Domesticity and Social Life
This chapter considers domesticity and social life within two “houses”: the fair’s Ohio Building and the Charnley House. It begins with an overview of American ideologies of domesticity and domestic spaces through historical and archaeological accounts. Next discussion moves to the Ohio Building, a small structure from the fair that operated as a sort of clubhouse for tourists. Many conceived of the fair’s quasi-domestic state buildings as domestic because of their non-monumental scale, their intended use as spaces for informal social life, and the cutting-edge sanitary infrastructure, such as toilets, that tourists could experience within them. The chapter turns to a detailed residential history of the Astor Street home, to reveal further interconnections and entanglements of elite social networks in Chicago. Adding to these experiences, a look at the limited documentary record of servants from the Charnley House and the Ohio Building expands upon domestic life, architecturally, materially, and socially.