The Invisible Truimph: The Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893

Largely on the word of architect Louis Sullivan and architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler, the Chicago Columbian Exposition is viewed as the event that subverted the development of a true American modernist architecture. In feminist history, the World Congress of Woman held at the exposition is the event that defined women’s issues for the belle époque. This paper looks at the contemporary media of the period in order to present the framing of those architectural and women’s issues as they relate to the creation of the Woman’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Chicago’s elite women of influence chose to chal-lenge the fallacy of a cultural ideology of male pre-eminence and female dependence. In this paper, I explore the Woman’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago as represented in New York’s popular progressive publication, Harper’s Weekly, in the years 1892 to 1894, in exposition committee minutes and documents, and in the archi-tectural press at the time. I will compare the goals of equal representation for women, exer-cised by the mandated Board of Lady Managers with the press reception of this accom-plishment in the popular and professional press. The board created the Woman’s Building designed by women: Sophia G. Hayden, architect of Boston; Elsa Rideout, artist of San Francisco; and Candace Wheeler, artist and activist for decorative arts.

Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto

ISBN
0-935502-57-2