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| THE WESTERN SIDE OF THE MANUFACTURES BUILDING ON
CHICAGO DAY - Inasmuch as it is not known that seven hundred and
fifty thousand American people have ever before gathered in a region
no larger than Jackson Park, and as it is here desired to portray the
buildings of the Fair in all their aspects, several pages of this
volume will be devoted to the illustration of the masses who
surrounded the lagoons and buildings on that memorable day, the
anniversary of another event entirely without parallel in history.
On October 9, 1871 the city of Chicago, in its commercial center and
its northern residential and suburban quarters, was razed to the
ground by fire. Over one-third of its actual geographical area was
covered with ashes and ruins. In memory of that frightful day, and
because Chicago had risen from that awful fate to be a rival of the
leading cities of the world, it became the ambition of the West to so
crowd Jackson Park on October 9, 1893, as to outdo the greatest
attendance ever chronicled at a fair in the history of the world. To
do this, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand one hundred and
fifty admissions were needed, while the Fourth of July and Illinois
Day had fallen far short of the "high-water mark." On Sunday night,
October 8th - strangely enough, the days of the week tallied with the
days of the week in 1871 - the streets of Chicago showed that the
greatest of crowds had come. The next day a body of visitors five
times larger than could sit in the Manufactures Building when it was
clear of exhibits, entered Jackson Park. |
