World's Fairs: a more personal perspective
It’s 100 years since one of the greatest success stories of the world’s fair movement took place in San Francisco: the Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in 1915 was originally planned to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal – a huge feat of engineering and human endeavour – but it also showcased the city’s impressive recovery from the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906.
Palace of Fine Arts. Image © Lauren Jones. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
This landmark event, the remnants of which can still be seen in San Francisco today in the form of the glorious Palace of Fine Arts (above), will be one of the case studies in our forthcoming resource on World’s Fairs (released in 2016). As many people around the world will be making their own journeys to this year’s world’s fair in Milan this summer (Milan Expo 2015), it’s great to be able to look back at the journeys and experiences of individuals who attended the PPIE 100 years ago.
The fair was a huge success, with over 18 million paying guests visiting the city within a city. An innovation of design and layout, the fair site featured beautiful courtyards, the delightfully named Joy Zone and the magnificent Tower of Jewels – an impressive 432-foot structure adorned with over 100,000 glass jewels, each backed with a mirror.
Birdseye view of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Image © Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Although we have many clearer and more impressive photographs for this exposition within the forthcoming resource, I am particularly fond of one amateur photo album, taken and compiled by a visitor to the fair. The photographs are sometimes a little blurry, often wonky, but you get a real sense of the excitement of this visitor and their accompanying party as they explore the vast grounds of the exposition.
The visitor's party all assembled at the fair. Image © Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
As well as capturing their arrival at the fair (above) and some of the more obvious attractions, such as the Tower of Jewels (below), these sorts of unofficial albums also give glimpses into less-documented but equally beautiful nooks within the fair that captured visitors’ imaginations; the image below is a great example of this, quaintly labelled by our album maker as ‘a lovely, dreamy corner’.
A slightly lopsided Tower of Jewels. Image © Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno.Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
A lovely, dreamy corner. Image © Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
The joy of rare archival treats such as these amateur photo albums is that they give you a fascinating insight into that individual’s unique experience of the fair – something that tells you so much more than you can learn from the more commonly circulated official images alone – and really brings these fantastic global historical events back to life.
World's Fairs: A Global History of Expositions will be released in Spring 2016.
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