"City of Light"

[Laurence Horn]

We've been through enough fair-based and city-nickname-relevant
etymythologies that when I saw this little story I immediately began
to wonder:  Is "the City of Light" as a sobriquet for Paris really
traceable back to the Paris Fair of 1900, or should that story be
consigned to the murky dustbin of urban legend, along with the St.
Louis World's Fair that didn't really give us hamburgers, not to
mention the Dana non-source of "the Windy City" and Eve's Apples?  Or
is this one legit?

larry
==================================

The New York Times
January 6, 2003, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk
Paris Journal;
Call It the City of Darkness, and Give It Vitamin D

BYLINE:  By ELAINE SCIOLINO

DATELINE: PARIS, Jan. 5

    These are dark days in the City of Light.

    It is a cruel trick played on those who are not forewarned. Paris
is a northern city, on about the same latitude as Seattle and
Vancouver. New York, by contrast, sits on a level with Madrid and
Naples. So when winter comes, Paris's northern position combines with
humidity, above-freezing temperatures, the absence of fierce winds
and a location at the bottom of a basin to rob the city of sun and
light.
...
  As for Paris's century-old nickname as the City of Light, it has
nothing to do with the atmosphere. The seven-month-long Paris Fair of
1900 included a Palace of Electricity that displayed light
encapsulated in glass and electrical motors that became symbols of
modernity.

    Paris became one of the first urban centers to light its streets,
factories and department stores -- artificially, with electric light.