The Press., 1892-10-06
GETTING READY FOR THE FAIR Wonderful Transformations of One Year.
JULIAN RALPH IN HARPER's WEEKLY


 It is not true that the grounds of our Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park, Chicago, have for months been more in- teresting than they will be when the fair is thrown open to the world. And yet they have presented a fascinating study during all the stages of the preparation for the great display, scene so peculiar that no public exhibition except the com- pleted fair can exceed it in interest. To have been there and to have watched the construction of the exhibition palaces is to have enjoyed 8 great surprise and a unique pleasure. The three thousand spectators on weekdays and the ten thou sand who have paid their quarter-dollars at the gates on Sundays will alone be able to boast, when they see the Columbian show itself, that they have enjoyed the full spectacle. They will have seen the earliest and most peculiar exhibit-the mode and progress of construction. It will not dwarf the aggregation of exhibits but it pales every single one or dozen of them.
 It is the custom of the persons con- cerned in the work to refer back to the time when not,a spade had been thrust in the surface of the fair-ground, as if that were an interesting period; and truly it is wonderful, now, to see the finished ave- nues and lawns around the great palaces, and the trim-sided lagoons, and the or derly beach of Belgian blocks, against which the lakes wavelets lick, and to know that here, year ago, was part jun gle, part marsh, and part sandy waste. Of what has been done with the land and water nothing is to me more interesting than the story of the making of Wooded Island. This island, as all the public must know, is in the main lagoon between the horticultural building and the enor- nous structure for the exploitation of manufactures and liberal arts. It contains sixteen acres, is sparsely wooded, and is designed to be kept rid of all buildings except superb Japanese temple, and is to be sacred to public comfort. It will be cool and shady place for visitors to rest upon: One end of it the Japanese will decorate with their peculiar but beau- tiful flowers and dwarfed trees, and this they have promised to give to Chicago as 8 lasting memento of their interest in our exposition. The place was scarcely an island; it was rather a lump of solid sand in marsh. To-day it is picturesque islet that any one would aver had been made by nature, and by her slow process es. The banks slope into the clear water of the lagoon in very natural, ragged way, with sedge grass and water weeds and lilies wading out beyond the edges of the water. Little arms of vegetation and of land reach out here and there between tiny coves and bays, and the general ef- feet is so natural and real that it amazes one to hear that it is not so. Yet the fact is that the island, as we see it to-day, is a work of art-of the art of Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, the landscape architects. The land was shaped as it is now, and the lilies and grasses and water plants were put there and made to grow according to picture or plan, precisely as the gigantic palaces of the exposition were first designed upon paper, and then executed by mechanism.
 , Such perfected bits of the fair ground ; do not speak for themselves, however ; one might walk around and over them ) and never suspect that there was a story ) to tell concerning them. It is the build ings that are loudly eloquent of their own 7 histories, and that cause repeated excla- , nations of wonder and delight from all who see them. While they were at their first stage they were less substantial then most skeletons. They looked like mere cobwebs of timber and iron. Next their sides were latticed with thin woodwork so that you saw their full dimensions and artistic outlines and proportions, and yet could look right through them as if they were architectural ghosts. To-day some are partially at that stage, and partially clothed with the stuff that is to make them all look like palaces of marble or oi ivory. They rise on every hand to great heights, with graceful arches and pictur esque towers and pinnacles, and already reveal bits of storied entablature, groups of statuary, reaches of decorated frieze and, in short, strong hints of all that they are to be.
 One cannot be among them, and witt the architects and artists who al at work upon them, without feeling that one is upon novel ground, that they are realized castles in Spain, that the scene is an ar tist's festival, and that the entire work is like materialized dream