1200 West Wrightwood Street
This is the address where Minnie (Holmes' wife) Williams and Anna her sister lived up to the day before being murdered by Holmes.
"Holmes checked newspaper advertisements for a rental flat far enough from his building to make impromptu visits unlikely. He found a place on the North Side at 1220 Wrightwood Avenue, a dozen or so blocks west of Lincoln Park, near Halsted. It was a pretty, shaded portion of the cty, though its prettiness was to Holmes merely an element to be entered in his calculations. The flat occupied the top floor of a large private house owned by a man named John Oker, whose daughters managed the rental. They first advertised the flat in April 1893." (Page 243.)
[After the 4th of July fireworks show at the World's Fair,] everyone began moving at the same time, and soon a great black tide was moving toward the exits and the stations of the Alley L and Illinois Central. Holmes and the Williams sisters waited hours for their turn to board one of the northbound trains, but the wait did nothing to dampen their spirits. That night the Oker family heard joking and laughter coming from the upstairs flat at 1220 Wrightwood." (Page 291.)
63rd and Wentworth (looking south from the north-east corner)
Englewood is today a mostly working class African-American neighborhood. The 90/94 expressway runs over the western part of this intersection. The same expressway, built during the "reign" of the first Daley, ate up the intersection just as it swallowed the house where Nelson Algren lived with Simone De Beauvoir, on Wabansia Street, further up north.
"He walked. He came to Wentworth Street, which ran north and south and clearly served as Englewood's main commercial street, its pavement clotted with horses, drays, and phaetons. Near the corner of Sixty-third and Wentworth, he passed a fire station that housed Engine Company no. 51. Next door was a police station." (Page 36)
Graceland Cemetery
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Graceland Cemetery is on the North Side of Chicago. It is the resting place of many famous figures in the history of Chicago. The graves I was interested in, though, were Daniel Burnham's, the leading figure behind the Chicago Columbian Exposition; John Root's, his business partner, who died even before construction got under way; and Louis Sullivan's, who didn't have a role in organizing this event, but who designed the Transportation Building and its famed Golden Arch at the Columbian Exposition.
View: Burnham's Tomb - Root's Tomb - Sullivan's Tomb
Midway Plaisance (63rd Street)
Midway Plaisance was where the World Columbian Exposition (the 1893 World Fair) side-shows put tent. Most notable among them were "Buffalo" Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and Ferris' Wheel. Today, Midway Plaisance is a wide space between two rows of buildings, coasted by 62nd and 63rd streets. At the very head of it, towards the lake, is a monument of St. Venceslaus, dedicated by the Hungarian community of Chicago to the Independence of Hungary.
"There was disarray in the fairgrounds, but not next door on the fifteen acres of the ground leased by Buffalo Bill for his show, which now bore the official title "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World." He was able to open the show on April 3 and immediately filled his eighteen-thousand-seat arena. Visitors entered through a gate that featured Columbus on one side, under the banner "PILOT OF THE OCEAN, FIRST PIONEER," and Buffalo Bill on the other, identified as "PILOT OF THE PRAIRIE, THE LAST PIONEER.
His show and camp covered fifteen acres. Its hundreds of Indians, soldiers, and workers slept in tents." (Page 222.)
"The Ferris Wheel quickly became the most popular attraction of the exposition. Thousands rode it every day. In the week beginning July 3 Ferris sold 61,395 tickets for a gross return of $30,697.50." (Page 287.) That would be $880,326 in today's money!
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The Museum of Science and Industry is the only standing building from the Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition. During the fair, it was called the Palace of Fine Arts. After the fair, people took to the streets to save it from demolition, after fires set by striking workers had reduced the rest of the fair to rubble. All of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition was built of steel covered with wood, staff (a mixture of cement and fibers) and glass, so the building was reconstructed with permanent materials with money made available by Julien Rosenwald, of Sears, Roebuck and Co.
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The Rookery
The Rookery Building was designed by John Root. It housed the offices of Burnham and Root's architectural firm. The top floor still houses a reconstruction of Burnham's library.
The Statue of The Republic ("Big Mary")
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This is a replica of the original statue that was created years later by French himself. In 1993, it was placed in Jackson Park, to commemorate the first centenary from the World's Columbian Exposition.
"Daniel Chester French's "Statue of the Republic" - nicknamed "Big Mary" - stood in the basin complete and gleaming, its entire surface gilded. Including plinth, the Republic was 111 feet tall." (Page 220.)
[On Inauguration Day] "From the president's vantage point the scene was festive and crisp, but at ground level there was water and mud and the mucid sucking that accompanied any shift in position. The only human form with dry feet was that of Daniel Chester French's Statue of the Republic - Big Mary - which stood hidden under a silo of canvas," (Page 238.)
View: Statue Photo 1 - Statue Photo 2
The Wooded Island
Frederick Law Olmsted - the famous landscape architect who designed Central Park in New York and the Biltmore Estates for the Vanderbilt family -, wanted this island to be the epitome of Nature at its best, with all its subtle changes of colors and textures. He fought throughout the installation of the fair to have this island left to his talents only. In the end, Burnham convinced him to allow the Japanese garden to be housed on part of it.
"He concentrated on the fair's central lagoon, which his dredges soon would begin carving from the Jackson Park shore. THe dredges would leave an island at the center of the lagoon, to be called, simply, the Wooded Island. The fair's main buildings would rise along the lagoon's outer banks. Olmsted saw this lagoon district as the most challenging portion of the fair. Just as the Grand Court was to be the architectural heart of the fair, so the central lagoon and Wooded Island were to constitute its landscape masterpiece. (Page 117.)
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