"The Worlds' Columbian Exposition: Portfolio of Views" — 1893

Updated on June 4, 2026: This has been sold.

Full title: The World's Columbian Exposition Portfolio of Views. Issued by the Department of Photography, C.D. Arnold, Chief. Published in St. Louis, Missouri by C.B. Woodward Company in 1893.

Souvenir album of photographic views from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, published the same year as the fair.

The volume places strong emphasis on the architecture and layout of the famed “White City,” much of it designed under the direction of architect Daniel Burnham, with landscape planning by Frederick Law Olmsted. The photographs capture the grandeur of the fairgrounds before the enormous crowds arrived, offering unusually clear views of the buildings, lagoons, courts, and exhibition halls.

The images, credited to photographers C.D. Arnold and H.D. Higginbotham, include:

• the Administration Building
• the Court of Honor
• the Grand Basin
• the Lagoon and Colonnade
• the Electricity Building
• the Agricultural Building
• the Manufactures Building
• the Wooded Island
• various state and exhibition buildings

Each leaf contains a full-page black-and-white photographic reproduction with captions identifying the structures and scenes depicted.

Bound in the publisher’s original decorated red cloth stamped in black, gold, and white/pink, secured with its original red cord binding.

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