Project Clarity

Master landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, designer of New York’s Central Park as well as the grounds of George W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore House and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, liked to talk to strangers while crisscrossing the country by train to check on work in progress.

In June 1893, on a trip to Asheville, NC, from Chicago, Olmstead quizzed fellow passengers about their intentions to attend the recently opened World’s Fair.

Most everyone said they planned to attend the Fair, but gave a variety of excuses regarding why they hadn’t gone just yet. People feared a looming economic crisis and the coming summer heat, he learned. Probing further, he uncovered a common fear of being “fleeced unmercifully” in the wild western streets of Chicago by hoteliers, restaurateurs, and even the Fair itself.

Writing back to other Fair directors, Olmstead pled for urgency in making early improvements that would be fodder for the stories people took back home:

“This is the advertising now most important to be developed; that of high-strung, contagious enthusiasm, growing from actual excellence: the question being not whether people shall be satisfied, but how much they shall be carried away with admiration, and infect others by their unexpected enjoyment of what they have found.”