Existing comment:
Constructing the Fair:
The Fair was a highly orchestrated event. Designers joined ranks with civic planner and an army of more than 10,000 laborers to transform 1,240 acres of Forest Park and Clayton into a grant landscape-filled with classically inspired buildings, waterways, gardens, and avenues.
The story behind the construction of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition is one of human perseverance -- a testimony to the energy, investment, and commitment of St. Louis's citizens. The Fair was a highly orchestrated event. Designers joined ranks with civic planners and more than 10,000 laborers to transform 1,240 swampy acres in Forest Park in Clayton into a grand landscape filled with classically inspired buildings, waterways, gardens, and avenues.
While the 1904 World's Fair celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, the renovated parkland told a story of American progress since 1804. As the Fair's chief architect, Isaac Taylor, proclaimed, the designers and laborers had built "the grandest and most magnificent exposition in the way of buildings, architectural effects and landscape gardening the world had ever seen." |