Harlow Niles Higinbotham / A memoir with brief autobiography and extracts from speeches and letters

by Harriet Monroe

This was the “Columbian Ode” episode—a story which Mr. Higinbotham delighted to tell to the end of his life. This poem had been unanimously requested of the author by the Committee on Ceremonies and definitely accepted by that body for the great day of the Dedication of Buildings—the four-hundredth anniversary of the Discovery of America. But a small group in the committee suddenly ceased to favor the poem, and set up a violent opposition in the effort to have it annulled as a feature of the Dedication Day program. The dispute became so bitter that a peaceful decision in the Committee became impossible, and the matter was referred to the Council of Administration for settlement.

This was in mid-September, 1892—the Dedication of Buildings was only a month away. The writer, who had just returned from a summer outing, was summoned to present her side of the question at an evening session of the Council of Administration. At this time she had never met Mr. Higinbotham, who took the chair soon after her arrival—a simple, quiet man in the prime of life, of slight figure, fine shapely head, regular features rather delicate in contour, and dark wavy hair and beard streaked with a few threads of gray. Near him were two other members of the Council of Administration.

It was strictly a business session, and the writer was interested to observe how simply and easily various widely differing details were disposed of, either directly or by reference to individuals or committees; details of the roofing contract, the power plants, the sewerage system; applications from would-be concessionaires; and Dedication Day arrangements—program-printing, livery charges, the military procession, plans for transporting and seating the vast throng of over an hundred thousand persons who were being invited to assemble under the lofty glazed and vaulted roof of the Manufacturers’ Building, to celebrate the quadri-centennial anniversary of one of the supreme events in the history of the world. And one of these details was the dispute, inherited from the Committee on Ceremonies, about the “Columbian Ode”—whether or not a portion of it should be read and sung before the great audience on the great day.

The opponents presented their case; they were not satisfied with either the author, who should have been a poet of distinction like the aged Whittier, or the ode itself, which was too long for the occasion, and which contained, moreover, a sixty-line tribute to a deceased relative of the author—a tribute which she had declined to omit.

The writer met these objections as well as she could, pointing out especially that the tribute in question—to the Fair’s first architect-in-chief—was due to his memory on this great day, especially as it was only three lines and a half long instead of the sixty-four complained of.

Mr. Higinbotham asked the writer to read the questioned tribute, and then remarked: “It’s hardly enough to say of the great architect who planned the Fair, whose death at his post during that first year was the heaviest blow it could possibly have received. A poem for this dedication which did not refer to him would be gravely defective, in my opinion.”

Mr. Higinbotham used to say afterwards: “Her poem had been asked for, approved by experts and accepted by the Committee on Ceremonies, and I made up my mind that as much of it should be read as we had time for in the program, including the tribute to John Root.” And it was so ordered.

At last the long anticipated anniversary arrived. It is impossible to exaggerate the beauty of the late October day, the dramatic splendor of the festival, or the ardent spirit of that vivid audience, whose gay colors fluttered into rainbow brilliancy as the sun struck down through the glass roof. Mr. Higinbotham wrote in his report:

“The scene in the Manufacturers’ Building will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The grand platform was occupied by officers of the national government, members of the diplomatic corps, officers of the various States, senators and representatives, directors and commissioners. The eye and brain could scarcely comprehend the vastness of the audience stretching out before this platform. There was little motion, but the air was resonant with an indescribable hum of voices. At the south end of the building the chorus of five thousand persons seemed but a mere island in an ocean of humanity.”

Mr. Higinbotham’s share of the program was a quiet speech in which he accepted the completed grounds and buildings from Daniel H. Burnham, Director of Works, saluted “the master artists of construction” whom the Director had presented, and offered to him for distribution the medals which had been struck off by the Directory for presentation to the artists of the Fair. Everyone noted the simple dignity of his bearing and speech on this conspicuous occasion.