This weekend concludes the 2016 Chicago Auto Show, the country’s biggest and longest-running car show. Sponsored by Motor Age magazine, Chicago’s first official auto show opened on March 23, 1901 at the Chicago Coliseum. Exhibiting just 100 cars, the second annual show charged visitors $0.50—an amount, when adjusted for inflation, slightly higher than the price of the ticket to the 2016 Chicago Auto Show.
A total of 332 exhibits were crammed into the Coliseum and the First Regiment Armory, both of which were festooned with bronze-colored papier-mâché and stucco ornamentation. Unlike contemporary auto shows, which market the relative greenness of their new fuel-efficient or electric cars through video presentations, the 1909 show brought in hundreds of plants to decorate exhibits—the Coliseum was even scented with incense to give visitors “a breath of pine country.”
[Photos] The car was ‘king’ at the 1909 Chicago Auto Show#
