ODN Item of the Week: Josephinum Viewbook

Final report, Catholic Educational Exhibit : World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Courtesy of livinghistoryofillinois.com

We’ve written about the World’s Columbian Exposition (aka the World’s Fair or Chicago World’s Fair and Chicago Columbian Exposition) before, so you know it was full of a dizzying array of exhibits and demonstrations. One of those was the Catholic Educational Exhibit, where representatives from dozens of seminaries, nunneries, schools, and dioceses across the country represented work they have done, and shared educational programming and materials.

One of these exhibits was made possible by the work of students from Pontifical College Josephinum, who carved an altar for the display. At 28 feet high and made of oak and red and white mahogany, this Gothic style altar ended up winning an award at the Fair, and you can see why!

Staff at the Josephinum were prescient enough to document the students and staff who helped to make this display possible, and because of their work, and the work of today’s librarians, we can see this Viewbook online. Another neat thing about the Viewbook is that each photo is captioned in English, German, and Latin!

Josephinum Viewbook. Courtesy of Pontifical College Josephinum

You can see this Viewbook and more of Pontifical College Josephinum’s collection right now at DPLA, and thanks to the work of the Digital Research Library of Illinois History and the University Libraries of the Catholic University of America, you can read all about the Education Exhibit, and see photographs from it, as well.