In the first years of the 1920s, the mayor of Philadelphia was the city’s biggest proponent of having a Sesquicentennial to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
“W. Freeland Kendrick was a real publicity hound. He understood the value of media. He was much more of a modern politician than many of his contemporaries. He knew that hosting a successful World’s Fair would put Philadelphia on the world map, that all cameras would be tuned to Philadelphia, and they would be watching him,” said Thomas Keels, author of Sesqui: Greed, Graft and the Forgotten World’s Fair of 1926.
“He received a number of dignitaries from around the world — presidents, foreign leaders, royalty and diplomats. He was politically ambitious as well. He saw the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg as his next step, so he knew that hosting a successful World’s Fair would enhance his political future immensely,” Keels said.
Originally, there was a great deal of consensus about having a World’s Fair. And Philadelphia had successfully hosted the nation’s 100th birthday party in 1876, which saw 12 million people — including nearly 10 million paying customers — show up to celebrate the nation, its people and its industrious spirit.
“Back in 1916, John Wanamaker — the grand old man of Philadelphia, department store magnate, etc. — was the first one to suggest Philadelphia host a second World’s Fair,” Keels said, “and he was really its guiding light until he died in 1922.”
“At that point, things sort of fell apart. We had had World War I by that point. The country was still mired in a postwar recession. Unemployment was high, business conditions were depressed,” said Keels, who added that the prosperity of the decade, why we remember it as “The Roaring Twenties,” didn’t start until 1924.
There was also concern, in this age of “boss politics,” that the process was being corrupted by the influence of U.S. Rep. Congressman William S. Vare.
“Vare basically owned everybody in city government,” said Keels, and that included the mayor. “So [he] was calling the shots through Kendrick. Kendrick was moving the World’s Fair from the new Fairmount Park, the city’s newest civic improvement, down to the swamps of South Philadelphia because that was his home, [his] congressional district and where all of his constituents lived,” Keels said. “So, many Philadelphians began to separate themselves from the fair because they thought that it was becoming a tool of boss politics, that Vare was only in it to get as much out of it as he could.”
Shriners’ debacle
Kendrick was a former supreme potentate of the Shriners, and conceived the idea of the Shriners Hospital, which opened in 1926. One of Kendrick’s most unfortunate decisions was to pair a pre-Sesquicentennial visit by the nation’s Shriners to their national convention, even though many parts of the fairgrounds were incomplete.
“So we do have something very positive to thank Freeland Kendrick for, but he was realizing, as the fair was getting closer and closer, that it was going to be a very hard sell,” Keels said.
“It was just not pulling together. [The] Shriners were going to celebrate their annual convention on May 31st, Memorial Day, so he arranged to have them hold their convention in Philadelphia,” Keels said.
“They would be the guests of honor for the opening of the Sesquicentennial. He knew they would bring lots of pageantry. He would have at least 200,000 [visitors] from the Shriners alone, so there would be a crowd for that, and that that might detract from any of the unfinished business, the fact that most of the buildings were still under construction, nothing was really open, none of the displays had been mounted,” Keels said.
After three days, the Shriners went home with bad impressions and told people across the country that the event was a flop and not to bother coming for it.
“And so the Sesqui stumbled coming out of the gate. It never really recovered from that first PR nightmare,” Keels said.
Presidential snub
Like the 1876 Centennial, the President, now Calvin Coolidge, was invited to attend and participate in the opening and closing ceremonies. Coolidge, however, had his own agenda, Keels said. His presidential predecessor was Warren G. Harding, whose term was rocked by corruption, including the Teapot Dome scandal.
“So Coolidge was trying to show that he was a ‘straighten up and fly right’ president,” Keels said. “He did not really want to be associated with the Sesqui because he, like a lot of Philadelphians, saw it as a pet project of Boss Vare.”
“Coolidge showed up on Monday, July 5th. He wouldn’t go there for July 4th because that was a Sunday and you had lots of Philadelphians [and] Americans who were furious that the fair was opening on the Sabbath. And so he showed up with Mrs. Coolidge for three or four hours. He basically took a whirlwind tour of the Sesquicentennial, gave a talk, then got in a motor car and zipped over to Camden to celebrate the opening of the Delaware River Bridge, what we call the Ben Franklin Bridge. He really tried to keep arm’s length between him and what he saw as a tainted project,” Keels said.
Keels added that many Republicans in Congress felt the same way, and held back on the expected financial support.
“The fair planners were expecting to get $20 million,” Keels said. “From Congress, they got about $3 million, which was a drop in the bucket even back then, and it was not voted through until March of 1926, less than three months before the fair opened.”
The exhibition opened with a heavy downpour of rain; Within the first hour, less than 250 had entered the gates of the fairgrounds. The first, though, at 9 a.m., was symbolic — Jacob J. Henderson told newspapers he had been to the Centennial with his parents, and did not want to miss the opening day of the Sesquicentennial.
The Rainbow City
The fairgrounds were called the Rainbow City, because many buildings were stucco, tinted in pastel hues and lit with colored lights at night.
At the Sesquicentennial entrance was a huge replica of the Liberty Bell (without a crack), located at Oregon Plaza. The 80-foot, 40-ton Liberty Bell was studded with 26,000 15-watt light bulbs. The rim of the bell stood 20 feet above Broad Street, allowing cars and people to pass underneath. Two 70-foot support towers decorated with carved garland and topped by stone eagles supported the structure. After the fair, the bell’s components were sold for a combined $60, and the structure was demolished in 1927.
A giant stadium was built on South Broad Street. It hosted a speech by President Coolidge, and other events for the fair (including the first Gene Tunney-Jack Dempsey fight for the heavyweight boxing championship). It had more than 100,000 seats. Afterwards, it was called Municipal Stadium and was home for many years to the Army-Navy college football games. Later, it was renamed JFK Stadium in honor of the slain president. It featured performances by the Rolling Stones and other top acts, and hosted Live Aid in 1985. It was demolished in 1992.
During its run, the fair drew a much smaller crowd than anticipated (about 5 million people, half of the 1876 Centennial). And it rained — a lot — on 107 of its 184 days.
Variety dubbed it “America’s Greatest Flop” with millions of dollars lost by August 1926. The exposition ended up unable to cover its debts and was placed into receivership in 1927, at which point its assets were sold at auction.
Avi Wolfman-Arent wrote about the 1926 World’s Fair as part of his Headlines of Yore series.
