What year is it?
Something for everyone as Hearthside on Great Road holds third annual event
The 1904 World’s Fair came to life in Lincoln on Sunday thanks to Hearthside on Great Road’s event.
LINCOLN — The third annual 1904 World’s Fair at Hearthside on Great Road drew a steady stream of visitors looking to recall the great fair of St. Louis on Sunday. The event is a key fundraiser for the circa-1810 mansion on historic Great Road and has been growing in popularity each year.
Visitors not only got the chance to tour the historic property at 677 Great Road and its collection of artifacts from the fair and Rhode Island’s connections to it, but also to enjoy drumming and singing performances by the Eastern Medicine Singers Native performance group, stage events, a Chinese Dragon performance by students from Bryant University’s Confucius Institute, belly dancing by the Beledi Dance Troupe, the Generations Barbershop Quartet, a brass band, antique cars, as well as demonstrations of activities put on at the 1904 World’s Fair and how some of its unique features were made.
There were also art displays, craft booths and foods made popular at the Fair such as ice cream cones, hot dogs and Dr. Pepper.
The Fair recreation included a midway with old-time games and feats of strength like ringing bell on the high striker, as T.J. Cahill of Woonsocket did repeatedly while working as a barker in the area.
The fundraising festival drew Ron Ayers and Harry Cohoon, neighbors from Prospect Street in Woonsocket, and Cohoon recalled his own time growing up in the St. Louis area, not far from where the fair was held in Forest Park.
All of the World Fair’s exhibits and created features were dismantled and removed from the park after it ended and Cohoon said there is only speculation today that the axle of the great Observation Wheel, a towering ride of about 250 feet to the top, may have been left behind somewhere in the park.
“One ride could seat 1,200 riders and it took 15 minutes to go around,” Cohoon said. Unlike a carnival ride Ferris wheel of today
– a wheel that moves quickly to give its riders the thrill of rising and falling – the Observation Wheel, powered by a steam engine, was intended to give the rider a slow look at the city around them, he said. “It was on the western edge of the city and you could look out to the north, the south and the east,” he said. Each of its enclosed cars could carry 60 people as passengers, he added.
Hearthside has its own connection to the St. Louis World’s Fair having served as the model for the Rhode Island Pavilion at the exhibition.
The historic home has a collection related to that role including assorted documents, mementos and even a model of the Observation Wheel.
Cohoon said there were other exhibitions that have gained fame over the years but none have topped St. Louis. “The St. Louis World’s Fair was the biggest and best and there has never been a better one either before or since,” he said. “Nothing could ever surpass it.”
In addition to the displays of games and activities one would have found at the Fair such as exhibits honoring Native American culture, brass bands, carnival shows and belly dancing, Heartside’s tribute also offered a look at how the massive ornamental displays in St. Louis were created.
Jason Loik was found working a booth showing how artists relied on staff, a type of plaster used to mold or sculpt creative figures and designs, when adding artistic features to Fair’s structures and highlight attractions.
“It is a mix of plaster, concrete, glycerin and dextrose that was applied to burlap structural elements to create architectural details or objects like Carousel horses,” he said. The material could also be poured in to molds for quick production of specific details for structures that were erected in just weeks, he explained.
“They had 100 sculptures working to produced 1,000 sculptures,” Loik explained. All of that was done for a World’s Fair lasting just seven months before it closed for all time.
Jenna Alessandro of Pawtucket, working as the volunteer stage manager for Hearthside’s Fair and also as a Suffragette character campaigning for women’s voting rights, said the third edition of the 1904 World’s Fair may have been the most successful yet.
“This is going really well and I think we’ve had the most people attend that we’ve had at any of our events,” she said.