Bryan S. Bush Books :: Articles by Bryan S. Bush - Article: Southern Exposition: 1883-1887

After the Civil War, the people of Louisville, Kentucky identified their city as being part of the South. Because of their harsh treatment from Union military leaders, such as General Stephen Gano Burbridge and other military commanders, Louisville turned from its support of the Union, to the support of the Democrats and ex-Confederates. Many of Kentucky’s political and civic leaders after the Civil War were ex-Confederate soldiers. The Southern Exposition held in Louisville in 1883 not only showcased the products from the South, such as cotton, but the Exposition also showcased Kentucky made products and embraced the new technology of the North such as electric lights. The Southern Exposition may have tried to convey to the world that the show would showcase the South, but the exposition actually became a blending of the modern technology with agriculture, which fits more traditionally with Kentucky’s linking with both the North and South.

The idea of holding an exposition in Louisville can be traced to a letter published in the New York Herald in July 1880, written by Edward Atkinson of Boston. Atkinson’s idea was for a grand exposition of cotton as the staple of the South, showing the product in all its stages, from seed to the different forms of manufacturing and the process of manufacturing of the cotton in all its forms, uses and ornamentation. The Louisville Courier-Journal supported the interests of Louisville and the South and decided to adopt Atkinson’s idea. On August 20, 1880, the Courier-Journal published an editorial reviewing Atkinson’s letter and supporting the idea of a Southern Exposition in Louisville. The central exhibit would be cotton. The paper called for the Louisville Board of Trade to take on the idea of an exposition.

On August 21, 1880, the Louisville Board of Trade met to discuss the idea of an exposition. The Board reported to the Courier-Journal that the exposition would cost in excess of $200,000 dollars. The Board of Trade reported that they needed more time to study if Louisville was ready for an exposition. While Louisville contemplated over whether to have an exposition, Atlanta, Georgia beat Louisville to the draw and held their own Cotton Exposition.

In December 1881, Henry Watterson, owner of the Courier-Journal, again put forth an idea for an exposition. In October of 1882, a committee formed to discuss the idea of an exposition with the streetcar lines, railroad officials and proprietors of hotels. On October 18, 1882, the committee reported that the public supported the idea of an exposition. The committee recommended the formation of a stock company with a capital of $250,000 dollars. The committee would elect twenty-five men to sit on the Board of Directors. On October 25, 1882, the committee drafted the form of incorporation to raise a capital stock of $300,000 dollars, with the privilege to raise $500,000 dollars. The committee agreed to expand the board to fifty members becoming known as “The Committee of Fifty.” The committee was comprised of some of Louisville’s most influential men, including M. Lewis Clark, Jr., Biderman DuPont, W. R. Belnap, and Bennett Young, who served as a colonel in Confederate General John Hunt Morgan’s command during the Civil War.

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The committee made an offer for Mr. DuPont’s land near Central Park as the location of the exposition. The committee chose the plans of Kenneth McDonald and Cornelius Curtain. The cost of the building was determined at $167,000 dollars. The committee approved $227,000 dollars for music, lights and machinery for the building. On January 29, 1883, the committee had raised $288,000 dollars, so they held a massive fundraiser at the opera house in Louisville, and invited the cities of New Albany and Jeffersonville, Indiana to participate. The event was a huge success and raised the money needed to complete the project.

On January 30, 1883, McDonald and Curtain began construction of the buildings. On March 15, 1883, lumber arrived for the carpentry work and soon the electricians and plumbers started their work on the massive structure. The main building covered ten acres and was six hundred feet wide and nine hundred feet long. Situated from the outer boundaries of the building were open courts, four in number, 945 feet by 100 feet in size. The cross-shaped figure left in the center of the structure was higher than the remainder of the building, having around the outside boundary a gallery which would be used as a promenade. The central pavilion was one hundred feet square, and the corner pavilions were each ninety feet square. The curtains connecting the pavilion north and south were each 810 feet long, and those connecting east and west were 160 feet long. The central cross is four hundred feet by six hundred feet and was 110 feet wide and forty-five feet high up to the bottom of the trusses. Twenty-five feet above the first floor there were five thousand feet of galleries extending around the building.

The interior of the building had five departments for the exhibits. The northwest wing had natural products, such as mineral, vegetable and animal. The second department was devoted to machinery and occupied the southern area of the building and comprised of tools and implements, motors and power generators, machinery and implements for preparing raw material, machines for manufacturing, machines for manufacturing tools and implements. The third department was devoted to manufactured products, which occupied the northwest area of the building and included mineral, vegetable and animal substances. The fourth department was transportation and was located in the space between the northwest and northwest wings of the building connecting the building north and south. The exhibit was devoted to animal, wind, steam and electrical power. The fifth department was devoted to music, literature and art, and occupied the area running the dividing wings north and south, and the area comprised of piano and organs, and other musical instruments, books and stationary, education, general literature, statuary, paintings and engravings, industrial and ornamental designs, and scientific instruments and models.

There was 3,700 feet of continuous skylights. At night the entire building and annexes were lit with 4,600 incandescent light bulbs, provided by Thomas Edison’s company, which at that time was the largest contract made for lighting a building. In order to string the lights, one hundred men took a month to complete the task at a cost of $100,000 dollars, which included the four engines required to provide electricity to run the lights. An electric railway was built to carry passengers on a narrow track that circled Central Park and passed through an artificial tunnel lighted by incandescent bulbs.

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The exposition grounds covered forty-five acres, with forests and flowerbeds. The park covered eighteen acres. An art gallery was built on the northeast section of the park, with a three thousand seat Music Hall located in the center of the park. South of the main building and east of the saw mill annex was the field agricultural exhibit, which grew every staple vegetable of the South. The field comprised about ten acres and represented a Southern plantation.

By the end of July 1883, the Southern Exposition, the Art Gallery, and Central Park were ready for the public. On July 31, 1883, a large crowd assembled around the Short Line Railroad to greet President Chester Arthur and his entourage. Ten carriages lined up to take the President and his staff to the Galt House. Bly’s Artillery, stationed east of First Street, fired a salute upon the arrival of the train. The President brought with him Secretary Folger, General Preston, Post Master General Walter Q. Gresham, Mayor Jacob, Secretary Robert Lincoln (President Abraham Lincoln’s son), Governor Blackburn, and Senator Bayard, along with many others. Another train from Chicago arrived in New Albany, Indiana and carried Union General Phil Sheridan. General Sheridan commented to the Courier-Journal that he had not been in the city for thirteen years or since the reunion of the Army of Tennessee, and that Louisville had become an important city. His most distinct remembrance of the city was connected with a time when he had to erect fortifications around the city during the Civil War. General Sheridan traveled from Chicago with his wife and brother, Michael Sheridan, General J. Tompkins, Col. G. C. Wharton, Col. F. K. Faulkner, and R. M. Kelley, President of the G. A. R. post at Louisville, and Colonel Bennett Young. Sheridan and his staff also stayed at the Galt House.

On August 1, 1883, the citizens of Louisville crowded around the Galt House to greet the distinguished visitors. Every column on Fourth Avenue was dressed in red, white, blue. Standing on Market Street, citizens could see flags, bunting, Chinese lanterns, and evergreen wreaths. Oak Hall on Fourth Avenue was decorated with great strips of bunting, which were stretched diagonally across the front of the building and the space in between was decorated with the flags of all nations. City Hall was decorated with hundreds of flags with several miles worth of bunting. A large flag hung over Jefferson Street at the Masonic Temple.

President Chester Arthur, General Phil Sheridan, Secretary Robert Lincoln and General Thompson stayed overnight at the Galt House. At 11 a.m. on August 1, 1883, General Taylor, Chief of Police, accompanied by a squad of policemen on foot and about fifty on horseback, drew up in front of the Galt House. Companies A, B, C, D and F of the Louisville Legion, under the command of Colonel John B. Castleman, Major J. H. Leathers, and James Speed marched from the armory of Seventh Street and coming down Main Street marched to martial music of the Legion band up the street four deep to the Galt House. A long line of carriages drew up in front of the Galt House. President Arthur, Louisville Mayor Charles Jacob, and Charles Pettet entered the first carriage.

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By 1 p.m. the President arrived at the Exposition building. President Arthur, along with Mayor Jacob, and Mr. DuPont marched through a special entrance to the Exposition. Five hundred musicians and an organ played “Hail to the Chief.” Mayor Charles Jacob welcomed the President. The President stood and gave a small speech. At the end of the speech he declared: “I now declare that the Southern Exposition is open, and may God speed the fulfillment of all the lofty and ennobling purposes.” As President Arthur pulled the rope setting the machinery in motion, bells rang, machinery clanged and prolonged shouts arose. There were frequent shouts for Lincoln. Robert Lincoln rose and bowed, but did not address the crowd. The crowd called for General Phil Sheridan to speak, but he also sat in his chair and did not address the crowd.

After the speeches, the President along with Mayor Jacob inspected the Exposition, and then turned towards the Art Gallery in Central Park. The President spent an hour looking at the paintings and stated that no collection excelled beyond that in the Art Gallery. The Art Gallery contained private collections from J. P. Morgan, August Belmont, Jay Gould, Victor Newcomb (former president of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad) and John Jacob Astor. The Smithsonian Institute furnished paintings and former President Ulysses Grant loaned a collection of curios, given to him during his travels around the world. While in the Art Gallery, Mayor Jacob introduced prominent citizens of Louisville to the President. At 2 p.m. the President headed to Mr. DuPont’s house, near Central Park. After an hour luncheon the President and his entourage headed back to the Galt House. Later that evening a grand gala dinner was held for the President.

By 8 p.m. five thousand people came to the Exposition to see the one hundred arch lights and 1,800 incandescent lights that lit up the building at night. According to legend or tradition, when Thomas Edison arrived at the Exposition Hall he discovered that the power system had broken down. Since his company had supplied the power, he felt a responsibility to get the lights back into working order so he immediately went down to the Exposition Hall lower floors and joined the workmen who were trying to put the generator back together. When he fixed the problem, Edison emerged back up to the Exposition Hall’s floor, but he was covered in grime, but the crowd cheered and he joined the dinner reception at the Galt House and finished his dinner.¹

Under the incandescent lights, people came to hear the grand organ and Seventh Regiment Band. The highlight of the evening was when the chorus sang Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” By 10:30 p.m. the Exposition closed their doors for the day. Over twenty thousand people attended the first day. During the eighty-eight days the Exposition ran, over 770,048 people attended the event, with an additional 200,933 admitted on passes. The Exposition exceeded everyone’s expectations and the Exposition ran until 1887. The show normally ran from August until late October. Although the Exposition was a regional event, the Museum of Natural History loaned a mammoth from the Royal Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, an orangutan from Borneo, and the fossilized remains of a megatherium discovered in Argentina. In 1886, the Exposition committee erected a Japanese village.

The Southern Exposition served as a catalyst for development in the surrounding area. In 1885, 260 homes valued at an average cost of $6,150, or $1.6 million dollars, was constructed between Kentucky and Magnolia Streets. The most popular Victorian style houses built were the Queen Anne and the Richardsonian Romanesque. On March 1887, the Courier-Journal declared Louisville the “New Gotham” and hailed that the city had the most beautiful homes. After the Southern Exposition closed its doors in 1887, William Slaughter, president of the Victoria Land Company, bought the vacated property from the Southern Exposition and built the Saint James Court development, which still stands today as a testament to the Southern Exposition’s ideals of commerce and progress, Southern hospitality and Northern ingenuity.■

Resources

Southern Exposition, 1883, Kentucky Explorer, Jackson, Kentucky, June 1996, Vol. 11, Issue 2.

Carl E. Kramer, Old Louisville: A Changing View. Old Louisville Neighborhood Council, Inc., 1982.

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