The spectacular World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 generated an immense amount of interest in the power that well-designed public buildings, and public spaces, could have. The Exposition helped lay the groundwork for the "City Beautiful" movement of the early decades of the 20th century -- a movement which stressed the value of civic design. The result: thousands of public buildings that still stand as landmarks in communities across the United States.

"The fair! The fair! A city of palaces set in spaces of emerald, refelcted in shining lengths of water ... The result stands to-day, a vision and foretaste of how the world will one day build in earnest." -- Candance Wheeler writing for Harper's New Monthly, May 1893. "It was indeed worth a journey of a thousand miles ... If any fault is to be found with this Columbian Exposition, it will be on account of the inability of the human mind to compass and appreciate it." -- C.C. Buel writing for The Century magazine, 1893.

As planning historian Laurence Gerckens recounts:

"Thousands of visitors left Chicago with the belief that things could be made better back home. They began to organize local groups to plan for a visually and functionally unified new 'civic center,' for metropolitan park systems and tree-lined boulevards with coordinated public benches, street lights and transit stations. They sought to realize architecturally integrated streets through laws regulating building heights and setting building setback lines.

Led by major businessmen, unofficial City Plan Committees undertook to raise the quality of the public environment to make physical America a fitting subject for public-spirited support and patriotic respect, capable of inspiring both the ambitions of youth and the visions of the industrious. The idea of America would take positive physical form through the effort of community planning commissions; it would be realized in community actions directed toward shaping and protecting the public environment."

From Gerckens' Community Aesthetics & Planning, Planning Commissioners Journal, #7, Nov/Dec 1992).

Looking South across the Grand Plaza towards the Machinery Hall at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

An interesting motto can be found on the seal of the City of Lowell, Massachusetts.

See also, James Howard Kunstler's Remarks to the Florida AIA for a look at the impact of the City Beautiful movement, and the pride communities used to take in their public buildings.

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