The Woman's Building (Chicago)

Last updated
Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893 Woman's Building (closeup) designed by Sophia Hayden.png
Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893

The Woman's Building was designed and built in June of 1892, for the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893; under the auspices of the Board of Lady Managers. [1] Out of the twelve main buildings for the Exhibition, the Woman's Building was the first to be completed. [2] It had an exhibition space as well as an assembly room, a library, and a Hall of Honor. The History of the World's Fair states, "It will be a long time before such an aggregation of woman's work, as may now be seen in the Woman's Building, can be gathered from all parts of the world again." [3] The purpose of the building was to highlight woman's achievements, and challenge the traditional ways of thinking at the time it was built. The Woman's Building was planned, designed, and decorated entirely by women under the direction of the board of lady managers.

Contents

Building

Floor Plan and Ground Plan of the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, 1893 Floor Plan and Ground Plan of the The Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, 1893.jpeg
Floor Plan and Ground Plan of the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, 1893

Throughout the construction process of the Women's Building, fourteen women architects submitted designs. The board of architects selected Sophia Hayden's design of an Italian Renaissance-style three-story building with Corinthian columns. [4] The hall honor was 70 ft tall in height with no additional pillars that would obstruct the view. Alice Rideout was chosen as the official sculptor for the Woman's Building. She created the exterior sculpture groups and the pediment. [5] Enid Yandell designed and created the caryatid that supported the roof garden. In addition, [6] Candace Wheeler supervised the interior decorations. [7]

Decor

Interior decoration included murals painted by Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low (Primitive Woman) and Mary Cassatt (Modern Woman). Cassatt was asked to paint a 58 x 12 foot mural for the north tympanum over the entrance to the Gallery of Honor, showcasing the advancement of women throughout history, called Modern Woman. Four panels in the Hall of Honor were painted by Lucia Fairchild Fuller, Amanda Brewster Sewell, Rosina Emmet Sherwood and Lydia Field Emmet. [8] The work by Rosina Emmet Sherwood, titled The Republic's Welcome to Her Daughters, is a neo-classical setting with women draped in a toga bestowing women entering the hall with laurels as crowns. [9] Women in Arcadia, painted by Amanda Brewster Sewell, displays a warm summer with two women, one of which is half nude holding their hand out to a sheep and the other stands behind her plucking oranges from a tree. [9] The library ceiling mural was painted by Dora Wheeler Keith. [10] Regardless of the artists background, they all painted their murals in the 'new style' which had been developed in France. [10]

The British sculptor Ellen Mary Rope contributed a bas-relief, depicting ‘Hope, Charity, Faith and Heavenly Wisdom’, which found a later home in the dining room of the first Ladies' Residential Chambers in London, a project of cousins Rhoda and Agnes Garrett. [11]

Located in the Assembly Hall, were seven stained and leaded glass windows that were visible from both the inside as well as out. The most prominent of which was centered behind the stage. These were created by Elisabeth Parsons, Edith Blake Brown, and Ethel Isadore Brown, Massachusetts Mothering the Coming Woman of Liberty, Progress, and Light depicts two women both in classical garb, the one in the forefront holds a torch high above her head. [7]

Exhibits

Madeleine Lemaire's poster for The Art & Handicraft in the Woman's Building Woman's Building Lemaire poster.png
Madeleine Lemaire's poster for The Art & Handicraft in the Woman's Building

The Woman's Building contained exhibits of works by women across a variety of fields from fine art, applied art, literature and music, to science, and home economics. There were also exhibits about women in American history and other cultures and places in the world. [12] Displays also included charts and graphs of women's advancement in the industrial workforce as well as philanthropic and political work. [13] The Smithsonian loaned an ethnological exhibit featuring crafts from several cultures including African, Native American, and Polynesian, titled "Woman's Work in Savagery". The Inventions Room and Science Exhibit featured more modern contributions, all of which except for one were of white woman. [13]

The library, located on the second floor and decorated with wood paneled bookshelves, leather couches, and artworks by female artists, boasted at least 8,000 books representing 24 different nations all of which were written by women. [14]

Annexed to the Woman's Building was the Children's Building, which exhibited American 19th century best practices for child-rearing and education. [15]

Reactions

The Woman's Pavillion at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia fought to raise money and protect land ownership at the fair. The resilience and persistence surprised male management members as they did not expect the women to be able to raise enough money for a separate building, which they did. [16] This laid some groundwork so that by 1893 there was lesser backlash from the World Columbian Exposition management members. This allowed for the authorization of the creation of the Board of Lady Managers.

The Board of Lady Managers worked tirelessly to connect their individual enterprise with the entirety of the rest of the fair. They insisted on fair representation of female judges across exhibitions and equitable recognition of women's enterprise in all competitions. [17]

Although most women viewed this building as a chance to celebrate progress in women’s achievements, there was still some backlash. Some argued that having a separate building to show off strictly work done by women, it singles women out and suggests they are secondary to men. [18] Along with protesters saying that the building suggested women were secondary to men, another major backlash they faced had to do with the actual architecture of the building. Some argued that the building was too plain and not as bold compared to the other buildings that were designed by men. Going along with these criticisms, people said that the design was too feminine and delicate. [19]

Legacy

Enid Yandell and Laura Hayes co-wrote a semi-autobiographical account of three women architects and their involvement in planning the fair. Along with Yandell and Hayes, eight illustrators are credited with contributing to illustrations throughout the book. Jean Loughborough, Laura Hayes, and Enid Yandell lived together before the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and contributed to the construction of the Women's Building. This novel was written and published in 1892 and titled Three Girls in a Flat (1892). [20]

The exhibits at the Woman's Building inspired Danish noblewoman, Sophie Oxholm, to organize a women's exhibition in Copenhagen, eventually resulting in the 1895 Copenhagen Women's Exhibition. [21]

Buildings at world's fairs are often demolished when the event ends, and finding another home for them is rarely practical. (The exception was The Crystal Palace after the Great Exhibition of 1851.) The Woman's Building was destroyed as part of the general demolition after the Fair. [22] Sadly, after the exposition, Cassatt's mural and many other artworks by many women were placed in storage and subsequently lost. [23]

Eighty years later, the Woman's Building had been almost lost to history. With the flourishing of second-wave feminism, women went searching for what had gone before. Feminist artist Judy Chicago and her team of students, in the midst of creating The Dinner Party , discovered a copy of the Woman's Building catalog in a second-hand bookstore. When the Los Angeles Woman's Building was opened in 1973, the founders decided to name the organization after the 1893 Woman's Building. [24]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Cassatt</span> American painter and printmaker (1844–1926)

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World's Columbian Exposition</span> Worlds Fair held in Illinois, U.S. in 1893

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 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bertha Palmer</span> American art collector (1849–1918)

Bertha Matilde Palmer was an American businesswoman, socialite, and philanthropist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enid Yandell</span> American sculptor (1869–1934)

Enid Yandell was an American sculptor from Louisville, Kentucky, who studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris, Philip Martiny in New York City, and Frederick William MacMonnies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White Rabbits (sculptors)</span> Group of women sculptors

The White Rabbits were a group of women sculptors who worked with Lorado Taft at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophia Hayden</span> American architect

Sophia Hayden was an American architect and first female graduate of the four-year program in architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lydia Field Emmet</span> American artist (1866–1952)

Lydia Field Emmet was an American artist best known for her work as a portraitist. She studied with, among others, prominent artists such as William Merritt Chase, Harry Siddons Mowbray, Kenyon Cox and Tony Robert-Fleury. Emmet exhibited widely during her career, and her paintings can now be found hanging in the White House, and many prestigious art galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low</span> American painter

Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low (1858–1946), born in New Haven, Connecticut was an American painter who specialized in landscapes, genre paintings, and portraits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Tyson Hallowell</span> American art curator

Sarah Tyson Hallowell or Sara Tyson Hallowell was an American art curator in the years between the Civil War and World War I. She curated a number of major exhibitions in Chicago, arranged the loan exhibition of French Art at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and worked with Bertha Palmer (1849–1918) to organize the murals for the women's pavilion for the fair. She then moved to Paris, where she served as agent for the Art Institute of Chicago. During World War I she and her niece Harriet Hallowell (1873–1943) volunteered at a small hospital. She lived in France until her death in 1924.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucia Fairchild Fuller</span> American painter

Lucia Fairchild Fuller was an American painter and member of the New Hampshire Cornish Art Colony. She was inspired to pursue art by John Singer Sargent. Fuller created a mural entitled TheWomen of Plymouth for the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Best known for her portrait miniatures, she was a founding member and treasurer of the American Society of Miniature Painters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver Dennett Grover</span> American painter

Oliver Dennett Grover, was an American landscape and mural painter, the son of lawyer Alonzo Jackson Grover.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amanda Brewster Sewell</span> American painter

Lydia Amanda Brewster Sewell was a 19th-century American painter of portraits and genre scenes. Lydia Amanda Brewster studied art in the United States and in Paris before marrying her husband, fellow artist Robert Van Vorst Sewell. She won a bronze medal for her mural Arcadia at The World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. She continued to win medals at expositions and was the first woman to win a major prize at the National Academy of Design, where she was made an Associate Academian in 1903. She was vice president of the Woman's Art Club of New York by 1906. Her works are in several public collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enella Benedict</span> American painter

Enella Benedict was an American realism and landscape painter. She taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a founder and director for nearly 50 years for the Art School at the Hull House.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson</span> American painter

Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson was an American-born artist who was recognized as one of the leading American women artists in Paris during the 1880s, and whose artwork was exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabrielle D. Clements</span> American painter

Gabrielle de Veaux Clements was an American painter, print maker, and muralist. She studied art at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in Paris at Académie Julian. Clements also studied science at Cornell University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. She created murals, painted portraits, and made etchings. Clements taught in Philadelphia and in Baltimore at Bryn Mawr School. Her works have been exhibited in the United States and at the Paris Salon. Clements works are in several public collections. Her life companion was fellow artist Ellen Day Hale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Maitland Armstrong</span> American stained glass artist (1869–1948)

Helen Maitland Armstrong was an American stained glass artist who worked both solo and in partnership with her father, Maitland Armstrong. Her work is considered among the finest produced in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosina Emmet Sherwood</span> American painter

Rosina Emmet Sherwood was an American painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Susan Baker</span> American painter, muralist and teacher

Martha Susan Baker was an American painter, muralist and teacher born in Evansville, Indiana, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Exposition</span> American womens organization

The Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Exposition was organized November 19, 1890. It oversaw the construction of The Woman's Building in Chicago and organized the exposition's World's Congress of Representative Women (1893). A cookbook with autographed recipes of board members was also issued.

References

  1. ↑ Corn, Wanda M.; with contributions by Charlene G.; Garfinkel, Charlene G.; Madsen, Annelise K. (2010). Women building history: public art of the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. ISBN   0520241118.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ↑ Palm, Regina Megan (2010). "Women Muralists, Modern Woman and Feminine Spaces: Constructing Gender at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition". Journal of Design History. 23 (2): 123–143. ISSN   0952-4649.
  3. ↑ Truman, Benjamin Cummings (1893). History of the World's Fair : being a complete description of the Columbian Exposition from its inception. Philadelphia, Pa.: H.W. Kelley. p. 192.
  4. ↑ Palm, Regina Megan (2010). "Women Muralists, Modern Woman and Feminine Spaces: Constructing Gender at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition". Journal of Design History. 23 (2): 123–143. ISSN   0952-4649.
  5. ↑ Weimann, Jeanne Madeline (1981). The Fair Women: the story of the Woman's Building World's Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893. Chicago: Academy Chicago. pp.  167-175. ISBN   0915864673.
  6. ↑ Weimann, Jeanne Madeline (1981). The Fair Women: the story of the Woman's Building World's Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893. Chicago: Academy Chicago. pp.  159. ISBN   0915864673.
  7. 1 2 Nichols, K. L. "Women's Public Arts & Architecture: 1893 Exposition". Women's Art at the World's Columbian Fair & Exposition, Chicago 1893. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  8. ↑ Elliott, Maud Howe (1894). Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1983. Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company. p. 43-47.
  9. 1 2 "The Decoration of the Woman's Building at the Columbian Exposition". The Decorator and Furnisher. 23 (6): 221–222. 1894. ISSN   2150-6256.
  10. 1 2 Nichols, K. L. "Women's Public Arts & Architecture: 1893 Exposition". Women's Art at the World's Columbian Fair & Exposition, Chicago 1893. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  11. ↑ "Spirited Women of Gower Street: The Garretts and their Circle" (PDF). Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  12. ↑ Elliott, Maud Howe (1894). Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1983. Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company. p. 7.
  13. 1 2 Gullett, Gayle (1994). ""Our Great Opportunity": Organized Women Advance Women's Work at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893". Illinois Historical Journal. 87 (4): 259–276. ISSN   0748-8149.
  14. ↑ Searing, Susan E. (2012). "Women in the White City: Lessons from the Woman's Building Library at the Chicago World's Fair". American Libraries. 43 (3/4): 44–47. ISSN   0002-9769.
  15. ↑ Elliott, Maud Howe (1894). Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1983. Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Company. p. 189-194.
  16. ↑ Freedman, Estelle (1979). "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930". Feminist Studies. 5 (3): 512–529. doi:10.2307/3177511. ISSN   0046-3663.
  17. ↑ Freedman, Estelle (1979). "Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930". Feminist Studies. 5 (3): 512–529. doi:10.2307/3177511. ISSN   0046-3663.
  18. ↑ "Women's History at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-04-03.
  19. ↑ Casey (2013-08-15). "The Woman's Building at the Columbian Exposition of 1893". Molly Brown House Museum. Retrieved 2024-04-09.
  20. ↑ Yandell, Enid; Hayes, Laura. "Three Girls in A Flat". A Celebration of Women Writers. Penn Libraries. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
  21. ↑ "Kvindernes Udstilling 1895". Emma Gad (in Danish). 30 June 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  22. ↑ Weimann, Jeanne Madeline (1981). The Fair Women: the story of the Woman's Building World's Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893. Chicago: Academy Chicago. pp.  593. ISBN   0915864673.
  23. ↑ Michalska, Magda. "Mary Cassatt's Feminist Mural Which Has Gone Lost". DailyArt Magazine. DailyArtMagazine.com. Retrieved 6 July 2018.
  24. ↑ "Celebrating The Woman's Building on International Women's Day". Otis College of Art and Design. Otis College of Art and Design. Retrieved 6 July 2018.

41°47′13.6″N87°35′8.2″W / 41.787111°N 87.585611°W / 41.787111; -87.585611

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.