The 1893 World’s Fair and the First Ferris Wheel

A corresponding lesson plan, A Spectrum of Perspectives: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Through the Lens of the 1893 World’s Fair, designed for grades 9-12, is available on EDSITEment. This lesson, based on primary source analysis, uses the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition as an entry point to introduce debates and developments of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. It addresses many themes and topics of the period, including sectional reconciliation after Reconstruction; the Panic of 1893; African American activism against segregation and oppression; women’s rights and suffrage; and colonialism, imperialism, and Indigenous resistance. The lesson positions students as historians and asks them to: 1. uncover the motives and messages of elite fair organizers, 2. analyze the diverse range of attitudes that Americans held toward the fair, and 3. explore methods for recovering the perspectives of Indigenous performers who were largely unable to document their experiences.

Exposition organizers branded their events with unique structures and distinctive architectural styles. The famed Eiffel Tower in Paris was constructed as the centerpiece for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. When completed in March 1889, it was the tallest human-made structure in the world at 1,024 feet (312 meters). Despite early criticism of its design, the Eiffel Tower was an engineering marvel that thrilled fairgoers. Hydraulic elevators opened in June, providing an unmatched view of the fairgrounds and the city beyond, serving as evidence of the scale of human achievement.

Chicagoans wanted the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition to surpass the grandeur of the recent Exposition Universelle. The young yet fast-growing midwestern city hoped to prove its place among the major cultural and economic centers of the United States and Europe. It was the second most populous U.S. city after New York City. As the central hub for the nation’s railroads, Chicago played an increasingly important role in the national economy, linking the populous East with the land and resources of the West. Having risen from the ashes of the catastrophic Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the city was an object lesson in resilience.

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Bird’s-eye view of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

Library of Congress

Architect Daniel Burnham, who oversaw the fair’s design and construction as director of works, sought an innovative and striking attraction that would rival the Eiffel Tower. He chose an observation wheel proposed by engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. The design, which came to be known as the Ferris Wheel, was based on the existing concept of hand-turned wooden “pleasure wheels.” Ferris was directly inspired by three 50-feet-tall steam-powered “roundabouts” installed by carpenter William Somers at beachfront boardwalks on the East Coast in 1892. Using a lightweight steel construction, Ferris scaled up his steam-powered wheel to a previously unimaginable height of 264 feet (80.4 meters).

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The Ferris Wheel at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

Wikimedia Commons

When the Ferris Wheel opened to the public on June 21, 1893, a ticket cost 50 cents, equivalent to about $17 today. Forty chairs were installed in each of the 36 passenger cars. With a capacity of 60 people per car, the wheel could accommodate 2,160 riders. The wheel made two revolutions over 20 minutes. After making six stops to drop off and pick up passengers, the wheel made a nine-minute nonstop rotation. Nearly 1.5 million Ferris Wheel tickets were sold throughout the fair, slightly more than the population of Chicago at the time.

Although ferris wheels are now ubiquitous, the original Ferris Wheel no longer stands. After the end of the fair, the Ferris Wheel remained in place for a couple of years before it was moved to another part of the city. It was later brought to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and was finally demolished and sold for scrap metal in 1906.

Experience a ride on the 1893 Ferris Wheel for yourself with this NEH-funded virtual reality simulation from the Chicago00 Project. The EDSITEment media resource A Flight on the 1893 Ferris Wheel provides discussion questions for incorporating the simulation in the classroom.

Riding the wheel was a novel experience providing a thrill of danger. Although today’s skyscrapers would tower over the Ferris Wheel, it was the tallest structure most passengers had ever been on. Only a few buildings in Chicago were taller. It was a point of pride for Chicago and the entire nation, and many American visitors took it as confirmation of their belief in the technological superiority of the United States.

The view from the Ferris Wheel gave fairgoers the opportunity to contrast the fairgrounds with the rest of the city. Chicago was a red-brick industrial city. The main section of the fair, the Court of Honor, was nicknamed the “White City” and featured white plaster-coated Greek- and Roman-style buildings housing the latest technological and artistic achievements. Well-ordered and lit by electric lights, the White City represented a vision for the ideal city of the future.

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The Administration Building and Grand Basin at the Court of Honor, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

Wikimedia Commons

The White City’s vision of progress was a limited one, based on inequality and exclusion as much as technological advancement. But other visions of progress emerged from the actions and voices of those whose perspectives were excluded from the White City.

You can read about technology, architecture, and futuristic fantasies at the 1939 New York World's Fair and other later expositions in the Humanities magazine article "Enchanting Reality: World's Fairs During the Depression."

Related EDSITEment content:

• Media Resource: BackStory: Shock of the New - The Legacy of the 1893 World’s Fair
• Media Resource: BackStory: Man vs. the Machine - Technophobia and American Society
• Lesson Plan: Having Fun: Leisure and Entertainment at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (6-8)
• Student Activity: Having Fun: The Economics of Leisure (6-8)
• Lesson Plan: Scraping the Sky: Architecture and American History (6-12)
• Lesson Plan: Thomas Edison's Inventions in the 1900s and Today: From "New" to You! (6-12)
• Lesson Plan: Carl Sandburg's "Chicago": Bringing a Great City Alive (9-12)
• Lesson Plan: The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad (6-8)

The tidy, sparkling beauty of the White City depended on the hidden labor of thousands of working-class builders, janitors, and security guards. Workers, many of whom were immigrants, transformed Jackson Park from over 600 acres of swamplands and sand dunes to a lush landscape with more than 200 temporary buildings. Living conditions for these workers were cramped and dangerous. Nearly 6,000 cases of injury and illness were reported during construction, and there were at least thirty fatalities. 

Hazards continued after the opening of the fair. Temporary materials proved highly flammable, and a July fire in the Cold Storage Building—deemed the “greatest refrigerator on earth”—killed thirteen firefighters and four civilian workers. Most laborers earned $1 to $3 per day, meaning that a day’s wages wouldn’t cover admission and Ferris Wheel tickets for a family of four. Not coincidentally, the all-African American janitorial staff were paid less than the mostly white watchmen staff.

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Cold Storage Building Fire, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

Wikimedia Commons

However, living up to Chicago’s reputation as a center of labor activism, exposition workers organized more than two dozen labor strikes during the construction and run of the fair.

The fair coincided with the start of the worst economic depression in U.S. history until the Great Depression of the 1930s. In February 1893, the bankruptcy of a major railroad signaled a warning sign of economic downturn following two decades of explosive growth. In April 1893, the U.S. Treasury announced that they were running low on gold. Massive selloffs hit the stock market from May 3-5, sending share prices tumbling. The Panic of 1893 triggered an economic depression that lasted until 1897, resulting in bank and business failures, wage cuts, and high unemployment. The depression exacerbated conflicts between workers and business owners over wages and working conditions, leading to many strikes and protests, including Chicago’s infamous 1894 Pullman Strike. In some ways, the Columbian Exposition offered Americans a momentary distraction from the nation’s economic uncertainty. However, as the fair’s labor strikes demonstrate, it was impossible to escape the class tensions of the Gilded Age.

Related EDSITEment content:

• Media Resource: BackStory: The Melting Pot - Americans & Assimilation
• Curriculum: The Jungle, Muckrakers, and Teddy Roosevelt (6-8)
• Lesson Plan: The Industrial Age in America: Robber Barons and Captains of Industry (6-8)
• Lesson Plan: The Industrial Age in America: Sweatshops, Steel Mills, and Factories (6-8)
• Lesson Plan: The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad (6-8)
• Lesson Plan: The Statue of Liberty: Bringing “The New Colossus” to America (6-8) 

From the top of the Ferris Wheel, visitors could look down at the “Midway Plaisance,” the entertainment center of the fair. In addition to food stalls and amusement rides, it featured "ethnological villages” populated by hired performers from across the globe. Exhibits included Turkish, Chinese, Lapland, and Dahomey (present-day Benin) villages. Just outside the gates, fairgoers could also visit Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. The famed stage production featured cowboys and American Indians reenacting battles, as well as horseback performers from around the world pulling off daring stunts. Because fair organizers did not believe the show had enough educational value, they denied a spot to “Buffalo Bill” Cody, but he managed to lease a space next to the fairgrounds. The show was a popular success, attracting nearly 3 million visitors, and many visitors were probably unaware that it was not a part of the official exposition.

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Buffalo Bill's Wild West at the dedication of the South Dakota building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

Wikimedia Commons

The intended message of fair organizers was that other cultures were “primitive” in comparison to Euro-American “civilization” on display in the White City. Portraying other cultures as underdeveloped helped them justify U.S. colonial efforts to control Native Americans. Later in the decade, the United States would harness this patronizing attitude toward other cultures to justify the nation's imperial expansion across the globe.

Village performers nevertheless challenged and subverted negative assumptions about their cultures and abilities by exercising agency and resistance. In history, “agency” refers to the power of individuals and groups to enact or exercise power, shaping their own lives and the course of society and history. Human agency is always limited by social and material constraints, and it is more limited for marginalized people who experience exclusion, discrimination, and hardship. However, although power is unequal and some people’s choices are more constrained than others, people find ways to exercise agency within their structural circumstances. “Resistance” is a form of agency that challenges these power structures. Resistance can range from bold and overt, like violence or organized protests, to small-scale and covert, like individual acts of disobedience or defying authority.

Agency and resistance to colonialism and imperialism took many forms at the exposition. Participants negotiated for better pay or working conditions and spoke out against mistreatment or inequality. Many were experienced professionals, and they found creative ways to supplement their regular earnings with performances, stunts, and crafted goods. By maintaining and sharing aspects of their cultures, Indigenous participants resisted forced assimilation to Euro-American norms. They defied expectations of "savagery" or backwardness by engaging with new technologies and aspects of modernity. They also returned the “colonial gaze” (the power of dominant cultures to scrutinize and judge other cultures) by reacting to rude or ignorant fairgoers with their own critical or humorous observations. Activity three of the EDSITEment lesson plan A Spectrum of Perspectives: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Through the Lens of the 1893 World’s Fair prompts students to read newspaper excerpts "against the grain" and uncover examples of Indigenous agency and resistance at the exposition.

More rarely, Indigenous participants were able to speak out directly against colonial and imperial policies. Author and activist Simon Pokagon, member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, was an invited speaker for the fair’s “Chicago Day.” In his speech, he criticized U.S. treatment of Native Americans, particularly the taking of their land. Pokagon reminded the crowd that the land now encompassing Chicago had been the home of the Potawatomi before the U.S. federal government coerced them to cede their homelands with the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. In activity two of the lesson plan A Spectrum of Perspectives, students have an opportunity to read and interpret Pokagon’s speech.

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Simon Pokagon, ca. 1899.

Wikimedia Commons

Related EDSITEment content:

• Teacher’s Guide: American Indian History and Heritage
• Media Resource: BackStory: Shock of the New - The Legacy of the 1893 World’s Fair
• Media Resource: BackStory: Darkness over the Plain: The Bison in American History
• Media Resource: Reimagining Sitting Bull, Tatanka Iyotake
• Curriculum: The Birth of an American Empire (9-12)
• Lesson Plan: The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad (6-8)
• Lesson Plan: Hawai'i's Annexation and Statehood: How the Island Nation Became an American Frontier (6-12)
• Lesson Plan: Native American Cultures Across the U.S. (6-8)
• Lesson Plan: Frontiers on the Big Screen (9-12)

African Americans found their own ways to challenge racist stereotypes promoted in some of the fair’s exhibits. Organizers excluded African Americans from fair planning and rejected the idea of an exhibit dedicated to Black progress. The Board of Lady Managers, responsible for planning women’s exhibits, also refused to appoint a single Black woman among their members. African American activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett called for a boycott of the fair. In an effort to appease Wells and other Black leaders, fair organizers designated August 25, 1893, as “Colored Americans Day.”

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Ida B. Wells-Barnett in a photograph by Mary Garrity, ca. 1893.

Wikimedia Commons

Wells-Barnett saw this as an empty gesture, but Frederick Douglass accepted the organizers' invitation to give the keynote address. Douglass used his speech to criticize white northerners for the hypocrisy of treating white southerners better than African Americans, arguing,

These same states were your enemies; they fought to trample in the dust the grandest republic the world can ever have. Why, in the name of bare justice, are we not treated with as much consideration as your foes?

The national unity on display at the Columbian Exposition was part of a larger trend of sectional reconciliation after the end of Reconstruction, which came at the expense of protecting the rights and safety of African Americans. Activity two of the EDSITEment lesson plan A Spectrum of Perspectives: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Through the Lens of the 1893 World’s Fair asks students to read and interpret Douglass’s keynote address.

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Frederick Douglass, ca. 1879.

National Archives

In response to Black exclusion from the fair, Wells-Barnett prepared a pamphlet with contributions from Frederick Douglass, journalist Irvine Garland Penn, and her husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett. Titled “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition,” it was published and ready for distribution on August 30. The pamphlet condemned white America for Black oppression, especially for the convict-lease system and lynchings, and highlighted Black achievements. With no designated building for African Americans, Wells-Barnett and Douglass made the Haitian Pavilion their base of operations on the fairgrounds. Douglass had served as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Haiti from 1889-1891, and Haiti had appointed him co-commissioner of its pavilion. From the Haitian Pavilion, Douglass and Wells-Barnett distributed 10,000 copies of the pamphlet to fairgoers from around the world.

Related EDSITEment content:

• Teacher's Guide: African American History and Culture in the United States
• Teacher’s Guide: Rethinking Reconstruction: Black Community and Political Organizing
• Media Resource: BackStory: Shock of the New - The Legacy of the 1893 World’s Fair
• Media Resource: Backstory: Behind the Bylines – Advocacy Journalism in America
• Closer Readings Commentary: Activist Constellations: Recovering Black Women's Labor and Leadership
• Student Activity: Frederick Douglass's, “What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (6-12)
• Curriculum: From Courage to Freedom: Frederick Douglass's 1845 Autobiography (9-12)
• Curriculum: NAACP's Anti-Lynching Campaigns: The Quest for Social Justice in the Interwar Years (9-12)
• Lesson Plan: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Aftermath of Reconstruction (9-12)

White women also had to negotiate barriers to self-representation on the fairgrounds. They were shut out of the main governing board of the fair, but their insistence on securing official planning roles led U.S. Congress to establish a Board of Lady Managers, made up of 117 women from around the country. Women’s exhibits were not incorporated within the main exhibition halls. Instead, the Lady Managers were given control over the Woman’s Building, the first building dedicated to women at a world’s fair.

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Photomechanical print of the interior of the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

Wikimedia Commons

They focused on highlighting women’s accomplishments in science, education, and art, avoiding any political statements calling for women’s rights. In addition to excluding Black women from representation, the Board of Lady Managers excluded outspoken suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Women’s rights activists found an alternative way to seize the public stage of the fair. They voiced their demands in speeches during the Congress of Representative Women, a week-long convention of around 150,000 women held on the fairgrounds in May. Nearly 500 women from 27 countries gave speeches, including six African American women. Themes included education, science and religion, moral and social reform, civil law and government, and industries and occupations. Several speeches from women’s rights activists called for women’s suffrage and other social and political rights.

Activity two of the EDSITEment lesson plan A Spectrum of Perspectives: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Through the Lens of the 1893 World’s Fair asks students to compare a speech from Bertha Palmer, president of the Board of Lady Managers, to a speech given at the Congress of Representative Women by African American suffragist Fannie Barrier Williams.

Photo caption

Fannie Barrier Williams, ca. 1885.

Wikimedia Commons

Related EDSITEment content:

• Teacher's Guide: Women’s History in the United States
• Media Resource: BackStory: Shock of the New - The Legacy of the 1893 World’s Fair
• Curriculum: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (9-12)
• Lesson Plan: Women's Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs (9-12)
• Lesson Plan: Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage (9-12)
• Lesson Plan: Who Were the Foremothers of the Women's Suffrage and Equality Movements? (6-12)
• Lesson Plan: Women's Suffrage: Why the West First? (6-12)
• Lesson Plan: Chronicling and Mapping the Women's Suffrage Movement (6-12)
• Lesson Plan: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper” & the “New Woman” (9-12)
• Lesson Plan: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper"—Writing Women (9-12)