The Collins Block is a historic commercial building located at 204 South Mill Street in Aspen, Colorado . It is a brick and stone structure erected in the early 1890s.
76-477: It was the last major construction project in the city before the silver-mining industry, mainstay of Aspen's economy, collapsed following the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act . The classically inspired decorative touches , such as a colonnade-supported roof over the sidewalk and an elaborate cornice, are the only ones on a commercial building in the city. They anticipate the wider embrace of
152-430: A pavilion of artillery, which apparently had cost one million dollars to stage, including a coastal gun of 42 cm in bore (16.54 inches) and a length of 33 calibres (45.93 feet, 14 meters). A breech-loaded gun, it weighed 120.46 long tons (122.4 metric tons). According to the company's marketing: "It carried a charge projectile weighing from 2,200 to 2,500 pounds which, when driven by 900 pounds of brown powder ,
228-524: A proportionate growth in the gold stock. The crash in the silver dollar's bullion value in the 1890s from 80 cents to approximately 50 cents increased public anxiety on their continued ability to convert silver dollars and banknotes into gold. The result was a run on the Treasury's gold stock and the onset of the Panic of 1893 . President Grover Cleveland summoned an emergency session of Congress on August 7, 1893, for
304-489: A ripe tomato." Light is furnished by candles and antler chandeliers . There are six round tables for diners. Samuel Collins began construction of the building in 1891, when the city was at the peak of its population and prosperity due to the Colorado Silver Boom . It was designed to have businesses on the first floor and offices on the second. Collins had problems with the carpenters' union that delayed completion of
380-619: A successful exposition and that only Chicago was fit to fill these exposition requirements. The location of the fair was decided through several rounds of voting by the United States House of Representatives. The first ballot showed Chicago with a large lead over New York, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., but short of a majority. Chicago broke the 154-vote majority threshold on the eighth ballot, receiving 157 votes to New York's 107. The exposition corporation and national exposition commission settled on Jackson Park and an area around it as
456-590: A very popular exhibit. Eadweard Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall, built specially for that purpose on Midway Plaisance. He used his zoopraxiscope to show his moving pictures to a paying public. The hall was the first commercial movie theater. The "Street in Cairo" included the popular dancer known as Little Egypt . She introduced America to
532-504: Is a 10-foot (3 m) sofa with an equally long ottoman . The main corridor leads around the Great Room past bathrooms, the wine cellar and two private rooms to the bar, also accessible from the Great Room. The room has many personal pictures from members on its wall. The bar itself is mahogany with a brass rail along the floor. In the southeast corner is the dining room. It is finished in a shade described as "somewhere between Etruscan red and
608-616: Is another listed building, the Wheeler Opera House , opposite a pedestrian mall . Like most of its neighbors (except the Wheeler), the Collins Block is two stories high. The north frontage, along East Hopkins, is five bays long with the western facade seven. Rusticated sandstone , interrupted by several storefronts and a recessed corner entrance with column, faces the first floor on both sides. A flat wooden roof extends out to cover
684-507: Is located in the basement. The building is located on the southeast corner of the intersection of East Hopkins Avenue and South Mill Street. Other commercial structures, historic and modern, fill the built-out blocks . To the immediate east is the Brand Building , with Aspen City Hall on the opposite far corner. Both are listed on the Register. At the south end of the opposite block of Mill
760-535: Is still known as the Sardy House. They bought a lumber business across the street, moved the mortuary to their house and combined the two businesses into Aspen Lumber & Supply, using almost the whole Collins Block. After World War II , Aspen began to develop into the ski resort town it is today. The Sardys sold part of both their family businesses to Walter Paepcke , the Chicago businessman who guided much of that era of
836-745: The Niña (real name Santa Clara ), the Pinta , and the Santa María . These were intended to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the Americas. The ships were constructed in Spain and then sailed to America for the exposition. The celebration of Columbus was an intergovernmental project, coordinated by American special envoy William Eleroy Curtis , the Queen Regent of Spain , and Pope Leo XIII . The ships were
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#1733085015711912-581: The $ 2 million to $ 4 million that had been required by the Bland–Allison Act of 1878, the US government was now required to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion every month. The law required the Treasury to buy the silver with a special issue of Treasury (Coin) Notes that could be redeemed for either silver or gold. The result was the substantial expansion in the volume of circulating dollars without
988-521: The Baháʼí Faith in North America; it was not taken seriously by European scholars until the 1960s. Along the banks of the lake, patrons on the way to the casino were taken on a moving walkway designed by architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee , the first of its kind open to the public, called The Great Wharf, Moving Sidewalk , it allowed people to walk along or ride in seats. Horticultural exhibits at
1064-889: The CTA Green Line . Forty-six countries had pavilions at the exposition. Norway participated by sending the Viking , a replica of the Gokstad ship . It was built in Norway and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean by 12 men, led by Captain Magnus Andersen. In 1919, this ship was moved to Lincoln Park . It was relocated in 1996 to Good Templar Park in Geneva, Illinois , where it awaits renovation. Thirty-four U.S. states also had their own pavilions. The work of noted feminist author Kate McPhelim Cleary
1140-501: The Classical Revival style in other cities that began a few years later. For much of its existence it housed a lumber supply store. Local developer Harley Baldwin , owner of the neighboring Brand Building , bought it in 1988. After renovations, he began leasing space within the buildings to upscale retailers, earning the two the combined nickname of "Gucci Gulch". The Caribou Club, a members-only restaurant and Aspen institution,
1216-772: The House Ways and Means Committee , worked with John Sherman to create a package that could both pass the Senate and receive the President's approval. Under the Act, the federal government purchased millions of ounces of silver, with issues of paper currency. It became the second-largest buyer in the world, after the British Crown in India, where the Indian rupee was backed by silver rather than gold. Instead of
1292-575: The Louis Vuitton , Gucci and Dior presence at the other end of the block. These entrants into the local marketplace, into a city that had not previously shown the effect of its growing population of rich and famous residents, earned the two buildings the nickname "Glitter Gulch", which eventually became applied to Aspen as a whole. In the basement of the Collins, Baldwin built the Caribou Club. Admission
1368-532: The 1930s, a time when Aspen was down to less than a thousand people, the Collins housed a mortuary . A couple named Tom and Alice Rachel Sardy bought it in 1938 and moved in. They also became proprietors of another business in the building, Aspen Supply, which sold furniture and hardware. The mortuary was successful enough that the Sardy family was able to move out and build a house on Main Street across from Paepcke Park which
1444-475: The 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing started in the late 1880s. Civic leaders in St. Louis, New York City, Washington DC, and Chicago expressed interest in hosting a fair to generate profits, boost real estate values, and promote their cities. Congress was called on to decide the location. New York financiers J. P. Morgan , Cornelius Vanderbilt , and William Waldorf Astor , among others, pledged $ 15 million to finance
1520-595: The 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World, the fair served to show the world that Chicago had risen from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire , which had destroyed much of the city in 1871. On October 9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the fair set a world record for outdoor event attendance, drawing 751,026 people. The debt for the fair was soon paid off with a check for $ 1.5 million (equivalent to $ 50.9 million in 2023). Chicago has commemorated
1596-600: The Beautiful " were inspired by the White City. The White City is largely credited for ushering in the City Beautiful movement and planting the seeds of modern city planning. The highly integrated design of the landscapes, promenades, and structures provided a vision of what is possible when planners, landscape architects, and architects work together on a comprehensive design scheme. The White City inspired cities to focus on
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#17330850157111672-589: The Beaux-Arts architecture of the buildings was under the direction of Daniel Burnham, Director of Works for the fair. Renowned local architect Henry Ives Cobb designed several buildings for the exposition. The director of the American Academy in Rome, Francis Davis Millet , directed the painted mural decorations. Indeed, it was a coming-of-age for the arts and architecture of the " American Renaissance ", and it showcased
1748-506: The Chicago Columbian Exposition was predominantly designed by John Wellborn Root , Daniel Burnham , Frederick Law Olmsted , and Charles B. Atwood . It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux-Arts principles of design, namely neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor. The color of the material generally used to cover
1824-543: The Fair, held in Jackson Park , was a large water pool representing the voyage that Columbus took to the New World. Chicago won the right to host the fair over several competing cities, including New York City , Washington, D.C. , and St. Louis . The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American architecture , the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image. The layout of
1900-549: The Horticultural Hall included cacti and orchids as well as other plants in a greenhouse . Most of the buildings of the fair were designed in the neoclassical architecture style. The area at the Court of Honor was known as The White City . Façades were made not of stone, but of a mixture of plaster, cement, and jute fiber called staff , which was painted white, giving the buildings their "gleam". Architecture critics derided
1976-480: The Louisiana Pavilion were each given a seedling of a cypress tree. This resulted in the spread of cypress trees to areas where they were not native. Cypress trees from those seedlings can be found in many areas of West Virginia, where they flourish in the climate. The Illinois was a detailed, full-scale mockup of an Indiana -class battleship , constructed as a naval exhibit. The German firm Krupp had
2052-588: The Office of Indian Affairs, that housed delegations of Native American students and their teachers from schools around the country for weeks at a time. The John Bull locomotive was displayed. It was only 62 years old, having been built in 1831. It was the first locomotive acquisition by the Smithsonian Institution . The locomotive ran under its own power from Washington, DC , to Chicago to participate, and returned to Washington under its own power again when
2128-478: The Senate Finance Committee, was not the author of the bill, but once both houses of Congress had passed the Act and the Act had been sent to a Senate/House conference committee to settle differences between the Senate and House versions of the Act, Sherman was instrumental in getting the conference committee to reach agreement on a final draft of the Act. Nonetheless, once agreement on the final version
2204-542: The World's Columbian Exposition, the answer is Slavery." Ten thousand copies of the pamphlet were circulated in the White City from the Haitian Embassy (where Douglass had been selected as its national representative), and the activists received responses from the delegations of England, Germany, France, Russia, and India. The exhibition did include a limited number of exhibits put on by African Americans, including exhibits by
2280-514: The World's Fair. Nearby, "The Cliff Dwellers" featured a rock and timber structure that was painted to recreate Battle Rock Mountain in Colorado, a stylized recreation of an American Indian cliff dwelling with pottery, weapons, and other relics on display. There was also an Eskimo display. There were also birch bark wigwams of the Penobscot tribe. Nearby was a working model Indian school, organized by
2356-426: The World's Religions , which ran from September 11 to September 27, marked the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions from around the world. According to Eric J. Sharpe , Tomoko Masuzawa , and others, the event was considered radical at the time, since it allowed non-Christian faiths to speak on their own behalf. For example, it is recognized as the first public mention of
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2432-517: The beautification of the components of the city in which municipal government had control; streets, municipal art, public buildings, and public spaces. The designs of the City Beautiful Movement (closely tied with the municipal art movement) are identifiable by their classical architecture, plan symmetry, picturesque views, and axial plans, as well as their magnificent scale. Where the municipal art movement focused on beautifying one feature in
2508-522: The buildings' façades, white staff , gave the fairgrounds its nickname, the White City. Many prominent architects designed its 14 "great buildings". Artists and musicians were featured in exhibits and many also made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition. The exposition covered 690 acres (2.8 km ), featuring nearly 200 new but temporary buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture, canals and lagoons , and people and cultures from 46 countries. More than 27 million people attended
2584-413: The burgeoning neoclassical and Beaux-Arts styles. The fair ended with the city in shock, as popular mayor Carter Harrison Sr. was assassinated by Patrick Eugene Prendergast two days before the fair's closing. Closing ceremonies were canceled in favor of a public memorial service. Jackson Park was returned to its status as a public park, in much better shape than its original swampy form. The lagoon
2660-459: The city where there was "not a house to buy and not a rock to blast" and that it would be located so that "the artisan and the farmer and the shopkeeper and the man of humble means" would be able to easily access the fair. Bryan continued to say that the fair was of "vital interest" to the West, and that the West wanted the location to be Chicago. The city spokesmen would continue to stress the essentials of
2736-647: The city's development. In the late 1940s, Tom Sardy recognized that Aspen would need a modern airport, and after being elected a Pitkin County commissioner worked to get one built. Sardy Field at Aspen-Pitkin County Airport is named in his honor. In 1988 the Collins was acquired by Aspen developer and businessman Harley Baldwin , who already owned the neighboring Brand Building . Returning to Aspen after 16 years of activity in New York, he undertook extensive renovations to
2812-519: The end of the frontier which Buffalo Bill represented. The electrotachyscope of Ottomar Anschütz was demonstrated, which used a Geissler tube to project the illusion of moving images . Louis Comfort Tiffany made his reputation with a stunning chapel designed and built for the Exposition. After the Exposition the Tiffany Chapel was sold several times, even going back to Tiffany's estate. It
2888-511: The exposition closed. In 1981 it was the oldest surviving operable steam locomotive in the world when it ran under its own power again. A Baldwin 2-4-2 locomotive was showcased at the exposition, and subsequently the 2-4-2 type was known as the Columbia . An original frog switch and portion of the superstructure of the famous 1826 Granite Railway in Massachusetts could be viewed. This
2964-585: The exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world's fairs , and it became a symbol of emerging American exceptionalism , much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom. Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21, 1892, but the fairgrounds were not opened to the public until May 1, 1893. The fair continued until October 30, 1893. In addition to recognizing
3040-416: The fair if Congress awarded it to New York, while Chicagoans Charles T. Yerkes , Marshall Field , Philip Armour , Gustavus Swift , and Cyrus McCormick, Jr. , offered to finance a Chicago fair. What finally persuaded Congress was Chicago banker Lyman Gage , who raised several million additional dollars in a 24-hour period, over and above New York's final offer. Chicago representatives not only fought for
3116-553: The fair site being referred to as the "White City". The Exposition's offices set up shop in the upper floors of the Rand McNally Building on Adams Street, the world's first all-steel-framed skyscraper. Davis' team organized the exhibits with the help of G. Brown Goode of the Smithsonian . The Midway was inspired by the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition , which included ethnological "villages". Civil rights leaders protested
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3192-411: The fair site. Daniel H. Burnham was selected as director of works, and George R. Davis as director-general. Burnham emphasized architecture and sculpture as central to the fair and assembled the period's top talent to design the buildings and grounds including Frederick Law Olmsted for the grounds. The temporary buildings were designed in an ornate neoclassical style and painted white, resulting in
3268-495: The fair with one of the stars on its municipal flag . Many prominent civic, professional, and commercial leaders from around the United States helped finance, coordinate, and manage the Fair, including Chicago shoe company owner Charles H. Schwab, Chicago railroad and manufacturing magnate John Whitfield Bunn , and Connecticut banking, insurance, and iron products magnate Milo Barnum Richardson , among many others. The fair
3344-479: The fair's official director of color-design, William Pretyman. Pretyman had resigned following a dispute with Burnham. After experimenting, Millet settled on a mix of oil and white lead whitewash that could be applied using compressed air spray painting to the buildings, taking considerably less time than traditional brush painting. Joseph Binks, maintenance supervisor at Chicago's Marshall Field's Wholesale Store , who had been using this method to apply whitewash to
3420-525: The ground level consists of storefronts and offices. The upstairs level is a residence. In the basement is the Caribou Club. Entrance to the Caribou Club is via an unmarked mahogany door with brass trim. It opens into a paneled entry area with 19th-century Western landscape paintings . On the east is the entrance to the Great Room, similarly paneled in wood and British racing green . It is decorated with more landscapes, by Frederic Remington and Albert Bierstadt , among others. Its dominant piece of furniture
3496-510: The help of Chicago Art Institute instructor Lorado Taft to help complete them. Taft's efforts included employing a group of talented women sculptors from the Institute known as "the White Rabbits " to finish some of the buildings, getting their name from Burnham's comment "Hire anyone, even white rabbits if they'll do the work." The words "Thine alabaster cities gleam" from the song " America
3572-566: The lowest productions of Morgan dollars for the entire series, creating several scarce coins. World%27s Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition , also known as the Chicago World's Fair , was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus 's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of
3648-400: The metal to back the dollar in addition to gold . Aspen, which had grown so rich so rapidly from those sales of its silver, suffered severely as the market collapsed and many of its miners left for the gold fields of Cripple Creek . The Collins survived into the city's ensuing "quiet years" of steady population decline, when vacancy and disuse felled many of the other relics of that era. In
3724-462: The price of their product, often to below the point at which the silver could be profitably extracted. They hoped to enlist the government to increase the demand for silver. Originally, the bill was simply known as the Silver Purchase Act of 1890. Only after the bill was signed into law did it become the "Sherman Silver Purchase Act." Senator John Sherman , an Ohio Republican and chairman of
3800-437: The project for two years. That delay may have accounted for the disparity between the more Victorian look of the stone lower story and the neoclassical elements of the upper story. The latter may have been inspired by the influential use of neoclassical design at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Later that year, Congress repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act , which had required the federal government regularly purchase
3876-462: The refusal to include an African American exhibit. Frederick Douglass , Ida B. Wells , Irvine Garland Penn , and Ferdinand Lee Barnet co-authored a pamphlet entitled "The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition – The Afro-American's Contribution to Columbian Literature" addressing the issue. Wells and Douglass argued, "when it is asked why we are excluded from
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#17330850157113952-493: The repeal of the act to prevent the further depletion of the government's gold reserves. In 1890, the price of silver dipped to $ 1.16 per ounce. By the end of the year, it had fallen to $ 0.69 . By December 1894, the price had dropped to $ 0.60 . On November 1, 1895, US mints halted production of silver coins, and the government closed the Carson City Mint . Banks discouraged the use of silver dollars. The years 1893–95 had
4028-454: The sculptor Edmonia Lewis , a painting exhibit by scientist George Washington Carver , and a statistical exhibit by Joan Imogen Howard . Black individuals were also featured in white exhibits, such as Nancy Green 's portrayal of the character Aunt Jemima for the R. T. Davis Milling Company. The fair opened in May and ran through October 30, 1893. Forty-six nations participated in the fair, which
4104-401: The sidewalk on both sides, supported by smooth round wooden Tuscan columns. The second story is faced in brick. On the north face fenestration is one-over-one double-hung sash windows . Its middle three bays have a recessed porch with Ionic columns and a wooden balustrade . At the roofline is a lightly dentilled cornice with broad overhanging eaves . The roof itself is flat. Inside,
4180-475: The structure. The upper floor he returned to residential use, building for himself and his partner , Richard Edwards, a 6,000-square-foot (560 m) penthouse that was later featured in Architectural Digest . On the ground level he eased out the remnants of the hardware store and other, similar retail tenants. In their place came upscale fashion boutiques such as Bulgari and Brioni , complementing
4256-443: The structures as "decorated sheds.” The buildings were clad in white stucco , which, in comparison to the tenements of Chicago, seemed illuminated. It was also called the White City because of the extensive use of street lights, which made the boulevards and buildings usable at night. In 1892, working under extremely tight deadlines to complete construction, director of works Daniel Burnham appointed Francis Davis Millet to replace
4332-410: The subbasement walls of the store, got the job to paint the Exposition buildings. Claims this was the first use of spray painting may be apocryphal since journals from that time note this form of painting had already been in use in the railroad industry from the early 1880s. Many of the buildings included sculptural details and, to meet the Exposition's opening deadline, chief architect Burnham sought
4408-400: The suggestive version of the belly dance known as the " hootchy-kootchy ," to a tune said to have been improvised by Sol Bloom (and now more commonly associated with snake charmers) which he had composed when his dancers had no music to dance to. Bloom did not copyright the song, putting it immediately in the public domain . Also included was the first moving walkway or travelator, which
4484-512: The world's fair for monetary reasons, but also for reasons of practicality. In a Senate hearing held in January 1890, representative Thomas Barbour Bryan argued that the most important qualities for a world's fair were "abundant supplies of good air and pure water", "ample space, accommodations and transportation for all exhibits and visitors". He argued that New York had too many obstructions, and Chicago would be able to use large amounts of land around
4560-806: Was 264 feet (80 m) high and had 36 cars, each of which could accommodate 40 people. The importance of the Columbian Exposition is highlighted by the use of rueda de Chicago ("Chicago wheel") in many Latin American countries such as Costa Rica and Chile in reference to the Ferris wheel . One attendee, George C. Tilyou , later credited the sights he saw on the Chicago midway for inspiring him to create America's first major amusement park, Steeplechase Park in Coney Island , New York. The fair included life-size reproductions of Christopher Columbus' three ships,
4636-409: Was claimed to be able to penetrate at 2,200 yards a wrought-iron plate three feet thick if placed at right angles." Nicknamed "The Thunderer", the gun had an advertised range of 15 miles. On this occasion John Schofield declared Krupps' guns "the greatest peacemakers in the world". This gun was later seen as a precursor of the company's World War I Dicke Berta howitzers. The 1893 Parliament of
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#17330850157114712-486: Was closed on Sunday, it would restrict those who could not take off work during the work-week from seeing it. The exposition was located in Jackson Park and on the Midway Plaisance on 630 acres (2.5 km ) in the neighborhoods of South Shore, Jackson Park Highlands, Hyde Park , and Woodlawn . Charles H. Wacker was the director of the fair. The layout of the fairgrounds was created by Frederick Law Olmsted, and
4788-548: Was closing (the university has since developed south of the Midway). The university's football team, the Maroons, were the original " Monsters of the Midway ." The exposition is mentioned in the university's alma mater : "The City White hath fled the earth, / But where the azure waters lie, / A nobler city hath its birth, / The City Gray that ne'er shall die." The World's Columbian Exposition
4864-486: Was designed by architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee . It had two different divisions: one where passengers were seated, and one where riders could stand or walk. It ran in a loop down the length of a lakefront pier to a casino. Although denied a spot at the fair, Buffalo Bill Cody decided to come to Chicago anyway, setting up his Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show just outside the edge of the exposition. Nearby, historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave academic lectures reflecting on
4940-415: Was eventually reconstructed and restored and in 1999 it was installed at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art . Architect Kirtland Cutter 's Idaho Building , a rustic log construction, was a popular favorite, visited by an estimated 18 million people. The building's design and interior furnishings were a major precursor of the Arts and Crafts movement . There was an Anthropology Building at
5016-507: Was featured during the opening of the Nebraska Day ceremonies at the fair, which included a reading of her poem "Nebraska". Among the state buildings present at the fair were California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas; each was meant to be architecturally representative of the corresponding states. Four United States territories also had pavilions located in one building: Arizona , New Mexico , Oklahoma , and Utah . Visitors to
5092-405: Was limited to members only, the first time such an establishment had opened in Aspen, where celebrities and locals had previously mixed at the Hotel Jerome 's bar. Baldwin was criticized for this, but the Caribou became one of the city's most popular nightspots. Diana Ross and Tom Ford , as well as businesspeople like Warren Lichtenstein and Lynda Resnick , are among the regulars. In 1987, it
5168-412: Was listed on the National Register of Historic Places along with many other historic properties in the city. Sherman Silver Purchase Act The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was a United States federal law enacted on July 14, 1890. The measure did not authorize the free and unlimited coinage of silver that the Free Silver supporters wanted. It increased the amount of silver the government
5244-432: Was planned in the early 1890s during the Gilded Age of rapid industrial growth, immigration, and class tension. World's fairs, such as London's 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition , had been successful in Europe as a way to bring together societies fragmented along class lines. The first American attempt at a world's fair in Philadelphia in 1876 drew crowds, but was a financial failure. Nonetheless, ideas about distinguishing
5320-438: Was reached in the conference committee, Sherman found that he disagreed with many sections of the act. So tepid was Sherman's support that when he was asked his opinion of the act by President Benjamin Harrison , Sherman ventured only that the bill was "safe" and would cause no harm if the President signed it. The act was enacted in tandem with the McKinley Tariff of 1890. William McKinley , an Ohio Republican and chairman of
5396-568: Was required to purchase on a recurrent monthly basis to 4.5 million ounces. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act had been passed in response to the growing complaints of farmers' and miners' interests. Farmers had immense debts that could not be paid off due to deflation , and they urged the government to pass the Sherman Silver Purchase Act to boost the economy and cause inflation , allowing them to pay their debts with cheaper dollars. Mining companies, meanwhile, had extracted vast quantities of silver from western mines. The resulting oversupply drove down
5472-506: Was reshaped to give it a more natural appearance, except for the straight-line northern end where it still laps up against the steps on the south side of the Palace of Fine Arts/Museum of Science & Industry building. The Midway Plaisance , a park-like boulevard which extends west from Jackson Park, once formed the southern boundary of the University of Chicago , which was being built as the fair
5548-700: Was the first commercial railroad in the United States to evolve into a common carrier without an intervening closure. The railway brought granite stones from a rock quarry in Quincy, Massachusetts , so that the Bunker Hill Monument could be erected in Boston. The frog switch is now on public view in East Milton Square, Massachusetts , on the original right-of-way of the Granite Railway. Transportation by rail
5624-454: Was the first world's fair to have national pavilions. They constructed exhibits and pavilions and named national "delegates"; for example, Haiti selected Frederick Douglass to be its delegate. The Exposition drew over 27 million visitors. The fair was originally meant to be closed on Sundays, but the Chicago Woman's Club petitioned that it stay open. The club felt that if the exposition
5700-462: Was the first world's fair with an area for amusements that was strictly separated from the exhibition halls. This area, developed by a young music promoter, Sol Bloom , concentrated on Midway Plaisance and introduced the term "midway" to American English to describe the area of a carnival or fair where sideshows are located. It included carnival rides, among them the original Ferris Wheel , built by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. This wheel
5776-517: Was the major mode of transportation. A 26-track train station was built at the southwest corner of the fair. While trains from around the country would unload there, there was a local train to shuttle tourists from the Chicago Grand Central Station to the fair. The newly built Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad also served passengers from Congress Terminal to the fairgrounds at Jackson Park . The line exists today as part of
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