Official Views of the World's Columbian Exposition

In the summer of 1893, Chicago built a city of white plaster and glass that existed for only six months before it was destroyed. This is its ghost. The World's Columbian Exposition was America's declaration to the world that it had arrived: a fantastical dreamscape of neoclassical architecture, electric lights, and engineering marvels that drew 27 million visitors to the shores of Lake Michigan. C. D. Arnold, the official photographer, captured the White City in its brief prime: the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building that covered 44 acres under a single glass roof, the towering Ferris Wheel that dwarfed everything around it, the dizzying Minaret and the Streets of Cairo, the tranquil Japanese garden blooming beside the Illinois Central Railroad. These plates preserve a fleeting moment when America imagined itself as a modern Athens. Most of these buildings burned or were demolished within a year. What remains is this book: a luminous, melancholy record of a city that existed only to vanish, and the audacity of the dream that built it.