It’s winter break here in Auburn, Alabama. We’re not likely to have snow for Christmas, but we are due for some below-freezing temperatures and windchills in the teens. I’m thankful to be from the Midwest and so still in possession of a few good winter coats.Winter break is a weird time, full of a lot of conflicting impulses: resting, holiday prep, course prep, hanging our with family, and, of course, trying to get some writing done.
I have two writing projects for the spring:
1) Co-editing and writing an article for a special issue of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Film, which will be about the first season at the New York Hippodrome.
2) Writing a sample chapter to complete my trade proposal for the group biography of the New York Hippodrome
So I’m thinking about the Hip from academic and popular points of few. In both cases, though, I’m starting at the same place, what I’m starting to think of as the genesis of the New York Hippodrome. And I think the place where the New York Hippodrome was born is the Chicago World’s Fair.
Rand Mcnally And Company. Bird's eye view of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago. [S.l, 1893] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/98687181/.
There were thousands of people who helped create the New York Hippodrome’s schedule, but it was arguably the brainchild of Fred Thompson, the architect and mind behind the first spectacles produced there.) Here’s Thompson at a more established point in his career:
New York Star (October 3, 1908) Vol.1 No.1 via Wikipedia
When I went to the Ransom Center last spring, I found a lot of cool things about the Hippodrome. But maybe the most important thing I found was a letter that Fred Thompson wrote to his parents when he was a twenty year-old working at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Thompson worked at a bunch of world’s fairs around the turn of the twentieth century. He met his partner Elmer Dundy at the Omaha world’s fair and collaborated with him in Buffalo before they went in on Luna Park, the Coney Island venue that made their names as purveyors of amusements. This is before all of that.
My photo of the letterhead for Fred Thompson’s letter home to his folks from the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893, which is part of the Theater Arts Mss. Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
The World’s Columbian Exposition was a big deal to Chicago (see Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City) and it’s been a big deal to scholars of twentieth-century culture (see every American studies book in the past 30 or 40 years). And from what I can tell, it was a similarly big deal to the twenty year-old Thompson. His biographer Woody Register says Thompson “worked as a janitor and later a ‘demonstrator’ at one of the industrial exhibits and supplemented his income by stringing articles and sketches for a Chicago newspaper.” In the letter held by the Ransom Center, Thompson takes a day off from his demonstrator role and takes in the sights of the White City’s central area, the Court of Honor. He loves the contrast between the natural light of the sunset and the electric lights picking out the facades of the buildings surrounding the lagoon. He stays in one spot as the dark comes on and the electric light intensifies. I love this postcard image of the Court of Honor by moonlight:
Davis, George R. (George Royal). Picturesque World’s Fair : An Elaborate Collection of Colored Views : Comprising Illustrations of the Greatest Features of the Word’s Columbian Exposition and Midway Plaisance : Architectural, Artistic, Historical, Scenic and Ethnological. Chicago : W.B. Conkey, 1894. http://archive.org/details/picturesqueworl00davi.
He sees a statue at one end of the lagoon and imagines it as an allegory for classical culture being faced with modern life:
The search light on the Manufacturers Bldg turned its silvery rays upon the fountain directly in front of me, and revealed, standing out in bold relief, the figure of Father Time at the helm of the ship Columbia. In the striking contrasts of light and shadows he appeared in a much surprised attitude, surprise was even pictured upon his countenance. Can you wonder at it? as he sees himself guiding a ship, which in itself is a perfect gem, manned by a crew of nymphs, perfect in form and features, and whose grace is incontestable. The ship heads down a lake whose beauty he himself would never have dreamt possible. Mermaids sporting in the water about him, while the fountain is spurting up jets of silver from numberless mouths. Farther down the lagoon he sees gondolas, fantom like, quietly gliding over the placid waters, while in strange contrast to the slow, laborious but picturesque craft of Venice, there swiftly glides by a boat of graceful lines, propelled by no visible power.
‘’Photographs of the World’s Fair: An elaborate Collection of Photographs of the Buildings, Grounds and the Exhibits of the World’s Columbian Exposition with a special description of The Famous Midway Exposition’’, The Werner Company, Chicago, 1894 via wikimedia.
Thompson’s letter identifies so many things about the spectacle surrounding him that get picked up in the Hippodrome’s design, from colored lights and fountains to mermaids and Neptune. I really think the Hippodrome’s 14-foot deep water tank was included in the design of the stage from the beginning because of Thompson’s love for water features in world’s fairs, a love that began in Chicago. There’s lots more that I want to do with the letter, thinking about how these technological sights make him super nostalgic for home, but only for a home where he can imagine a similarly overwhelming and modern spectacle on the river next to a Nashville farm. He imagines a boat too, one that is human-powered like the fountain’s barge but silent and modern like the motor-powered gondolas. I feel like this is the starting point, but I can’t quite articulate why yet. For now, enjoy the pictures and the dreams of a kid still in awe of other peoples’ spectacles but on his way to creating his own.