Philadelphia played a defining role in the history of world fairs by hosting the Centennial Exposition, the first official world’s fair in the United States, writes Heidi Mitchell for The Wall Street Journal.
Held in 1876 in Fairmount Park to celebrate the nation’s 100th anniversary, the exposition introduced millions of visitors to emerging technologies and helped establish America as an industrial power on the world stage.
Spread across 450 acres and housed in massive exhibition halls that exceeded anything visitors had seen before, the fair was built to overwhelm, and it did just that…