More than 200 buildings were constructed within the exposition's grounds, which were surrounded by a fence nearly three miles long. There were five main buildings in the exposition. They were the Main Exhibition Building, Memorial Hall, Machinery Hall, Agricultural Hall, and Horticultural Hall. Apart from these buildings, there were separate buildings for state, federal, foreign, corporate, and public comfort buildings. This strategy of numerous buildings in one exposition set it apart from the previous fairs around the world that had relied exclusively on having one or a few large buildings. The Centennial Commission sponsored a
design competition for the principal buildings, conducted in two rounds; winners of the first round had to have details such as construction cost and time prepared for the runoff on September 20, 1873. After the ten design winners were chosen, it was determined that none of them allowed enough time for construction and limited finances. The architecture of the exposition mainly consisted of two types of building, traditional masonry monuments and buildings with a structural framework of iron and steel.
Main Exhibition Building ’s hymn for the 1876 U.S. Centennial. The Centennial Commission turned to third-place winner's architect Henry Pettit and engineer
Joseph M. Wilson for design and construction of the Main Exhibition Building. A temporary structure, the Main Building was the largest building in the world by area, enclosing . It measured in width and in length. It was constructed using
prefabricated parts, with a wood and iron frame resting on a substructure of 672 stone piers. Wrought iron roof trusses were supported by the columns of the superstructure. The building took eighteen months to complete and cost $1,580,000. The building was surrounded by portals on all four sides. The east entrance of the building was used as an access way for carriages, and the south entrance of the building served as a primary entrance to the building for streetcars. The north side related the building to the Art Gallery and the west side served as a passageway to the Machinery and Agricultural Halls. In the Main Exhibition Building, columns were placed at a uniform distance of . The entire structure consisted of 672 columns, the shortest column in length and the longest in length. The construction included red and black brick-laid design with stained glass or painted glass decorations. The Interior walls were whitewashed, and woodwork was decorated with shades of green, crimson, blue, and gold. The flooring of the building was made of wooden planks that rested directly on the ground without any air space underneath them. The orientation of the building was east–west in direction, making it well lit, and glass was used between the frames to let in light. Skylights were set over the central aisles of the structure. The corridors of the building were separated by fountains that were attractive and also provided cooling. The structure of the building featured a central avenue with a series of parallel sheds that were wide, long, and high. It was the longest nave ever introduced into an exhibition building up to that time. On both sides of the nave were avenues in width and in length. Aisles wide were located between the nave and the side avenues, and smaller aisles in width were on the outer sides of the building. The exterior of the building featured four towers, each high, at each of the building's corners. These towers had small balconies at different heights that served as observation galleries. Within the building, exhibits were arranged in a grid, in a dual arrangement of type and national origin. Exhibits from the United States were placed in the center of the building, and foreign exhibits were arranged around the center, based on the nation's distance from the United States. Exhibits inside the Main Exhibition Building dealt with
mining,
metallurgy,
manufacturing, education, and science. Offices for foreign commissioners were placed in proximity to the products exhibited along in the aisles along the sides of the building. The walkways leading to the exit doors were ten feet wide. After the Exposition, the structure was turned into a permanent building for the International Exhibition. During the auction held on December 1, 1876, it was bought for $250,000. It quickly ran into financial difficulties but remained open through 1879 and was finally demolished in 1881.
Agricultural Hall The third-largest structure at the exposition was Agricultural Hall. Designed by
James H. Windrim, Agricultural Hall was long and wide. Made of wood and glass, the building was designed to look like various
barn structures pieced together. The building's exhibits included products and machines used in
agriculture and other related businesses.
Horticultural Hall , now part of the Robert N. Dennis Collection at
New York Public Library Situated high atop a hill presiding over Fountain Avenue, Horticultural Hall epitomized floral achievement, which attracted professional and amateur gardeners. Unlike the other main buildings, it was meant to be permanent. Horticultural Hall had an iron and glass frame on a brick and marble foundation and was long, wide, and tall. The building was designed in the
Moorish style and intended as a tribute to the
Crystal Palace of
London's
Great Exhibition of 1851. Inside, nurserymen, florists, and landscape architects exhibited a variety of tropical plants, garden equipment, and garden plans. In dramatic fashion, the exposition introduced the general public to the notion of landscape design, as exemplified the building itself and the grounds surrounding it. A long, sunken parterre leading to Horticultural Hall became the exposition's iconic floral feature, reproduced on countless postcards and other memorabilia. This sunken garden enabled visitors on the raised walkways to see the patterns and shapes of the flowerbeds. After the Exposition, the building continued to be used for horticultural exhibits until it was severely damaged by
Hurricane Hazel in 1954 and was subsequently demolished. As a replacement, the
Fairmount Park Horticulture Center was built on the site in 1976 as part of the
United States Bicentennial exposition.
Machinery Hall Designed by Joseph M. Wilson and Henry Pettit, Machinery Hall was the second largest structure in the exposition and located west of the Main Exhibition Building. With a superstructure made of wood and glass resting on a foundation of massive masonry, it had a main hall painted light blue, long and wide, with a wing of by attached on the south side of the building. The length of the building was 18 times its height. With eight entrances, it occupied , had 1,900 exhibitors, and took six months to construct. The exhibits focused on machines and evolving industries. Machinery Hall was the show case for the state of the art industrial technology that was being produced at the time. The United States of America alone took up two-thirds of the exhibit space in the building. One of the major attractions on display in the building was the
Corliss Centennial Steam Engine, which ran power to all the machinery in the building as well as other parts of the world's fair. The 1,400 horsepower engine was tall, weighed 650 tons, and had of overhead line belts connecting to the machinery in the building. It symbolized the technology that was transforming the United States into an industrial powerhouse. Amenities available to the visitors within the hall were rolling chairs, telegraph offices, and dinner for fifty cents. Machinery Hall had 8,000 operating machines and was filled with a wide assortment of hand tools, machine tools, material handling equipment, and the latest fastener technology. Some of the sandstone that was used to build the hall was from
Curwensville, Pennsylvania.
Memorial Hall The Art Gallery building (now known as
Memorial Hall) is the only large exhibit building still standing on the exposition site. Constructed of brick, glass, iron, and granite in the
beaux-arts style, it was the largest art hall in the country when it opened, with a massive footprint and a dome atop a -high structure. The central domed area is surrounded by four pavilions on the corners, with open arcades to the east and west of the main entrance. It provided of wall surface for paintings and of floor space for sculptures. The exposition received so many art contributions that a separate annex was built to house them all. Another structure was built for the display of
photography. Memorial Hall was designed by Herman J. Schwarzmann, who basically adopted an art museum plan submitted by Nicholas Félix Escalier to the competition in 1867–69. Memorial Hall became the prototype, both from a stylistic and organizational standpoint, for other museums such as the
Art Institute of Chicago (1892–1893), the
Milwaukee Public Museum (1893–1897), the
Brooklyn Museum (1893–1924), and the
Detroit Institute of Art (1920–1927). Libraries such as the
Library of Congress, the
New York Public Library, and the
Free Library of Philadelphia also emulated its form. Finally, Memorial Hall was the architectural inspiration for the German capitol, the
Reichstag building in Berlin. After the exposition, Memorial Hall reopened in 1877 as the Pennsylvania Museum of Art and included the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art. In 1928 the museum moved to Fairmount at the head of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and in 1938 was renamed the
Philadelphia Museum of Art. Memorial Hall continued to house the school, and afterward was taken over by the Fairmount Park Commission in 1958. The museum school is now the
University of the Arts. Used for a time as a police station, the building now houses the
Please Touch Museum, which includes a faithful 20x30-foot model of the exposition grounds and 200 buildings.
Women's Pavilion The Women's Pavilion was the first structure at an international exposition to highlight the work of women, with exhibits created and operated by women. Female organizers drew upon deep-rooted traditions of separatism and sorority in planning, fundraising, and managing a pavilion devoted entirely to the artistic and industrial pursuits of their gender. They had to build their own structure because they lost their spot in one of the larger pavilions (the Main Building) due to an unexpected increase in the participation of foreign countries. Their aim was to employ only women in the construction of the pavilion and even to power it, and they succeeded with the exception of the design by Hermann J. Schwarzmann. Their overarching goal was to advance women's social, economic, and legal standing, abolish restrictions discriminating against their gender, encourage sexual harmony, and gain influence, leverage, and freedom for all women in and outside of the home by increasing women's confidence and ability to choose. A project of the Women's Centennial Executive Committee, the Women's Pavilion was commissioned in 1873 by the United States Centennial Board of Finance with the expectation that it would generate enthusiasm for the celebration of the fair and increase subscriptions to exposition stock. Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, president of the Women's Centennial Committee, led the effort to gather 82,000 signatures in two days to raise money for the pavilion. Gillespie also helped convince Congress to grant additional funding. It took only four months to raise the funds for the pavilion. Much of the pavilion was devoted to
human ecology and
home economics. On exhibit were over 80 patented inventions, including a reliance stove, a hand attachment for sewing machines, a dishwasher, a fountain griddle-greaser,
a heating iron with removable handle, a frame for stretching and drying lace curtains, and a stocking and glove darner. The Centennial women not only showed domestic production but also employed a popular means for justifying female autonomy outside of the home by demonstrating to visitors the many ways women were making a profitable living. Exhibits demonstrated positive achievements and women's influence in domains such as industrial and fine arts (wood-carvings, furniture-making, and ceramics), fancy articles (clothing and woven goods), and philanthropy as well as philosophy, science, medicine, education, and literature. The building also included a display art created by women; including
The Death of Cleopatra by
Edmonia Lewis which was a success with both critics and the public. Mexico participated in the pavilion's exhibits, indicating the growth of a sector of elite women during the
Porfirio Díaz regime of the late nineteenth century, with many individual women sending examples of woven textiles and embroidery.
Other buildings , one of four exposition buildings remaining in
Fairmount Park; the others are
Memorial Hall and two
comfort stations. Eleven nations had their own exhibition buildings, and others contributed small structures, including the Swedish School house referenced below, now in
Central Park, New York City. The British buildings were extensive and exhibited the evolved bicycle, with tension spokes and a large front wheel. Two English manufacturers, Bayless Thomas and Rudge, displayed their
high-wheel bicycles (also known as "ordinary bikes" or "penny-farthings") at the exposition. The bicycle displays inspired
Albert Augustus Pope to begin making high-wheel bikes in the United States. He started the Columbia Bike Company and published a journal called "
LAW Bulletin and Good Roads", which was the beginning of the
Good Roads Movement.. The main British building, also known as St. George's Hall or the English Commission Building, survived at its original site as
Fairmount Park offices until it was demolished in 1961. 26 of the 37 U.S. states constructed buildings along States Drive in the exhibition grounds. Only three such state houses are still extant: the
Ohio House at its original location in Fairmount Park, the Maryland House, which was moved to
Druid Hill Park in
Baltimore, where it is extant today, and the Missouri House, which was moved to
Spring Lake, New Jersey, along with several other exhibition buildings, some of which are still extant in various
Jersey Shore towns. The
United States government had a cross-shaped building that held exhibits from various government departments. The remaining structures were corporate exhibitions, administration buildings, restaurants, and other buildings designed for public comfort. ==Exposition==