Building
a Century of Progress: The Architecture
of Chicago's 1933-34 World's Fair
by Lisa
D. Schrenk
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
MN USA, 2007
368 pp., illus.170 halftones, 26 color
photos. Trade, $ 39.95
ISBN: 0-8166-4836-8.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University
mosher@svsu.edu
World's Fairs are fun. Its crowds assemble
to observe the exhibits, to participate
as allowed, and to spend money at this
special, short-term event. Its innovations,
eccentricities and spectacle spill over
into histories long after the Fairs. In
Building a Century of Progress,
architectural historian Lisa D. Schrenk
gives us a profusely illustrated book
on one Fair that is both informative to
read and fun to examine.
A panel of distinguished architects gathered
in the late 1920s to plan the look of
Chicago's 1933-34 World's Fair, but its
leader Paul D. Cret obviously wanted to
borrow as much as possible from the look
of the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs
in Paris. That fair showcased Moderne
architecture and its juxtaposition of
simplified geometric forms and smoothly
figurative decoration, and gave the name
"Art Deco" to that style.
The fair was held on land beside windy
Lake Michigan. Beyond a mammoth Hall of
Science decorated with figurative sculpture,
many of the buildings were big corporate
sheds with three-dimensional sans-serif
lettering giving the company name or buildings
purpose. Buildings were painted in a vibrant
color palette included deep greens and
rich reds, and at night a "Scintillator"
projected light into grand clouds of mist
produced by fountains
Called "A Century of Progress", the 1933-34
Fair was determined to establish an architectural
identity well out of the shadow of the
Columbian Exposition in Chicago forty
years before. But 1933 was in the midst
of the twentieth century's worst economic
depression, so economy of means was important.
Manufacturers showcased new construction
materials in the Vinylite House, the Good
Housekeeping Stran-Steel House, the porcelain-enameled
metal wall panels of the Armaco-Ferro
Enamel Frameless House. The Rostone House
was of built from synthetic stone made
of dust and detritus from Indiana limestone
quarries.
An octagonal glass-walled House of the
Future was suspended from a central core,
borrowing much from Buckminster Fuller's
unbuilt Dymaxion home design. . Fullers
house was not exhibited, but his ovoid
Dymaxion car was. A long barroom on the
fairgrounds, stocked with Schweppes
beverages, was nicknamed "the doodlebug"
for its similar shape. Considered too
individualistic for committee work, Frank
Lloyd Wright and Norman Bel Geddes were
excluded from designing buildings for
the Fair, but both published opinions
and alternatives in architectural journals
In this enjoyable book, Schrenk details
the influence of the Fair on New York's
Worlds Fair five years later. This
reviewer would have liked her to trace
more influences of the Chicago event upon
the 1939 San Francisco Worlds Fair,
too.