing, and production departments occupy three of the four floors, which have a high-ceilinged "industrial" look.

The Press is the largest university press in the United States and second only to Oxford University Press in the world. It was one of the original elements in Harper's plan for a research institution. He planned to have a journal published by each department at the university. There are a still few journals from this original plan, such as the American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Geology, Modern Philology, and the American Journal of Education.

The original press building is now occupied by the bookstore on 58th and Ellis. The original idea was that all the typesetting and printing for the books and journals would also be done on campus, but these are now shipped out to services worldwide.

Hagenbach's Animal Show was on the corner of Dorchester Avenue. Hagenbach claimed to train more wild animals than any living man. The show had elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, bears, dogs, pigs, goats, sheep, horses, ponies, zebras, boars, monkeys, storks, and parrots. There was a lion in the cage over the door, who paced all day long, looking down at the crowds.

One feature was Prince, the equestrian lion, who rode on horseback. Another lion rode in a chariot drawn by Bengal tigers. Polar bears walked the tight rope. Goats frisked with spotted panthers. The chief keeper would take the lions for an airing out around the Plaisance to drum up business in the teeming crowd.

Even Hagenbach's circus fit the Social Darwinism of the ethnography exhibit. As Shepp's World's Fair Photographs commented, "It is wonderful to think that man can so thoroughly subdue and govern the animal kingdom."

Also in this area were two rival glass companies--Venice Murano Glass to the south and American Libbey Glass Works to the north.

Venice Murano Glass resembled an Italian cathedral in rich gold and green with a winged lion on top. It showed glass and mosaic work. Enameled mosaics showing two scenes from the life of Columbus were to be donated to the Columbian Museum. Perhaps they are still in the Field Museum, the heir of the Columbian Museum.

Libbey Glass on the north side had corner towers and a domed central roof with prisms, It showed its products but also showed men at work glass blowing, cutting, engraving, and etching. In the display room they had a gown made of spun glass for Georgia Cayvan an actress. It was a famous sight. The Infanta Eulalia liked it so much she ordered one for herself.

A small concession near here was the submarine dive. It was a small building filled with a tank to show how lost articles were recovered at sea according to the sideshow barker.