Wallpapers have a long history of celebrating innovations in technology, especially when it involves mobility. Early steam-powered locomotives and paddle boats, automobiles and airplanes are frequent themes. Feats of civil engineering including the Brooklyn Bridge are also highlighted. Here is a wallpaper celebrating industrial progress. This paper is commemorating the Exposition Universelle of 1855, the...

This woven bookmark with President Theodore Roosevelt was made for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, an international exposition celebrating the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. The exposition also was known informally as the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 and was held from April 30th to December 1st. The bookmark was manufactured by the Anderson Brothers...

Hildreth Meière (1892-1961) was a distinguished Art Deco muralist, painter, mosaicist, and decorative artist often applauded for her defiance of normative standards against the professional success of females.  In 1936 she wrote, “It drives me wild to be spoken of as ‘one of the best women artists’. I’ve worked as an equal with men, and...

Founded in 1837, Tiffany & Co. by the late 19th century had become one of the leading manufacturers and retailers in America of fine jewelry and luxury items.  This small catalog lists items on display from Tiffany & Co.  in the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building at the Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.  The...

“Located on a larger tract of land in the transportation area, the aviation exhibit gives the visitor a realistic picture of a busy metropolitan airport. The dome-like rear portion holds  an invisibly suspended transport plane in full flight against a projected night sky.”[1] Published in the 1939 New York World’s Fair brochure, this description and...

The World’s Fair of 1964-65 was the third major international exhibition to be held in New York City. The Fair was held in Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the same site as the 1939-40 World’s Fair. The theme of the Fair was “Peace Through Understanding”, and it was dedicated to “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking...

In the early 1890s science teacher Emily Healey was working in her laboratory in Washington D.C. when she accidently dropped a certain uranium salt into some heavy oil. When she fired this compound onto a scrap of china, the effect was a brilliantly colored surface. Many experiments with the uranium followed and Emily determined that...

The 1939 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens was themed the ‘World of Tomorrow.’ Visitors came away with visions of radio-controlled highways, mechanical milking machines, and the 7-foot-tall Westinghouse robot. Many also left with Fair memorabilia, from the pins given away at the Futurama exhibition that read ‘I have seen the future,’ to...