The Woman's Building (Chicago)

Floor Plan and Ground Plan of the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, 1893

Fourteen women architects submitted designs for the Woman's Building. The Board of Architects selected Sophia Hayden's design.[4] The design was for a three story building done in Italian Renaissance style with Corinthian columns.[5] The Hall of Honor was in total 70 feet in height and didn't have any pillars or supports obstructing the space.[6] Alice Rideout was chosen as the official sculptor for the Woman's Building. She created the exterior sculpture groups and the pediment.[7] Enid Yandell designed and created the caryatid that supported the roof garden.[8] Candace Wheeler supervised the interior decorations.[9]

Interior decoration included murals painted by Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low (Primitive Woman) and Mary Cassatt (Modern Woman). Cassatt was asked to paint a 58 x 12 foot mural for the north tympanum over the entrance to the Gallery of Honor, showcasing the advancement of women throughout history, called Modern Woman. Four panels in the Hall of Honor were painted by Lucia Fairchild Fuller, Amanda Brewster Sewell, Rosina Emmet Sherwood and Lydia Field Emmet.[10] The work by Rosina Emmet Sherwood, titled The Republic's Welcome to Her Daughters, is a neo-classical setting with women draped in a toga bestowing women entering the hall with laurels as crowns.[11] Women in Arcadia, painted by Amanda Brewster Sewell, displays a warm summer with two women, one of which is half nude holding their hand out to a sheep and the other stands behind her plucking oranges from a tree.[11] The library ceiling mural was painted by Dora Wheeler Keith.[12] Regardless of the artists background, they all painted their murals in the 'new style' which had been developed in France.[13]

The British sculptor Ellen Mary Rope contributed a bas-relief, depicting ‘Hope, Charity, Faith and Heavenly Wisdom’, which found a later home in the dining room of the first Ladies' Residential Chambers in London, a project of cousins Rhoda and Agnes Garrett.[14]

Located in the Assembly Hall were seven stained and leaded glass windows that were visible from both the inside as well as out. The most prominent of which was centered behind the stage. Created by Elisabeth Parsons, Edith Blake Brown, and Ethel Isadore Brown, Massachusetts Mothering the Coming Woman of Liberty, Progress, and Light depicts two women both in classical garb, the one in the forefront holds a torch high above her head.[9]

Madeleine Lemaire's poster for The Art & Handicraft in the Woman's Building

The Woman's Building contained exhibits of works by women across a variety of fields from fine art, applied art, literature and music, to science, and home economics. There were also exhibits about women in American history and other cultures and places in the world.[15] Displays also included charts and graphs of women's advancement in the industrial workforce as well as philanthropic and political work.[16] The Smithsonian loaned an ethnological exhibit featuring crafts from several cultures including African, Native American, and Polynesian, titled "Woman's Work in Savagery". The Inventions Room and Science Exhibit featured more modern contributions, all of which except for one were of white woman.[16]

The library, located on the second floor and decorated with wood paneled bookshelves, leather couches, and artworks by female artists, boasted at least 8,000 books representing 24 different nations all of which were written by women.[17]

Annexed to the Woman's Building was the Children's Building, which exhibited American 19th century best practices for child-rearing and education.[18]

Yandell co-wrote a semi-autobiographical account of her involvement in planning the fair, Three Girls in a Flat (1892).[19]

The exhibits at the Woman's building inspired Danish noblewoman, Sophie Oxholm, to organize a women's exhibition in Copenhagen, eventually resulting in the 1895 Copenhagen Women's Exhibition.[20]

Buildings at world's fairs are often demolished when the event ends, and finding another home for them is rarely practical. (The exception was The Crystal Palace after the Great Exhibition of 1851.) The Woman's Building was destroyed as part of the general demolition after the Fair.[21] Sadly, after the exposition, Cassatt's mural and many other artworks by many women were placed in storage and subsequently lost.[22]

Eighty years later, the Woman's Building had been almost lost to history. With the flourishing of second-wave feminism, women went searching for what had gone before. Feminist artist Judy Chicago and her team of students, in the midst of creating The Dinner Party, discovered a copy of the Woman's Building catalog in a second-hand bookstore. When the Los Angeles Woman's Building was opened in 1973, the founders decided to name the organization after the 1893 Woman's Building.[23]

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  Mary Fairchild MacMonnies - Primitive Woman - Decoration for the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition 1893
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  The Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, 1893
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  Hide and Seek. Sculptural Group in front of the Woman's Building
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  Part of the French Exhibit at the Woman's Building
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  View from Balcony of Woman's Building, William Henry Jackson, 1893
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  Library Ceiling Mural by Dora Wheeler Keith
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  mural The Republic's Welcome to Her Daughters by Rosina Emmet Sherwood

• List of women artists exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
• White Rabbits (sculptors), a group of women who created statues for the Horticultural Building
• World's Congress of Representative Women, a week-long convention for the voicing of women's concerns, held at the Fair in May 1893
• Women's Building (disambiguation), other structures with a similar name

• Digitized version of World's Columbian Exposition, 1893: Official catalogue: pt. XIV, woman's building by World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.)
• Digitized version of Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893
• Scans of illustrations from 'Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893'
• The Women's Pavilion by Anna Burrows
• The Book of the Fair:Chapter the Eleventh: Woman's Department
• Official manual of the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Commission : the minutes of the Board from the date of its organization, November 19, 1890, to the close of its second session, September 9, 1891, including the act of Congress and information in regard to the action of the World's Columbian Commission and of the Chicago directory of the Columbian Exposition, by World's Columbian Exposition (1891)

41°47′13.6″N 87°35′8.2″W