CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image: Nighttime Fireworks Show Above Federal Building

This image was originally produced by Kaufmann & Fabry, official photographers for the Century of Progress International Exposition. The world's fair was held in Chicago during the summers of 1933 and 1934 to commemorate the incorporation of the city in 1833. The black-and-white photography does not convey the multicolored “Rainbow City” scheme of the fair, intended to contrast the “White City” of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition also held in Chicago.

A commission of architects was responsible for the streamline moderne design of the fair architecture. Edward H. Bennett, who had responsibility for the buildings in the area north of the fair's central lagoon, and Arthur Brown, Jr., designed the Federal Building (also known as the U.S. Government Building). The Federal Building had a central rotunda, reminiscent of the dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and three 150-foot-high fluted towers. The towers—with allegorical statues by Raoul Josset, John H. Storrs, and Lorado Taft at their bases—represented the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. The fireworks display over the adjacent lagoon was a nightly occurrence.

The digital collection contains more than 1,400 publicity and documentary photographs from the Exposition. The photographs form part of “A Century of Progress Records, 1927-1952,” housed in the Special Collections and University Archives Department, University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

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