Chicago's First Ferris Wheel and Film: A Reading List

Enjoy our list of carefully curated sources about Chicago's 1893 Ferris wheel and movies.

Our virtual tour Chicago's First Ferris Wheel in Film (36 min.) offers you a significant amount of information about the World's Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance, and the 264-foot-tall Ferris wheel that captivated the attention of the Fair's visitors.

To make all of this content manageable for you, we divided the tour into four sections:

1. Beginnings

2. At the Fair

3. Riding the Wheel

4. After the Fair

Watch a sneak preview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1rVB5yNUxU

If you'd like to read further about the Ferris wheel or about other World's Fair and movie connections mentioned in Chicago's First Ferris Wheel in Film (36 min.), then you'll likely enjoy the sources linked below.

Under the Ferris Wheel, LOC.gov

Further Reading

To make it easier for you to recall, the following sources for further reading are divided into the same four sections as the virtual tour. Enjoy!

Beginnings

In the first section of the virtual tour, Beginnings, you considered the 5Ws, or those questions often used to gather information about a subject.

You learned, for example, why the Ferris wheel existed, who was behind its creation, and when it was constructed. You also looked at photographs of select exhibition spaces in the 1893 World's Fair, including the three-story Art Gallery and Women's Building.

• Pleasure wheels in Bulgaria: The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667 (page 134).

• Pleasure wheels from Pietro's Pilgrimage: A Journey to India and Back at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century (page 30).

• Art Gallery at World's Fair: Art in the Gallery of the 1893 World’s Fair.

• Women's Building at World's Fair: Women Building History: Public Art at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

At the Fair

In At the Fair, you explored the Ferris wheel as it stood in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Through personal drone footage, you soared atop the Midway currently and imagined where the Ferris wheel was once positioned.

In this section of the virtual tour, you also learned more details about the Ferris wheel, including its capacity, materials, riders, and gross revenue over the course of the Fair.

• Chicago's Grand Midway: A Walk Around the World at the Columbian Exposition.

• Art, History, Midway Plaisance and World's Columbian Exposition, published 1893.

• George W.G. Ferris, Alumni Hall of Fame, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

• Competing designs of Ferris Wheel on blog On Verticality.

• "A Wheel with a View," Chicago History Museum.

Riding the Wheel

In Riding the Wheel, you took an animated ride on the Ferris wheel through the Chicago History Museum's free augmented and virtual reality experiences. Whee!

• Chicago00 Project, Chicago History Museum.

• Scientific American on the Ferris wheel, published July 1893.

• Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History.

After the Fair

In After the Fair, you discovered what befell Chicago's massive Ferris wheel after the Fair closed its doors in October 1893. You also got to see film footage and map imagery to prove the wheel's relocation and ultimate demise.

• Watch the Ferris wheel turn in 1896, Lumiere brothers.

• Finding the Ferris wheel axle in St. Louis.

• Obituary of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., New York Times, 1896.

• The 1893 World’s Fair, website.

Captive balloon and Ferris wheel, 1893. Wikimedia Commons