The Night Chicago Became the White City

On the evening of May 1, 1893, President Grover Cleveland pressed a single golden button inside the Administration Building at the World's Columbian Exposition. In an instant, more than ninety thousand incandescent bulbs blazed to life across six hundred acres of Chicago's Jackson Park. Visitors gasped. Some wept. Most had never seen electric light before. One moment, the fairgrounds sat draped in darkness — the next, an entire city of white neoclassical buildings glowed like a vision from another world.…