Everything about The Louisiana Purchase Exposition totally explained
The
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as
The Saint Louis World's Fair, was a
World's Fair held in the
U.S. city of
St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904. The Fair celebrated the centennial of the
Louisiana Purchase (delayed one year). It opened
April 30,
1904, and closed
December 1 the same year.
The Fair's 1,200 acre (4.9 km²) site, designed by
George Kessler, was located at the present-day grounds of
Forest Park and on the campus of
Washington University, and was the largest fair to date. There were over 1,500 buildings, connected by some 75 miles (120 km) of roads and walkways. It was said to be impossible to give even a hurried glance at everything in less than a week. The Palace of Agriculture alone covered some 20 acres (324,000 m²).
Exhibits were staged by 62 foreign nations, the
United States government, and 43 of the then-45
U.S. states. These featured industries, cities, private organizations and corporations, theater troupes, and music schools. There were also carnival-type amusements found on "The Pike."
Architects
Kessler, who designed many urban parks in Texas and the Midwest, created the master design for the Fair.
A popular myth says that
Frederick Law Olmsted, who died the year before the fair, designed the park and fair grounds. There are several reasons for this confusion. First, Kessler in his twenties had worked briefly for Olmsted as a
Central Park gardener. Second, Olmsted was involved with
Forest Park in Queens, New York. Third, Olmsted had planned the renovations to the
Missouri Botanical Garden a few blocks to the southeast of the park in 1897.
(External Link
) Finally, Olmsted's sons advised
Washington University on integrating the campus with the park across the street.
In 1901, the commissioner of architects of the St. Louis Exposition selected
Emmanuel Louis Masqueray to be Chief of Design. As Chief of Design of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a position he held for three years, Masqueray designed the following Fair buildings: Palace of Agriculture, the Cascades and Colonnades, Palace of Forestry, Fish, and Game, Palace of Horticulture and Palace of Transportation, all of which were widely emulated in civic projects across the United States as part of the
City Beautiful Movement. Masqueray resigned shortly after the Fair opened in 1904, having been invited by Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul to come to Minnesota and design a new cathedral for the city.[4]
Legacy
Buildings
As with the
World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago in 1893, all but one of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition's grand, neo-Classical exhibition palaces were temporary edifices. They were built with a material called "staff," a mixture of
plaster of Paris and hemp fibers. As in Chicago, buildings and statues deteriorated visibly during the months of the Fair.
The Palace of Fine Art, designed by architect
Cass Gilbert, featured a grand interior sculpture court based on the Roman
Baths of Caracalla. Standing at the top of Art Hill, it now serves as the home of the
St. Louis Art Museum.
The Administration Building is now
Brookings Hall, the defining landmark on the campus of
Washington University. A copy of the building was erected at
Northwest Missouri State University founded in 1905 in
Maryville, Missouri. The grounds layout was also recreated in Maryville and now is designated as the official Missouri State Arboretum.
Some of the mansions from the Exposition's era survive along Lindell Boulevard at the north border of Forest Park.
The huge bird cage at the
St. Louis Zoo dates to the fair.
Birmingham, Alabama's iconic
cast iron Vulcan statue was first exhibited at the Fair in the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy.
The Missouri State building was planned as a permanent structure, but it burned down on November 18, and since the fair was almost over it wasn't rebuilt. After the fair, the World's Fair Pavilion was built on the site of the Missouri building.
Festival Hall was the site of the largest organ in the world at the time, built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company. It was placed into storage and then eventually purchased by
John Wanamaker for his new
Wanamaker's store in
Philadelphia. See
Wanamaker Organ for more details. Completed in 1913, the Jefferson Memorial building was built near the main entrance to the Exposition, at Lindell and DeBalivere. It was built with proceeds from the fair, to commemorate
Thomas Jefferson, who initiated the Louisiana Purchase, and to store the Exposition's records and archives. It is now home to the
Missouri History Museum.
Introduction of new foods
A number of foods are claimed to have been invented at the fair. The most widely accepted claim is that the waffle-style
ice cream cone was invented and first sold during the fair. Other claims are more dubious, including the
hamburger and
hot dog (both traditional
American foods),
peanut butter,
iced tea, and
cotton candy. It is more likely, however, that these food items were first introduced to mass audiences and popularized by the fair.
Dr Pepper and Puffed Wheat cereal were first introduced to a national audience at the fair.
Iced tea had been available for a few years prior to the fair, but it was popularized at the fair.
Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis
The Fair inspired the song
Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis, which was recorded by many artists including
Billy Murray. Both the Fair and the song are focal points of the 1944 movie
Meet Me in St. Louis, starring
Judy Garland, which also inspired a
Broadway musical.
Human zoos
Following the
Spanish-American War, the
United States acquired new territories such as
Guam, the
Philippines, and
Puerto Rico, allowing them to "display" some of the native inhabitants. Some of these displays include the
Apache and the
Igorot, both of which were dubbed as "primitive". According to the Rev.
Sequoyah Ade,
To further illustrate the indignities heaped upon the Philippine people following their eventual loss to the Americans, the United States made the Philippine campaign the centrepoint of the 1904 World's Fair held that year in St. Louis, MI [sic]. In what was enthusiastically termed a "parade of evolutionary progress," visitors could inspect the "primitives" that represented the counterbalance to "Civilisation" justifying Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden". Pygmies from New Guinea and Africa, who were later displayed in the Primate section of the Bronx Zoo, were paraded next to American Indians such as Apache warrior Geronimo, who sold his autograph. But the main draw was the Philippine exhibit complete with full size replicas of Indigenous living quarters erected to exhibit the inherent backwardness of the Philippine people. The purpose was to highlight both the "civilising" influence of American rule and the economic potential of the island chains' natural resources on the heels of the Philippine-America War. It was, reportedly, the largest specific Aboriginal exhibit displayed in the exposition. As one pleased visitor commented, the human zoo exhibit displayed "the race narrative of odd peoples who mark time while the world advances, and of savages made, by American methods, into civilized workers."
One of the exhibited Pygmies was
Ota Benga, who featured a
human zoo exhibit at the
Bronx Zoo alongside an
orangutan in 1906 .
1904 Summer Olympics
The Fair hosted the
1904 Summer Olympic Games, the first Olympics held in the United States. These games had originally been awarded to Chicago, but when St. Louis threatened to hold a rival international competition, the games were relocated. Nonetheless, the sporting events, spread out over several months, were overshadowed by the Fair. With travel expenses high, many European athletes didn't come, nor did modern Olympics founder Baron
Pierre de Coubertin.
Anglo-Boer War Concession
Frank Fillis produced what was supposedly "the greatest and most realistic military spectacle known in the history of the world". Different portions of the concession featured a British Army encampment, several South African native villages (including
Zulu,
Bushmen,
Swazi, and
Ndebele), and a 15 acre arena in which soldiers paraded, sporting events and horse races were held, and major battles from the
Second Boer War were re-enacted twice a day. Battle recreations took 2-3 hours and included several Generals and 600 veteran soldiers from both sides of the war. At the conclusion of the show, the
Boer General
Christiaan De Wet would escape on horseback by leaping from a height of into a pool of water.
Admission ranged from 25 cents for bleacher seats to $1.00 for box seats, and admission to the villages was another 25 cents. The concession cost $48,000 to construct, grossed over $630,000, and netted about $113,000 to the Fair -- the highest grossing military concession of the Fair.
Notable visitors
Notable attendees included
John Phillip Sousa, whose band performed on opening day and several times during the fair;
Scott Joplin; and
Thomas Edison. President
Theodore Roosevelt opened the fair via
telegraph, but didn't attend personally until after his re-election in November 1904, as he claimed he didn't want to use the fair for political purposes.
Ragtime music was popularly featured at the Fair.
Scott Joplin wrote "The Cascades" specifically for the fair, inspired by the waterfalls at the Grand Basin.
Helen Keller, who was twenty-four and graduated from
Radcliffe College, gave a lecture in the main auditorium.
Further Information
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