“The Dream City,” The World’s Columbian Exhibition.
16 x 24 inches. Chromolithograph; backed with rice paper, else excellent condition. A beautiful, very scarce bird’s-eye view of Chicago, Illinois, published to promote and celebrate the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. It shows the Exposition’s buildings in the foreground in Jackson Park along the shore of Lake Michigan with the rest of the city in the distance. Sailboats, clipper ships, and steamships move through the area, and smoke pours from factory chimneys in the background. The view documents the massive neoclassical structures designed by architect Daniel Burnham, known collectively as the White City for the color of their faux stone facades. The grand fairground buildings of the White City were also called the “Dream City,” as indicated in the title of this view. Notable among the facades characterizing the exhibition is the warship moored at a pier near the center of the view. While the Navy wished to showcase its new, steel-hulled warships at the exhibition, they were constrained from doing so. The Rush-Bagot Treaty forbade warships to operate on the Great Lakes, and prior to the 1900 opening of the Sanitary and Ship Canal, a battleship would be unable to leave the lake. Consequently, a full-scale replica of a modern battleship -dubbed the Illinois – was built to show off the Navy’s new technologies.
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