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| GRAND PLAZA ON CHICAGO DAY - Monday, October
9, 1893, the twenty-third anniversary of the conflagration of
Chicago, one of the greatest disasters of modern times, fell also on
the exact calendar anniversary of the event. Chicago burned from
Twelfth street to Lincoln Park on a Monday. Memories so stirring,
and civic pride, abetted by the regard of the Northwestern States,
and sustained by the general cognizance that the Fair was a success,
conspired to assemble in Jackson Park the greatest multitude that
ever paid an admission fee to come together, and our engraving
presents such a picture of that convocation as could be offered
within the limits of a single camera. We look southeast across the
Plaza and Basin,
and the reader is to know
that all the buildings,
all the plazas, the island, the boats, the restaurants, and Midway
Plaisance were thus engorged with humanity. The most terrifying
music of China could this day be wreaked on the patrons of the
Celestial Theatre, for there was nowhere to go to escape it. The
number of individuals who obtained admission in regular ways was
seven hundred and sixty-one thousand nine hundred and forty-two, and
there may have been nine hundred thousand persons present, for the
ticket-takers were overwhelmed. When the evening papers in London
and Paris announced the probable attendance at Chicago on this day,
the feeling of incredulity was succeeded by a sense of admiration and
fraternal congratulations. The memory of Chicago Day is the meed and
palm that will forever be awarded to the men who built the Fair. |
