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Presentations for the Public Eye: Exhibits and Exhibitors at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition

Julie K. Brown

in Health and Medicine on Display: International Expositions in the United States, 1876-1904

The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held in St. Louis, Missouri, featured rich and extensive exhibits of social economy and health. Aside from exhibits found in the Education and Social Economy ... More

The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held in St. Louis, Missouri, featured rich and extensive exhibits of social economy and health. Aside from exhibits found in the Education and Social Economy building, there were important related exhibits in the New York City building, the Model Town Hall, the Liberal Arts building, and various foreign buildings. This chapter examines a select group of exhibits related to health and medicine, focusing on the official exhibition theme of “life and motion.” A notable exhibit format was the “Proposed Plan of the Municipal Art and Science Exhibit” by Albert Kelsey, a Philadelphia architect and municipal reformer. There were also exhibits on urban tenements and employer-provided workers’ housing, on hygiene and public health, and on hospital care, mental health, tuberculosis, and pathology/anatomy.Less

Making History

in Whose Fair?: Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition

This chapter begins with the voice of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, as articulated by David Francis, the president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, who is important because of his ... More

This chapter begins with the voice of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, as articulated by David Francis, the president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, who is important because of his activities after the Fair ended in December 1904. Francis became the president of the first official memory organization devoted to preserving the cultural and economic effects and artifacts of the Fair, and perhaps most important, shepherded the preservation of the archives of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company as well as his own extensive papers. In the end, publicity may be the most significant influence in determining the contemporary meaning of the Fair in its national setting. Beyond publicity, there are two special forms of literature that depicted the Fair, and they too may have had considerable influence in shaping its contemporary meaning. These include guidebooks and official publications, as well as widely sold novels about the Fair that were apparently written using guidebooks as sources. The chapter concludes by exploring the historiography of the Fair and what writers of our own day have made of the event.Less

Introduction: The Complicated and Collaborative Art of Colonial Display

Michael C. Hawkins

in Semi-Civilized: The Moro Village at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition

This introductory chapter provides a background of the Philippine Village exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Despite the supposedly comprehensive nature of the Philippine display, the ... More

This introductory chapter provides a background of the Philippine Village exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Despite the supposedly comprehensive nature of the Philippine display, the exhibit was ultimately called upon to serve two sometimes divergent scientific and pedagogical functions. On the one hand, the Philippine Village was a self-contained exhibit, set apart as an inclusive continuum of indigenous types ranging from the “head-hunting,” “dog-eating,” savage Igorots to the highly civilized Philippine Scouts and Constabulary. By viewing these communities in quick successive comparison, onlookers could draw broad lessons from the “demotic” differences in dress, materials, cultural customs, and habits. The Philippine exhibit was also meant to be an interactive display promoting a sense of otherization and cultural affirmation. This book examines a particularly soft spot in the subjective and contested colonial discourse between colonizer and colonized at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition—that of the Philippine Muslims, also known as Moros. The chapter then describes the Moro Village, which was constructed to effectively commodify and exoticize the mundane aspects of Moro life.Less

Making a Solemn Protest: Site and Services at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition

Julie K. Brown

in Health and Medicine on Display: International Expositions in the United States, 1876-1904

This chapter focuses on the establishment of medical authority and the provision of medical services, the conditions for exposition workers, and the problems of imposing hygienic sanitation during ... More

This chapter focuses on the establishment of medical authority and the provision of medical services, the conditions for exposition workers, and the problems of imposing hygienic sanitation during the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri. It also examines how infectious disease was controlled and considers how and why the exposition differed from the previous events. The chapter first looks at the publicity rhetoric of the exposition and water issues faced by the city and the visitors. It then turns to the accidents and injuries suffered by workers during the exposition construction period from 1901 to 1904.Less

Wash in the Age of Progress

Claudio Saunt

in Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family

By the turn of the 19th century, many Indians despaired of the future. Some firmly believed in the inevitability of progress, a theme highlighted at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, attended by G. ... More

By the turn of the 19th century, many Indians despaired of the future. Some firmly believed in the inevitability of progress, a theme highlighted at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, attended by G. W. Grayson. The Exposition suggested that darker-skinned peoples would survive only as servants, if at all, while whites would inherit the modern world. This widespread belief led Native Americans such as G. W. Grayson to distance themselves further from black Indians, who seemed condemned to the past.Less

Making Images

in Whose Fair?: Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition

Photographs and stereographs taken of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition provided vicarious experience for those who could not attend, just as much as newspaper and journal articles and novels and ... More

Photographs and stereographs taken of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition provided vicarious experience for those who could not attend, just as much as newspaper and journal articles and novels and guidebooks did. Published images shaped expectations and affected experience itself, refiguring what had been seen, depicting what should have been seen, or offering an ideal perspective that only the photographer could record. Photographs embellished memory by substituting tangible and reproducible pictures for fleeting mental images. This chapter looks at the photographic record of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, which is available in a variety of formats: photographic postcards, official photographs, shots taken by professional photographers, and, in particular, the scarcely used but huge stereographic record. It argues that these different formats depict very different impressions, experiences, and purposes, and seem to show several different Fairs, rather than a singular, coherent vision. The chapter focuses on the struggle of photographers to understand and depict the extensive anthropological displays of peoples and cultures.Less

Introduction

in Whose Fair?: Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition

This book, which focuses on one of the great, important events of the early twentieth century—the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904—inquires into how we come to know about and ... More

This book, which focuses on one of the great, important events of the early twentieth century—the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904—inquires into how we come to know about and understand such great public events, and what we should make of them. It offers insights into ways that experience, history, and memory might complement each other and learn from each other's proceedings and accepted methods and truths. The author chose St. Louis as the site to explore these issues, mainly because of the well-established historical narrative that has developed to explain the meaning of the Fair based upon the works of Robert Rydell then adopted and expanded by many others. This interpretation places matters of race and imperialism at the center of the intention of the Fair builders and sponsors, and it argues that this is the predominant meaning of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The book also looks at the voice of the Fair itself, as articulated by David Francis, the energetic and accomplished president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company.Less

Building Empire: Architecture and American Imperialism in the Philippines

in Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines

This chapter investigates the representation of the Orient at turn-of-the-century world's fairs, asking initially why Americans became so interested in representing the Orient through architecture at ... More

This chapter investigates the representation of the Orient at turn-of-the-century world's fairs, asking initially why Americans became so interested in representing the Orient through architecture at these expositions. It focuses on the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, where imported Filipino workers (directed by the fair's organizers) constructed a form of “native” architecture meant to frighten visitors, convincing them of the need for an American presence in the Philippines. The chapter then moves from American fantasies about Filipino architecture on American soil into the Philippines by examining architect Daniel Hudson Burnham's presence in the Pacific from late 1904 to early 1905, detailing how the colonial administration implemented an architectural program of building imperialism. Once American colonial officials, with the help of Burnham's successor, architect William Parsons, executed parts of these plans, these alterations to the Philippine landscape established that the Orient did not have to be relegated to the realm of fantasy. This distant place had become a tangible location, appropriated for imperialist interests by building government structures and business venues. The creation of US government-sponsored architecture in the Philippines epitomizes how Americans wanted to replicate their vision of American ingenuity in the colonial zone.Less

Making Identities

in Whose Fair?: Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition

Sometimes the meaning of an event is best understood by those looking in from the margins, those excluded for one reason or another, who could not attend but recognize the importance of being ... More

Sometimes the meaning of an event is best understood by those looking in from the margins, those excluded for one reason or another, who could not attend but recognize the importance of being present. This was certainly the case for the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, which planned to hold their biannual convention on the fairgrounds in July 1904. The sad story of this futile endeavor and the group's intense desire to affirm membership for middle-class African Americans in the larger American community by appearing on the fairgrounds underscores the importance of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition as a site of modern pilgrimage. Their self-imposed exile was the inevitable reaction to the reputation for discrimination of the Exposition, for its unfair treatment of African Americans in restaurants and other concessions. This chapter suggests several new ways to construe the meaning of the St. Louis Fair and world's fairs in general—ways of reflecting upon history with the new knowledge gained from considering memory and experience as vital sources of meaning.Less

Epilogue

Michael C. Hawkins

in Semi-Civilized: The Moro Village at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition

This epilogue reflects on the author's experience while serving as a supporting participant in a grant project known as the Philippine Youth Leadership Program (PYLP). In the closing days of the ... More

This epilogue reflects on the author's experience while serving as a supporting participant in a grant project known as the Philippine Youth Leadership Program (PYLP). In the closing days of the program, all Filipino participants came together to perform a “Philippine Culture Night.” A conversation between the author and an observer revealed the supposed ubiquity of American culture around the world. If “American” culture is so ubiquitous, then Americans are in no need of discovery, definition, or exhibition, by themselves or by others. This creates an uncomfortable lack of reciprocity in which the dynamics of cultural exhibition are reduced to an asymmetrical “you dance for me, but I never dance for you; I discover, observe, define, and preserve the things of this world, but I am not subjected to those processes by others.” Yet this notion betrays a certain postcolonial cultural narcissism in which the legacies of empire often loom larger in the minds of former colonizing nations than they do in the minds of nations formerly colonized. It cannot be forgotten that “live exhibits” and cultural performers are ultimately agents unto themselves, choosing and participating in representations that are independent of how observers may attempt to objectify them. This was certainly the case for the Moros at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.Less

City Beautiful

David E. Nye

in American Illuminations: Urban Lighting, 1800-1920

Expositions in St. Louis and San Francisco and the 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration were brilliantly coordinated electric landscapes. Urban planners such Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Mulford ... More

Expositions in St. Louis and San Francisco and the 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration were brilliantly coordinated electric landscapes. Urban planners such Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Mulford Robinson successfully promoted new parks, restrictions on electric advertising, and tasteful lighting along boulevards. But commercial energies retained their focal points in the downtown and amusement parks, where spectacular lighting effects had free play. The controversy over how to light American cities resulted in a compromise between the City Beautiful Movement and the individualistic forces of commerce. The resulting hybrid landscape was neither the harmonious, horizontal city of the great expositions nor the visual cacophony of Times Square but a lively compromise. It lacked an intentional unifying style, but when viewed from a skyscraper or an airplane, it was impressive and unexpectedly attractive. It expressed tensions between Beaux Arts tradition and American iconoclasm, between the horizontal city and the vertical thrust of commerce, between an exuberant popular culture and a reverence toward patriotic symbols.Less

Freddie, 1904

Edward A. Berlin

in King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era

Joplin had gone to Chicago after the failure of his opera and in late 1903 (or early 1904) went to Arkansas to visit relatives. In Little Rock he met a nineteen-year-old woman named Freddie Alexander ... More

Joplin had gone to Chicago after the failure of his opera and in late 1903 (or early 1904) went to Arkansas to visit relatives. In Little Rock he met a nineteen-year-old woman named Freddie Alexander and dedicated his rag Chrysanthemum to her. He returned to St. Louis for the St. Louis World’s Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition), and for which he wrote The Cascades, in reference to the fair’s artificial waterfalls. In June returned to Little Rock where, on June 14, he and Freddie were married in a religious ceremony in the family home. From there, they went to Sedalia, where Joplin gave concerts during the summer. Freddie fell ill early in the summer and died at age twenty of pneumonia on September 10, 1904. Joplin moved back to St. Louis after the funeral.Less