Spanning over 1,200 acres and drawing roughly 20 million visitors over its run, the fair celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase with elaborate palaces, international pavilions, and a controversial 'Human Zoo' anthropology exhibit displaying indigenous peoples, including Filipinos and Apache leader Geronimo. It also hosted the third modern Olympic Games, marred by low international participation.
The fairgrounds, designed by architect Emmanuel Louis Masqueray and landscape planner George Kessler, dazzled visitors with electric lighting and monumental plaster-and-hemp 'palaces' meant to look like marble. At night, the Cascade Gardens glowed with thousands of lightbulbs, a spectacle many rural American visitors had never seen.
The fair is remembered fondly today for its food innovations, whether or not the myths are entirely accurate: vendors popularized the ice cream cone after a waffle-maker reportedly ran out of dishes, and iced tea got a boost amid a brutal heat wave. Peanut butter and the hot dog also gained popularity there.
Less celebrated was the fair's Department of Anthropology, run by W J McGee, which displayed Filipino Igorot villagers and other indigenous people in supposedly 'authentic' settings for gawking crowds—a grim example of scientific racism dressed as education. Geronimo, the Apache leader, was also put on display, selling autographed photos and bows to tourists, a captive celebrity a generation removed from the wars he'd fought against the U.S. Army.
Key people: David R. Francis