Cities and world fairs: From “A stone in a pond” to “A meteorite from another world”

Abstract

This paper discusses the understanding revealed by the media about five World Fairs held in the United States: Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, 1876; World’s Columbian, Chicago, 1893; Pan American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901; Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904; and Panama-Pacific International Expo, San Francisco, 1915. The main source of data for the case study is the Chronicling America Project, with two thousand newspapers online. The objective of this article is to compare reactions to these events in their contemporary societies and identify possible distinctions and convergences when compared to ours. Its conclusions reveal an intriguing and ubiquitous apology for these events and the dormancy of controversies they may have generated: The hypothesis that current criticism would be similar in content, form and volume to the analyzed period (1876-1915) was thus not confirmed. The theoretical reference permeates the text and prioritizes distinctions between the perception of the five selected fairs at the time they were held and those more commonly found nowadays concerning large urban events.