Despite the financial panic of the summer of 1873, preparations progressed so favorably that on July 3 President Grant issued a proclamation reciting that the one-hundredth anniversary of the independence of the United States would be celebrated by holding an international exhibition of arts, manufactures, and the products of the soil and mine, in Philadelphia, in 1876, opening April 19 and closing October 19, and inviting the nations of the world to take part in both the celebration and the exhibition. In response to a formal invitation issued by the Secretary of State, thirty-two foreign governments sent favorable replies for themselves and their colonies.
AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.
(Atlanta Exposition, 1895.)
The city of Philadelphia placed at the disposal of the commissioners a tract in Fairmount Park, aggregating 236 acres, for the principal buildings, and also made proportionately large allotments for the exhibition of livestock and agricultural implements.
Five principal buildings were erected. The Main Exhibition Building was in the form of a parallelogram, 1880 feet long and 464 feet wide, with projections at the centre of the longest sides 416 feet long, and at the centre of the short ones 216 feet long. The building was erected on piers of masonry, wrought-iron columns supporting wrought-iron roof trusses forming the superstructure, the sides of which for some distance above the ground were finished between the columns with paneled brick work. This building covered 21.47 acres, had a floor space of 936,008 square feet, and cost $1,600,000.
The Art Gallery and Memorial Hall, designed to be a permanent structure, was erected on an eminence in the Lansdowne Plateau. It is built of granite, glass, and iron, in the modern Renaissance style of architecture, on a terrace several feet above the level of the Plateau, and cost $1,500,000. The dimensions are: length, 365 feet; width, 210 feet; height, 59 feet. From the centre of the structure rises a dome of iron and glass, 150 feet in height, surmounted by a figure of Columbia with outstretched hands. This building was erected by the State of Pennsylvania, and is now used as a permanent art and industrial museum.
Machinery Hall was 1402 feet long and 360 feet wide, with an annex on the south side 210 by 208 feet, and the main building and annex had together a floor space of 558,440 square feet, or nearly thirteen acres. The total cost was $792,000. Horticultural Hall, near the Art Gallery, was built by the city of Philadelphia for permanent uses. It exhibits the Moorish architecture of the twelfth century, is 383 feet long by 193 feet wide, and is 72 feet high to the top of the lantern. Its cost was $251,937. The Agricultural Building was erected of wood and glass, the ground plan showing a parallelogram 630 feet long by 465 feet wide, and a nave 826 feet long and 100 feet wide crossed by three transepts, and cost about $356,000.
MACHINERY HALL.