This Day in American History: America's First World's Fair Opens (July 14, 1853)
- ForAmerica
- 44 minutes ago
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This Day in American History: July 14, 1853
On this day in 1853, newly inaugurated President Franklin Pierce stepped up to a podium in New York City and opened a building unlike anything most Americans had ever seen: a shimmering, six-acre palace of iron and glass, built to prove that the United States could stand shoulder to shoulder with the great powers of Europe. It was called the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, and it was America's first World's Fair.
The building alone was the spectacle. Modeled on London's Crystal Palace from the wildly successful 1851 Great Exhibition, the New York version rose in a Greek cross shape on the site of today's Bryant Park, its central dome soaring 100 feet high, its walls made of roughly 15,000 panes of glass. At the time, it was the largest building in the country. Next door stood the Latting Observatory, a 315-foot wooden tower where visitors could climb up and see clear across the harbor into New Jersey.
Inside, nearly 4,400 exhibitors from 17 nations packed the halls with locomotives, farm equipment, sculpture, and jewelry, laid out so visitors could compare American craftsmanship directly against Europe's best. Samuel F. B. Morse showed off his telegraph. Mathew Brady displayed his photographic portraits. Singer sewing machines were demonstrated live by women operators. And in 1854, engineer Elisha Otis climbed onto a platform, had the hoisting rope deliberately cut in front of a stunned crowd, and let his new safety brake catch the fall, a stunt that convinced the public elevators were finally safe and helped make skyscrapers possible.
A quick walk through the fairgrounds, set to "Hail Columbia," one of the songs played on opening day.
The fair never turned a profit. Construction delays, a leaky roof, and no federal backing left it deep in debt within its first year, prompting organizers to bring in showman P.T. Barnum, who added crowd-pleasers like opera singer Jenny Lind and a bearded lady to the mix. Even so, more than 1.1 million people walked through those doors before it closed in November 1854. The building itself burned to the ground in 1858, and the land it stood on eventually became the Bryant Park New Yorkers walk through today, but the template it set, art and machinery and spectacle all under one roof, became the blueprint for every American World's Fair that followed.
A glass palace, a safety elevator, and a bearded lady, all in the name of American ingenuity. Come back tomorrow for what else happened on July 15 throughout American history.
Also on this day
1798: Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious" criticism of the government; it expired in 1801 and stands today as a First Amendment cautionary tale.
1881: Outlaw Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
1912: Folk singer Woody Guthrie, who wrote "This Land Is Your Land," was born in Okemah, Oklahoma.
1913: Gerald R. Ford, who would become America's only unelected president, was born in Omaha, Nebraska.
1965: Mariner 4 became the first spacecraft to photograph another planet, sending back images of Mars.
1969: Easy Rider hit theaters, becoming a counterculture classic and launching Jack Nicholson to stardom.
Sources: Mystic Stamp Discovery Center and America's Best History
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