Historic Philadelphia

science, agriculture, and such. A twenty-nineyear-old
inventor was honored: Alexander
Graham Bell, who demonstrated something
he called an Electric Telephone and Multiple
Telegraph. The major anecdote about the
Centennial tells how Emperor Dom Pedro II
of Brazil made the new invention famous
by holding it to his ear and then exclaiming,
“My God! It talks!” Like so many enjoyable
oft-told tales from Philadelphia’s past, it
never happened.
The Centennial guidebook listed 7,620
rooms in the city’s hotels of fifty rooms or more.
Two hotels, of 1,000 and 500 rooms, were built
across from the main entrance to the grounds.
Highest room rate was $5. Most included four
meals a day: breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper.
On the eve of the centennial Fourth of July,
crowds converged on Independence Hall. In
front of the Continental Hotel on Chestnut
Street at Ninth was an arch illuminated by gas
jets, with the names of the thirteen original
states in illuminated transparencies and the
motto, “Welcome to All Nations.”
The July Fourth celebration started with the
city’s bells ringing at sunrise. “Exercises” were
set for 10 o’clock in Independence Square.
The inevitable long-winded speechmakers
faced an invited crowd of fifty thousand
ticket-holders, jammed together in typical
Philadelphia July heat. A big parade followed,
led by Governor John F. Hartranft and his
aides on horseback. In the evening there were
fireworks displays at Independence Square, in
Fairmount Park for the Exhibition visitors,
and in Norris Square.
More than 9.7 million times, visitors from
all over the country and the world passed
through the entrance turnstiles of the
Exhibition during its 159 days. We don’t know
how many individuals came through more
than once. We do know that the Centennial
security staff handled 504 lost children, provided
free medical treatment for 6,463 visitors
(four died), and arrested one attendee for
fornication. (Shouldn’t there have been two?)
✧
Above: After passage of the federal Civil
Rights Act of 1875, African Americans
moved more into the mainstream, and the
Italian sculpture The Freed Slave drew
much attention at the Centennial.
Philadelphia’s response to the new law
wasn’t all positive. Louisa Drew forced a
black husband and wife out of the ticket line
at her Arch Street Theatre. The Bingham
House hotel, Eleventh and Market Streets,
refused to provide a room to a black cleric
from Virginia who came here for a religious
meeting. The large funeral procession of
prominent black caterer Henry Jones, led by
his widow and five children, was turned
away at the gate of Mount Moriah
Cemetery when the manager, apparently
surprised by the race of the mourners,
mysteriously couldn’t find any record of
ownership of the burial plot. All three of
those slighted parties brought legal suits and
won. And one of the Jones daughters
married John D. Lewis, the city’s first black
civil rights lawyer, who represented the
family in their suit.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
Left: The 1876 Centennial Exhibition
grounds, looking toward Center City from a
point above George’s Hill. The Fairmount
Park site covered 285 acres.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER IV
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