Charles Dudley Arnold, "Lagoon Looking East,"July 18, 1891,

Charles Dudley Arnold and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893

Some time in 1892, Director of Works Daniel Burnham hired C.D. Arnold, "an obscure Buffalo photographer" (in the words of Alfred Stieglitz), to photograph the construction of the World's Fair of 1893; he would continue as the official photographer of the White City and as the holder (with sycophant H.N.Higinbotham, Jr.) as the holder of the photography concession at the Fair. A promising architectural photographer who had worked for many of the prominent architects chosen to build on the site of the Exposition, Arnold was aesthetically and philosophically in tune with the principal forces behind the Fair. He produced an impeccable series of construction views, and an equivalent set of views of the finished Fair, most of which were and are best seen as the mammoth-plate platinotypes that formed the first "edition" of the work. Sets of these views were scattered to a number of private and public collections; however, complete or near-complete double-elephant portfolios are found in the Burnham and Ryerson Libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Avery Library in New York City, and the Library of Congress in Washington.
For more information on Arnold and the Exposition photography, see Peter Bacon Hales, Silver Cities: The Photography of American Urbanization, 1839-1915 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984); and Peter B. Hales, Constructing the Fair: Platinum Photographs by C.D. Arnold of the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1993).

Construction Views

  • Workers in Staff, March 11, 1892
  • On the Roof of the Woman's Building, November 11, 1891
  • Government Building [showing pile driver and numbered precut construction materials], November 14, 1891
  • Workmen for the Edge Moor Bridge Company, Manufactures Building, March 30, 1892
  • First Arches, Manufactures Building, April 15, 1892
  • Administration Building, July 23, 1892
  • Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, May 21, 1892
  • Manufactures Building, August 11, 1892
  • Manufactures Building, August 15, 1892
  • Main Entrance, Transportation Building [Architect, Louis Henri Sullivan], October 30, 1891
  • Administration Building, July 23, 1892

    Views of the Completed Fair

  • Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building
  • Fisheries Building
  • Palace of Fine Arts
  • [View from the Roof, of the] Lagoon Looking East

    This webpage is a part of the Chicago Imagebase Project of the Department of Art History, The University of Illinois, Chicago
    Robert Bruegmann, Professor
    Peter Bacon Hales, Professor
    If you have comments or suggestions, email me at     pbhales@uic.edu