The White City Meets the River City

Lecture by Anne Miller

Sunday, June 14, 2 pm

1893 Chicago World’s Fair

Sculpture, Photos, & Furnishings to be Viewed at the

Howard Steamboat Museum

Anne Miller

Anne Miller grew up in Wisconsin. In 1953 she moved to Louisville to attend the University of Louisville. After graduation, she taught in public schools in New Albany, Indiana. Her husband also taught in New Albany and became a principal. Anne was Director of Religious Education at First Unitarian Church in Louisville for 25 years. She is now an active retiree volunteer at the Louisville Science Center and a board member and lecturer for Veritas Society with special interest in drama, music, film, history, and classic mysteries. She has a daughter and two grandchildren.
“Growing up in Southern Wisconsin, I loved visiting the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, but never realized it was the only surviving building from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. A centennial display first piqued my interest in the Fair, but reading Erik Larson's book The Devil in the White City hooked me into research. The more resources I found, the more I discovered the Fair's artistic grandeur and scientific accomplishment teetered above impediment, catastrophe, and coincidence. The 1893 World’s Fair story is ‘stranger than fiction, larger than life’.

Almost 30 million people came to the fair at a time when the total population of the United States was just 65 million. Imagine my delight to discover that the Howard family of Jeffersonville, Indiana, were among those who visited the White City — so-called because of the magic of electric lights.


The Howards had profitably built famous wedding-cake steamboats and had just finished the exterior of their new mansion. The Fair was the perfect place to seek ideas for interior design and discover fine furnishings for their home.”

Funded in part by a grant from the Arts Council of Southern Indiana

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