It was a near-moonless night in November when I arrived at Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park for a meeting. This was my first visit to the place, although I had passed through the area many times on my way to elsewhere.
I had seen the two-column stone monument that served as entrance to its street but never realized that it was a pathway to a building I had given a nod to in my blog posts. In the glow of outdoor lights, Memorial Hall presented itself well, a huge gray structure that seemed endless in breadth.
Entering the building, I was astounded. It was cavernous, with ceilings so high they seemed to reach to the sky and colors so bright they shone like the sun. I didn’t expect to be so blown away by what I saw.
I was an adult looking through kid eyes. I’m sure the little ones who come to frolic among the SEPTA transit bus, the Woodside Park Dentzel carousel and the Alice in Wonderland Garden at the Please Touch Museum see it as a wonderland for play.
For me, it was a place of history – even though back in the day it wasn’t as welcoming to my ancestors as it was to me on this night.
Memorial Hall is the sole survivor of more than 200 buildings that stood on this spot in Philadelphia during the 1876 Centennial Exposition celebrating the 100th birthday of the founding of the United States. More than 10 million people attended the centennial, the first world’s fair in this country, which ran from May 10 to Nov. 10, 1876. It featured more than 30,000 exhibitions from 37 countries and two dozen states, according to text accompanying the display at the children’s museum.
The centennial committee’s own buildings were the Main Exhibition Building, Machinery Hall, Agricultural Hall, Horticultural Hall and Memorial Hall (also known as the Art Gallery).
Visitors were introduced to such innovations as Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. Hires peddled its root beer; Campbell, its soup; Whitman’s, its candy; Anheuser-Busch, its beer, and Singer, its sewing machines. People rode on the country’s first monorail to get around the vast acreage, and saw the arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty on the grounds.
They ate at restaurants and cafes on the site, as well as the same – at cheaper rates – in places set up outside. Visitors paid 50 cents, and entered the park through the main plaza to the Main Building. Just behind it was Memorial Hall, which became one of the more popular structures because it showed nudes in paintings and sculptures from Europe.
One of the main attractions was the Corliss steam engine in Machinery Hall – which “motored all of the new industrial machinery” in the building, said Elisabeth Berry Drago, director of research and content development at the museum. Poet Walt Whitman was said to have been so taken with the engine that he sat watching it for 30 minutes.
To attract more western visitors, the railroads dropped their prices by 30 percent, according to the display at the museum. A train ride from Chicago cost $14, from St. Louis, $18, and from San Francisco, $130. That still seemed like a lot for most people at that time.
Fair organizers, though, did not open their arms to African Americans. There were no exhibits touting their contributions, because society didn’t believe that they or their African ancestors had ever contributed anything meaningful. Blacks were minimally hired to work in menial jobs as waiters, janitors and messengers.
Frederick Douglass and some others were supportive of the centennial. They saw it as a chance to change the way that whites perceived blacks. It didn’t.
Douglass was invited to sit on the stage with President Ulysses S. Grant and other dignitaries on opening day when an estimated 190,000 people attended. Douglass was stopped at the gate by police, even though he had a ticket. Police could not fathom that a black man would be sitting next to the president of the United States.
“Someone had to come out and basically say, please let him in, we invited him,” said Drago (a U.S. congressman came to the rescue). “We often tell that story because it’s still a contemporary story – getting stopped at the gate, getting questioned, getting over-policed. He did make it to the stage, thankfully.”
Douglass was not allowed to address the crowd, however.
African Americans were represented in at least three instances at the fair. Artist Edward M. Bannister won a bronze medal for his painting “Under the Oaks.” When the judges found out that he was black, they wanted to take it back but relented after white artists protested. The painting appears to have been lost.
Artist Edmonia Lewis’ “The Death of Cleopatra” was the only work by an African American in Memorial Hall. The statue by Lewis, who was living in Italy, was well-received.
Italian sculptor Francesco Pezzicar’s “Abolition of Slavery” or “The Freed Slave” showed a man holding up the Emancipation Proclamation while breaking free of his chains. An illustration by Fernando Miranda appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, which showed equally well-dressed white and black visitors enraptured by the sculpture. Meanwhile, Harper’s Weekly offered a demeaning illustration of a black family attending the fair.
A group of blacks – including Benjamin Tucker Tanner, father of artist Henry Ossawa Tanner – wanted a statue of AME founder Bishop Richard Allen erected on the centennial site, but they were rebuffed. So, the bust was placed outside the park and is now in the museum of Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia.
Members of the United States Colored Troops were said to have participated in parades on opening day and July 4.
Women fared a little better, but they were primarily on their own. A group of women – including Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, the great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin – raised money to build the Women’s Pavilion. It included artwork, inventions, photographs, furniture, needlework and more pertaining to females. Black women, however, were not readily welcomed by this group.
Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists crashed the centennial’s July 4 celebration at Independence Hall to present a “Declaration of the Rights of Women” – seconds after the Declaration of Independence was read. The male organizers had denied the women’s request to read the document at the ceremony; they ended up reading it, instead, to a group of people in front of Independence Hall.
Over the years, Memorial Hall served as the city’s first museum, an office building and a police station. At one point, it housed a gym and swimming pool. The Please Touch Museum began renovations in 2005 and moved into the building in 2008. A mezzanine was added to house offices.
The museum painted the interior as close as it could to the original colors, Drago said, discovering them under layers of paint; turned the swimming pool area into an Alice in Wonderland Garden, and splashed color and characters all over the walls. Walking through the museum is like being inside a box of Crayola crayon.
When I returned to Memorial Hall during the day recently, the first thing I heard was the sound of tiny voices. A little boy on unwieldy legs tottered across the expanse of gray floors to a room that held the SEPTA bus. A group of school children sat on a floor near an elephant created by Leo Sewell – who also designed the oversized Statue of Liberty torch in the main room – and sang heartily.
Downstairs, the building’s history sought to co-exist with its current mission. A reconstruction of the interior of the original train depot was flanked by a small town of shops where children could experiment: a shoe store, a bakery and a grocery store with child-size products that children could bring to a register helmed by pint-sized cashiers.
“What kids want is to do what we’re doing,” said Drago, referring to children’s desire to mimic adults. The museum has reduced the size of the structures in the make-believe stores. “It’s accessible to them. The counters are all their heights.”
These rooms were bustling with children, but the room that held an original model of the centennial site was empty on this day. I didn’t mind, because it fascinated me.
The model was gigantic – 20 feet by 30 feet – enclosed in a wood and glass case in the center of the room. Around the perimeter of the room were other elements aimed at explaining the breadth and nature of the centennial: souvenirs, photos, a classroom, miniature railroad cars.
The model permanently preserved the architectural structures and layout of the centennial grounds. Round in shape, it was given to the city in 1889 and eventually moved to the basement of City Hall. When it was moved from that location in the early 20th century, it was changed to its current rectangular shape.
Drago says an upgrade of the centennial model in 2020 will focus on the people who arrived here. “We’ve developed a digital interactive (program) called ‘Explore the Model’ that will allow people to step into the buildings and meet the people who actually populated them,” she said.
“They’ll meet and speak with Frederick Douglass. They’ll meet and speak with Susan B. Anthony. They’ll meet and speak with President Grant, but also everyday inventors who brought their ideas to the fair.
“There’s Emma Allison who was a female engineer. … Her entire experience of running the engines in the Women’s Pavilion was people saying, ‘but you’re a woman!’ And she’s standing there doing the work and going, ‘yes, I’m aware I’m a woman.'”
This new upgrade gives the museum the opportunity to tell the full story of who was accepted at not only the centennial but in society.
“It’s offering all kids the opportunity to picture themselves at the centennial, but also to remind them that historically they were not welcomed at the centennial or they were the only ones welcomed at the centennial,” Drago said, “and getting them to think about that.”
