## 2. Exposition Grounds

Milton Mayer, concluding a series of articles on the Exposition, probably captured the main impression of the fair. In June, 1933 he wrote: "It does not matter that one exhibit is swell and another one terrible. What matters is that you can't keep away from the place. . . . It is so confoundedly different from everything we have seen and heard and cursed and wept over the past few years. It is so bright and so simple. It is so new. You go in

cynical and sour and you come out convinced that you'll pull through and so will everyone else. You sit on your front porch or you sail on the lake or you drive down the boulevard at night and watch the lights go on and transform the place into a paint factory on fire, and you say to yourself, 'By the dog of Egypt, if someone had given me twenty-five million smackers and a strip of land and told me to do what I wanted, this is what I'd have done. It's just what I'd have done. A green building here. A

purple building there. A yellow building there. Filled full of people and light. I couldn't have done it better myself. And you couldn't have. The people who conceived this Fair and built it struck just the right note at a time when the rest of us did not know where to turn next. If you ask me . . . I think that A Century of Progress (drat that name!) is a galloping success.' "
(Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.)

## 3. Northern Entrance to the Century of Progress Exposition, 1933

To the north, Michigan Avenue's crisp facade stands as a background for this temporary pedestrian ramp and street railway terminal. These were built on a trestle through the Central Station of the Illinois Central and across the I.C. tracks. The ramp across Outer Drive still provides access to the Field Museum of Natural History, though it has been partially reconstructed.
(Courtesy George Krambles Collection.)

characterize this architecture instead of
classical lines or a parade of plaster,
omentation and decoration," D. H.
Burnham, Jr., wrote in 1932. "Instead of
expensive exteriors, we are depending on
the dramatic effects of lights and bright
colors to furnish a background both new
and inspiring. As a result, we are building
for less than fourteen cents a cubic foot
of space."

### 3. Century of Progress Exposition, Southeasterly across Grant Park, 1933-34

Contrasting the new exposition to the
one held in 1893, a *Literary Digest* observer
was awestruck: "Once more Chicago startles
the world with a great, big show, as she
did forty years ago. And what a difference!

Then it was the 'White City,' which took
the breath away with the stupendous
'frozen music' of its classic architecture,
while this year the modernistic towers of
'A Century of Progress' outmarvel the
Arabian Nights with their varicolored
splendor."

3