GRAND COURT, OMAHA EXHIBITION, 1898.(Night view.)
GRAND COURT, OMAHA EXHIBITION, 1898.(Night view.)
GRAND COURT, OMAHA EXHIBITION, 1898.
(Night view.)
West Side Park, a former race-course in the suburbs of Nashville, with many natural attractions in running water and forest growths, was selected as the site, and Centennial City was made for the brief time of the exposition a full-fledged municipality, with a mayor, board of aldermen, and a combined police and fire department. The reproduction of notable buildings showed on a reduced scale the Parthenon, the Pyramid of Cheops, theAlamo of Texas, the Blue Grotto of Capri, a glimpse of the Rialto of Venice, and, in the beautiful main entrance, a type of early Egyptian architecture. A flagstaff 250 feet high, cotton and tobacco fields, Venetian gondolas, Vanity Fair, a typical Chinese farm, an abundance of statues of classical and mythological subjects, waterfall and old-time wheel at work, Lake Katherine, Ellen Island, the umbrella fountain, and a large field for athletic sports, were among the pleasurable features. The State made a strong showing of its industrial development and of its riches yet in reserve.
In all 190 acres of ground were occupied. The total receipts were $1,087,227, and the expenditures balanced to a cent. A unique expense feature was that, excluding the preliminary work, the women raised the money and paid the entire running cost of the Woman’s Department. The turnstiles registered 1,886,714 entrances.
This exposition was succeeded in 1898 by the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition at Omaha, an undertaking designed to show what had been accomplished by the pioneers and their children in the great Trans-Mississippi Valley, and especially in a State that forty-three years before was an unorganized territory in the vast tract known as the Louisiana Purchase. The site was a plateau just north of the city, and in planning the display every consideration was given to originality. Excepting that the grounds constituted a second White City, from the use of “staff,” as at Chicago, every feature of design and construction possessed striking elements of difference from all similar efforts in the past.
The management was under the presidency of Gurdon W. Wattles, and the exposition was formally opened by President McKinley, who, in the White House at Washington, pressed an electric button that started the great engine. The United States Government erected a building of the classic style, following the Ionic order. It was surmounted by a colossal dome supporting a copy of Bartholdi’s statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and had a floor space for exhibits of about 50,000 square feet. The Government also recognized the importance of the event by issuing a special set of commemorative postage stamps. Fine arts was exhibited in a twin-domed building, a structure in two parts, with an elaborate peristyle between them, and all under one great roof.
What afforded the masses the greatest delight were the ethnological exhibits and the instructive and amusing scenes on the Midway Reserve. These included an Indian village, with representatives from every tribe between Alaska and Florida, a Chinese village, an Arabian encampment, a Moorish town, a Swiss village, a Cairo street, the entertaining Egyptian Pyramid, and the gigantic passenger-carrying Sherman Umbrella—a mechanical marvel operated by electricity, and one hundred feet higher than the Ferris Wheel of Chicago. There was also a picturesque lagoon or canal, half a mile long and 150 feet wide at its narrowest part, terminating in an artificial lake trefoil in shape and 400 feet across.
The exposition was opened on June 1 and was closed on October 31. In that time it was visited by more than 2,600,000 people, the largest single-day attendance being 98,785. The total receipts were not quite $2,000,000, and the expenditures were about $1,500,000.
MAIN BUILDING, NATIONAL EXPORT EXPOSITION, PHILADELPHIA, SEPT. 14 TO NOV. 30, 1899.
MAIN BUILDING, NATIONAL EXPORT EXPOSITION, PHILADELPHIA, SEPT. 14 TO NOV. 30, 1899.
This completes the record of the most notable expositions and the incidentalhistory of their development, from the commercial fair of the previous century up to near the close of 1899.
There remains to note a form of permanent exhibition that has been purposely reserved for this point. The Commercial Museum, of which Philadelphia has the two most effective examples in existence, is a purely commercial development, yet an educational text-book of unique and extraordinary compass. Though the Philadelphia Commercial Museum and the similar department of the Philadelphia Bourse were both projected before the foreign trade of the United States had reached the enormous volume that caused wonder and alarm alike all over the world, both have had a powerful, direct, and immediate influence in bringing about a greater appreciation abroad of American products.
The commercial museums stand between the American producer and the foreign factor. They inform the former where special articles are needed and the latter of reputable firms who can supply their needs. By a large corps of traveling agents, an enormous correspondence, and a direct coöperation with the State Department and its representatives, these museums keep in the closest possible touch with the commercial interests of the world. All this is independent of the exhibition feature, a vast department in which the principal economic productions, first of the United States and then correspondingly of the world, are spread before the eye of the visitor. In this connection should also be noted the fact that many of our commercial representatives abroad have established at their headquarters collections of American products that are particularly needed in their respective localities.
In all of the foregoing a single text has been kept in mind: What has been the influence of the fair, the exhibition, the international exposition? Ready answers have been suggested by the several items of cost and attendance. Another answer may be divined in their frequency and universality. And at the close of this survey of more than a hundred years, probably the best answer of all is to be found in the efforts in this line with which one century is closed and another opened.
These include the Greater American Exposition at Omaha, July-November, 1899, a commercial success, and a revelation of trans-Mississippi pioneering enterprise. This was supplemented by the Export Exposition and World’s Commercial Congress, the first of the kind ever held under the joint auspices of the Commercial Museum and the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, in that city, in September-November, 1899. Then followed the Universal Exposition in Paris, in 1900. It was regarded as especially elaborate and successful. It beautified the Champ de Mars and Place des Invalides with handsome industrial palaces, brought into permanent existence the two Palaces of Fine Arts and the Alexander III. Bridge, lined the banks of the Seine with the “Street of Nations,” and swarmed the Trocadero with the world’s colonization. Over 50,000,000 witnessed its panoramic scenes. Its expense was largely provided for by prior sales of tickets on a bonded plan. The century turned with a prospective of the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo and International at Glasgow in 1901; the Ohio Centennial and International at Toledo in 1902; the International at Liege, Belgium, in 1903; and the Louisiana Purchase Centennial at St. Louis in 1904.