Free Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead

(who had laid out New York’s Central Park), and Chicago’s own celebrated Louis Sullivan. They apparently started to argue at their very first meeting, with the eastern group advocating classicism and Chicago’s Louis Sullivan, modernism. Furthermore, it soon became clear that the plans laid down couldn’t possibly be completed in time, and the public opening of the Fair was postponed to 1893.
    There being a lot to do, Chicago’s great and good set to work. First, Mayor Carter H. Harrison had to get re-elected. He had already served a straight four terms, so the city’s residents knew what they were getting – Harrison was a hard-drinking, keen gambling man. Sure enough, when he won, albeit by a narrow margin, he announced he had ‘laid down two hundred barrels of good Chicago whiskey that could kill at the distance of a mile’ for official hospitality. In New York, Mrs Astor’s arbiter of etiquette Ward McAllister was horrified, writing in
The World
‘that it is not quantity but quality that visiting New York society will care about’. Uneasy about the menus, not to mention the wines, McAllister advised the city to ‘import a number of fine French chefs as a gentleman who has been accustomed to terrapin and pâté de foie gras would not care to dine on muttonand turnips’. His pronouncements on Chicago’s seeming inability to organize a banquet caused a furore, with the local press calling him a ‘head butler’ and a ‘New York flunky’. McAllister, not to be outdone, unleashed a further barrage of criticism: ‘It takes nearly a lifetime to educate a man how to live. These Chicagoans should not pretend to rival the East in matters of refinement – their growth has been too rapid for them to acquire both wealth and culture.’
    McAllister, who had originated the concept of Mrs Astor’s famous ‘Four Hundred’ (in reality the number of people who could comfortably fit in her ballroom), was obsessed with decorum, dancing and décor. Convinced that the rich of Chicago couldn’t dance a quadrille, he was particularly caustic about the design of the millionaires’ mansions, where the ballroom was often relegated to the third floor and, worse, accessed by an elevator: ‘In New York, the opinion is that the approach to the ballroom should be as artistically effective as the room itself. We don’t go to dance by going up in an elevator.’
    Chicago, proud of its meaty menus and its elevators, ignored most of his pontificating, but jibes about dancing touched a nerve. Help was on hand courtesy of Eugene A. Bournique’s Dance Academy where Mr Bournique, more used to teaching children their first ballet steps, was kept busy teaching the intricacies of ballroom etiquette to their parents. The city echoed to the sound of construction. New hotels were built, existing ones redecorated; new restaurants opened and, as the city’s gaming dens hastily planned an expansion of their floor space, demand for roulette wheels rocketed and a new factory had to be opened to cope with the orders.
    Mrs Potter Palmer, as the city’s leading lady, was appointed chairman of the Board of Lady Managers in charge of their own Women’s Building. Even in the face of the growing influence of the women’s movement, such a project was a radical step for America, and Mrs Palmer determined it would be noteworthy. The Lady Managers hired a female architect, Sophia Hayden, to create their pavilion, planning a series of rooms to show everything from cookery demonstrations to the latest in home technology, interior design, arts,crafts and even a model kindergarten. It was agreed that concerts in the auditorium would only feature the work of women composers and that exhibitions would display the achievements of women in the arts and sciences and in the professions. Last but not least, the pavilion would exhibit the very latest in fashion trends, together with exhibits of rare jewels and antiquities borrowed by Mrs Palmer from her wealthy,