History
The Century of Progress Exposition committee sought an exciting signature attraction, one that would be remembered like the Eiffel Tower from the 1889 Paris World's Fair or the Ferris wheel of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. One proposal under consideration, to be underwritten by Montgomery Ward, was called the Tower of Water and Light. A 250 foot tall tower with water flowing down the outside and elevators traveling to observation platforms. When the Montgomery Ward company backed out of its offer to finance the tower, the commission considered the Sky Ride.
The Sky Ride, an idea suggested by an engineer named William L. Hamilton, would span the grounds and be relatively cheap to build. The ride was built in the span of 6 months prior to the fair's opening, by a consortium of 5 companies: Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, Inland Steel, John Roebling and Sons, Mississippi Valley Structural Steel and Otis Elevator at a cost of about 1,000,000 USD.
The ride had a capacity of 5,000 people per hour. It was reported that the attraction had 2,616,389 riders in 1933 and a total of about 4.5 million during the course of the fair. At the time of construction the span between towers was one of the longest in the world, allegedly exceeded in span only by the George Washington Bridge, and the towers were higher than any of the skyscrapers then extant in Chicago. It was reported that it contained 2,000 tons of steel, 100 miles (160 km) of cabling and that the cableway had a breaking strength of 220,000 pounds per square inch.
The Sky Ride was demolished at the conclusion of the fair. The west tower was brought down using 120 pounds of dynamite. The east tower was toppled on August 29, 1935 using 1,500 pounds of thermite charges to melt ten-foot sections near the bottom of two of the legs. When the thermite was fired, the two legs collapsed and the tower fell on its side.
Read more about this topic: Sky Ride
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)