Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
February 20, 2005
Reading:
from
The City of the Century by Donald Miller
The White City's richest legacy is the
confidence of its builders in the possibilities of urban life, their conviction
that the modern metropolis, with its enormous problems, could be made over into
a work of art. But a great city is not a work of inspired scene painting, static
and splendid. It's a living drama with a huge and varied cast of characters, and
with a plot full of conflict, tension, and spectacle. And a big city’s diversity
and explosive energy—the very factors Burnham and the civic elite hoped to tame
and control—enliven the drama and “bring the performers”, Lewis Mumford wrote,
“up to the highest pitch of skilled, intensely conscious participation."
People will always disagree about how to make
cities better. Theodore Dreiser speaks for those who insist that cities should
be allowed to grow freely and naturally, achieving a kind of messy vitality;
while Daniel Burnham speaks for those who lean toward order and planning. But
both Dreiser and Burnham ignored the lesson their own city provided: that a
great city is an uneasy balance between order and energy, planning and privatism,
capitalism and community, Jane Addams and Philip Armour. Interesting cities are
places of stimulating disparity and moral conflict where crudity and commerce
are often accompanied by memorable advances in the arts.
Sermon:
He
called himself H.H. Holmes when he moved to Chicago at age 23 in 1886. A doctor
by training, he bought a pharmacy on the corner of Wallace and 63rd.
Many young women frequented his store to bask in this charming bachelor’s
attentiveness. He often broke the rules of casual intimacy, by lingering with
his stare or a touch, which made women adore him. When the World’s Fair was
scheduled to be built just a mile west, he built a hotel and called it the
World’s Fair Hotel. No one knows how many people checked into the hotel that
never checked out, but an extraordinary detective story demonstrated that Holmes
had killed at least nine people, including four children. Some put the number of
victims at two hundred. In his book, Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
interweaves a gruesome tale with the extraordinary story of Daniel Burnham, the
chief architect and director of the 1893 World’s Fair.
I had
originally acquired the book thinking it was historical fiction, from which I
could learn a piece of
Chicago’s
history. Little did I know, it was all well-researched stories that read like
fiction because they are so much larger than life.
The city
of Chicago didn’t exist in 1830. In 1890, its business leaders persuaded the
United States Congress that their city was the most representative American city
to host the 1893 World’s Fair, beating out New York for the bid. Less than
twenty years prior, a colossal firestorm had destroyed the city from which it
had rebuilt. Easterners saw
Chicago
as a backwater, incapable of pulling off a World’s Fair. There were many
obstacles that could have—and, according to Larson, should have—prevented it
from coming to fruition. The extraordinary effort that managed to build what
turned out to be the world’s largest tour attraction in human history was pride,
civic pride, national pride, and the personal pride of those who financed and
designed it. Daniel Burnham, the visionary builder and partner of the
architectural genius John Root, was chosen to be the chief designer. He had
three years to have a finished product, but it took most of a year simply to
sign on the premier American architects and artists and convince them that
Chicago was serious about doing this on the grandest scale. Once gathered, they
were shocked as they revealed to each other the exquisite, fabulous buildings
each had designed. The Columbian exposition was to be a tremendous city covering
363 acres of the most extraordinary buildings and landscapes that they could
imagine, only to be torn down at the end of the Fair.
The White
City got its name from the decision by the architects to paint all the buildings
white. In the six-month run of the World’s Fair, over 27 million tickets were
sold to enter. One of the greatest concerns was that the previous fair, held in
Paris, boasted the Eiffel Tower. Daniel Burnham and others lost sleep trying to
figure out how to “out Eiffel” Eiffel. There was a lot of talk of building
another tower, but a young bridge engineer, George Ferris, suggested a huge
wheel that could take thousands of people into the sky. The idea was rejected
twice before Ferris convinced other architects of its viability. The Wheel that
Ferris built, had thirty-six wooden cars that held forty people each, a fine
complement to the extraordinary buildings. The Fair was the spectacle that the
Chicago
commercial elite had hoped it would be, bringing well over 27 million visitors
in its six-month run.
As Donald
Miller says, “Built by
Chicago's
commercial kings, the White City was their vision of what a great city could be
like. There were no beggars or garish signs. The streets were immaculately
clean. Picturesque walkways and waterways connected the magnificent exhibition
halls. And these buildings were filled with the newest inventions of the age:
among them, electric kitchens, calculating machines, and a gadget for viewing
motion pictures, Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope.”
In the
year 1893, there were four Unitarian congregations in Chicago, with others in
the suburbs. From 1870 to 1925, five core beliefs were affirmed by them. This
was their declaration:
"We believe in:
The Fatherhood of God;
The Brotherhood of Man;
The Leadership of Jesus;
Salvation by Character;
The Progress of Mankind
onward and upward forever.”
It is
rather embarrassing to recite today with its gender exclusions and patriarchal
language, but also because “onward and upward forever” has such an imperialist,
naïve ring to it. It sounds like a superhero from the comic books. “Onward and
upward forever!” And yet, this was not only the core focus of late nineteenth
century Unitarianism but also precisely the mantra of business and civic leaders
throughout the country. Here, Chicago’s business leaders wanted to convey with
the Columbian Exposition a fantastic exhibition that foretells the progress of
humankind onward and upward forever.
Faith in
technology and human achievement, that sums up the essence of the Chicago
World’s Fair. It cost, in today’s dollars, six hundred million dollars. And the
entire project, with scores of buildings, was fully constructed, with the most
advanced sewage and transportation systems in the world, in less than two years.
Erik
Larson offers a most riveting description of the World’s Fair and its Columbian
Exposition. As wonderful and exciting a read Larson provides, his focus on the
serial killer averts our attention from what else could be the devil of the
White City. His juxtaposition of the horrific with the phenomenal frames and
reinforces his perspective of the White City being emblematic of the gilded age
of America.
Holmes, in his horrific deeds, is a complete and utter sociopath, extremely rare
among the masses that crowded Chicago. Far more significant and relevant to our
lives, I believe, are the failings, albeit unintentional, of those who built the
World’s Fair, operating according the mantra, onward and upward forever.
Larson vividly captures the social insecurities that
led
Chicago’s business leaders to go to astonishing lengths to prove the worthiness
of their city and themselves. But he doesn’t mention the negative impacts of the
Fair on Chicago and America.
In City
of the Century, Donald Miller writes of those who glorify the White City and
those who deplored it. For example, Frederick Douglass called the fair a
national scandal. Millions of dollars were poured into a temporary, fake city
just miles away from a real city with arguably the worst social problems in
America. Dark-skinned peoples were imported from all corners of the earth to
perform on the Midway and add to the spectacle. The
White
City
was built for white-skinned people, as the Fair excluded the accomplishments of
African-Americans. Douglass and the young black activist, Ida B. Wells,
protested. When fair directors hosted a special Colored People’s Day, they
passed out watermelon to the crowd, adding a note of ridicule. Wells boycotted
it, but Douglas, at seventy-five years of age, provided an electrifying speech.
He said, “We Negroes love our country. We fought for it. We only ask that we be
treated as well as those who fought against it in the Civil War.” He then
pointed out that the World’s Fair not only failed to acknowledge the
accomplishments but also the existence of the kind of powerless people Hull
House workers were trying to help only a few miles to the north.
Following
the fair, Chicago’s unemployment skyrocketed to twenty percent. The business
elite had flourished but most people had to endure an ever-growing city among an
economy whose bottom fell out. It was a time that people like Jane Addams and
Florence Kelley honed their efforts to bring social reform for the benefit of
the city’s poor.
What does
all this have to do with us? We live in a megalopolis that has been shaped by an
extraordinary history. I believe we can better respond to our surroundings and
move through our world more effectively when we have a better understanding of
the forces that have shaped our surroundings.
The legacy
of the Chicago World’s Fair is multi-dimensional. First, and most visible,
Chicago owes its
unimpeded lakefront and urban design of parks to Daniel Burnham. Because of his
success with the White City, Burnham received the job of urban design for
several cities, including Chicago. Ever since, the city’s residents have enjoyed
its public land, both on the lake and in the many parks. But like most
everything there is a shadow side. It is noted by many sociologists, that
Burnham’s plan ignored both the black and ethnic neighborhoods. Chicago has kept
both the unimpeded lakefront but it also has throughout its history erected
barriers via railroad or subway tracks, freeway systems, or factory walls to
border and contain less desirable neighborhoods.
Regardless
of whether you consider it a positive or negative, Chicago at the end of the
nineteenth century had the tightest relationship between artists and the
business elite of any American city. This paved the way for the making of the
White City as well as many other examples of corporate patronage of the arts.
This can be noted even in the Art Institute of Chicago, arguably the most
enduring institution to benefit the entire city. In his recent book, The Pig
and the Skyscraper, Marco d’Eramo finds a metaphor for
Chicago
in the Art Institute. “One good example of
Chicago’s
capitalist ethos [is] the city’s Art Institute, … the patrons do not limit
themselves to simply having their names engraved on a plaque next to the works
of art, as in other museums.… The pictures here are organized by who donated
them, not who painted them.”
Whether it
be the civic institutions or the World’s Fair, it is on a grand scale that
Chicago does just about everything. People say in
Texas everything is made big. Well, in
Chicago, the city has always
reached for greatness and grandiosity, whether it’s in skyscrapers,
merchandising, museums, or pizza. “Make no little plans,” Daniel Burnham was
often heard to say, “they have no magic to stir people’s blood.”
The
World’s Fair catalyzed the rise of American consumerism as it presented all
sorts of consumer items from the zipper to the dishwasher, from Cracker Jack and
Juicy Fruit gum to the thrill of riding a Ferris Wheel. Every state had its own
building or exhibition, laying out their products to catch people’s imagination.
During the fair, the spell of consumerism entranced millions, as they left with
a dream of acquiring what they had just learned was available. Thus was
unleashed a force of consumerism for which many would sell their souls. It was
common for young women to move to Chicago to work in a factory for wages that
were not enough to buy the clothes they made. So many turned to prostitution or
hitched themselves to a wealthy man, as did Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, so
that they could buy those things that promised happiness and fulfillment.
A related
legacy of the World’s Fair was what one entrepreneur said: “We Americans want to
be thrilled or amused and are ready to pay well for either sensation.” The White
City was the first fantasy park and the first carnival. While many people gushed
about how real cities should be patterned after the
White
City,
the real city of Chicago held as much of a spectacle for just how crowded, ugly,
and filthy city life could be. Frederick Douglass wasn’t the only one who
uttered the cry of a realist. Theodore Dreiser and many others pointed out how
the business elite created a fantasy world while the real world was waiting for
attention. Jane Addams and other social reformers called for the city’s
resources to benefit the heart of the city. It did not escape notice that Daniel
Burnham had moved his own family out of Chicago to the suburb of Evanston.
When
referring to the Devil in the White City, one should not consider simply a
psychopathic man who murdered a few people in gruesome style. No, that awful
story directs our attention from the far more disturbing legacies of the World’s
Fair.
As a
newcomer to Chicago, I find this city overwhelming. I understand the desire to
see a great city as a work of inspired scene painting but it’s not. As Miller
says, it is a living drama with a huge and varied cast of characters, with a
plot full of conflict, tension and spectacle. As much as I’d like
Chicago to conform to my vision of reality, I am repeatedly learning
that if I am going to be real and authentic here, then I must seek to be open to
the vastness and multiplicity of experience to know the truth of the city.
I must
confess that as I came up with the idea to do two services on Chicago, of which
this is the second, I fed into the grandiosity that is in the very structure of
society, hoping that I could bring forth sermons that not only reflected but
embodied this structure. However, I have been humbly reminded that the quest for
greatness so easily devolves into a quest for grandiosity. Just as the
commercial kings lost sight of authentic life in the construction of an orderly,
controlled world, so I have returned to the realization that the soul does not
deepen in the realm of the grandiose but instead seeks to deepen amidst the
world of the real.
Don’t be
too quick to assume that the devil in the White City was simply a sociopath who
committed gruesome murders. The devil lives—within the legacy of the White City,
calling us to enthusiastically consume all that is laid out before us, to
worship the technology that provides us convenience, and to foster allegiance to
our corporate leaders that would privatize all public land to build for us new
fantasylands.
May the
legacy of the White
City
be for us a reminder to live in the real city, among the flesh and blood, messy
and vital life that is ours if only we resist the temptation to rush back into
the fantasy that we are on a march onward and upward forever.
Our
liberal religious tradition once declared its faith in the progress of
humankind, onward and upward forever. Today, may we set our sights not on the
grandiose visions that boast great wealth and power but instead towards the
vision of spiritual teachers and social reformers calling us to seek to spiral
ever deeper into the heart of reality.
Blessed
be. Amen.
© Copyright 2005 Rev.
Alan Taylor, All Rights Reserved.
