Various
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 102, June, 1876
THE CENTURY—ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL
VI. THE DISPLAY—INTRODUCTORY
FAÇADE OF THE SPANISH DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
All things being ready for their reception, how were exhibits, exhibitors and visitors to be brought to the grounds? To do this with the extreme of rapidity and cheapness was essential to a full and satisfactory attendance of both objects and persons. In a large majority of cases the first consideration with the possessor of any article deemed worthy of submission to the public eye was the cost and security of transportation. Objects of art, the most valuable and the most attractive portion of the display, are not usually very well adapted to carriage over great distances with frequent transshipments. Porcelain, glass and statuary are fragile, and paintings liable to injury from dampness and rough handling; while an antique mosaic, like the "Carthaginian Lion," a hundred square feet in superficies, might, after resuscitation from its subterranean sleep of twenty centuries with its minutest tessera intact and every tint as fresh as the Phoenician artist left it, suffer irreparable damage from a moment's carelessness on the voyage to its temporary home in the New World. More solid things of a very different character, and far less valuable pecuniarily, though it may be quite as interesting to the promoter of human progress, exact more or less time and attention to collect and prepare, and that will not be bestowed upon them without some guarantee of their being safely and inexpensively transmitted. So to simplify transportation as practically to place the exposition buildings as nearly as possible at the door of each exhibitor, student and sight-seer became, therefore, a controlling problem.
In the solution of it there is no exaggeration in saying that the Centennial stands more than a quarter of a century in advance of even the latest of its fellow expositions. At Vienna a river with a few small steamers below and a tow-path above represented water-carriage. Good railways came in from every quarter of the compass, but none of them brought the locomotive to the neighborhood of the grounds. In the matter of tram-roads for passengers the Viennese distinguished themselves over the Londoners and Parisians by the possession of one. In steam-roads they had no advantage and no inferiority. At each and all of these cities the packing-box and the passenger were both confronted by the vexatious interval between the station and the exposition building—often the most trying part of the trip. Horsepower was the one time-honored resource, in '73 as in '51, and in unnumbered years before. Under the ancient divisions of horse and foot the world and its impedimenta moved upon Hyde Park, the Champ de Mars and the Prater, the umbrella and the oil-cloth tilt their only shield against Jupiter Pluvius, who seemed to take especial pleasure in demonstrating their failure, nineteen centuries after the contemptuous erasure of him from the calendar, to escape his power. It was reserved for the Philadelphia Commission to bring his reign (not the slightest intention of a pun) to a close. The most delicate silk or gem, and the most delicate wearer of the same, were enabled to pass under roof from San Francisco into the Main Building in Fairmount Park, and with a trifling break of twenty steps at the wharf might do so from the dock at Bremen, Havre or Liverpool. The hospitable shelter of the great pavilion was thus extended over the continent and either ocean. The drip of its eaves pattered into China, the Cape of Good Hope, Germany and Australia. Their spread became almost that of the welkin.
Let us look somewhat more into the detail of this unique feature of the American fair.
Within the limits of the United States the transportation question soon solved itself. Five-sixths of the seventy-four thousand miles of railway which lead, without interruption of track, to Fairmount Park are of either one and the same gauge, or so near it as to permit the use everywhere of the same car, its wheels a little broader than common. From the other sixth the bodies of the wagons, with their contents, are transferable by a change of trucks. The expected sixty or eighty thousand tons of building material and articles for display could thus be brought to their destination in a far shorter period than that actually allowed. Liberal arrangements were conceded by the various lines in regard to charges. Toll was exacted in one direction only, unsold articles to be returned to the shipper free. As the time for closing to exhibitors and opening to visitors approached the Centennial cars became more and more familiar to the rural watcher of the passing train. They aided to infect him, if free from it before, with the Centennial craze. Their doors, though sealed, were eloquent, for they bore in great black letters on staring white muslin the shibboleth of the day, "1776—International Exhibition—1876." The enthusiasm of those very hard and unimpressible entities, the railroad companies, thus manifesting itself in low rates and gratuitous advertising, could not fail to be contagious. Nor was the service done by the interior lines wholly domestic. Several large foreign contributions from the Pacific traversed the continent. The houses and the handicraft of the Mongol climbed the Sierra Nevada on the magnificent highway his patient labor had so large a share in constructing. Nineteen cars were freighted with the rough and unpromising chrysalis that developed into the neat and elaborate cottage of Japan, and others brought the Chinese display. Polynesia and Australia adopted the same route in part. The canal modestly assisted the rail, lines of inland navigation conducting to the grounds barges of three times the tonnage of the average sea-going craft of the Revolutionary era. These sluggish and smooth-going vehicles were employed for the carriage of some of the large plants and trees which enrich the horticultural department, eight boats being required to transport from New York a thousand specimens of the Cuban flora sent by a single exhibitor, M. Lachaume of Havana. Those moisture-loving shrubs, the brilliant rhododendra collected by English nurserymen from our own Alleghanies and returned to us wonderfully improved by civilization, might have been expected also to affect the canal, but they chose, with British taste, the more rapid rail. They had, in fact, no time to lose, for their blooming season was close at hand, and their roots must needs hasten to test the juices of American soil. Japan's miniature garden of miniature plants, interesting far beyond the proportions of its dimensions, was perforce dependent on the same means of conveyance.
FAÇADE OF THE EGYPTIAN DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
The locomotive was summoned to the aid of foreign exhibitors on the Atlantic as on the Pacific side, though to a less striking extent, the largest steamships being able to lie within three miles of the exposition buildings. It stood ready on the wharves of the Delaware to welcome these stately guests from afar, indifferent whether they came in squadrons or alone. It received on one day, in this vestibule of the exposition, the Labrador from France and the Donati from Brazil. Dom Pedro's coffee, sugar and tobacco and the marbles and canvases of the Société des Beaux-Arts were whisked off in amicable companionship to their final destination. The solidarity of the nations is in some sort promoted by this shaking down together of their goods and chattels. It gives a truly international look to the exposition to see one of Vernet's battle-pieces or Meissonier's microscopic gems of color jostled by a package of hides from the Parana or a bale of India-rubber.
Yet more expressive was the medley upon the covered platforms for the reception of freight. Eleven of these, each one hundred and sixty by twenty-four feet, admitted of the unloading of fifty-five freight-cars at once. At this rate there was not left the least room for anxiety as to the ability of the Commission and its employés to dispose, so far as their responsibility was concerned, of everything presented for exhibition within a very few days. The movements of the custom-house officials, and the arrangements of goods after the passing of that ordeal, were less rapid, and there seemed some ground for anxiety when it was found that in the last days of March scarce a tenth of the catalogued exhibits were on the ground, and for the closing ten days of the period fixed for the receipt of goods an average of one car-load per minute of the working hours was the calculated draft on the resources of the unloading sheds. Home exhibitors, by reason of the very completeness of their facilities of transport, were the most dilatory. The United States held back until her guests were served, confident in the abundant efficiency of the preparations made for bringing the entertainers to their side. Better thus than that foreigners should have been behind time.
When the gates of the enclosure were at last shut upon the steam-horse, a broader and more congenial field of duty opened before him. From the rôle of dray-horse he passed to that of courser. Marvels from the ends of the earth he had, with many a pant and heave, forward pull and backward push, brought together and dumped in their allotted places. Now it became his task to bear the fiery cross over hill and dale and gather the clans, men, women and children. The London exhibition of 1851 had 6,170,000 visitors, and that of 1862 had 6,211,103. Paris in 1855 had 4,533,464, and in 1867, 10,200,000. Vienna's exhibition drew 7,254,867. The attendance at London on either occasion was barely double the number of her population. So it was with Paris at her first display, though she did much better subsequently. Vienna's was the greatest success of all, according to this test. The least of all, if we may take it into the list, was that of New York in 1853. Her people numbered about the same with the visitors to her Crystal Palace—600,000. Philadelphia's calculations went far beyond any of these figures, and she laid her plans accordingly.
Some trainbands from Northern and Southern cities might give their patriotic furor the bizarre form of a march across country, but the millions, if they came at all, must come by rail, and the problem was to multiply the facilities far beyond any previous experience, while reconciling the maximum of safety, comfort and speed with a reduction of fares. The arrangements are still to be tested, and are no doubt open to modification. On one point, however, and this an essential one, we apprehend no grounds of complaint. There will be no crowding. The train is practically endless, the word terminus being a misnomer for the circular system of tracks to which the station (six hundred and fifty by one hundred feet) at the main entrance of the grounds forms a tangent. The line of tourists is reeled off like their thread in the hands of Clotho, the iron shears that snip it at stated intervals being represented by the unmythical steam-engine. The same modern minister of the Fates has another shrine not far from the dome of Memorial Hall, where his acolytes are the officials of the Reading Railroad Company.
Care for the visitor's comfortable locomotion does not end with depositing him under the reception-verandah. The Commission did not forget that a pedestrian excursion over fifteen or twenty miles of aisles might sufficiently fatigue him without the additional trudge from hall to hall over a surface of four hundred acres under a sun which the century has certainly not deprived of any mentionable portion of its heat. Hence, the belt railway, three and a half miles long, with trains running by incessant schedule—a boon only to be justly appreciated by those who attended the European expositions or any one of them. His umbrella and goloshes pocketed in the form of a D.P.C. check, the visitor, more fortunate than Brummel or Bonaparte, cannot be stopped by the elements.
FAÇADE OF THE SWEDISH DIVISION, MAIN BUILDING.
We shall have amply disposed of the subject of transportation when we add that the neighborhood or city supply to the thirteen entrance-gates is provided for by steam-roads capable of carrying twenty-four thousand persons hourly, and tram-roads seating seven thousand, besides an irregular militia or voltigeur force of light wagons, small steamers and omnibuses equal to a demand of two or three thousand more in the same time. It was not deemed likely that Philadelphia would require conveyance for half of her population every day. Should that supposition prove erroneous, the excess can fall back upon the safe and inexpensive vehicle of 1776, 1851, 1867 and 1873—sole leather.
Let us return to our packing-cases, and see where they go. To watch the gradual dispersal of a congregation to their several places of abode is always interesting. Especially is it so when those places of retreat bear the names and fly the flags of the several nations of the globe. This stout cube of deal, triple-bound with iron, disappears under the asp and winged sphere of the Pharaohs. That other, big with rich velvets and broideries, seeks the tricolor of France. Yonder, a wealth of silks and lacquer finds a resting-place in the carved black-walnut étagères of Japan. Here go, cased in the spoils of the fjelds, toward a pavilion seventy-five paces long and twenty wide, the bulky contributions of the Norsemen. Swedish carpentry in perfection offers to a deposit separate from that of the sister-kingdom a distinct receptacle. Close at hand stand the antipodes in the pavilion of Chili, that opens its graceful portal to bales sprinkled mayhap with the ashes of Aconcagua. There "crashes a sturdy box of stout John Bull;" and Russia, Tunis and Canada roll into close neighborhood with him and each other. A queer and not, let us hope, altogether transitory show of international comity is this. Many a high-sounding, much-heralded and more-debating Peace Congress has been held with less effect than that conducted by these humble porters, carpenters and decorators. This one has solidity. Its elements are palpable. The peoples not only bring their choicest possessions, but they also set up around them their local habitations. It is a cosmopolitan town that has sprung into being beneath the great roof and glitters in the rays of our republican sun. In its rectangularly-planned streets, alleys and plazas every style of architecture is represented—domestic, state and ecclesiastical, ancient, mediæval and modern. The spirit and taste of most of the races and climes find expression, giving thus the Sydenham and the Hyde Park palaces in one. The reproductions at the former place were the work of English hands: those before us are executed, for the most part, by workmen to whom the originals are native and familiar. In this feature of the interior of the Main Building we are amply compensated for the breaking up of the coup d'oeil by a multiplicity of discordant forms. The space is still so vast as to maintain the effect of unity; and this notwithstanding the considerable height of some of the national stalls, that of Spain, for example, sending aloft its trophy of Moorish shields and its effigy of the world-seeking Genoese to an elevation of forty-six feet. The Moorish colonnade of the Brazilian pavilion lifts its head in graceful rivalry of the lofty front reared by the other branch of the Iberian race. In so vast an expanse this friendly competition of Spaniards and Portuguese becomes, to the eye, a union of their pretensions; and a single family of thirty-three millions in Europe and America combines to present us with two of the handsomest structures in the hall.