1926 Meets 1776 at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial

In 1876, the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition kicked off the craze for world’s fairs that would grip the United States into the 20th century. Each subsequent fair was bigger and more successful than the last—Chicago in 1893, St. Louis in 1904, San Francisco in 1915. So when it came time for Philadelphians to start planning a fair to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it was only natural to assume that it, too, would succeed wildly. After all, they were returning to the site of the first American fair, it was a period of economic prosperity, and the Colonial Revival was in full swing. 

Yet the 1926 fair was plagued with troubles from the start, and it had hardly begun before the general consensus emerged that the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition was a disappointment and a failure. Some observers even argued that the great age of fairs was over—there were simply too many other entertainment options available competing for attention. Why should someone travel to a fair when he or she could experience the world via radio or the movies, or just by going to a department store?

Colonial musicians parading on High Street
phillyhistory.org

But there was one part of the fair that succeeded, and in fact prevented the whole thing from being a complete financial disaster. This was High Street, made up of reproductions of 21 structures from various parts of colonial Philadelphia, brought together to create an imagined 18th-century neighborhood. Organized and operated by the Women’s Committee, High Street was intended to provide fairgoers with “a temporary escape from the complexity of modern society.” Here there were “no radios, no Charleston Dancers, no automobiles, no skyscrapers, no night clubs, no traffic semaphores.” Instead, there were town criers, hostesses in ruffled caps, and (of course) weekly pageants. In its own way, however, High Street did address the world of 1926 by suggesting ways in which Americans could come to terms with modernity by looking to the past.

The President’s House, based on the Philadelphia
residence of Washington and Adams
phillyhistory.org

High Street directly or indirectly addressed three main issues: anxiety about excessive materialism and consumerism, the changing roles of women in the wake of the passage of the 19th Amendment, and the shifting demographics of Philadelphia (and the nation as a whole). In all of these cases, looking back at the colonial period provided reassurance that these changes were not as dramatic as they seemed. 

The buildings of High Street were each run by a different organization, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the League of Women Voters, which used their building to promote their ideas and sometimes to sell products. Most of the houses were decorated with modern reproductions of colonial furnishings, provided by department stores and other businesses. The sponsoring companies then produced pamphlets that were essentially catalogs telling visitors where these items could be purchased. The overall impression created by these interiors was that “colonial people had been surrounded by the material abundance of modern society,” and that consuming material goods “was a longstanding American tradition.” Americans in 1926, then, need not feel anxious about their own consumption habits.

Pageant performer
phillyhistory.org

In a similar fashion, the organizers of High Street tried to show visitors that they should not be worried about women’s expanded public roles because women had in fact always been important parts of public life, even in the 18th century. The exhibits showed that even when women were not directly involved in politics, they still were essential to the civic, economic, and social life of the nation. At the same time, the domestic setting of the High Street exhibits assured visitors that women were not going to abandon their responsibilities at home. Modern women were simply adding electoral politics to these other activities.

The question of racial and ethnic diversity was harder to handle. The organizers of High Street were members of Philadelphia’s old-stock, white Protestant elite, and they believed they should continue to be the city’s cultural and political leaders. They thus used the fair to reassert their own (largely fictive) versions of a homogeneous past dominated by their ancestors. On High Street, for example, the only non-white people to be found were the black musicians performing “plantation songs” in the tavern.

Circular advertising the pageant
“Loyalty’s Gift”
UMass Amherst Special Collections

However, the fair’s organizers did not achieve their goal of making sure that their vision of the past was the only one represented—largely because African-American and immigrant organizations pushed back strongly against their exclusion. Irish, Polish, Italian, Swedish, and Jewish groups held exhibits, parades, and pageants in order to demonstrate the contributions they had made to American history and to show that they were also loyal Americans. 

For African-Americans, efforts to include black history at the Sesquicentennial were part of a broader movement among black leaders to find a “usable past.” Their messages were intended for both white and black audiences: to counteract portrayals of the past that excluded or denigrated African-Americans, and to strengthen racial pride. Historical exhibits, pageants, and speeches aimed to correct the notion that blacks did not have a history in America, or at least not one that was relevant to white Americans. They demonstrated that blacks had a distinct history but one that was also inseparable from wider American history. 

Historians still disagree about the reasons for the Sesquicentennial’s low attendance, though the weather certainly had something to do with it—it rained 107 out of 184 open days. And as it turned out, the era of world’s fairs was not over. The Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933-34, and the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 would both be very successful fairs. Both of these fairs took different approaches than the Sesqui, fully embracing modernity and looking to the future for inspiration. In some ways, we might see 1926 as the last of the “Victorian” fairs, but in others, such as the way High Street tried to make the past relevant to the present, it was decidedly of the 20th century.

Sources:

Lydia Mattice Brandt, ”Picturing Female Patriotism in Three Dimensions: High Street at the 1926 Sesquicentennial,” in Meet Me at the Fair: A World’s Fair Reader (2014).

Calista K. Cleary, “The Past is Present: Historical Representation at the Sesquicentennial International Exposition,” PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania (1999).

Ellen Freedman, “The Women’s Committee and Their High Street Exhibit at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition of 1926,” MS Thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1988).


SaveSaveSaveSave

At the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition with Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper

I was thinking about subjects for my next blog post when I came across this book that had been tucked away on a shelf in one of our collections storage areas. Well, I had already been planning to write more about the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, so clearly now was the time.

The book’s full title is Frank Leslie’s Historical Register of the United States Centennial Exposition, 1876. Embellished with nearly Eight Hundred Illustrations drawn expressly for this Work by the most Eminent Artists in America. Including illustrations and descriptions of all previous international exhibitions, and containing much useful information, and statistics of the foreign countries represented at the exposition. And it certainly lives up to its name.

Frank Leslie was the publisher of the popular literary and news magazine Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. In an era before the development of the halftone printing process, which allowed for inexpensive reproduction of photographs, Leslie’s (like other periodicals) relied upon engravings for illustration. The Historical Register contains an impressive array of highly detailed engravings, many covering the full 11 x 17 page or even double-page spreads, depicting the buildings, exhibits, and events of the Exposition. Those who were not among the fair’s 10 million visitors could experience it through the pictures and descriptions in this book.

The Exposition was, of course, timed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But more than that, it was intended to show just how far the United States had come in its relatively short life. Exhibits of raw materials and agricultural products demonstrated the natural bounty of the United States, while displays of machinery and manufactured goods showed the incredible progress of American science and technology. 

Eureka Grain Cleaning Machinery

E.J. Larrabee & Co., Manufacturer of Biscuits and Crackers

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, Heinz ketchup, the Remington typewriter, and Fleischmann’s yeast were among the many consumer products first exhibited to the public at the Centennial Exposition. Perhaps the most powerful symbol of the fair, and of American progress, was the great Corliss Engine, a massive two-cylinder steam engine that powered the exhibits in Machinery Hall.

President Ulysses S. Grant and the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II,
started the Corliss Engine as part of the opening ceremonies.

There were also a number of exhibits that explicitly compared the America of 1776 with the America of 1876 in order to emphasize the theme of progress. For example, an exhibit of sewing machines in Machinery Hall also contained two “life-size wax figures, representing the different styles of dress work in 1776 and 1876, showing such a marked contrast that they were much admired and excited considerable amusement.” Visitors could also see the Centennial Brewery exhibit, which included a model of a “brewery of 100 years ago, when all the labor was done by hand under a shed, the roof rudely thatched with straw.” This was contrasted with “a neat model of the modern brewery,” showing “all the machinery in use at the present day.”

But perhaps the most popular, and most often remarked-upon, exhibit of this type was the New England Kitchen. The Historical Register described it thus:

“Near the summit of the hill, on the southern side of this valley, and snugly nestled among the tall trees which are now in the freshness of renewed life, is a quaint structure of that style of architecture which characterized the backwoodsman’s cot in Vermont or Connecticut one hundred years ago. It is called the New England Log Cabin. In connection with it is a building of familiar architecture, and called the New England Modern Kitchen. Taken together, they are designed to exhibit a comparison between the manner of carrying on culinary operations and attending table a century ago, and that of doing the same things at present in the Eastern States. A combination of quaint architecture, antiquated furniture, and the epochal costumes of the attendants, gives one a pleasing view of life in New England a century ago.”

Exterior of the New England Log Cabin

Inside the cabin, the exhibit’s organizer, Emma Southwick, had arranged “ancient articles,” interesting to visitors because of their age or connection to historical figures. These included the cradle supposedly used by Peregrine White, who was born aboard the Mayflower in 1620; John Alden’s writing desk, another Mayflower passenger; a chair owned by Massachusetts Governor John Hancock; a silver teapot used by the Marquis de Lafayette; and a sword used by Captain Nathan Barrett at the battle of Concord in 1775. These pieces were joined by a number of other anonymous pieces of tableware and furniture “said to be” anywhere between 100 and 400 years old.

Exhibit of "Washington Relics" in the United States Building

As a number of historians of the colonial revival have noted, for most of the 19th century, early American objects were considered worthy of preservation and display because they were “relics” of an earlier time, and because they had direct connections to important people or events. These objects were not antiques with aesthetic value in the way we might think of them today. Exhibitors like Emma Southwick were not particularly concerned with establishing the exact provenance or age of their collections—if something looked like it came from great-grandmother’s time, that was good enough for most people.

Though the Centennial Exposition as a whole was designed to play up the theme of progress, the historical exhibits ultimately had the effect of raising interest in and appreciation for America’s colonial past. Over the next decades, Americans would become increasingly enthusiastic about collecting and preserving colonial furniture, ceramics, textiles, and decorative arts, along with houses and even entire towns. They would also come to better understand the historical context of these items as well as to appreciate them as art objects and as examples of a distinctly American cultural tradition that could compare with the best of European design.

As the frontispiece for the Historical Register illustrates, the Centennial Exposition was a way for Americans to show the rest of the world that they were products of a venerable past and that they had a boundless future to look forward to.

You can browse a digital copy of the book here: Frank Leslie's Historical Register