Understanding the Centennial Exhibition

Because my previous blogs were about the catalogue’s introduction and objects/inventions/buildings at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, I wanted to spend this week learning more about the Fair’s history. Therefore, I decided to read pages 167-187 (“The History of the Centennial Exhibition”) in McCabe’s catalogue. These pages are a great starting point for understanding the Fair.

McCabe discusses why Philadelphia was chosen for the Fair, and, as someone born in Philadelphia (although I moved to New York at 6 months old) and now going to school here, I found this portion particularly interesting. Philadelphia was chosen for two reasons. First, it was “entitled to the honor, inasmuch as it had been the scene of the signing of the Declaration of Independence” (169). And second, the location was central to all parts of the Union and Europe and was thus easily accessible. The second reason is how I feel today about the proximity of Philadelphia to major cities—I can easily hop on Amtrak to go north back home to New York or south to visit my friends in D.C. (Although, obviously, transportation in the late 1800s was a bit more difficult!)

Something that struck and helped me understand the Fair was learning about the process by which the Fair was approved in the United States. In 1870, a bill was presented to the lower House of Congress proposing this exhibition. The bill was amended several times before being approved on March 3^rd, 1871. The federal government was clear in stating that it wouldn’t be liable for any of the expenses related to the Fair. McCabe discusses the bill in detail for three pages, and an excerpt of the Act of Congress is shown below:

After President Grant approved the bill, it became a law. It never even occurred to me that an event like a Fair would need a law for it to take place. Unlike the United States’ World’s Fair that was organized by private parties, in other countries, governments organized their World’s Fairs. I would be curious to learn more about the process by which World’s Fairs were approved in those countries, and see how similar or different those processes were from that of the United States. The idea of needing a law for the Fair also made me think about whether we need a law in modern times for something similar, such as holding the Olympics in the United States. I did a little research and it seems that unlike the need for a law in 1876 to hold a Fair, we don’t need a federal law to hold the Olympics.

However, in today’s times, the federal government does provide significant funding for Olympic Games held in the United States, (http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/GGD-00-183). This is a very different scenario from the 1876 Act of Congress approving the Fair, in which the federal government specifically said it would not be responsible for any expenses related to the Fair.