World's Columbian Exposition: Transportation Building (detail)
by SULLIVAN, Louis Henry, Colour plate, 224 x 279 mm
The World’s Columbian Exposition (the official shortened name for the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair) was a world’s fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World in 1492.
The centrepiece of the fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage Columbus took to the New World. The layout was, in large part, designed by Daniel Burnham and his colleagues. Many prominent architects designed its 14 “great buildings”, which followed Beaux-Arts principles of design, namely neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendour. Sullivan’s polychrome proto-Modern Transportation Building was an outstanding exception to the prevailing style, as he tried to develop an organic American form.
The colour plate shows the Golden Arch at Louis Sullivan’s Transportation Building. It is taken from “The World’s Fair in Water Colours” by Charles S. Graham.