To this are to be added a few other items, making a total of over $17,000,000.
The site chosen for the Columbian Exhibition is a truly magnificent one. No World’s Fair ever had one surpassing if equalling it. It embraces Jackson Park and Washington Park, and the Midway Plaisance, a strip 600 feet wide connecting the two parks. Jackson Park, where nearly all of the buildings will be, is beautifully situated on the shore of Lake Michigan, having a lake frontage of two miles and an area of 586 acres. Washington Park contains 371 acres, and the Midway Plaisance, 80 acres. Upon these parks previously to their selection for the World’s Fair site, $4,000,000 was spent in laying out the grounds and beautifying them. The Exhibition company will spend more than $1,000,000 additional for similar purposes. These parks are connected with the central portion of the city of Chicago and with the general park and boulevard system by more than 35 miles of boulevards from 100 to 300 feet in width. The Midway Plaisance is a popular driveway to the upper end of Jackson Park, and is a broad and spacious avenue richly embellished with trees and shrubs. The inclosed portion of it connected with the Exhibition grounds will run directly eastward and throughout its entire length will present some of the most picturesque and novel effects of the whole fair. There will be a “Street in Constantinople,” a “Street in Cairo,” and other reproductions of Old World scenes. There will be a most graphic reproduction of an American Indian camp, showing the red man in his natural state. Then there will be two acres devoted to the American Indian as he is to be seen under the paternal care of the government. Types of all the leading tribes will be portrayed in their native habitations and engaged in their characteristic industries. Thus the perspective along the Plaisance, whether viewed from the ground or from an elevation, will be a singularly attractive one. In the two parks hundreds of thousands of trees and shrubs have been planted and transplanted, so that the great Exhibition will have such a setting of natural beauty as none of its predecessors ever enjoyed.
The engineers as well as the landscape gardeners and architects, have been set effectively to work. Twenty miles of water pipes have been laid to provide a supply of 64,000,000 gallons daily. For supplying power to machinery there are boilers and engines of 25,000 horse-power and for generating electricity, 18,000 horse-power; for driving small independent exhibits, 2,000 horse-power, for pumps 2,000 horse-power and for compressed air, 3,000 horse-power. The lighting of the grounds and buildings will require the use of 7,000 electric arc lights and 100,000 incandescent lamps. Preparations have been made for disposing of 6,000,000 gallons of sewage every 24 hours. Contracts for the work of construction have been let to the lowest competent bidders wherever found. They have thus been awarded in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston; in San Francisco, Seattle, and Omaha; in Minneapolis and Duluth; in Kansas City and St. Louis; in Leavenworth and Louisville; in Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh; in Birmingham, Alabama; in Wilmington, Delaware; in Plainfield, New Jersey; in Jackson, Michigan; and in Stamford, Connecticut. This is a slight indication of the national character of the work. Its international character is also shown by the awarding of contracts in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Edinburgh, Florence, and Constantinople.
But with such characteristic energy is the work of construction now being pushed that the completed buildings may be spoken of in the present rather than in the future tense. A brief description of the most important of them will not come here amiss:
One of the finest structures on the Exhibition Grounds is the Agricultural Building, as befits the foremost agricultural nation on the globe. It stands near the shore of the lake, almost surrounded by the lagoons. The style of architecture is classic renaissance, and the building is 500 by 800 feet in ground area. It consists of a single story, with a cornice line 65 feet above the ground. Huge Corinthian pillars flank the main entrance, each 50 feet high and 5 feet in diameter. At each corner and from the centre of the building rise huge pavilions, that at the centre being 144 feet square. The four corner pavilions are connected by curtains, forming a continuous arcade around the top of the building. The main entrance leads through an opening 64 feet wide into a vestibule, and thence into the rotunda, 100 feet in diameter, surmounted by a glass dome 130 feet high. The corner pavilions are surmounted by domes 96 feet high.
At the south side of the Agricultural Building is another vast structure, devoted principally to a Live Stock and Agricultural Assembly Hall. This is to be the common meeting-point for all persons interested in live stock and agricultural pursuits. This building contains a fine lecture-room, with a seating capacity of about 1,500, in which lectures will be delivered and conferences held on topics connected with live stock, agriculture, and allied industries.
The Forestry Building stands near the Agricultural Building, and is the most unique of all the Exhibition structures. Its ground area is 200 by 500 feet. On all four sides is a veranda, the roof of which is supported by a colonnade, each column of which consists of three tree-trunks, each 25 feet long. These trunks are in their natural state, with the bark undisturbed. They were contributed by the different States and Territories of the Union, and by various foreign countries, each furnishing specimens of its most characteristic trees. The walls of the building are covered with slabs of logs with the bark removed. The roof is thatched with bark. Within, the building is finished in a great variety of woods so treated as to show, to the best advantage, their graining, their colors, their susceptibility to polish, etc. It will contain a wonderful exhibition of forest products in general, doubtless the most complete ever seen
