The Woman’s Building

Bertha Palmer and the Board of Lady Managers: Progress and Conflict at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition

The Woman’s Building, 1893. Photo: Getty Imagesand

Wealth, power, race, class, gender, economics, politics — the conflicts of the world came with the work of bringing the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition alive and the contemporary echoes are deafening.

And at the Woman’s Building, remarkable in that it existed at all, progress and conflict were equal p…