Background InformationIntroductionPhiladelphia has a long tradition of hosting national and international expositions to celebrate America’s birthday. The year 2026 will mark the nation’s 250th. What will this type of celebration look like in the 21st century, and how will it impact our urban landscape? The 5th annual Ed Bacon Student Design Competition focuses on imagining innovative visions for the Fair of the Future, focusing on a large-scale, underutilized area of the city with great unrealized potential. At the heart of this ambitious challenge are some important questions. What is the value of undertaking a massive project like a world’s fair or the Olympics? How do we design a celebration that serves its purpose and also leaves a lasting, positive impact for the host city and its inhabitants? How will the nature of these mega events change by the year 2026? How can we learn from Philadelphia’s long history hosting celebrations of America’s birthday and from international examples of planning for world’s fairs and the Olympics? In 1959, Edmund Bacon, Philadelphia’s former planning director wrote an article for Greater Philadelphia Magazine laying out a vision for a celebration in 1976, focusing on the long-term impacts of that celebration. He wrote, “the 1976 [Bicentennial and] World’s Fair can become the force that will sustain the present civic effort to the year 1976, and to give the impetus to keep it going for the full half century.” However, as Bacon himself experienced in the years that would follow this proclamation, the planning for the 1976 would be controversial, divisive, and ultimately a ghost of the grand vision for a major national celebration focused on Philadelphia. The 250th anniversary of the United States offers a fresh opportunity for Philadelphia to host an international exposition. Can we learn from Philadelphia’s successes and mistakes in planning past fairs? Will we succeed in 2026? What will the vision of USA250 look like? HISTORY AND CONTEXT
Philadelphia is the logical choice to be the hub of a celebration of America’s founding — the site of the First and Second Continental Congresses, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the drafting of the Constitution. Philadelphia has hosted three previous celebrations for America’s landmark birthdays in 1876, 1926, and 1976. The stories of these, and other similar large-scale festivals, provide lessons and insights in the shaping of the celebration in 2026. 1864 — The Great Central FairThe Great Central Fair, held at Philadelphia’s Logan Square in 1864, was not a celebration of America’s birthday. In fact, it came at the low point of American pride. It was a fundraiser for the United Sanitary Commission, which during the Civil War aided sick and wounded soldiers. But in many ways, it was a precursor to the later larger celebrations to come — an early example of Philadelphians bonding together to rally behind an important cause. The fair was a massive undertaking. In forty days, workers erected a complex of buildings that entirely covered Logan Square, including a building 540 feet in length. It was in many ways a continuance of the benevolence citizens had displayed throughout the Civil War, during which Philadelphia earned a reputation among soldiers for its refreshment saloons and top-rate medical care. The celebration attracted more than a quarter million visitors, the First Family among them, and raised over $1.5 million for the Sanitary Commission. The Great Central Fair was a valuable precursor to the Centennial, providing experience to political, business, and philanthropic leaders in fundraising and large-scale planning for a major celebration. 1876 — The Centennial ExhibitionThe Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was officially open from May 10 to November 10, 1876. All told 10,164,489 people attended the Fair, with most days averaging over 100,000 visitors, including foreign dignitaries and President Ulysses S. Grant. Ten years earlier Professor John Campbell from Wabash College first put forth the idea to combine a celebration of 100 years of American independence with a World’s Fair, and for Philadelphia to be the host. It was to be the first successful World’s Fair to be held in the United States. A marvel of the Centennial Exhibition was that it came together so successfully in such a short time (Congress only passed a resolution for the fair in Philadelphia in 1871). It was blessed with dedicated leadership in the form of Alfred T. Goshorn, the exposition’s director-general, who led a team of talented designers, architects and engineers, notably Hermann J. Schwarzmann, who designed Memorial and Horticultural Halls — two of the fair’s permanent buildings. Goshorn helped attract funds from federal, state and city coffers. Moreover, he harnessed the spirit of volunteerism from the Great Central Fair. For instance, women volunteers played a key role, with the Woman’s Centennial Executive Committee raising over $40,000. The celebration was based in a sparsely developed area of Fairmount Park, with 450 acres set aside for the fairgrounds. Railroad and transit connections were built and upgraded, with direct regular passenger service to Center City. Elevated rail cars efficiently shepherded visitors around the grounds. A temporary hospital and hotels were erected in the immediate vicinity, and tight security kept crime at a minimum. Like the Great Central Fair, the Centennial featured a massive temporary central building. Covering over 21 acres, it was the largest structure in the world at the time. Memorial Hall (still standing) and Horticultural Hall (damaged and razed in 1954) were designed as permanent structures. A major focus of the exhibition was America’s technological prowess — announcing the still-young nation as an emerging industrial powerhouse, and an inventive and innovative one at that. Inventions featured at the fair include the telephone, telegraph, and the Corliss steam engine. The 1876 Centennial Exhibition was a transformative event for Philadelphia, physically and psychologically. It demonstrated to the world and to Philadelphians themselves that the host city was cosmopolitan, and firmly on the international stage. It was not without its struggles, with Philadelphia and the nation as a whole wracked by recession in 1873. However, it was by all accounts an overwhelming achievement, and it set a high bar for American world’s fairs. 1926 — The Sesquicentennial ExpositionIt rained for 107 of the 184 days of the Sesquicentennial in 1926. After opening at the end of May, the construction work was still not complete a month later. It got a very late start, even though department store tycoon John Wanamaker had put forth the idea in 1916. President Calvin Coolidge did not formally designate the celebration a World’s Fair until 1925. The idea of postponing it until 1927 had numerous advocates, but Philadelphia’s Mayor Freeland Kendrick found the idea illogical and forced strict adherence to the 1926 deadline. Mayor Kendrick’s decision in many ways doomed the celebration because the whole Fair seemed thrown together and incomplete from the opening bell. Choosing a location also caused significant delays. Many favored returning the celebration to Fairmount Park, the site of the Centennial fifty years earlier. However, political forces moved it to South Philadelphia, at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue. Built for the fair was Municipal Stadium, a precursor to the stadium district that exists on that site now. Many of the structures for the Sesquicentennial were designed by Louis Kahn — later to become one of Philadelphia’s most renowned architects. Unlike the Centennial, there was much less support from both the state and federal government, each of which gave a fraction of what it had fifty years earlier. The Sesquicentennial relied on $5 million from the city and $3 million raised by real estate mogul Albert M. Greenfield. Despite the valiant efforts of Greenfield and others, the Sesquicentennial’s potential was drowned in the rain. The highlight was in September when nearly 125,000 guests stood in a downpour to watch a heavyweight boxing title bout. In the end the Sesquicentennial had 3 million fewer attendees than had the Centennial in 1876, and the city was left with $5 million in unpaid bills. The financial woes pushed Philadelphia to the brink of bankruptcy, though eventually every creditor was paid in full. Philadelphians worked hard to pull off the Sesquicentennial, to be sure, and many saw a few positive externalities to the whole project, like new development in South Philadelphia. But many were disappointed, and much of the blame was directed, fairly or unfairly, at Philadelphians themselves for not rallying behind the effort enough. 1947 — The Better Philadelphia ExhibitThe success of the Better Philadelphia Exhibit in 1947 demonstrated Philadelphia’s ability to get excited about city planning. Over 385,000 people circulated in and about the Gimbels department store in Center City, admiring audio and visual displays, illustrating what Philadelphia could look like in the year 1980. It featured a gigantic 33-by-14 foot model of Center City, with 45,000 model buildings, 25,000 cars and buses, and 12,000 trees. On one side the model illustrated Philadelphia in the present day, and on the other was a vision of the future city. Many ideas in the exhibition were no more than visions on paper. Yet they laid a foundation for much of Philadelphia’s planning and development work over the next thirty years — during much of which Edmund Bacon headed up the City Planning Commission staff. 1976 — The BicentennialAlas, there was to be no 1976 Philadelphia World’s Fair. Though there was a Bicentennial celebration, it was a tame one, especially when compared to its predecessors. This happened despite the fact that the Bureau International Des Expositions had approved Philadelphia as host of a 1976 World’s Fair back in the 1950s. The 1976 fair disappointed despite being planned well in advance, by active committees of business and civic leaders. With a lot of blame to go around, it is hard to pinpoint a singular cause for this disappointment. Were there too many cooks in the kitchen? Did it lack strong leadership? Did it lack a compelling vision? Did Philadelphians not unite enough? Was the planning too top-down? Was it overly democratic? Was government involvement helpful or detrimental? Bacon had an affinity for World’s Fairs, evident in his “2009” essay. His boss, Mayor Richardson Dilworth began advocating for Bicentennial planning in 1957. Bacon’s “2009’ essay, penned two years later, was one of the early concrete visions of the Fair’s physical shape and its programming. Over time Bacon’s plan for the Bicentennial World’s Fair would disintegrate, piece by piece, as more people became involved, and Bacon himself would migrate to the periphery of its planning. The main point of contention, throughout the plan’s entire lifespan, was site selection. Many had soured on the 19th century model of expositions, in which all attendees congregated at one site to take in a massive display of industrial and technological achievement, and favored a more decentralized approach. During the dozen-year dialogue, proposed sites for the 1976 fair included Fairmount Park, a gigantic “megastructure” to be erected above the 30th Street Station railyards, Byberry in Northeast Philadelphia, Fort Mifflin, League Island, Port Richmond, and Eastwick. There was an unsuccessful effort to bring the 1972 Olympics to Philadelphia, in preparation and as a warm up for the Bicentennial. The complex issues around the failure of the Bicentennial had several themes including the location issue, the reliance on federal funding, racial conflict and a feeling of disenfranchisement from some of Philadelphia’s African-American neighborhoods, shifting visions as new players came and went, and Philadelphia’s declining economy and tax base. Ultimately, the city was resigned to accept its fate as having failed to pull off the Bicentennial Exposition. In the end, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of America’s founding, the city displayed patriotism on a smaller scale. After years of planning, the city that had thrilled the world in 1876, came up short. 1985-2010 — Small Scale Celebrations and the 21st Century FairIn 1985 the Live Aid festival and concert featured the most star-studded rock concert in the city’s history, in front of nearly 100,000 people. The effort was duplicated on the Parkway in 2005 for Live 8, with more than one million attendees. The Phillies World Series Championship celebrations and parade is estimated to have brought nearly 2 million people to the streets. While these smaller events demonstrate Philadelphia’s capacity for holding sporadic, one-off events, it remains unclear if the city can reach consensus behind a vision for a conceivably months-long fair. What is also unclear is the form the 21st Century exposition. How are the technological achievements of the recent decades since Philadelphia’s last centennial applied to the historical World’s Fair model? How could anything of scale be funded in this post-recession age of budgetary belt-tightening? The Shanghai World’s Fair, currently underway, is a window into the future, and should be watched closely. Thus, to plan for 2026 is to enter a checkered historical narrative of Philadelphia’s celebration of America’s independence. As the 1876 Centennial shows, the value of success can be great; as the 1926 Sesquicentennial and the 1976 Bicentennial show, the pitfalls are many, and the stakes high. From this competition will emerge the first ideas for how the 2026 celebration will indeed be a positive experience, and a worthy endeavor for the City of Philadelphians, its inhabitants, and its future. RESOURCESOnline Resources
Shanghai
Primary Research For information on past centennial celebrations, consult:
Secondary Research To complete the review of the historical record, consult:
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