Century of Progress

     In 1933, the World's Fair came to Chicago, and was dubbed the "Century of Progress International Exposition". The World's Fairs are a sequence of large public exhibitions that have been going on since 1851, and gained much popularity in the latter half of the 19th century and the early half of the 20th century.

     Chicago had previously hosted such an exhibition in 1893, the Columbian Exposition. The 1933 fair was created to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the incorporation of Chicago. Since the fair was held in the midst of the Great Depression, financing was an issue. The fair received no government funding, but the federal government did choose to build its own exhibition at the fair using federal dollars. Interestingly enough, planing and fundraising for the exhibition began mere months before the stock market crash, and construction continued through the worst phases of the Great Depression.This was possibly due to the sale of memberships, which could be exchanged for tickets the day the fair opened. The day before the stock market crashed, a $10M bond was issued this way. This marked the first time in American history at which a world's fair had returned its investments and made a profit.

     The architecture of the fair was uniquely modern. Architects such as Edward H. Bennett and Ralph T. Walker were involved in the design of sections of the fair, and chose to focus on streamlined, bright, architecture rather than the monochromatic designs of the 1893 fair. The fair seemed to promote the idea that cooperation between government, science, and business was the key to success in the future, a product of the decade preceding the fair, and perhaps a guideline for the New Deal which succeeded the fair. President Roosevelt was firmly in favor of the fair, and marveled at the private spending it helped induce. The fair was even re-opened half a year after its original closing date, and remained open for roughly half a year in 1934.

     It is estimated that a total of approximately 48 million visitors visited the exposition. At the time, the population of the United States was approximately 126 million, and that of Chicago was roughly 3.5 million. The following year, the Brussels exposition generated about 20 million visitors. Up until now the fair remains the 5th most attended fair in history, behind the 1967 Montreal fair, the 1900 Paris International, the 1970 Expo in Osaka, Japan, and the 2010 Expo in China. It has also been the most popular American world's fair, beating out the New York 1939-1940 Exposition.


http://www.chicagohs.org/history/century.html
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/225.html