Categories
Events and People

Delayed Centennial Gift

One unusual attraction at the Centennial was a disembodied copper arm bearing a torch. Forty two feet high, it was a portion of a sculpture by French artist Frederic Bartholdi entitled “Liberty Enlightening the World.” Visitors could pay 50 cents to climb a ladder to the top of the torch. The kiosk at its base offered brochures and subscription information. When complete, the literature boasted, the statue would be just over 150 feet tall from foot to torch. The people of France had already offered to pay to complete the rest of the statue. All Americans had to do was to pay for the construction of a base, hopefully built on an island in New York harbor.



Bartholdi dreamed of giving America a 100th birthday present since 1865. The project’s chief promoter, jurist and poet Edouard de Laboulaye, felt that the abolition of slavery following the Civil War proved that America indeed could live up to its original promise of liberty and justice for all. He was also disappointed that earlier French experiments in democracy had failed; his nation was now under the rule of Emperor Napoleon III.i

Bartholdi and de Laboulaye were part of a long tradition of French intellectuals, most notably Alexis de Tocqueville, who were fascinated by American democracy. France, after all, had been the crucial European supporter of American independence during the Revolutionary War. Lafayette, a young French nobleman, fought alongside General George Washington and became a surrogate son. Philadelphia’s own Benjamin Franklin, the lead negotiator of the alliance, was the toast of French society, who lionized him as the ideal American–much to John Adams’ chagrin.

Bartholdi’s workers fashioned a Greco-Roman style likeness of Liberty out of hammered copper plates. Each plate was shaped by hand and was only 3/32 of an inch thick.ii There were two obstacles to Bartholdi’s vision, however. The first was that the copper statue could not support itself; the artist needed a skilled engineer to design an internal iron “skeleton” that allowed the statue to withstand the force of the wind. He finally found one in Auguste Gustave Eiffel, who went on to fame as designer of a 1,000 foot high tower that still graces the Paris skyline.

The second problem was the construction of the statue’s base, which the French hoped the recipients would pay for. The arm was sent to the Centennial as a part of a public relations campaign. The public could purchase subscriptions ranging from a dime to $100 to help pay for the pedestal. But the public response at the Centennial was unenthusiastic. The country had been in the grips of a massive economic depression since 1873. To many Americans, a big copper woman seemed like a frivolous gift in this time of need. Moreover, it seemed incongruous compared to such exhibits celebrating American technical prowess: the Remington typewriter, Bell’s telephone, and Corliss’s engine. And no American city seemed eager to offer her a home, including Philadelphia. After the fair was over, the arm was packed up and displayed in New York’s Madison Square. However, the response from New Yorkers was also lukewarm; the arm was shipped back to France.

It took another ten years before the American people fulfilled their end of the bargain. Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant and the editor of the New York World, had led a newspaper campaign to raise funds for the pedestal.iii Not only that, but poet Emma Lazarus wrote a poem in 1883 called “The New Colossus” to tell the American people what the statue really stood for:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The statue arrived in crates in 1885, and was formally dedicated on October 28, 1886 – just over ten years after the arm first appeared at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.


Postscript: In 1918, a year after America entered World War I, Lady Liberty made a brief return to the city of her American debut. A miniature of the statue (complete with pedestal) was exhibited in front of City Hall as the centerpiece of a patriotic display promoting the war effort.

References:

[i] “Statue of Liberty National Monument: History and Culture,” National Park Service, the Department of the Interior. http://www.nps.gov/stli/historyculture/index.htm Accessed May 22, 2010.

[ii] “Statue of Liberty, National Park Service, Department of the Interior. http://www.nps.gov/archive/stli/prod02.htm Accessed May 25, 2010.

[iii] Seymour Topping, Pulitzer biography, Joseph Putlizer, 1847-1911. http://www.pulitzer.org/biography Accessed May 24, 2010.

Categories
Historic Sites

The Corliss Engine

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On May 10, 1876, the crowd held its breath as President Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil started the massive Corliss engine, which stood at the center of Machinery Hall. Nearly 190,000 visitors had flooded the fairgrounds on opening day, and a choir of 1,000 sang the “Centennial Hymn,” composed for the occasion by John Greenleaf Whittier.

With a hiss of steam and the clank of pistons, the Corliss engine shook to life, as did the fair it powered. The great engine, according to historian Esther M. Klein, “symbolized the nation’s growth.” i  Journalists like William Dean Howells saw it in poetic terms. “It rises loftily in the centre of the huge structure,” he wrote, “an athlete of steel and iron with not a superfluous ounce of metal on it; the mighty walking beams plunge their pistons downward, the enormous flywheel revolves with a hoarded power that makes all tremble, the hundred life like details do their office with unerring intelligence.” Howells also felt that technology was America’s answer to the art and culture of Europe. “Yes, it is still in these things of iron and steel that the national genius most freely speaks,” he concluded, “by and by the inspired marbles, the breathing canvases, the great literature; for the present America is voluble in the strong metals and their infinite uses.” ii

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The unveiling of the Corliss engine in 1876 was the equivalent to the release of the iPad in 2010. The Corliss engine was not just a demonstration piece: through a system of shafts and underground tunnels, it directly powered 800 machines throughout the Centennial Exposition. One of the marvels on display would revolutionize the world: a new invention by Alexander Graham Bell. Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil put his ear to its speaker and heard Bell reading Hamlet’s Soliloquy. “My God, it talks!” the emperor spluttered. iii

The steam engine was hardly new technology: it had been in practical use since the early 1700s, when it was first used in British coal mines.  John Fitch operated America’s first commercial steamboat between Philadelphia and Camden, but he did not attract enough backing to continue his business. Starting in 1802, two Watt steam engines powered the first Philadelphia Waterworks at Centre Square. Five years after that, Robert Fulton built the first commercially viable steamboat, which plied the Hudson River between New York and Albany. Much progress had been made in the decades leading up to the 1876 Centennial. The Corliss engine in Machinery Hall was of a type used to power large, fast coastal and river steamers. It’s variable valve timing, an idea patented by inventor George Henry Corliss in 1849, made this engine 30% more efficient than earlier steam engines. The Centennial engine towered 45 feet in the air and boasted a flywheel 30 feet in diameter. Its two cylinders, each nearly four feet in diameter, contained two rotating steam and two rotating exhaust valves. The pistons turned a crankshaft at 36 revolutions per minute, and the engine itself was rated at 1,400 horsepower. iv

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On a ship, the beam that connected the pistons to the flywheel stuck up above the superstructure, and the flywheel then spun a pair of paddlewheels. Because of the beam’s rocking motion, passengers called these “walking beam” engines. Outside of steamship use, Corliss engines freed America’s burgeoning industry from dependence on waterpower. Corliss engines powered textile looms, rolling mills, saw mills, and pumping stations. They were also remarkably durable machines, often lasting decades before wearing out.

Nearly three decades after the Centennial, steam power spawned and was eventually supplanted by a new force: electricity. Historian Henry Adams spent hours gazing at another massive Corliss engine at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. This time, the Corliss engine did not directly power the fair’s machinery. It powered an electrical dynamo, which in turn powered thousands of incandescent bulbs and electrical appliances.

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Unlike the steam engine, with its visible mechanical components, electricity was invisible to the naked eye. To Adams, it appeared the dynamo was replacing the Virgin Mary as the “greatest force the Western world ever felt,” and the prospect was frightening. “The dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of sight,” he continued, “but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity.” v

As for the Centennial Corliss engine, it remained in service long after the exposition closed. George Pullman, president of the Chicago-based railroad car manufacturer, purchased the engine to power one of his factories. The old engine was not scrapped until 1910, after thirty four years of service. By then, the old fashioned Corliss engine, with its clunky pistons and cumbersome “walking beam,” was completely obsolete. It had been supplanted by Charles Parsons’ compact, much more efficient steam turbine, which are still used in power plants and ships to this day.

References:

[i] Esther M. Klein, Fairmount Park: A History and Guidebook, World’s Largest Municipal Park (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Harcum Junior College Press, 1974), p.29.

[ii] About the Corliss Engine, Dr. George F. Corliss, MU EEC http://www.eng.mu.edu/corlissg/gc_engine.html Accessed May 16, 2010.

[iii] “More About Bell,” The Telephone, The American Experience, PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/telephone/peopleevents/mabell.html Accessed May 16, 2010.

[iv] About the Corliss Engine, Dr. George F. Corliss, MU EEC http://www.eng.mu.edu/corlissg/gc_engine.html Accessed May 16, 2010.

[v] Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1918. http://www.bartleby.com/159/25.html

Categories
Events and People

Japan-a-mania at the Centennial


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America had been trading with Asia since the early years of the Republic. In fact, some of the nation’s first great fortunes were made in the China Trade; the merchant princes of Boston and Salem would ship American goods and Indian opium to China in exchange for tea, silk, and porcelain.

Yet Japan, that mysterious island nation, remained aloof from the Western world. Aside from the Dutch, who maintained a trading post in Nagasaki, westerners were forbidden to set foot on Inflatable Bungee Run Japanese soil. The Japanese aristocracy was afraid that European culture, specifically Christianity, would “contaminate” their way of life and threaten their autonomy.

By the mid-nineteenth century, America (now a two-coast power) was looking for more trading partners in the Pacific. President Millard Fillmore decided to use a bit of gunboat diplomacy to shake Japan out of its slumber. In 1853, Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States Navy led a fleet of steam-powered warships to Edo harbor (modern day Tokyo). Perry presented the ruling shogun with a proposition: open up to American trade or Edo would be bombarded into oblivion.

The shogun gave in. Samurai swords were no match to American cannons.

In 1868, a group of nobles overthrew the conservative shogunate and “restored” power to the 16 year old Emperor Meiji. This group’s goal was to drag Japan into the modern age. National survival was at stake. If Japan remained stuck in the past, they argued, a Western power could easily conquer and exploit it. Britain and France, for instance, were carving up a prostrate and technologically backwards China into “spheres of influence.” Japan would not be next.


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Progress was swift. By 1876, Japan had set up a European-style parliament and was building up a modern army and navy. Railroads were connecting ancient Japanese cities. The Meiji regime decided that a grand display at Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition would be the perfect vehicle to show the world how far Japan had come.

Yet it was traditional Japan, not the newly-industrialized one, which captivated the millions of visitors to the Japanese pavilion, bazaar, and gardens. The American public was starved for novelty, especially in architecture and the decorative arts, which were smothered in the rich gravy of Victorian taste.


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Amidst all this overstuffed and ornate excess, the Centennial’s Japanese exhibit was a breath of fresh air. The Atlantic Monthly said the clean lines and simple elegance of Japanese design made everything else look “commonplace and vulgar.” For the Japanese, “the commonest object of pottery of cotton-stuff for daily use has a merit of design and color which it does not owe to oddity alone.” i Even respected architect Richard Morris Hunt, a devoted Francophile, was stunned by the attention to detail and quality of craftsmanship he saw. The Japanese garden and bazaar, he wrote, provided “capital and most improving studies to the careless and slipshod joiners of the Western world.” ii

Following the Centennial Exposition, America went Japan-crazy. Upper class Bostonians, with their Trascendentalist philosophical leanings and love of nature, were particularly smitten. Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow lived in Japan from 1882 to 1889, collected 40,000 pieces of Japanese art which he donated to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and even converted to Buddhism. The eccentric heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner — known as “Mrs. Jack” — also fell under the Buddhist spell for a while. Her conversion was one of many things she did to flout Proper Bostonian conventions.iii Art critic Okakura Kakuzo, a mutual friend of both Bigelow and Gardner, designed the display of Japanese art at Mrs. Jack’s mansion. Kakuzo also arranged a performance of the ancient tea ceremony at her 1903 housewarming party.iv This house would eventually become the famed Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.


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The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition further stoked American fascination with Japan. One person who prowled the Japanese pavilion was a young architect named Frank Lloyd Wright.v Wright, an avid collector and dealer of Japanese prints on the side, was integrating Japanese design elements into his “Prairie style” houses. When designing suburban and country houses, Wright made a point of building his structures “into” rather than “on top of” the natural landscape, a very Japanese design philosophy.

Across the Atlantic, Japanese prints sold by dealers such as Wright had a profound influence on the painters Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. In 1887, Van Gogh did a self-portrait in the Japanese style, showing himself as he wished to be: “a simple monk…worshipping the eternal Buddha.” vi


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In Philadelphia, the Japanese presence in Fairmount Park did not vanish with the closing of the exposition. After the Centennial, the Park Commission imported a Buddhist temple gate and placed it on the site of the Japanese bazaar. After this structure burned in 1955, the Fairmount Park Commission secured the “Shofuso,” an interpretation by architect Junzo Yoshimura of a seventeenth century aristocrat’s country house. This handcrafted structure, with its cypress frame and hinoki bark roof, had been presented by the America-Japan Society to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It also boasted sliding doors decorated by renowned artist Kaii Higashiyama.vii

In 1958, the Shofuso was carefully shipped to Philadelphia and reconstructed in the new tea garden. It still stands to this day, maintained by a dedicated group of volunteers. During the year, the Shofuso hosts events showcasing Japanese culture to Philadelphians. These include tea ceremonies, bonsai workshops, craft and martial arts classes, and the Sakura Sunday – Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival.

After 134 years, few visual reminders of the great Centennial Exposition remain. But miraculously, the patch of ground where the Shofuso stands continues to host the Centennial’s longest running exhibition.

References:

[i] The Atlantic Monthly, as quoted by Dorothy Gondos Beer, “The Centennial City, 1865-1876,” from Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (New York, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1982), p.470.

[ii] Richard Morris Hunt, as quoted by Dorothy Gondos Beer, “The Centennial City, 1865-1876,” from Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (New York, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1982), p.470.

[iii] Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians (New York, New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1947), p. 130.

[iv] Overview, Isabella Stewart Garnder Museum http://www.gardnermuseum.org/collection/overview.asp Accessed May 6, 2010.

[v] Melanie Birk, editor. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fifty Views of Japan: the 1905 Photo Album (San Francisco, California: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996), p.105.

[vi] Martin Gayford, The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles (New York, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006), p.7.

[vii] History, Shofuso: Japanese House and Garden http://www.shofuso.com/?page_id=11 Accessed May 5, 2010.

Categories
Neighborhoods

After the Fair: The Development of Parkside


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After the 1876 Centennial Exposition closed, all but two of the fair’s buildings, as well as the surrounding temporary hotels on Elm Avenue, were torn down. Even the Main Exhibition Building – its 21.5 acres of floor space made it the largest building in the world — wasn’t spared from the wreckers.i Only Memorial Hall, a massive granite edifice capped by a glass-and-cast-iron dome, remained as a visible reminder of the exposition that attracted over 10 million visitors and showcased industrial Philadelphia to the world.

 

As part of Fairmount Park, the now-cleared fairground was protected in perpetuity as green space. The area around it remained largely undeveloped. Most of West Philadelphia was dotted Inflatable Football Soccer Dart with forests, shantytowns, farms, and summer villas. One big institution west of the Schuylkill was the University of Pennsylvania, which had pulled up stakes from Center City and moved to its new campus in 1873. The Philadelphia Zoo opened its doors on West Girard Avenue a year later. Would the area around the Centennial fairground return to its previous pastoral state?


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The answer was decidedly no. From 1870 to 1890, the city’s population nearly doubled from 674,000 to just over 1 million. Center City was congested and open space was at a premium. Industry befouled the air with coal smoke and other noxious fumes. For those who could afford it, a new West Philadelphia neighborhood fronting a verdant park – with its tree-shaded promenades and carriage trails — could be an attractive alternative to Rittenhouse Square or Fairmount.

The problem was access. After the demolition of the Centennial depot, the Pennsylvania Railroad did not provide a commuter service to the area as it did to the Main Line and Chestnut Hill. Finally, in 1895, following the growth of Powelton and Mantua to the south, a new trolley line connected the former Centennial fairgrounds with the rest of the city. Around the same time, Memorial Hall became the new home for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, packed with treasures from William Wilstach’s private collection.


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The area now seemed ripe for residential development. Frederick Poth and Joseph Schmidt, two enterprising German-American brewers, envisioned a modern, upper-class district of large houses and spacious apartment buildings.ii With the Zoo and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as nearby cultural attractions, perhaps their development could be Philadelphia’s answer to New York’s Upper Fifth Avenue?

The new development would be called Parkside, which also became the new name for Elm Avenue. The exuberance of the Centennial Exposition would be reflected in its residential architecture. The developers commissioned architects such as H.E. Flower, Angus Wade, John C. Worthington, and Willis Hale to design eclectic homes for prosperous professionals and businessmen. Flemish gables, copper bay windows, tiled dormers, and terra-cotta cornices sprouted from houses built of orange Pompeian brick. Spindly, conical towers topped the Queen Anne-style Lansdowne Apartments.iii One critic described Hale and his colleagues as providing a “stylistically pragmatic architecture expressive of a self-confident individualism and optimistic commercial expansion.” Others were not so kind. “Every precaution has been taken, and with success, to insure that the building shall lack unity, shall lack harmony, shall lack repose and shall be a restless jumble,” complained one critic of Hale’s work.iv


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No matter. Parkside’s big, superbly-crafted houses were a hit among newly-affluent Philadelphians, many of German origin. During Parkside’s glory days, weekend coaching enthusiasts flocked to the carriage trails. To the pedestrians, this parade presented a magnificent spectacle of rippling horseflesh, gleaming brass work, parasols and top hats. Parkside gained a place in art history when Eakins set his famous painting “The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand” on Lansdowne Drive, just north of Memorial Hall. One of Eakins’ artistic goals was to accurately depict a horse’s real gait as it had been recently discovered by photographer Eadward Muybridge.v

In 1912, workers completed the Richard Smith Civil War Memorial, a triumphal gateway flanked by two columns and adorned with bronze statues of Generals Meade, McClellan, and Hancock. Sunday strollers discovered that if they sat on benches on one side of the memorial, they could hear conversations from people on the other side. These seats became known as the “Whispering Benches.”


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However, Parkside’s splendor was fleeting. Despite the trolley connection and bridges spanning the Pennsylvania railroad tracks, Parkside still remained relatively isolated from the rest of the city. Commuting to the city’s central business district was still a headache, and many of the original residents moved either to more convenient Philadelphia neighborhoods or to the suburbs. By World War I, the area’s demographics shifted from wealthy German-American to middle-class Eastern European Jewish. For most, it was a big step up from the tiny row houses of South Philadelphia. Parkside’s first synagogue opened on the 3900 block of Girard Avenue in 1907.vi In 1929, the Philadelphia Museum of Art moved into its new home in Fairmount, depriving Parkside of a major cultural attraction. Memorial Hall was converted into a community gymnasium, then a police station. Not surprisingly, the underutilized structure suffered from deferred maintenance. The Great Depression dealt a major blow to the neighborhood, and most the big houses fronting Parkside Avenue were cut up into apartments.

 

Following World War II, the Great Migration coupled with “white flight” transformed Parkside into a predominantly African-American neighborhood. Landlords found the big houses difficult to maintain as multi-family residences, and either abandoned or neglected them. The old Girard Avenue commercial corridor also suffered from divestment. In recent years, efforts have been made to revitalize Parkside. The neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and community groups have renovated many of the mansions along Parkside Avenue into affordable apartments. Quicker access to the neighborhood from other parts of the city came in 2005 with the restoration of Girard Avenue trolley service. In 2009, the Please Touch Museum moved into a restored Memorial Hall. The neighborhood also boasts the Philadelphia Stars Negro Baseball League baseball diamond and monument. This May, the Philadelphia Historic Commission will designate East Parkside a local historic district, granting its structures stronger protection against demolition and alteration. Today, Parkside can once again proudly boast of being Philadelphia’s “Centennial District.”

References:

[i] Dorothy Gondos Beer, “The Centennial City, 1865-1876,” from Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (New York, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1982), p.462.

[ii] Robert Morris Skaler, Images of America: West Philadelphia – University City to 52nd Street (Charleston, South Carolina: The Arcadia Press, 2002), p.117.

[iii] Robert Morris Skaler, Images of America: West Philadelphia – University City to 52nd Street (Charleston, South Carolina: The Arcadia Press, 2002), p.121.

[iv] James Foss and Montgomery Schuyler, as quoted in Willis Hale, Architect: 1848 – 1907, http://www.brynmawr.edu/cities/archx/04-600/wgh/index.html

[v] Gordon Hendricks, “A May Morning in the Park,” The Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, vol.60, no.285 (Spring 1965), p.48.

[vi] Robert Morris Skaler, Images of America: West Philadelphia – University City to 52nd Street (Charleston, South Carolina: The Arcadia Press, 2002), p.117.