On April 30, 1904, David R. Francis officially opened the Louisiana Purchase Exposition- also known as the 1904 World's Fair- with the call, "Open ye gates. Swing wide, ye portals." A magnificent spectacle greeted the opening day crowd of 200,000—a dazzling city stood on what had been a woodland park. Fair organizers had erected nearly 1,500 buildings including several grand palaces across 1,200 acres of a newly redesigned Forest Park. That magnificent fairground equated America’s expansion westward since the Louisiana Purchase with the nation’s cultural and economic progress. As one exuberant writer noted in the World's Fair Bulletin, the Exposition's official journal:
The heroes of Homer’s Iliad were engaged in petty achievements when compared with the work of the men who wrestled a vast wilderness from savages and wild beasts and made it the seat of twenty great commonwealths in a single century. The Idaho House
"The Idaho House was a bungalow style of residence with a slate roof. Ten interior rooms were arranged on four sides of an open entryway. The north end of the building included a reception room painted in sage brush colors. Beyond this were the ladies' parlor and dressing rooms.
"To the rear was a kitchen with a complete outfit of range and utensils. On the south end of the building were a reception room for men, a smoking room, and the office of the Commission. Construction costs for the building ran a modest $6,964.
"On display was the largest piece of silver ever taken from the ground, weighing more than a ton and containing 60% pure silver. Opals as they were found in the ravines of Idaho were cut, polished and transformed into gems in view of the visitor." - Inside the World's Fair of 1904, Vol. One, Elana Fox
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment