ABSTRACT
This chapter sets the stage for a discussion of architectural trends and ideas about urbanism at the turn of the century with a look at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, an event that symbolizes the mounting dominance of the United States in global politics, economics, and cultural production. In 1900, few cities in the world offered more radical alternatives to the architecture and urbanism of the Ecole des Beaux Arts than Chicago and New York City. Concrete grain bins remained more expensive than wood in many places in North America but they had advantages at large centralized facilities such as Mill City on St. Anthony's Falls in Minneapolis, once the largest mill complex in the world. The chapter ends in New York City, which had shaped itself as the capital of the new world, the whole world and where the organic architectural expression of global capitalism had overshadowed the classicist White City.
