Review: Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago's 1933–34 World's Fair, by Lisa D. Schrenk and The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress, by Cheryl R. Ganz

Abstract

Lisa D. Schrenk ; Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago's 1933––34 World's Fair . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, 368 pp., 26 color and 172 b/w illus. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780816648368 Cheryl R. Ganz ; The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress . Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008, 272 pp., 42 color and 45 b/w illus. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780252033575 When you virtually browse the bookshelves of Amazon.com you will find pages of books about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, made even more famous in the popular imagination by Erik Larson's best selling The Devil in the White City (2004). There is even a computer game on that world's fair called 1893: A World's Fair Mystery , about a diamond heist conducted at the exposition. Now, try to search the 1933––34 Century of Progress fair, either on that website or on any number of antiquarian book sites. You will find some archival publications dating from the time of the fair, but you will be hard pressed to find anything more recent, such as a historical survey——that is, until now. Historians are fortunate that there have been two recent books on that Chicago world's fair, both being very welcome additions to the field. They both belong in the library of anyone who professes an interest in modernism, especially eclectic, conservative American modernism of the interwar years. And both books, in their own ways, tell an amazing story about a major world's fair that was the first to post a profit, created more than 20,000 jobs during a global economic depression, and welcomed over nine million visitors. The first of these books, published in 2007, is the very thorough architectural survey by Lisa D. Schrenk, Building a Century of Progress . Using archives from various sources, including the major 1933 world's fair archive at the University of Illinois in Chicago, her book is an exhaustive chronicle of the creation of the fair's built environment. Schrenk's story ranges from the fair's inception in 1923 as a centennial to celebrate Chicago's founding, to the shift in 1929 to the Century of Progress theme——which would demonstrate the scientific advances made over the past …