 Great Central Fair Buildings, Philadelphia an 1864 portrait of the fair by James Fuller Queen | |
| Date | June 7, 1864 |
|---|---|
| Location | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Type | Fundraising event |
The Great Central Fair was a Sanitary Fair that happened in June 1864. It took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a fundraiser for the United States Sanitary Commission.
The Great Central Fair took place from June 7 until June 28 of 1864 [1] in the Logan Circle park in Philadelphia. [2] It was inspired by past sanitary fairs that happened throughout the United States to raise funds for the United States Sanitary Commission. [3]
The main exhibit building was 200,000 square feet in size. It was designed by Samuel Honeyman Kneass and William Strickland. [3] There was also Union Street, which was 540 feet long and ran in the middle of the fair. [1] Union Street was compared to a cathedral by Charles J. Stille. Inside the main building were "departments" with different themes. Themes included the neighboring states of New Jersey and Delaware, themes about corn and sewing, a restaurant and parlor, as well as weaponry, fine art, curiosities, transportation and children's subjects. [3]
On June 16, Abraham Lincoln and his family visited the fair. He donated 48 copies of the Emancipation Proclamation at $10 a book. They were all autographed by Lincoln. The festival raised over $1 million. [1]
The Centennial International Exhibition, officially the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876. It was the first official world's fair to be held in the United States and coincided with the centennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence's adoption in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.
Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were debated and adopted by the Founding Fathers of the United States. The structure, which is the centerpiece of Independence National Historical Park, was designated a World Heritage Site in 1979.
Fort Myer is the previous name used for a U.S. Army post next to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, and across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Founded during the American Civil War as Fort Cass and Fort Whipple, the post merged in 2005 with the neighboring Marine Corps installation, Henderson Hall, and is today named Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall.
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Lincoln University (LU) is a public state-related historically black university (HBCU) near Oxford, Pennsylvania. Founded as the private Ashmun Institute in 1854, it has been a public institution since 1972 and is the second HBCU in the state, after Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. Lincoln is also recognized as the first college-degree granting HBCU in the country. Its main campus is located on 422 acres (170.8 ha) near the town of Oxford in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. The university has a second location in the University City area of Philadelphia. Lincoln University provides undergraduate and graduate coursework to approximately 2,000 students. It is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
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Logan Circle, also known as Logan Square, is an open-space park in Center City Philadelphia's northwest quadrant and one of the five original planned squares laid out on the city grid. The centerpiece of the park is the Logan Circle, a circular area centered on a large water feature, bounded by a traffic circle carrying 19th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway with connections to 18th and 20th streets to the east and west and Race and Vine Streets to the south and north.
The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was a private relief agency created by federal legislation on June 18, 1861, to support sick and wounded soldiers of the United States Army during the American Civil War. It operated across the North, raised an estimated $25 million in Civil War era revenue and in-kind contributions to support the cause, and enlisted thousands of volunteers. The president was Henry Whitney Bellows, and Frederick Law Olmsted acted as executive secretary. It was modeled on the British Sanitary Commission, set up during the Crimean War (1853–1856), and from the British parliamentary report published after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
The Cuyahoga County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument is a major Civil War monument in Cleveland, Ohio, honoring the more than 9,000 individuals from Cuyahoga County who served the Union throughout the war. It was dedicated on July 4, 1894, and is located on the southeast quadrant of Public Square in Downtown Cleveland. It was designed by architect and Civil War veteran Levi Scofield, who also created the monument's sculptures. The monument is regularly open to the public, free of charge.
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The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent national memorial was dedicated in 1922.
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William Gibbons Preston was an American architect who practiced during the last third of the nineteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth. Educated at Harvard University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he was active in Boston, New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, New Brunswick and Savannah, Georgia, where he was brought by George Johnson Baldwin to design the Chatham County courthouse. Preston stayed in Savannah for several years during which time designed the original Desoto Hotel, the Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory and 20 other distinguished public buildings and private homes. He began his professional career working for his father, the builder and architect Jonathan Preston (1801–1888), upon his return to the United States from the École in 1861, and was the sole practitioner in the office from the time his father retired c. 1875 until he took John Kahlmeyer as a partner in about 1885.
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Sarah Middleton Robbins Broadhead was a teacher, diarist, and resident of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the Battle of Gettysburg. She was the author of The Diary of a Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania from June 15 to July 15, 1863, which is a primary historical source for what happened during the battle and especially how it impacted the residents of the borough. It has been called the most comprehensive written document on the role of women in the Civil War. Ken Burns quoted entries from the diary in his 1990 documentary series, The Civil War.
Valley of the Yosemite is a painting by the German American painter Albert Bierstadt that was completed in 1864. Initially associated with the Hudson River School, Bierstadt rose to prominence for his paintings of the Rocky Mountains, which established him as one of the best painters of the western American landscape. His later paintings of Yosemite were also received with critical acclaim and public praise.
The Metropolitan Fair was a public event organized in the Metropolitan City of New York by the United States Sanitary Commission to raise funds and supplies for the Union Army during the American Civil War . The first Metropolitan Fair was announced by The New York Times on January 1, 1864, to be held on March 28 of that year. However, the event was postponed until April 4, and it resulted in the largest Sanitary Fair ever which raised over a million dollars for the Union cause.
Sanitary fairs were fund-raising events held in various cities on behalf of the United States Sanitary Commission to raise funds and supplies for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Established in 1863, the last major event was held in 1865 in Chicago. From the outset of the USSC, many local groups sponsored fundraising events to benefit the Commission. As the civil war progressed, these became larger and more elaborate. Organizing these Sanitary Fairs offered ways for local communities to participate directly in supporting the war effort of the nation.
Northwestern Sanitary Fair was a fund-raising event of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC), held in Chicago, Illinois. It opened on May 30 and closed on June 21, 1865. It was the second time such a Sanitary Fair was held in the city, the first time being in 1863. Although the civil war had come to a sudden close, there was still great need of funds to care for the disabled of the Union Army.