The 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition put Chicago on the map with innovation and invention

The 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition was hosted by Chicago just a couple decades after the entire city burned down, and it put the city back on the world map.

The World's Fair, as it's also known, introduced millions of people to inventions, architecture and ideas that still influence our lives today.

It was held just 22 years after the Great Chicago Fire devastated the city, but Chicago was determined to dominate the world stage.

"People acknowledged that the city was on the rise," said Paul Durica, director of curation and exhibition at the Chicago History Museum.

With that goal — and a lot of political influence and fundraising by Chicago businessmen — the city won the vote to host the World's Columbian Exhibition in 1893, which honored the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas.

It took more than two years to build the six-month-long event that drew over 27 million visitors to the city.

"The World's Fair also put Chicago on the world map," Durica said "Forty-six different nations participated in the Columbia Exhibition. All of them sent people that could be individual halls, that made up the Court of Honor."

There were 14 individual structures, grand buildings that became known as the Court of Honor or "White City." One of them may be recognizable to you today.

"If you're familiar with the Museum of Science and Industry, that was one of the smaller of the 14 main structure," Durica explained. "Almost all were what we call neoclassical in their design; that means they were evoking ancient Greece and Rome."

Inside the 14 buildings were booths, concessions and innovations from all over the world, amazing fairgoers. Among the majestic, temple-like structures were about 200 other buildings on more than 600 acres in Jackson Park.

"It had electricity, so it was the first large civic event to be fully electrified. So it really was this kind of city, within the larger city of Chicago, that had a lot of other amenities too — its own police force, its own fire department, its own daily newspaper," Durica said. "It's one of the first times in which you see all these different products being made available."

Among those products were Juicy Fruit gum, Vienna beef sausage and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

The fairgrounds went from Jackson Park to Midway Plaisance, where Chicago's answer to the Eiffel Tower took center stage: the Ferris wheel.

The original Ferris wheel was taller than Navy Pier's Centennial Wheel is today.

"It was giving you views that were, basically, never existed before," said Durica.

The World's Fair was never meant to be a permanent event. It would be dismantled, and even the awe-inspiring Ferris wheel had an unusual end.

"They decided to dynamite it," Durica said.

Small parts of the wheel were salvaged, and a few traces of the fair remain today. The stone lantern adorned with deer in Osaka Garden on the grounds of the Museum of Science and Industry is from the exhibition, and just southeast of there one of the stone structures from the World's Fair is now a Chicago Park District restroom.

The fair's conferences were held at the Art Institute, and on the current site of La Rabida Hospital was a recreation of the La Rabida convent in Spain, where Columbus plotted his voyages.

And Jackson Park still has a statue that's a replica of one of the largest on display at the fair.

"It was the statue of the Republic, which stood in the basin that opened out into Lake Michigan," Durica said.

Then there are the artifacts, housed in the Chicago History Museum's special collection — not on public view, and under lock and key.

There they have an original copy of Simon Pokagon's "Red Man's Rebuke," sold at the World's Fair, which revealed the plight of Native Americans. Each copy was written on birch bark leaves in honor of Potawatomi tradition.

There's also a board game that showcase the buildings at the World's Fair.

Durica said the event that shaped the world leaves behind much more than a board game and a marvel of engineering.

"I think through design and technological innovation, and through dialogue with a whole range of global communities, that you could shape a good future. That's the lasting legacy of the fair," he said.

More than a century later, the Chicago World's Fair remains one of the most remarkable chapters in this city's history and a powerful reminder of what can happen when a city dares to dream big.