Fairs and Expositions

The first world's fair was held in Hyde Park in London in 1851. The fair displayed foods, fine art and new technology from nations around the world. It was housed in the Crystal Palace, itself a technological wonder, which was constructed specifically for the event. Subsequent fairs and the nations and cities which held them sought to compete for acknowledgement and prestige. As a result, subsequent fairs were almost always increasingly larger with more elaborate architecture and exhibits. The 1889 World's Fair in Paris boasted of its Eiffel Tower, the 1893 Columbian Exposition touted its White City and giant Ferris wheel, the Louisiana Exposition could claim it occupied a greater area than any other world's fair, and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was famous for its Tower of Jewels.

Although fairs provided visitors with recreation, their principle purpose was the dispersal of ideas, technology and culture. Through their grounds, buildings and exhibits, fairs disseminated ideas about city planning, the relations of nations, the advancement of science, and beliefs about ethnic groups, races, and the sexes. One of the major themes was undoubtedly consumerism. The exhibits and elaborate displays of goods catered to and influenced middle-class tastes and consumption on an international scale.

The plan, architecture and grounds of the fairs were created as examples of ideal cities with extravagant and sometimes exotic architecture. They usually included three types of buildings: large pavilions, national and state buildings, and company exhibits. The groups who constructed the buildings competed with each other to create the most impressive displays. Nations attempted to create buildings which dwarfed their neighbors, states created monumental displays of their natural resources and industries, and merchants built elaborate exhibit booths to display goods such as mechanical equipment, furniture and other products.

The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition was the first world's fair to be held in California (San Francisco had been the site of the smaller Midwinter Fair in 1894 and the Mechanics Fair in 1913). The Panama-Pacific International Exposition (P.P.I.E.) celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, and showed off the rebirth of its host city, San Francisco, after the devastating 1906 earthquake and fires. The P.P.I.E. was the last great American Neo-Classical exposition in the nineteenth century tradition. The plan and buildings were conceived of and designed by numerous architects such as Willis Polk, Bernard Maybeck, Henry Bacon, and Louis Mullgardt. The focal point was the 450 foot high Tower of Jewels designed by Carrere and Hastings which featured 100,000 polished faceted glass jewels backed by tiny mirrors. San Francisco had competed with several other cities, including San Diego, for the honor of hosting the fair. Although San Diego eventually acquiesced to San Francisco, it had its own smaller Panama-California Exposition 1915. In 1916, many of the exhibits from the P.P.I.E. were moved to the Panama-California Exposition. Small fairs such as this were often patterned on the larger world's fairs.

San Francisco continued the world's fair tradition in 1939 with the Golden Gate International Exposition (G.G.I.E.), built on the man-made Treasure Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Unlike the earlier world's fairs which usually employed classical motifs, the G.G.I.E. buildings were an interesting mix of modernism and Aztec and Mayan motifs. The G.G.I.E. was the last world's fair in California and one of the last in the United States, as other recreation options and new communication mediums such as radio and eventually television eclipsed the fairs.

Sources:

Allwood, John. "The Great Exhibitions." London: Cassell & Collier Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1977.

Benedict, Burton. "The Anthropology of World's Fairs: San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915." Berkeley: The Lowie Museum of Anthropology, 1983.

"The Books of the Fairs: Materials about World's Fairs, 1834-1916, in the Smithsonian Libraries." Chicago: American Library Association, 1992.

Echternach, Thomas Nelson. "A World's Fair for San Francisco." Thesis. U.C. California.

"San Francisco Fair." Architectural Forum. Vol. 70 no. 6 p.463. June 1939.