1904 World's Fair: Then and Now

G440 Final Project

Kathryn Stovall

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, otherwise known as the 1904 World's Fair, took place in St. Louis, Missouri from April 30th to December 1st in 1904. The fair covered 1,200 acres of land and had a total of approximately 20 million visitors while it was open. 43 out of the 45 states at the time were represented, as well as 62 countries. On display at the fair were new marvels of technology, agriculture, art, and history. The overall theme and intention of the fair was, "to tell the story of American progress to the country and celebrate the Centennial of the Louisiana Purchase, while building political support for growing American markets overseas" (Sultan 2019). The fair was also known for its many anthropological exhibits, which have received much criticism from historians today.

After the fair had closed nearly all of its ~1,500 buildings were demolished, but this was the intention from the start. The majority of the buildings were made out of wood and plaster and not meant to last for a long time. Although, a few remnants of the fair still stand today.

In order to better understand what the landscape was like during the fair compared to what it is like today, I set out to create a GIS that could do exactly that.

Methods: I georeferenced and digitized this 1904 World's Fair map using ArcGIS Pro. For the purpose of this project I only digitized building footprints, and recorded the name for each building polygon as well as which Index group it belonged to using domains.

In this figure the building footprints from the 1904 World's Fair are delineated on the georeferenced map, as well as over a current basemap of St. Louis. Please note that the map frame is rotated 180 degrees as the historical map was oriented that way. In the map image from current day, the green buildings are ones that still stand today and the red buildings have been demolished over time.

An interactive map of the digitized building footprints from the Fair. The same symbology and map rotation applies from above.

Overall, the landscape of St. Louis is drastically different today than what it was during the 1904 World's Fair. In my experience, not many people living in St. Louis today know a lot about how large the fair was and where everything stood. It was very interesting to perform this analysis and digitize a map from the Fair to compare and contrast how things have changed.

Sources:

  • 1904 World's Fair, atthefair.homestead.com/1904Fair.html. 
  • “Cultural Landscapes.” Maps of Missouri, maps.slpl.org/cl.html. 
  • “Louisiana Purchase Exposition: The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.” Missouri Digital Heritage, www.sos.mo.gov/archives/mdh_splash/default.asp?coll=muellis. 
  • Sultan, Aisha. “Secrets, Scandals and Little-Known Stories about the 1904 World's Fair.” STLtoday.com, St. Louis Post Dispatch, 22 Apr. 2020, www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/secrets-scandals-and-little-known-stories-about-the-1904-worlds-fair/collection_8dd7c5e9-7bb0-51c9-8da8-40822ab2c64e.html#1. 
  • Taylor, Alan. “Photos of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 9 Sept. 2019, www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/09/the-1904-st-louis-worlds-fair-photos/597658/.

In this figure the building footprints from the 1904 World's Fair are delineated on the georeferenced map, as well as over a current basemap of St. Louis. Please note that the map frame is rotated 180 degrees as the historical map was oriented that way. In the map image from current day, the green buildings are ones that still stand today and the red buildings have been demolished over time.