Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Illinois: The White City with Ashley Lemieux

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

In this episode, Sharon takes Ashley LeMieux on a tour of the world’s most spectacular fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The World’s Columbian Exposition was a fair like none other. Located in Chicago on a 690-acre fairground, the exposition attracted over 27 million people. The fair dazzled visitors with 200 extravagant buildings and palaces, impressive spectacles of electric lights, the world’s first ferris wheel and exact replicas of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria (Columbus’ ships). Fair visitors never went hungry and were introduced to foods such as Cracker Jacks, hot dogs, brownies, Quaker Oats and cream of wheat. The World’s Columbian Exposition changed U.S history, architecture and culture in a profound way. Join Sharon and Ashley as they uncover the mind-boggling story of Chicago’s World Fair and the lasting impact it had on the world.  For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a $1 small coffee and a two dollar small latte available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Hey friends delighted that you're here with me today. Thank you for joining me. I'm chatting with my friend Ashley Lemieux today about an event that has so many mind-blown brain-tickle moments that you are going to want to like pause this, write stuff down and be like, I gotta look that up. So I'm not even going to give you any spoilers. You just got to hear everything in this episode from start to finish because you're just going to have so many takeaways. This is really fun. Let's dive into the World Columbian Exposition. I'm Sharon McMahon. And welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

Yay, Ashley. I am so excited to be chatting with you today. I'm so excited to see what I'm in for today. It's good. It is fascinating. I feel like I could have filled up three hours worth of time with the material today. So we're not even going to scratch the surface and hopefully this will be so interesting to people that they'll be inspired to do some of their own research, but I have some really cool stuff to share with you. Tell everybody if they don't already follow the one and only Ashley Lemieux, tell everybody what you do. I'm a grief expert and grief coach.

And I help women specifically have tools to get through the darkest moments of their lives. And I do that through online courses and through my books. And we'll have retreats launching next year and through our online community on Instagram. I just try to have a supportive community for women. I love that. I want to talk about the World's Columbian Exposition. You know what that is? No. This was an event that happened in Chicago in 1893. It was designed to be kind of like a world's fair, except like the biggest and best fair the world had ever seen. And when I'm talking about world's fair, some of them were popular in Europe. There were some in England, Paris, et cetera, where we are talking like massive structures are built for millions of people to come visit and see all the things there are to see.

Brands could show off their products. It's a little bit, if you think about like a state fair, except make it so much bigger and better and internationally impressive. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. So that is just a little background on the type of events we're discussing. I'm with you. I'm really excited to see where this is headed. Okay. They decided we're going to make this fair and we're going to call it the world's Columbian exposition because we are going to make it on or related to the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus, quote unquote, discovering America, which happened in 1492, you know, like in the year of 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. So they started building this in 1892, 400 years after Columbus, and they dedicated the

grounds, but then it actually opened for guests in May of 1893. Just to give you a little context of how big this was, we're talking 690 acres of land. This is a massive structure with 200 impressive buildings on it. These are not just little like carnival situations where it's like we have cheese curds. These are buildings that you are meant to walk in and be like, holy smokes. I have never seen anything like this, like palaces kind of situation. That is how huge these buildings were impressive buildings. And they decided to make it even more impressive. They would color everything on the outside white. They would have these huge palaces with these big water features. And so people were like, what? They'd never seen something like this where it was light outside at nighttime. And there was a lot of competition

between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who were pioneers of electrification. Edison wanted a certain type of incandescent light bulbs and Tesla and his comrades put in a different bid. So there was all of this huge rivalry between these two giants of electricity to see who was going to get the contract to make the world's Colombian exposition light up at night. So people had truly never seen anything like the fact that it was bright at nighttime. There was a lot of arguing about where they should put this thing. They knew they wanted to build it. They knew they wanted to have this like amazing American event. But there were several cities vying for the rights to have the world's Columbian Exposition. Washington, D.C., New York City, St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago.

Eventually, it came down to the House of Representatives to vote on where to put it. New York and Chicago really kind of rose to the top. And ultimately, Chicago edged out because Chicago had more wide open spaces. It was less built up. The shoreline around Lake Michigan was available, whereas they felt like, where are we going to put this in New York City? We're going to have to tear stuff down to be able to put it in New York. One of their visions for this exposition, this fair, if you will, was for the man of humble means to be able to attend. So they felt like Chicago was a better place for that to happen.

And over the course of this exposition, which opened at the beginning of May and closed at the end of October in 1893, 27 million people visited. What? Yeah. 27 million people visited. You can't drive your car there. There's no airplanes. They're getting here on boats from around the world or what's happening? Boats from around the world and then trains, literally trains. But think about what an arduous journey it would be to travel there by train. To come to this required a tremendous expenditure of energy, but that just goes to show how popular and massive this was that 27 million people visited in that span of about six months. Are they staying in tents? Like I'm thinking, cause there's no way Chicago had hotels for 260 million people at that

time. So we're just camping out going to this fair. Well, 27 million people, but to be fair, yeah, I would imagine a lot of them stayed in boarding houses, hotels, or visited for the day, stayed with relatives. I don't believe there was much camping. No. No camping. In my mind, I'm just seeing all these tents outside of this big event. Okay. But 46 countries from around the world sent exhibitions. So this was not just like a, hey guys, let's have some hot dogs and like have some contests with like log splitting. No, this was planned for years.

46 countries sent exhibits and delegations. The stuff that was there completely blew people's mind, you know, like exhibits from Egypt and exhibits from India, all over the world, things people had never, ever seen before. So you could understand why they would have gone to such great lengths to attend this. One of the things that was controversial about it, though, is that the organizers refused to have an exhibit for African Americans. And some African American civil rights leaders like Frederick Douglass, Ida Wells were like, this is unconscionable that you would not permit us to have an exhibit here. They said, well, you can be incorporated into some of the other exhibits.

And they were like, that is not what we're looking for. So Frederick Douglass got appointed by the government of Haiti to be their official representative because 46 countries were allowed to be exhibitors while he was there in the exhibit, passed out tens of thousands of little tracts talking about how unconscionable it was that the exhibitors purposely were excluding African-Americans. We're not going to pretend that this white city was all for equality because it wasn't, but I thought that was noteworthy that he found a workaround. Like you won't let me be an exhibitor, but I will find another way to pass out the information. He's genius. I love that so much. You will have to do a Google search for some pictures of what the exposition looked like because the buildings truly are spectacular,

like big domes. And they were meant to beinspiring. It actually had a pretty profound effect on American city design and on American architecture. Because this event was so popular, other city planners wanted to take portions of it back to their own cities and integrate it because people were in support of that. They wanted it to look beautiful, like that Colombian exposition. So you still see aspects of the Colombian exposition in American city and architectural design to this day. Chicago had experienced this horrible fire in the 1870s that, you know, killed 300 people and destroyed a huge chunk of Chicago. And so this was really Chicago's way of sort of being a Phoenix rising from the ashes and being like Chicago is back. A couple of the buildings from this exposition are still museums. Most of them were taken down, destroyed, et cetera,

but a couple of them still exist. And they went in and like reinforce them to make them permanent because all of the buildings were designed to be temporary. A few little interesting things that occurred at this exposition. The very first Ferris wheel in the entire world was at the Columbian exposition and it was massive. It was several hundred feet tall. It had 36 cars on it that could hold between 40 and 60 people. We're so used to thinking about a Ferris wheel, like, okay, you get on, you sit next to your person and there's like a little lap bar. You know what I mean? As you like go around, maybe it's romantic. You know what I mean? These cars held between 40 and 60 people and nothing else. Wait, each of them did? Each one of the cars did. Oh, wow. That is how massive this thing was and nothing like it had ever been seen

before. In fact, they were not even sure if they were going to build it. They were like, I don't know. It's so much money. The Ferris wheel wasn't even completed until about a month after the exposition opened because they finally decided to pull the trigger and build it. But the Ferris wheel was said to be the inspiration for the first amusement park in the United States, which was Coney Island. So the person who was the designer of Coney Island in New York saw this Ferris wheel and was like, we need a whole like amusement park full of this kind of stuff because people love it. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before, but can you imagine having never seen a ride like that before and being willing to get on one of

those cars with 40 other people and be like, we're going to go 260 feet in the air. No problem. No, that feels really terrifying. And how are you like thinking that you're going to survive that moment? Yeah, right. I don't know that I would trust that technology. This World's Exposition is where the concept of a carnival midway came from. So there were two big parks in Chicago that were both built up to be part of this World Exposition.

And there was this narrow strip of land that connected them. It was referred to as the midway because it was midway between these two large parks. And so a lot of the concessions and a lot of the games and things like that. And so the concept of a carnival midway, it originated at the Chicago World's Exposition. This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack. Dyson OnTrack headphones offer best-in-class noise cancellation

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Visit milk.org to learn more. So the people are, they're having to walk all of these acres. I mean, this is a huge thing. So yeah, so they need a stopping point to get snacks for the road. Yeah. There was however, an invention that no one had ever seen before at this thing, which is a moving walkway, like the kind you see at airports. There was one that had seats on it and you could just sit and it would take you to other parts of the exposition. And there was one that was meant for walking. Of course, those moving walkways help you walk

faster. It was possible to get around more quickly because of the moving walkway. One of the most popular exhibits was a replica, or I should say replicas, of Columbus's three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. And the government of Spain constructed replicas of these three ships and sailed them across the Atlantic to get to Chicago so people could see the replicas of these ships. They were some of the most popular exhibits there. There was also a replica of a Viking ship. How would you see that? Obviously, there's no Google. The average person doesn't have the ability to buy a lot of books. I mean, some people could make it to a library, but how would you know what they looked like, right? You would imagine it, but this was a chance for people to see what this kind of stuff

actually looked like. So I thought that was really cool that they literally just sailed them across the ocean, rebuilt them and sailed them here. And these are a few of the food items that were invented for this world's exposition. Okay. I'm really excited about this. Yeah. Quaker oats as a brand and the idea that you would have rolled oats, shredded wheat, like shredded wheat, Shredded wheat. Cracker Jacks were invented for this.

Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. These are like American staples. Yes, these are icons. Coming out of this fair. What is happening here? These are icons. Yes. Cream of wheat in addition to shredded wheat. Yes.

Juicy Fruit Gum. You are kidding me. Like gum had to be such a novelty. If you think about gum being like, what in the Sam Hills? Yes. You know what I mean? And juicy fruit. Juicy fruit is juicy fruit is the most classic of all gums. It is. It is. Obviously you could still buy it. This was the event that widely publicized Vienna beef, which we now think of as Chicago hot dogs. And also Aunt Jemima became a widely known brand because of the expositions. They had performances by a character who was playing Aunt Jemima. And then during the performances, they would like pass out pancakes. Like she had a pancake recipe, pancakes and syrup. So it exploded the popularity of the Aunt Jemima brand. Things that are very normal to us, like oats, rolled oats. Nobody had ever seen that before.

Gum. And just being so excited about the shredded wheat and the cream of wheat. Cream of wheat. This is so exciting. This is exciting. Wow. Do you like cream of wheat? So my mom made it for us all growing up. So I like it in a very nostalgic way, but I don't, I wouldn't choose to make it for myself now. Yeah. My dad bought some hot cereal. I don't know if it was cream of wheat or something similar to that when I was in second grade and I absolutely hated it so much. And my dad was like, well, I made it. You're going to eat it. You know, like you ate what your parents made or, or we didn't eat. That was our choice. Yeah. And I have this very vivid memory of going to second grade the next day and being like,

my dad tried to make me eat this horrible cereal. Like I felt like just so put upon that I was being made to eat hot cereal, poor second grade Sharon. Poor little Sharon. So, um, do you know the other thing that premiered at the Colombian world's exposition is the zipper, like a zipper to close your clothing. Wait, how are they, how were they closing their pants before? Oh my gosh. Was that, was that a hit? Do we know if that was a big hit there? I mean, I would assume so because zipper spread far and wide after they debuted a zipper. They especially became popular on men's pants, right? Like just quick and easy zipper. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. There were also a few other, you know, famous people there, like Alexander Graham Bell had an exhibit there. Helen Keller was there. Harry

Houdini did, you know, like performances in the Midway, like how do we get out of that? That is crazy. And Buffalo Bill Cody, you know, like famous Wild West dude applied to have an exhibit there and was denied. So he was like, fine, I will set up my own exhibit. And he did, he set up his own exhibit outside the fairgrounds that was so wildly popular that the fair organizers later said they regretted it because he was siphoning off business from them. And they were like, if we had let him be in here, he would have had to give us a portion of what he was making. That's amazing. Yes. So also this was the very first performance of the mormon tabernacle choir outside of utah of course all of the events were written about in newspapers every day like and

then this amazing choir and people were like that's i've never heard of such a choir. You know what I mean? And so it really gave all of these people and all of these products, it allowed them to rise to this kind of national prominence because of how heavily this fair was being written about on a daily basis. One of the other things that I won't go too deeply into is that there was a serial killer who was lurking and there's an entire book about this, if this interests you, but there was a serial killer who used the world's exposition as a cover to be able to take people to a nearby hotel. And like where he had a bunch of bad stuff set up in the basement. His name was H.H. Holmes. If this kind

of stuff interests you, I'm not going to get too deep into the serial killer, but there is a fascinating book called Devil in the White City by Eric Larson, where he really goes deep into this topic. The White City, of course, being the world's Colombian exposition, that's what people called it because it was all white. And it talks a lot about H.H. Holmes. That is shocking. And back then, probably very hard to even know that that was going on because information isn't tracked and spread like it is now. That is absolutely true. Terrifying. And also forensics did not exist. Nothing existed except for zippers. Except for zippers and cream of wheat. That's what we have to work with here. Oh my gosh. That's terrible. Brownies exist because

of the world's Colombian exposition. Who made the brownies? Do we know? We do. So the first brownies were made at the behest of this wealthy socialite named Bertha Palmer. If you look up pictures of Bertha Palmer, she's the most grandly elegant turn of the century woman you can imagine with like the corset and the jewels, you know, like it's almost like Dolly Levi in the movie. Hello Dolly. Like it's just over the top. You're like, this is a real woman. And she was married to this man named Potter Palmer, who was obviously very wealthy himself. And they owned the Palmer hotel, which is still very popular, very opulent, very beautiful, like a Chicago icon, the Palmer Hotel is. She was the chair of the board of lady managers. I want to be on the board of lady managers.

It sounds like a great board to be on. The lady managers. There was a women's building, of course. You wouldn't want to incorporate women into the rest of the exposition. Of course, you wouldn't want to incorporate women into the rest of the exposition. They needed to have the one separate building. And Bertha Palmer was in charge of the board of lady managers that oversaw the women's building. So she instructed the pastry chef at the Palmer Hotel, we need to come up with a dessert that can be easily transported, that is like stable, and that is new and noteworthy. We can't, we're not just going to make like a cake. You know what I mean? Like cake would be nothing. And cake also, you know, frosting and whatever gets mushy in the heat.

This is happening in the summertime. So we need something that can be easily transported. And then it is going to be included in the box lunches of the women in the women's exposition building. The pastry chef at the Palmer Hotel came up with this recipe. They didn't call them brownies at the time. If you Google Palmer Hotel brownie recipe, you can still easily find it. It's extremely dense and fudgy. It is not cake-like and it is topped with a topping of minced walnuts and apricot clays. They're just like squares, obviously like brownies are very dense, fudgy chocolate. The base of the brownie is half melted chocolate and half butter. half melted chocolate and half butter. It's not, it's very dense. And then like topping this crunchy walnut topping that goes on, goes on top. You can find that recipe. And that is where

brownies were invented. She just wanted a brownie. That's so, that's so funny. And I am, I am thankful. Brownies are some of my favorite. Here's the second to last thing. The woman who wrote the song, America, the beautiful, she was a school teacher from Massachusetts and her name was Catherine Lee Bates. And her name was Catherine Lee Bates. And she was taking a train from Massachusetts to Colorado. And she made a point of stopping at the Columbian Exposition to visit this fair. Obviously, if you have the opportunity to do it, you were going to do it. The song America the Beautiful was inspired by her train trip as she saw the changing landscape of the

country. You know, like you think about amber waves of grain and purple mountains, majesties, and you know, all of those things, those are things she saw out of the train window. But there is a verse that we don't often sing in America the Beautiful. We don't sing the second and third verses as often, but she talks about the alabaster cities. And that's what she's referring to is the white city of the World's Columbian Exposition. Wow. This was also the event that the Pledge of Allegiance was written for. So there was, yep, there was this gentleman named Francis Bellamy, who obviously this event had been years in the making. And he was like, this is the perfect time

to beef up patriotic education in the United States. After the Civil War, patriotism had kind of taken a dip, and he felt like it was at kind of a low level in the 1890s. And he really thought we needed a pledge that we would teach to school children, very short and to the point, and it would teach them to be more patriotic. And he also felt like there should be flags outside of every school and in classrooms and that children would pledge allegiance to the flag. So he coordinated, like he wrote this pledge and he coordinated with the National Education Association and he coordinated with members of Congress and ultimately the president of the

United States at the time to create this pledge and then to have this sort of national drive to have it implemented in schools. And so they used this event, which was commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus sailing the ocean blue, they felt like this is the perfect time to introduce this pledge because everything that's happening here is being written about. Everyone will know about it and we can get everyone on board. And so the original pledge just said, I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. That was the original pledge. It did not say I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. That was added later in the 20s, advocated for by the National Flag Conference,

who felt like now that the country is having this massive influx from all over the world, that they needed to add, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, so that people would not internalize it to mean I pledge allegiance to my flag, meaning the flag from the country they were coming from. They wanted to make sure that they knew it was the U.S. flag that they were pledging allegiance to. But a group of school children recited this at the World's Columbian Exposition. The originator of this pledge, again, Francis Bellamy, was a Baptist minister. And I'm going to blow some people's minds when I say this, and a lot of you are not going to like it. He was also a very famous Christian socialist

who was very opposed to capitalism. He felt like capitalism is the idolatry of greed and that it opposes Christian ideals. And there are going to be a lot of people listening to this now and was like, nope, I don't like that. I don't like the words that you're saying. I'm just reporting the facts. I am not telling you what to believe. I'm just reporting the facts. I am not telling you what to believe. I'm just saying that was his belief was that capitalism is the idolatry of greed and that the teachings of Christ lead us to a more socialist type of society. So isn't that fascinating? Yeah. I feel like I have to take no comment on, on it. Wow. That is very interesting. That is interesting. He wanted to include in the original pledge,

he wanted to include the phrases equality and fraternity, meaning like the brotherhood of men. Yes. The brotherhood. We are all equal. And he decided not to include equality in fraternity because he felt like there were so many people, particularly in the South, who did not believe in the equality of the races. And there were so many people who did not believe in the equality of genders that they would not adopt it. So he purposely excluded equality and fraternity in an effort to get more people to adopt the pledge. Then in the 1940s, there began to be a movement to add the phrase under God to the Pledge of Allegiance. And the Knights of Columbus, which is a Catholic organization, is widely credited as being the people who were like really behind this idea of we should add one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Like we should put that clause in there because we started seeing the conflict that was happening with the Soviet Union.

conflict that was happening with the Soviet Union. And we felt like the Soviet Union, Lenin, Marx, those are godless countries, and we want the United States to be different. So in the early 1950s, President Eisenhower heard about this idea to add the phrase under God to the Pledge of Allegiance, and was like, I could get behind that idea. And so he had a member of Congress write up a bill. Congress passed this resolution to add the phrase under God to the Pledge of Allegiance, which Eisenhower signed into law. And this was what he said when he signed it. He said, from this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty. And in this way, we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future. future. In this way, we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons, which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace or in war. And that was Eisenhower's belief about why

that should be added to the Pledge of Allegiance, which originated at the World's Colombian exposition in 1893. The only word that keeps coming to my mind as you tell me each new thing is just wow. Like. You know, this was something that I of course learned about in the past, but as I was doing more research of like what all foods were included, you know what I mean? Like what were all the inventions? I definitely was like, dang that I did not know that, you know, I just, I found this event so interesting in Illinois history and the profound effect it is continuing to have because so many of these things are icons in American, in American life. Now, I feel like you need to head up one in Minnesota for the next big world exposition. I would definitely, I'm sure that I would be on the board of lady managers.

Cause we do need to separate the ladies, but we did get brownies out of it. And so I am okay with it. And Cracker Jacks and juicy fruit and Quaker and zippers and moving walkways and Ferris wheels and hot dogs and cream of wheat. This is mind blowing. I'm just kind of sad about the fact that this huge, amazing thing happened. And then it just got destroyed little by little. Yep. Some of it burned down. There was actually a fire during the fair that killed like 11 or 12 firefighters. The building that that was in was supposed to house a skating rink. They were going to show off how their new like refrigerator cooling systems could make ice indoors in the summer, but they had not finished the skating rink yet the summer, but they had not finished

the skating rink yet. And so because they had not finished the skating rink, it probably saved hundreds of lives. One of the things that is kind of the most sad that all these buildings are gone is that Ferris wheel. They just like took it down and it was, it's gone forever. I want to see it. I know you can see some pictures of this event and it is well worth Googling for some pictures. Cause you will be like, dang, that does not look like a temporary fair at all. But the Ferris wheel in particular, I'm like that should have been preserved. I agree. That's so much better than hot dogs. Yes. I'll take that Ferris wheel. Yes, I agree. Actually, this is so fun. I'm glad you liked this as much as I did. Cause I love this event. I'm still thinking about all of the things that

you just explained to me that came from this one event that I didn't even know existed. You're like replicas of the Nia Pinta and Santa Maria sailing across the Atlantic plus juicy fruit gum. Yeah. What happened to the replicas of the ships? They're just gone. No, the replicas of the ships still exist. And I believe they have been returned to Spain and the, the replica of the Viking ship still exists in Illinois and you can actually visit it. Okay. That makes me feel better about the Ferris wheel. Well, tell everybody where they can find you, Ashley, and tell everybody about your latest book, which is fantastic. Oh, thanks. Well, thanks for sharing the story with me today. That was so much fun. Pleasure. But you guys can come find me on

Instagram at Ashley K Lemieux. And my new book, I Am Here, just came out in May. It's really a guidepost and a map to help you find freedom and clarity in your life. And you can go get that wherever books are sold. And spell your last name. So I have to tell you, we got married real quick and I didn't know how to spell my name when we got engaged. And my dad was really upset about it. So let me spell it for you. So it's L-E-M-I-E-U-X. Thank you so much, Ashley. This was amazing. Thank you. That was so fun. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. That was so fun. episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend. All of those things help podcasters out

so much. I cannot wait to have another mind blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.