"Details of Building at Louisiana Purchase
Exposition"
By an unknown artist, designed for the U.S. Government Building at the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904
Watercolor and pencil on tracing paper
24" x 25"
National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Public Buildings
Service
1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition:
U.S. Government Building
Starting in the late 1890s and continuing until
the outbreak of World War I, Americans celebrated their technological
and social progress in a series of dazzling fairs and expositions that
mirrored the nation's growing self confidence and power. These expositions
were showplaces not only for inventions, machinery, and agricultural bounty,
but also for architects who designed the fairgrounds as temporary fantasy
"cities," with stately boulevards, lakes, statues, and courtyards surrounded
by opulent Beaux-Arts buildings constructed from plaster. A staple for
fairgoers was the Federal Government Hall, where the latest scientific,
agricultural, and military discoveries would be exhibited. The nearly
20 million people who visited the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in
St. Louis saw remarkable displays such as the electric light, dial telephone,
and flight of a powered dirigible.