1895 Atlanta, Georgia | |
---|---|
Overview | |
BIE-class | Unrecognized exposition |
Name | Cotton States and International Exposition |
Area | 11.5 acres (4.7 ha) |
Visitors | 800 000 |
Participant(s) | |
Countries | 13 |
Location | |
Country | United States |
City | Atlanta, Georgia |
Venue | Piedmont Park (now) |
Coordinates | 33°47′05″N84°22′30″W / 33.7848009°N 84.3751073°W |
Timeline | |
Opening | September 18, 1895 |
Closure | December 31, 1895 |
Specialized expositions |
The Cotton States and International Exposition was a world's fair held in Atlanta, Georgia, United States in 1895. [1] The exposition was designed "to foster trade between southern states and South American nations as well as to show the products and facilities of the region to the rest of the nation and Europe." [1]
The Cotton States and International Exposition featured exhibits from six states, including various innovations in agriculture and technology, and exhibits about women and African Americans. [1] President Grover Cleveland presided over the opening of the exposition remotely by flipping an electric switch from his house in Massachusetts on September 18, 1895. [1]
The event is best remembered for the "Atlanta Compromise" speech given by Booker T. Washington on September 18, promoting racial cooperation. [1]
The idea for an international exposition in Atlanta was first proposed in November 1893 by William Hemphill, a former mayor of Atlanta. Hemphill served as vice president and director of the exposition. [2] [3]
Bradford Lee Gilbert was the supervising architect. [4] [5] He designed the Administration Building with the Main Entrance and Exits, the Agricultural Building, the Auditorium, the Chime Tower and Band Stand, the Electricity Building, the Fire Building, the Machinery Hall, the Manufacturers & Liberal Arts Building, the Minerals and Forestry Building, the Negro Building, the Semi-Circular Entrance and Exit Gateway, the Transportation Building, and the United States Government Building. [6]
The grounds were designed by Joseph Forsyth Johnson. Over $2,000,000 was spent transforming the exhibition site. [7] A pond was expanded to 11.5 acres (4.7 ha) Lake Clara Meer for the event. [8] Tropical gardens, now known as the Atlanta Botanical Garden, were also constructed for the fair. [8]
The government allocated $250,000 for the construction of a government building. Many states and countries such as Argentina also had buildings. [9]
The Exposition was open for 100 days, beginning on September 18, 1895, and ending on December 31, 1895. [1] It attracted nearly 800,000 visitors from the United States and thirteen countries. [10] [1] However, the exposition was plagued by financial issues. [10] [1]
Walter McElreath described the fair in his memoirs:
The railroad yards were jammed every morning with trains that brought enormous crowds. The streets were crowded all day long. Every conceivable kind of fakir bartered his wares. Dime museums flourished on every street ... Vast stucco hotels stood on Fourteenth Street ... I spent a great deal of time on the streets looking at the strange crowds — American Indians, Circassians, Hindus, Japanese, and people from every corner of the globe — who had come as professional midway entertainers or fakirs. [11]
The exposition included many exhibits on Minerals and Forestry, Agriculture, Food and Accessories, Machinery and Appliances, Horticulture, Machinery, Manufacturers, Electricity, Fine Arts, Painting and Sculpture, Liberal Arts, Education, and Literature. About 6,000 exhibits were examined by the Award Committee. [12] The Awards Committee awarded a total of 1,573 medals: 634 gold medals, 444 silver medals, and 495 bronze medals. [12]
In late September Charles Francis Jenkins demonstrated an early movie projector called the "Phantoscope." Organist and composer Fannie Morris Spencer chaired the exposition’s music committee. [13] John Philip Sousa composed his famous march, "King Cotton", for the exposition and dedicated it to the people of Georgia.
December 26, 1895, was "Negro Day" at the exposition. [14] Famed African American quilter Harriet Powers attended this day and met with Irvine Garland Penn, the chief of the Negro Building. [15]
The National League of Mineral Painters, with Adelaïde Alsop Robineau and Mary Chase Perry, contributed decorative objects and artwork to the New York City exhibit. An electric railway was built for the exposition by the Dixie Intramural Railway Company, founded and presided by Col. Ira Yale Sage. [16]
Pennsylvania's first woman American architect, Elise Mercur (1864–1947) designed the Palladian style Woman's Building. [17] The Women's Building showcased accomplishments of women throughout the South, and the country, in the areas of education, health care, and the fine and decorative arts. Its exhibitions were curated by women from Georgia. The contents were contributed by women around the country. Women culled historical artifacts, decorative arts objects, and industrial products to compose displays in each room, including the Baltimore Room, the Lucy Cobb Room, Mary Ball Washington Tea Room, the Columbus Room, Model Library, Assembly Hall, and others, each assigned to a different state. The many elaborate displays reflected a diversity of views spanning the mainstream social and domestic roles of Southern women, such as patriotism and the ideals of traditional motherhood to little-known achievements of women counter to mainstream stereotypes. [18]
The Legion of Loyal Women display presented an arrangement of 45 dolls, each one adorned with a small shield showing the name of a state, to illustrate the American Patriotic salute. Other displays posed a challenge to the roles of women and other social conventions. The Colonial Room presented utensils and furnishings, as well as Dolly Madison's spectacles, a gun carried in the Battle of Concord, and brass medallions belonging to George Washington; the display was said to represent "the growing bond of cooperation between the North and South." [19]
The exposition introduced new ideas to foster trade and collaboration between the Southern and Northern states and to also show ideas, products, and facilities to the rest of the nation and to Europe. [20] The exhibitions presented prototypes for a hospital room, a nursery, a kindergarten classroom, and a model library—each one in working order. These functional rooms represented the environments where women played important roles outside the home and family, and were equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, features, and furnishings. The model library included a collection of publications by women authors from every state in the nation. [21] A photography exhibition featured portraits of women in every branch of literature, appended with a verse, letter, or section of a manuscript by the authors. [21]
On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington gave the "Atlanta Compromise" speech was an address on the topic of race relations. [1] Washington's speech laid the foundation for the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement between African American leaders and Southern white leaders in which blacks would work meekly and submit to white political rule, while whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education and due process of law. The speech was presented before a predominantly white audience and has been recognized as one of the most important, influential, and controversial speeches in American history. [22] [23]
The Cotton States Exposition successfully showcased Atlanta as a business center and attracted investment to the city. [1] After the exposition, the grounds were purchased by the City of Atlanta and became Piedmont Park and the Atlanta Botanical Garden. [8] The buildings were demolished, but the park grounds remain largely as Joseph Forsyth Johnson designed it for the exposition. However, the stone balustrades scattered around the park are the only remaining part of the enormous main building. [8]
The Jamestown Exposition, also known as the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition of 1907, was one of the many world's fairs and expositions that were popular in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, it was held from April 26 to December 1, 1907, at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads, in Norfolk, Virginia. It celebrated the first permanent English settlement in the present United States. In 1975, the 20 remaining exposition buildings were included on the National Register of Historic Places as a national historic district.
Piedmont Park is an urban park in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, located about 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of Downtown, between the Midtown and Virginia Highland neighborhoods. Originally the land was owned by Dr. Benjamin Walker, who used it as his out-of-town gentleman's farm and residence. He sold the land in 1887 to the Gentlemen's Driving Club, who wanted to establish an exclusive club and racing ground for horse enthusiasts. The Driving Club entered an agreement with the Piedmont Exposition Company, headed by prominent Atlantan Charles A. Collier, to use the land for fairs and expositions and later gave the park its name.
The Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition was an exposition held in Nashville from May 1 – October 31, 1897 in what is now Centennial Park. A year late, it celebrated the 100th anniversary of Tennessee's entry into the union in 1796. President William McKinley officially opened the event from the White House, where he pressed a button that started the machinery building at the fair; he would visit in person a month later.
Centennial Park is a large urban park located approximately two miles west of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, United States, across West End Avenue from the campus of Vanderbilt University. The 21st-century headquarters campus of the Hospital Corporation of America was developed adjacent to the park.
William Arnold Hemphill was an American businessman and politician who served as Mayor of Atlanta from 1891 to 1893.
Charles Augustus Collier was an American banker, lawyer, and politician who served as Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, from 1897 to 1899.
Evan Park Howell was an American politician and early telegraph operator, as well as an officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
International Cotton Exposition (I.C.E.) was a world's fair held in Atlanta, Georgia, from October 4 to December 31 of 1881. The location was along the Western & Atlantic Railroad tracks near the present-day King Plow Arts Center development in the West Midtown area. It planned to show the progress made since the city's destruction during the Battle of Atlanta and new developments in cotton production. It demonstrated the rebirth of Atlanta and the South by announcing an end to the Reconstruction Era and the sectional hostilities that had plagued the nation for several decades.
The Atlanta Exposition Speech was an address on the topic of race relations given by African-American scholar Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. The speech, presented before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. The speech was preceded by the reading of a dedicatory ode written by Frank Lebby Stanton.
Rufus Brown Bullock was an American politician and businessman from Georgia. A Republican, he served as the state's governor during the Reconstruction Era. He called for equal economic opportunity and political rights for blacks and whites in Georgia. He also promoted public education for both, and encouraged railroads, banks, and industrial development. During his governorship he requested federal military help to ensure the rights of freedmen; this made him "the most hated man in the state", and he had to flee the state without completing his term. After returning to Georgia and being found "not guilty" of corruption charges, for three decades afterwards he was an esteemed private citizen.
The Piedmont Exposition of 1887 was the first exposition ever held in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia.
What came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise stemmed from a speech given by Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895. It was first supported and later opposed by W. E. B. Du Bois and other African-American leaders.
The South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition, commonly called the Charleston Exposition or the West Indian Exposition, was a multi-county fair and regional trade exposition held in Charleston, South Carolina from December 1, 1901 to June 20, 1902.
Miriam Elizabeth Benjamin was an American schoolteacher and inventor. In 1888, she obtained a patent for the Gong and Signal Chair for Hotels, becoming the second African-American woman to receive a patent.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
Elise Mercur, also known as Elise Mercur Wagner, was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's first female architect. She was raised in a prominent family and educated abroad in France and Germany before completing training as an architect at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her first major commission, for the design of the Woman's Building for the Cotton States and International Exposition of Atlanta, was secured in 1894, while she was apprenticed to Thomas Boyd. It was the first time a woman had headed an architectural project in the South. After completing a six-year internship, she opened her own practice in 1896, where she focused on designing private homes and public buildings, such as churches, hospitals, schools, and buildings for organizations like the YMCA/YWCA.
Irvine Garland Penn was an American educator, journalist, and lay leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was the author of The Afro-American Press and Its Editors, published in 1891, and a coauthor with Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Ferdinand Lee Barnett of The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbia Exposition in 1893. In the late 1890s, he became an officer in the Methodist Episcopal Church and played an important role advocating for the interests of African Americans in the church until his death.
Walter McElreath was an American lawyer, legislator, bank executive, and author in Atlanta, Georgia. McElreath was a member of the Georgia House of Representatives from 1909 until 1912. He was one of the founders and the first leader of the Atlanta History Center and its McElreath Hall is named after him.
The American Negro Exposition, also known as the Black World's Fair and the Diamond Jubilee Exposition, was a world's fair held in Chicago from July until September in 1940, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States at the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865.
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