Besides erecting a State Building, Kentucky collected, installed, and maintained 16 different exhibits; a collective display of minerals, a separate display of coal, a separate display of clays, in the Mines and Metallurgy Building; a collective display from the schools and colleges of the State and two separate displays in the blind section in the Palace of Education and Social Economy; two collective displays—one exterior, the other interior—of forestry in the department devoted to Forestry, Fish, and Game; a collective display of general agricultural products in the Palace of Agriculture; and displays of paintings and sculptures by Kentucky artists and sculptors, of fancy needle and drawn work by women, and of the works of Kentucky authors and composers in the Kentucky Building.
The displays in the exhibit palaces occupied 15,000 square feet of space, the tobacco display with 4,000 square feet having the largest space assigned any one product. Four thousand square feet were devoted to minerals, 1,200 to education, 3,000 to a general agricultural exhibit, 1,200 to forestry and its manufactured products, and 1,200 to horticulture.
In the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy the general display combined both State and individual effort. Its 3,400 square feet of space faced on three of the main aisles of the building. Facing on three aisles the exhibit had three entrances, an arch of cannel coal, an arch of white limestone, and an arch of terra cotta burned in St. Louis from clay taken from Waco, Madison County. The arches were connected by a 3-foot wall of minerals, forming an inclosure for the exhibit. In this wall were shown, as approaches to the clay-entrance arch, building brick, tiles, paving brick, fire brick, plain and decorated pottery, etc.; as approaches to the cannel-coal arch, both bituminous and cannel coal, and as approaches to the stone arch, building stones and cement building blocks.
Oil and its future development was found in a collective petroleum exhibit from the several oil horizons. Large blocks of coal, representing the different veins of Kentucky, several full lines of broken coals, and a very complete display of coke were also displayed. A very elaborate display of kaolin—plastic, vitrifying, and refractory clays—was made.
In all, there were 114 different specimens of clay attractively displayed in glass cases and in convenient corners; also plain and decorated pottery, white and cream-colored wares, terra cotta, earthen-ware, building brick, firebacks, coke-oven sundries, paving brick, fire brick, tiles, etc. The Kentucky display contained also zinc ore and sphalerite, lead ore and barite, lead and zinc ore, and fluarite from the mines in Chittenden County; zinc and lead ores and metallic zinc from "the Joplin district of Kentucky;" sphalerite and galena from Marion, galena (in barite) from Lockport, Henry County, and large lumps and ground fluorspar and lead concentrates from Marion, Crittenden County. There were 138 samples of iron ore shown as a collective State exhibit, and in addition to this there was ore from Edmonson County, ore from Nelson County, ore from Allen County, ore from Carter County, and ore from Hart County. One of the unique displays was a sample bottle of oil from the old American oil well in Cumberland County. This well, begun September 10, 1827, was the first oil well in America. Collective State exhibits of oynx marble, paint earths, polished earths, sands, silicious earths, road materials, fluorspars, barite calcite, cement materials, salt, lithograph stone, lime, potash, marl, asphalt rock, etc., were also to be found in Kentucky's general mineral exhibit.
The State made a fine display in forestry, fish, and game. The collection embraced displays from all parts of Kentucky. The forestry exhibit not only showed Kentucky's timbers in the rough and polished state, but hundreds of samples of the manufactured products. One of the exhibits was a full-sized log wagon, carrying three large logs 10 feet long, one each of oak, poplar, and hickory. The idea of showing the timber from which the product was made was carried out as far as possible throughout the exhibit.
Kentucky's educational exhibit occupied 1,100 square feet, every foot of which was utilized to advantage. The public schools, Catholic institutions, commercial branches, and colleges were given due prominence, while special attention was given to mountain school labors. One part was devoted to public schools and another to Catholic institutions. The school work of the totally blind pupils occupied six display cabinets. These cases showed the entire course, from 8 years to 18. The display from the Kentucky School for the Deaf at Danville, illustrating the work done in its manual-training department, was shown also. This school was the pioneer in the manual-training movement in Kentucky, and for over half a century every graduate has left its halls equipped with a knowledge of some useful handicraft. More than a year was consumed in the collection of Kentucky's educational exhibit.
Kentucky made a good showing agriculturally, and had a creditable and attractive representation in the Palace of Agriculture. Raising more than 90 per cent of the hemp of the United States, Kentucky made one of the really distinctive exhibits of the Agricultural Building at the exposition. The exhibit occupied more than 2,000 square feet. An experiment station showed 50 varieties of grasses and 15 varieties of wheat, both in the seed and in the sheaf Another interesting feature was an entire case of insects injurious to fruit trees and staple products. An interesting feature was an obelisk, 12 feet high, made of blue grass from the experiment station The apex was of ripened blue grass; the shades leading up to it, formed the base, beginning with the grass in its green state. The bluish tint that gives the grass its name could be seen. Various stages of hemp culture and harvest were shown also. These include the seed, the stalk intact, broken and dressed hemp. Practically 100 different places were represented in this Kentucky exhibit. There were in all 242 exhibitors. Fifty-two of these showed tobacco, 108 corn, 18 wheat, 6 oats, 8 seeds, 5 hemp, and the others miscellaneous.
The display of tobacco was conceded to be most instructive. Occupying an entire block—4,628 square feet of space—it covered more floor area than any other display in the 1,240 acres of the exposition devoted to a single product. There was shown in miniature or by pictures tobacco in every phase of its culture and manufacture. A box of plug tobacco 3 feet square, the largest ever made, was shown here. To show to good advantage the successive steps in the culture, harvesting, curing, and marketing of the tobacco, two platforms, each 31 feet long by 8 feet wide, were utilized. They were on opposite aisles of the space, running parallel with the 89-foot sides. On one platform were shown the plant beds and fields, on the other the curing barns and warehouses.
The State Pavilion was dedicated as the "New Kentucky Home." By a careful study of the visitors' register with the total attendance at the exposition it was found that 1 out of every 18 visitors to the fair visited the "New Kentucky Home." The registers showed for one day alone citizens from 35 States and 11 foreign countries. Its walls, hung with more than $20,000 worth of the paintings of Kentucky artists, the most important collection in the State Building; a score of glass cases holding one of the exhibits of fancy needlework and a display of relics, with a library of the works of Kentucky authors and an art-design piano with Kentucky-written music, the "New Kentucky Home" was most interesting. With four sides, and every side a front, its doors were always wide open and no restriction was placed upon visitors. Its 582 lights at night spoke an invitation to all.