The Centennial Exhibition of 1876
Fast Facts
The Figures
•Attendance: 9,789,392
•Attendance fee: 50 cents
(the average daily salary for the American worker was $1.21)
•The entire exhibition covered 284 acres.
•More than 70 acres of Fairmount Park was covered with buildings.
•There were 106 visitor entrance gates and 43 exit gates.
•The Centennial had 60,000 exhibitors from 37 foreign countries and the United States.
•The $8.5 million it cost to produce the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 is equal to $141,772,356 today.
•It cost $1.5 million to build Memorial Hall.
Inside Memorial Hall
•3,256 paintings and drawings, 627 works of sculpture, 431 works of applied art and nearly 3,000 groups of photographs from 20 nations were exhibited.
Innovations
•A model first kindergarten was exhibited at the fair. The education method was based on the ideas of Friedrich Froebel, a German educationalist considered the “father of the kindergarten.” His ideas maintained that when children engaged with the world, they gained understanding. He also emphasized learning through play. Froebel developed a series of “gifts” (play materials) and “occupations” (activities). The gifts included blocks that architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother bought at the Exhibition and took home for her son. He later placed great influence on these blocks in his designs and theories.
•Charles Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist, introduced his beverage, root beer, at the Centennial. Still in production today, Hires Root Beer is the oldest, continuously marketed soft drink in the United States.
•A six-bed hospital on site was run by Dr. William Pepper, who later founded the Free Library of Philadelphia.
•Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone during the Exhibition.
•The banana was first introduced to the U.S. at the 1876 Centennial, where it was wrapped in foil and sold as an exotic treat for a dime.
•Served at the Exhibition, “Centennial Cake” survives today as shoofly pie.
Other Centennial Landmarks in Fairmount Park
•In 1876, Wilhelm Wolff’s statue The Dying Lioness was located at the southeast corner pavilion of Memorial Hall. Today, it greets visitors at the
entrance to the Philadelphia Zoo.
•Ohio House, a 3,325-square-foot building on one acre at States Drive and Belmont Avenue, is the only state building left from the Centennial. The exterior stonework features 21 different Ohio sandstones with inscriptions indicating the source quarries. It was redeveloped in 2007 as a coffee shop and meeting place.
•The Total Abstinence Fountain, funded by the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America and dedicated on July 4, 1876, still stands between Memorial Hall and the Mann Center for the
Performing Arts. It portrays Moses (the central figure), prominent Catholic-Americans Charles Carroll and Archbishop John Carroll, Irish
temperance proponent Father Theobold Mathew, and Commodore John Barry, "Father
of the American Navy."
The Arm and Torch (above) of the Statue of Liberty was at the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Donations were collected to fund the pedestal that would sit in New York Harbor for the full statue.
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