Fan Dancing and Fan Belts: Selling Optimism at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair

Abstract

In 1833, Chicago was a tiny backwoods settlement on the western frontier. It ranked as the world’s fourth largest city a century later. To celebrate the city’s remarkable rise, civic leaders and businessmen decided to host the city’s second world’s fair. The theme of this 1933–34 international exposition was “A Century of Progress.” Amazingly, in the midst of the Great Depression, this celebration championed corporate capitalism—the very culprit that many Americans blamed for their economic woes. The fair celebrated the advances of science and its application to consumer goods. Unlike earlier world’s fairs, this international venue de-emphasized the ...