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| THE MOVABLE SIDEWALK - The earlier stages of
construction in Jackson Park saw, between the Illinois Building and the Woman's Building, a large circular and
unseemly inclosure, on the summit of which ran the working model of a
movable sidewalk, and it was supposed that this apparatus was to
ramify the ground in 1893. Certain it is, that the need of such an
adjunct of travel was pressing, and that the Fair will go down into
history as the most fatiguing region of the world. The visitor
walked over half a mile to enter the Manufactures Building, and it was about half
a mile long when he reached it. There was absolutely no means of
transport cheaper than a push-chair at seventy-five cents an hour,
which in turn discommoded almost every pedestrian whom it met. The
Movable Sidewalk, however, did not meet with great favor from the
friends of the push-chairs, and after narrowly escaping expulsion
from the park, the system was exiled to the region outside the
so-called Peristyle, where the pier, as here shown, extended for 2500
feet into Lake Michigan. On this endless platform, by paying 5 cents
for a seat, the tired visitor might ride as long as he pleased, under
a shed which protected him from the sun or the rain. In hot days,
after the machine was in order, which was not early in the summer,
hundreds of tired men and women might be seen asleep on these moving
chairs, sometimes with their shoes off, resting their feet from the
hardships of the day. During the last of the warm months the pier
was crowded with people. |
