Then & Now: Columbian Exposition Storage Buildings – Hyde Park

As the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the New World approached, the federal government announced that there would be a national event to celebrate the event.

A number of cities across the nation entered a competition to host the national exposition, including New York, Washington, St. Louis, and Chicago. On April 21, 1890, Congress designated Chicago as the official site for the Columbian Exposition.

One of the basic reasons the city was chosen was the fame of its local architects, including Daniel Burnham, John Root, William Le Baron Jenney and Louis Sullivan.

Once Jackson Park was chosen as the main location for the fair, and before a single exposition structure was raised, property in many neighborhoods, such as Hyde Park, Kenwood, Woodlawn and Englewood, was bought and retail spaces, hotels, warehouses and other buildings were constructed in anticipation of exposition needs.

In 1891, two years prior to the opening of World’s Columbian Exposition, Frederick C. Gibbs built a row of one-story frame store buildings on each side of 57th Street, between Stone Island Avenue and the Illinois Central tracks.

Designed by local architect George Beaumont, the 26 simple framed buildings were intended to be temporary spaces to produce quick rental income for Gibbs. Inside amenities were scarce, even for the time, as the store buildings lacked electricity and gas, and relied on a stove for heat.

When the Columbian Exposition opened in 1893, these narrow-spaced buildings were perfectly located near the South Park station, as riders arrived at the at the 57th Street entrance to the fair. During the fair, Gibbs’ buildings were used novelty booths and concession stands for the fair goers.

After the fair, the University of Chicago helped to make Hyde Park the center of an active cultural movement. Concerts, lectures, dramatic performances on campus drew people from all over Chicago, and in increasing numbers, professionals with intellectual interests came to live in Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhoods.

As the interest in art and literature increased, so did the demand for moderate priced stores and studios for painters and writers in the area. In time, the area around East 57th Street became known as an art center in Hyde Park, as paintings and writings from the “colony” began to attract national attention.

The area soon became known as “literary bohemia” when poet and novelist Floyd Dell moved into the area in 1913. Other writers, poets, and artists soon called Hyde Park home, including Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Carl Sandburg, Margaret Anderson, Harriett Monroe, Charles Corwin, Charles Francis Brown and Karl Albeit Buehr.

As the first wave of artists and writers move on to other locations, new groups moved in to keep the area active, unique and culturally renowned. By the late 1940s, however, the original buildings of the 57th Street Art Colony, became increasingly contentious sites as community residents complained about the growing crime and blight in the area.

As one of the last remaining structures from the 19th-century fair era, these simple structures stood in Hyde Park as both a symbol of a bygone era and the new reality of the distressed urban neighborhood.

While the 1950s land clearance and urban renewal programs of Hyde Park-Kenwood removed many of the “time-worn” buildings in each of these areas, the 57th Street Artists Colony managed to hang on until it was demolished in 1962.