Chicago 1893: Bringing the White City Back to Life
The Columbian Exposition introduced the world to the Ferris wheel, alternating current electricity, and a radical vision of what an American “dream city” could become with innovation and effort. Over 27 million visitors from around the world entered through the gates of a temporary neoclassical city built on the shores of Lake Michigan for the World’s Fair in 1893, Chicago.
How The Project Started
Chicago 1893 began its life in 2018 as a Twitter thread sharing photographs from The Dream City, a collection of official Exposition images taken by photographer Charles Arnold. People enjoyed the photographs and blurbs; I enjoyed the research. What started as 125 posts during the 125th anniversary of the event began to insist on becoming something much larger.
The material was too rich for social media alone, so I expanded it into a book. There was simply too much to say and show for the series of blog posts I had made. While creating the book, a documentary film felt like the logical next step — the visual grandeur of the fair demanded a visual medium. Plus, I had recorded the audiobook and had the material available for the voiceover of the film, with some alterations and additions. Eventually, the finished documentary premiered on the big screen at the Chicago Filmmaker's theater in 2022. This remains one of the most rewarding moments of my creative career.
What's Available
The project now spans multiple media formats, each designed as its own entry point into the legacy of the Columbian Exposition:
- The Book — available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook on Amazon
- The Documentary Film — streaming on Amazon Prime Video
- The Soundtrack — the original film score, available on Bandcamp
Beyond the Page and Screen
The Columbian Exposition was built to be experienced in three dimensions, and Chicago 1893 has been working to bring that experience back. Feature structures of the Grand Basin's Court of Honor have been recreated as 3D assets — one building was already made available on Meta's Instagram platform for a time as a lens filter. Walking around a virtual reconstruction of a structure that hasn't existed for over a century is something that still delights. These digital renderings are also viable for 3D printing, so you can hold the architectural history in the palm of your hand.
I've also turned to generative AI as a creative tool for the project, initially to colorize the original Charles Arnold photographs and more recently to render entirely new scenes inspired by the Columbian Exposition. In late 2023, a new four-minute cut of the documentary was released, combining these colorized images with AI-driven motion — bringing the people and places of 1893 back to life in a way that static photographs never could.
The fair was designed to disappear. This project exists to make sure it doesn't.