World’s Fair Stories: Introduction
The toothpick holder shown above is an example of a ruby-stained glass souvenir available for purchase at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. The vender would brush a staining compound of molasses and copper salts onto portions of a clear pressed glass item and then fire it to set the chemical. Items could be personalized on the spot by etching through the stain. The inexpensive technique approximated the look of finer crystal. Ruby-stained souvenirs were popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The spoon shown next to the toothpick holder is another fancy-looking Fair souvenir. However, this silver-plated spoon would have been a fairly affordable fairgoer purchase. The bowl of the spoon depicts the Palace of Electricity, one of the exhibit buildings at the Fair. The building housed various machinery demonstrating the generation of electricity and its uses, including electro-therapeutics, electric lighting, and electric cooking.
The 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis was officially called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The planners intended to coordinate the expo with the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. However, delays pushed back the Fair’s opening until April 30, 1904. Commemorative items manufactured before the decision to postpone the Fair, like the cigar box shown below, bear a World’s Fair date of 1903.
The Madison County Historical Society recently received the rare souvenir “book” shown below: St. Louis Exposition in a Nutshell. The tiny synopsis of the Fair tucked into an actual walnut shell was donated by the original owner’s daughter. Clara Schulze (later Clara Sickbert) was thirteen years old when her grandfather Ernst Schulze took her to the Fair. Ernst immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1867 with his wife and young son Fredrich (Clara’s father). He quickly settled in Edwardsville, Illinois, and worked as a tailor. By the time he and Clara went to the World’s Fair, Ernst was in his late sixties.
Many print and online resources detailing World’s Fair history and souvenirs already exist. The four sections of this online exhibition take a different approach. They tell the stories of some Madison County residents who participated in or visited the Fair.
Please send your feedback and/or any questions about this exhibition, written and designed by Mary Z. Rose, Assistant Curator at the Madison County Historical Museum and Archival Library, to madisoncountyhistoryil@gmail.com.
United States census records and the Alton Evening Telegraph newspaper were consulted for this article. Additional sources:
- Brooke, Bob. “Looking Through Rose-Colored Glasses.” The Antique Almanac. Accessed September 21, 2017. http://theantiquesalmanac.com/stainedglasmuseum.htm
- Edwardsville Intelligencer, “City Officers and Council Members,” December 17, 1895 (Industrial issue).
- Official Guide to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the City of St. Louis, State of Missouri, April 30th to December 1st, 1904. Compiled by M.J. Lowenstein. St. Louis: The Official Guide Co., 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library. Also available online at the HathiTrust Digital Library at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015009154207
The Travouses: Fair Commissioner and Hostess
The states were all eager to showcase their achievements and heritage at the 1904 World's Fair. Each state formed a commission to plan and coordinate exhibits and to construct a state building on the 1904 World's Fair fairgrounds. Charles N. Travous, a prominent lawyer in Edwardsville, Illinois, was the only person from Madison County on the Illinois Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, formed in July of 1901. He served as one of the fifteen-member commission's two Vice Presidents and as the chairman of the Building and Maintenance Committee.
Illinois originally budgeted $50,000 for construction of the Illinois building (not including furnishings). The first bids came in at $150,000. Charles and his committee trimmed the building plans. After concluding that local contractors had colluded to raise construction bids, the committee decided to proceed using day labor supervised by a builder. Construction came in under budget. The final total cost of the Illinois building – "designed by Illinois architects, erected by Illinois labor, and furnished, for the most part, by Illinois firms" (Official Guide, p. 23) – was $88,582.06. An updated example of the French Renaissance style, with the fleur-de-lis motif replaced by ears of corn in the frieze and cornice relief, the two-story building featured a domed rotunda and sculptures of Lincoln and Douglas flanking the entrance.
The building also provided a haven of hospitality for Illinoisan visitors. The wives or daughters of the commissioners rotated ten-day shifts to serve as (unpaid) hostesses. Charles's wife Gillian (née Torrence) took the first shift, beginning with the building's dedication on May 27 through June 9. She had to deal with a few wrinkles at the beginning. Access to the hilltop building was compromised by extremely muddy roads until the installation of cinderblocks. When a visitor to the building fell and broke her arm, Gillian rose to the occasion and made sure the woman got prompt medical attention.
The demolition process began as soon as the Fair closed on December 1st. Apart from the Palace of Fine Arts (today known as the St. Louis Art Museum), the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company had to dismantle all of the Fair structures and restore Forest Park within a year. Even the great Observation Wheel repurposed from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (today we would call it a Ferris wheel) was demolished. Relocation saved some of the smaller state buildings, but not the Illinois building. Southern Illinois Construction Company of East St. Louis purchased the structure and its furnishings as salvage for $4,250.
Sources
Sources for this article include news articles from the Edwardsville Intelligencer and the following additional sources:
- Find A Grave. "Charles Norton Travous." Accessed September 27, 2017. findagrave.com
- Official Guide to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the City of St. Louis, State of Missouri, April 30th to December 1st, 1904. Compiled by M.J. Lowenstein. St. Louis: The Official Guide Co., 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library. Also available online at the HathiTrust Digital Library at hathitrust.org
- Rademacher, Diane. Still Shining: Discovering Lost Treasures from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. St. Louis: Virginia Publishing Co., 2003.
- Report of the Illinois Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition: St. Louis, Missouri 1904. Peoria: J.W. Franks & Sons. Edited by Henry M. Dunlap. Available at the Madison County Archival Library. Also available online at the HathiTrust Digital Library at hathitrust.org
- Weinstein, Robert A., and Larry Booth. Collection, Use, and Care of Historical Photographs. Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1978. Available at the Madison County Archival Library.
- The World's Fair: Comprising the Official Photographic Views of the Universal Exposition held in Saint Louis, 1904. Library ed. Saint Louis: N.D. Thompson Publishing Company, 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library.
Florence Goes to the Fair
Mary Florence Glass was seven years old when she went to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair where she got this adorable souvenir purse. The miniature metal and mother-of-pearl pocketbook is 2.25″ wide x 1.75″ tall with red fabric inside pockets, a kissing lock closure, and a 3″-long chain handle.
When Florence's son donated her childhood purse to the Madison County Historical Society, it contained two train tickets. The consecutively numbered East St. Louis & Suburban Railway Co. tickets are for child fares to destination "7698." They are printed with the signature of J.M Bramlette, General Superintendent. Since Bramlette held the position from 1903 to 1905, these may be the tickets purchased for Florence and her brother John (age eleven) for their trip back home to Edwardsville from the Fair.
Florence's father worked as a constable in Edwardsville. John and his wife Mary had a nineteen-year-old son in addition to their two smaller children. Two of their daughters had previously died at the ages of three and four. The narrative that follows imagines what a day at the Fair might have been like for the Glass family.
Getting to the Fair
Several communities in the Metro-East St. Louis area declared special holidays so that residents could attend the Fair. August 23rd was "Collinsville Day" at the Fair; "Alton Day" came two days later; September 16th was "Belleville Day." Perhaps the Glasses went to the Fair on "Edwardsville Day." The Glasses likely traveled to the Fair via electric streetcar, crossing the Eads Bridge. A round-trip ticket cost 80 cents for an adult, the equivalent of about $21 today. Entrance into the Fair cost 50 cents (equivalent to $13 in 2017), which didn't include meals, snacks, souvenirs, and entertainment.
If the Glasses approached the Fair from the Main entrance on Lindell Boulevard, they immediately faced the choice of whether to tour the educational "palaces" – the Palace of Varied Industries, the Palace of Electricity, and the like – or to head "down the Pike." The Pike stretched west from present-day DeBaliviere to Skinker, bounded north and south by present-day Forest Park Parkway and Lindell Boulevard. It served as the Fair's midway, crawling with vendors and games and weird and wonderful amusements.
The Pike
Exposition president David Francis crafted the Fair as a vehicle for illustrating humanity's evolution through demonstrations of industrialization and civilization. The main buildings of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition stressed comparative sociocultural education. The Pike, although basically a carnival of lowbrow entertainment, echoed the "serious" Fair's theme by including such attractions as the Tyrolean Alps, the Irish Village, Cairo, and Ancient Rome.
It is almost a certainty that the Glasses visited the Pike at some point during their excursion to the Fair, and it's a good bet that the kids enjoyed it more than anything else they did that day. Florence and John Jr. probably giggled in front of funhouse mirrors at the Temple of Mirth and gaped in awe at the elephants in Hagenbeck's Circus and the camels in "Cairo."
John Sr., the son of Irish immigrants, may have felt a surge of ethnic pride if he visited the Blarney Castle reproduction in the Pike's Irish Village. Perhaps Mary peeked at the fragile babies in their "strange nests" at the Infant Incubator – a live demonstration of the latest in newborn support – and thought of her lost daughters.
Hopefully the whole family tried ice cream cones. The curled and hardened waffle-like zalabia filled with ice cream debuted at the Fair through the ingenuity of one of several Middle Eastern concessionaires who subsequently claimed credit for this masterful stroke of brilliance.
Child care at the Fair
If John Sr. and Mary wanted to take in some of the less child-friendly Fair sights on their own, they could drop off the kids at the Model Playground. Parents got a receipt when they left their kids at the playground, which they had to present in order to claim them when they returned. Lost children accidentally separated from their families were also brought to the Model Playground.
The Observation Wheel
The main educational attractions at the Fair are so numerous it is impossible to detail them all with any justice. The reader is referred to the sources below to learn more about the sculpture and art, the exhibits of technological innovation, and the dubious anthropological demonstrations. However, two attractions stand out as likely to have captured the imaginations of our young fairgoers Florence and John. One is the giant Observation Wheel at the center of the Fair. Designed by George Washington Gale Ferris for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Ferris wheel lifted passengers 255 feet into the air. The photograph below captures the view Florence would have enjoyed from the top of the wheel.
The Farmer Boy's Contest
The Illinois "Farmer Boy's Corn Contest" exhibit in the Palace of Agriculture also may have intrigued the Glass kids. (Encompassing 24 acres, the Palace of Agriculture was by far the largest palace at the Fair, so it is unlikely that the Glasses would have skipped it.) The Farmer Boy's Corn Contest exhibit showcased 1,000 pyramids of corn, each featuring ten ears grown by a young Illinoisan. Over 8,000 contestants competed for prizes – including a first place award of $500 (equivalent to $13,200 today). The boys submitted samples of their harvest along with a narrative of their experience. Six hundred winning pyramids were each topped with a photograph of the corresponding junior farmer. No information documenting the participation of Madison County farmer boys has been found, but the presentation must have been inspiring to John Jr. nonetheless. And maybe also to Florence: the two girls who entered the competition also earned the right to display their corn and photographs.
At the end of the day, we can imagine the happy and exhausted family boarding the streetcar for Edwardsville. Perhaps Florence fell asleep on the way home, clutching her little purse and dreaming of baby elephants.
Sources
Newspapers consulted for this article include the Alton Evening Telegraph, the Daily Review out of Decatur, Illinois, and the Edwardsville Intelligencer. Additional sources:
- East St. Louis Streetcar and Interurban Map. Accessed September 27, 2017. chicagorailfan.com
- Find A Grave. "Mary Florence Glass Rizzoli." Accessed September 27, 2017. findagrave.com
- Gilbert, James. Whose Fair?: Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
- The Greatest of Expositions: Completely Illustrated. St. Louis: Official Photographic Company, 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library. Also available online at the HathiTrust Digital Library at hathitrust.org
- Inflation Calculator. Accessed September 27, 2017. in2013dollars.com
- [John Rizzoli obituary]. Edwardsville Intelligencer. September 20, 2006.
- Official Guide to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the City of St. Louis, State of Missouri, April 30th to December 1st, 1904. Compiled by M.J. Lowenstein. St. Louis: The Official Guide Co., 1904. The description of the incubators at the Infant Incubator as "strange nests" is on page 141. Available at the Madison County Archival Library. Also available online at the HathiTrust Digital Library at hathitrust.org
- Pharus. Pharus-map World's Fair St. Louis, 1904. Library of Congress. Accessed October 18, 2017. lccn.loc.gov
- Report of the Illinois Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition: St. Louis, Missouri 1904. Peoria: J.W. Franks & Sons. Edited by Henry M. Dunlap. Available at the Madison County Archival Library. Also available online at the HathiTrust Digital Library at hathitrust.org
- Vaccaro, Pamela J. Beyond the ice Cream Cone: The Whole Scoop on Food at the 1904 World's Fair. St. Louis: Enid Press, 2004.
- Weinstein, Robert A., and Larry Booth. Collection, Use, and Care of Historical Photographs. Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1978. Available at the Madison County Archival Library.
- Witherspoon, Margaret Johanson. Remembering the St. Louis World's Fair. St. Louis: Comfort Printing Co., 1973. Available at the Madison County Archival Library.
- The World's Fair: Comprising the Official Photographic Views of the Universal Exposition held in Saint Louis, 1904. Library ed. Saint Louis: N.D. Thompson Publishing Company, 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library.
Ethel Pabst's World's Fair Adventure
Ethel Pabst's experience at the 1904 World's Fair transformed her worldview. Her story also captured journalistic imaginations, generating an apocryphal ending.
A difficult childhood
Ethel was born in September 1889, the youngest of seven siblings. The family lived in Collinsville, Illinois. Ethel's mother died when Ethel was still a young girl. Most of the older siblings had started their own families, but Ethel and two of her sisters still lived with their father. When he remarried, the three sisters left home.
In 1898, Ethel and her sister Lucille lived at the Girls Industrial Home on Van Verson Avenue (now Enright Avenue) in St. Louis. By 1904, Lucille had joined their older sister Ada at the Women's Christian Association Home on Washington Avenue. Ethel, only fifteen years old although she looked at least seventeen, still lived at the Girls Industrial Home.
Teenage rebellion
One day the Home's matron gave Ethel permission to visit the World's Fair with some friends. Ethel fell in love with the Fair – and possibly also with a young man she met there. At least that's what Matron Baker thought when she found a letter to Ethel from a soldier in the Minneapolis National Guard assigned to the World's Fair. Ada pulled her lively little sister out of the Girls Industrial Home so she could keep an eye on her.
Ethel had been learning the craft of millinery (hat-making) at the Girls Industrial Home. Ada had the elite position of head trimmer (the person who artistically festoons the hat with feathers, flowers, and lace) at a prominent millinery shop. Against her sister's wishes, Ethel turned her back on her hat-making training and got a job at a soft drink concession booth at the World's Fair. She lied about her age to get a job at the telephone company. Ada finally forced Ethel to quit her other pursuits and return to millinery work.
"But a girl wants more than that."
One day, at the end of October, Ethel told the staff at the Women's Christian Association Home she was going to do laundry. She said that she had packed the dirty clothes in a suitcase to make them easier to carry to the laundry building. But in reality she had packed the suitcase to run away. After quietly searching for three weeks, Ada and Lucille finally reported their sister missing. The police began their search. Everyone suspected that Ethel had eloped with her World's Fair soldier.
The police found Ethel four days later. The fifteen-year-old blue-eyed brunette with a curvy figure had been working as a dancing girl in the "Ancient Rome" attraction on the Pike, the World's Fair's midway. Visitors to Ancient Rome were entertained by acrobats and trapeze artists as well as dancing girls. Costumed employees portrayed slaves, peasants, nobles, statesmen, gladiators, and charioteers amid scaled-down replicas of Augustine buildings and a hippodrome.
Ethel explained to the police that she never intended to run away with a soldier: she just didn't like sewing and didn't want to be a milliner. She explained:
"Do you know that I only got 75 cents a week for working in a millinery shop? Of course my board was paid and my sisters clothed me. But a girl wants more than that. The World's Fair offered me an opportunity and I took it. … I made $10 a week, which kept me very nicely."
("Says 'It's Bosh' That She Eloped," St. Louis Republic, November 25, 1904)
The newspapers reported that Ada planned to send her wayward sister to the House of the Good Shepherd, a St. Louis reformatory for wayward women.
Postscript: Ethel's life after her adventure
It isn't clear what happened next to Ethel Pabst. Journalists in Minneapolis and St. Paul reported that she escaped her sisters and showed up in St. Paul to meet up with her soldier beau. One news story claimed she had arrived and secretly married him a mere four days after being apprehended by the St. Louis police. The timing alone makes this seem unlikely. The Minnesota articles mistakenly identify her as being from New York, which casts additional doubt on the veracity of these reports. Perhaps augmenting the story of an adventurous young girl with a slender connection to a local soldier was just too tempting for the writers to pass up. A secret elopement is a happier ending than detention in a reformatory.
Ethel resurfaces in the historical record in 1913 with her marriage to Frank Wiemeyer. She was 24 years old; he was 12 years older and divorced, with a son. In 1920, Ethel and Frank lived in Buckingham Annex, about a mile east of Ethel's old stomping grounds on the Pike. The couple eventually moved out to the suburbs where they employed a live-in yard man and maid.
Sources
United States census records and the following newspapers were consulted for this article: Edwardsville Intelligencer, the Minneapolis Journal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Republic, and the Saint Paul Globe. Additional sources:
- Corbett, Katharine T. In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women's History. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1999.
- Everett, Marshall. The Book of the Fair. Philadelphia: P.W. Ziegler Co., 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library (library copy is incomplete). Also available online at the Internet Archive at archive.org
- Gamber, Wendy. The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
- The World's Fair: Comprising the Official Photographic Views of the Universal Exposition held in Saint Louis, 1904. Library ed. Saint Louis: N.D. Thompson Publishing Company, 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library.
Romance at the Fair
Twenty-nine-year-old Fred Fahnestock from Wanda, Illinois, had taught school for ten years when he decided to apply for a job at the World's Fair. He got a position with the director of customs and was assigned to the Palace of Varied Industries.
Twenty-one-year-old Birdie Mae Barker from Mendota, Virginia, was staying with her sister in Danville, Illinois, in August of 1904. The sisters decided to go to the Fair. While strolling about the plaza north of the Grand Basin, they stepped into the Palace of Varied Industries to ask a question and met Fred. He was very helpful.
The sisters returned to the Fair a few days later and stopped by the Palace of Varied Industries to chat with Fred again. Before she left, Birdie Mae promised to come back before the Fair's end and bring a photograph for Fred. The romance blossomed.
The Fair closed on December 1, 1904. Exposition president David Francis spoke at the Peace Monument, near the Palace of Varied Industries where Fred and Birdie Mae had first met, and then flipped a switch at midnight turning off the lights in all of the World's Fair buildings. The couple married three days later. The newlyweds moved to St. Louis and eventually ended up in Chicago, where they raised four children.
Sources
Sources consulted for this article include the Edwardsville Intelligencer and the Alton Evening Telegraph newspapers, United States census records, and the following additional sources:
- Find A Grave. "Fred Hamilton Fahnestock." Accessed September 28, 2017. findagrave.com
- Official Guide to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at the City of St. Louis, State of Missouri, April 30th to December 1st, 1904. Compiled by M.J. Lowenstein. St. Louis: The Official Guide Co., 1904. Available at the Madison County Archival Library. Also available online at the HathiTrust Digital Library at hathitrust.org
Info Links
Events
