Midway Plaisance Essay example -- Architecture History

midway PlaisanceThe Midway first came to being during the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago as a bit of an accident. The worlds fair scheduled for 1892 was pushed towards a higher sample than most others. The successes of the 1876 Philadelphia and 1889 capital of France fairs drove the Chicago planners to produce something even greater. As stated by Richard Wilson, the Paris fair especi all in ally hit phratry for the Americans. The sheer magnificence of the buildings and exhibits made the United States look very receding(prenominal) indeed. While France and the rest of the Old World countries held their own with remarkable advances in art, architecture, and science, the U.S. appeared to be falling behind. Americas relatively inferior showings didnt help to shake this raspy image. The U.S. was desperate for a new self-image. It needed an opportunity to establish itself as the superpower it felt it deserved to be. The Columbian Exposition gave the U.S. this chance. sporting organizers mean the fair on a grand scale. They gravitated towards a solemn Neo-Classical style, as exemplified in the all-white Court of Honor, a style which represented order, tradition, purity, and grandeur -- all the things that America was trying to display.However, this new classical character impressed upon the fairs major(ip) buildings produced a conflict with a group of people that had already move claim to the fair the members of the entertainment industry. Even before the formal annunciation of the Fair in 1890, requests for space from all sorts of vendors, musical and circus troupes, and restaurateurs. sport vendors had been set up at previous expositions, usually right alfresco the fairgrounds. There, they not only attracted more fairgoers than the regular exhibits... ...ighted crowds at Montreal in 1967. This natural selection of the idea of the Midway is a testament to its charisma, its power, and the high place pastime holds in the eye of society.Bibliography Richard Wilson, Challenge and Response Americans and the Architecture of the 1889 Exhibition, in Annette Blaugrund (ed.) Paris 1889. American Artists at the Universal Exposition, Philadelphia Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1989, 93-110.Findling, washbasin E. Historical Dictionary of Worlds Fairs and Expositions 1851-1988. New York Greenwood Press, 1990.Meehan, Patrick. The Big Wheel. Chicagos Great Ferris Wheel of 1893.Rydell, Robert W. Fair America Worlds Fairs in the United States. Washington D.C. Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.Keefe, John Webster. Libbey film over A Tradition of 150 Years 1918-1968. Toledo, Ohio Toledo Museum of Art, 1968.