Judy Alter | Weaving research into fiction

Researching the Columbian Exposition for The Gilded Cage, I was fascinated by the history behind George Washington Ferris’ gigantic, people-carrying wheel. I took copious notes.

In 1889, the city of Paris erected the Eiffel Tower, an iron structure that
stood 300 meters (well over 900 feet) tall and cast its magic over the city. In
1890 in Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, planning the Columbian Exposition,
knew he needed a spectacular attraction, something that would outshine the
Eiffel Tower. Engineers tried, suggesting crude toboggan schemes and all sorts
of things. Eiffel offered to build a taller tower. None of it appealed until a
young engineer sketched out a huge wheel with cars to hold people while they
leisurely enjoyed a birds’ eye view of the city on their circular trip.

At first, Burnham rejected the wheel as too fragile, and Ferris spent his own
money on safety studies. He hired engineers and recruited investors. Then he
submitted the plans to Burnham again. His plan was chosen.

The first wheel had more than 100,000 parts, including the almost 90,000-lb.
axle required to turn the wheel. Thirty-six passenger cars held 40 revolving
seats plus a small serving area which offered champagne and light refreshments.
The wheel took two revolutions in twenty minutes, making six stops for
passengers to get on and off during the first revolution and no stops during the
second so that passengers could marvel at the view. A ride cost fifty cents.

The wheel was placed, on strong and deep foundation pillars blasted out of
then-frozen land in Jackson Park, in the Midway section of the fairgrounds. The
Midway was adjacent to the luxurious grounds of the White City, as the principal
buildings were called. These magnificent buildings were surrounded by lagoons
featuring sculpture and fountains by such illustrious artists as Augustus Saint
Gaudens. Buildings were hung with paintings by American artists Mary Cassatt and
Edward Moran, Paderewski played a concert, historian Frederick Jackson Turner
spoke as did novelist Theodore Dreiser.

On the Midway, the Ferris Wheel competed with less sophisticated but equally
popular attractions such as Little Egypt, featuring belly dancers, and Wild
Bill’s Wild West, deliberately kept just outside the grounds proper. But the
wheel held its own, carrying 38,000 passengers daily at the height of the fair
and over the wheel’s lifetime some two-and-a-half million.

World's Columbian Exposition: Ferris Wheel, Chicago, United States, 1893.

The exposition closed in October 1893. George Washington Ferris immediately
found himself entangled in lawsuits. Heavily in debt, he sued the city of
Chicago for his fair share of the over $7 million the wheel brought in. The
brief remaining period of his life was spent fighting for his wheel; he died,
bankrupt, of typhoid fever in 1896.

The wheel was first dismantled and moved to an amusement park in Lincoln Park on
Chicago’s North Side. In 1904 it was dismantled again and moved to St. Louis for
the 1904 World’s Fair. Eventually a wrecking company bought and dismantled it.
Ferris and his great dream both came to a sad end.

What was I to do with this history that fascinated me so? Nothing brings fiction
to a cold stop like pages of factual material inserted into what we hope is the
ongoing drama of the story. Yet many authors can’t bear to discard any of their
research and cram it into their novels and stories.

The original Ferris wheel figures casually in several scenes in my novel of the exposition, THE GILDED CAGE. In one of my favorite scenes, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison persuades (politely bullies?) Cissy Palmer, president of the Board of Lady Managers of the fair and wife of wealthy Chicago hotelier Potter Palmer, to ride the wheel with him, though Mrs. Palmer frowns on the Midway in general and Little Egypt in particular. Cissy Palmer, it turns out, is afraid of height, but Harrison calms her and by the time their cage reaches the apex of its first revolution, she is ecstatic that she can stand and see the Palmer mansion on the city's North Shore. Harrison encourages her to remain seated.

This scene, created by my imagination, accomplishes several things: it speaks to
the increasing illicit attraction between Cissy and the mayor, it emphasizes the
enormity of the wheel and the massive work behind it, and it puts the reader,
briefly, inside a cage in the largest Ferris wheel ever known and the only
original Ferris wheel built by Ferris himself. Riders of today’s wheels, with
two seat in a cage, should find it eye-opening. But I also hope it advances the
dramatic arc of the book a bit.