Main Exhibition Hall

The Main Exhibition Hall was the largest structure at the Centennial and the largest building anywhere in the world at the time. The glass and steel frame was over 1880 feet long (officially 1876), and covered more than 20 acres, or six football fields, with well over eleven miles of walkways. The building was functional but also elegant. Walt Whitman approved, "looking up a long while at the grand high roof with its graceful and multitudinous work of iron rods, angles, gray colors, plays of light and shade, receding into dim outlines."

It was in the Main Exhibition Building that 13,720 exhibitors from over 37 countries displayed their manufactures, mostly household goods such as furniture, clothing, tools, clocks, ceramics, glassware, musical instruments, but also scientific and medical apparatus. A 22-year-old George Eastman, visiting from Rochester, wrote to his mother:

I intend to traverse every aisle, I have accomplished this in machinery hall & have got about half through the Main Bldg... The ingenuity that exhibitors have displayed in arranging such things as tacks candles soap hardware needles thread pipe & all such apparently uninteresting articles is something marvelous -- and they command the attention of the observer even against his will.

Visitors to the Main Exhibition Building were entertained by concerts held at the central Music Pavilion within the great structure. There were also piano and organ recitals. The Centennial Organ by Hook and Hastings of Boston performed three times daily.

As large as the Main Exhibition Building was, not all of the exhibits fit. A Carriage Exhibit just north of the hall held exhibits of horse-drawn vehicles, and many manufactures exhibited independently in smaller buildings throughout the fairgrounds.

© 2001 Free Library of Philadelphia