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| 1933 Century of Progress Exposition Documents |
A New Englander at the Fair
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Source: Chicago Tribune, letter to the editor, 2 July 1933, pg. 10.
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Chicago, June 29.—As an occasional visitor to your remarkable and always stimulating city, may I be permitted to raise a small New England voice amidst the Illinoisan hubbub? Thank you.
Whether it is opera, cattle slaughter, architecture, gang killings, athletic spectacles, or municipal profligacy, Chicago can always be counted on to give the world's greatest show and A Century of Progress Exposition is no exception to the rule. It is immense, dazzling and blatant. Any one who doesn't react to its rich mixture of beauty and bunkum has no American blood in his veins.
But in two details, it seems to me, the Fair falls down. One, of course, is the continuous and conflicting barrage of loud speakers. This is pretty terrible. To ride about the lagoon in the late evening, enjoying the gorgeously extravagant colors of the electrical decorations, and to be suddenly shoved back into the workaday world by a blast about somebody's silk hosiery, "best for looks, best for wear," is no fun. Would it not be possible, say at 9 or 10 o'clock, to call a complete armistice on loud speakers and let the Exposition speak silently and eloquently for itself ten or fifteen minutes? I think it would provide a really dramatic contrast.
Then, it was disappointing to find so little made of the lake front of the exposition grounds. Lake Michigan remains Chicago's greatest and most dependable attraction and why subordinate it to a puny pond? There should be a grand restaurant with grand food and grant music somewhere on the lake side of the grounds where the tired wanderer could forget progress for a little while and just enjoy the satisfaction of the present. It's a crime to use Lake Michigan as a receptacle to drive golf balls into!
But, at that, it's a swell show. Chicago has not lost her talent for startling the world.
LEONARD WARE JR.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 14 January 2006
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