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Architecture

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 exhibition. 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 relied exclusively on having one or a few large buildings.

The Architecture of the Exhibition mainly consisted of two ways of building, the traditional masonry monuments and building of structural framework of Iron and Steel.

Main Building

A temporary structure, the Main Building was the largest building in the world by area, enclosing 21.5 acres (8.7 ha).^[5] It measured 464 ft in width and 1880 ft in length.

It was constructed using prefabricated parts, with a wood and iron frame resting on a substructure of 672 stone piers, the wrought iron roof trusses were supported by the columns of the superstructure.

The building took eighteen months to complete and costed $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 street cars. The North side related the main building to the Art Gallery and the west side served as a passage way to the Machinery and Agricultural Halls.

In the Main Building, Columns were placed at a uniform distance of 24 feet. The entire structure consisted of 672 columns, the shortest column 23ft in length and the longest 125 ft in length. The flooring of the building was made of wooden planks that rested directly on the ground without any space underneath it. 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 introduced within the structure, over the central aisles. The corridors of the building were separated by fountains, that were aesthetic and also served the purpose of cooling.

The structure of the building, the central avenue was a series of parallel sheds that were 120 ft (37 m) wide, 1,832 ft (558 m) long, and 75 ft (23 m) high. It was the longest nave ever introduced into an exhibition building. On either sides of the nave, were avenues of 100 feet in width and 1832 feet in length. Aisles of 48ft wide were between the nave and the side avenues, and smaller aisles of 24ft in width were on the outer sides of the building.

The exterior of the building consisted of 4 towers of 75 feet in height that stood at each of the building's corners. These towers served as small balconies or galleries of observation at different heights.

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 Building dealt with mining, metallurgy, manufacturing, education and science.^[9] Offices for foreign commissioners were placed along the sides of the building, in the side aisles, in proximity to the products exhibited. The walkways leading to the exit doors were 10 feet in width.

After the Exposition, the building was turned into a permanent building for the International Exhibition. During the auction held on December 1, 1876 the building was bought for $250,000. It quickly ran into financial difficulty but continued to remain open through 1879, before being finally demolished in 1881.

Exhibition

The Exhibition had an elaborate system of signage to orient the visitors in the vast and crowded landscape. A Number and Color coded banner system was used, the buildings were divided into five groups, blue was used for the centennial commission buildings, red for buildings of the federal government and American states. White for buildings of foreign nations. Yellow for restaurants and places of entertainment, Green for miscellaneous buildings. The number in the flag denoted the quarter in the fairground.