World's Fair
As the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas approached, the United States planned to hold a world's fair to celebrate. This was considered an important time, due to the French successes at the previous World's Fair with the construction of the Eiffel Tower.
The prestige of holding the fair enticed several prominent cities to compete to host the fair. At the top, New York City, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. all fought hard for the right and many New Yorkers thought they had a win guaranteed. In the end, it came down to New York and Chicago. In 1890, Chicago won the bid to host the World's Fair, also known as the World's Columbian Exposition, after eight ballots. Many prominent New Yorkers were extremely irritated that a "frontier town" could beat them.
It is a popular myth that the first person to use the term "Windy City" was The New York Sun editor, Charles Dana. Charles Dana was New York's leading fair booster, but there is little evidence that he ever used the "Windy City" term. The first known attribution of Dana to the origin of "Windy City" was in the Chicago Tribune, "Chicago Dubbed 'Windy' in Fight for Fair of '93," June 11, 1933:
| “ | "Don’t pay any attention", wrote Charles A. Dana, day in and day out in his New York Sun, "to the nonsensical claims of that windy city. Its people could not build a World’s Fair even if they won it". | ” |
Read more about this topic: Origin Of The Name "Windy City"
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or fair:
“Came to Ajanta cave, the painted space of the breast,
the real world where everything is complete,
there are no shadows, the forms of incompleteness,
The great cloak blows in the light, rider and horse arrive,
the shoulders turn and every gift is made.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Tell her that goes
With song upon her lips
But sings not out the song, nor knows
The maker of it, some other mouth,
May be as fair as hers,”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)