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The St. Louis Explorer. [Verso:] World’s Fair Pathfinder St. Louis 1904.

St. Louis, Missouri: Greeley Printer of St. Louis, [1904]. Fan on wooden handle, 14” x 9.5” (including handle), with two lithographic maps (one on each side), one black and white the other in color, 9” x 9.5”. CONDITION: Good, a few old tape repairs to recto and verso, creasing, a few dings to margins of map, light dampstaining to recto, but no losses to the maps.

A rare and attractive fan map printed for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, showing St. Louis on one side and the grounds of the World’s Fair on the other.

The map on the recto of this fan, copyrighted 1902, shows the city of St. Louis, with the Mississippi River at the lower (eastern) border and Forest Park and the fairgrounds at the (western) upper border. The map extends south to Bates Street on the left, and north Calvary Cemetery on the right. The fairgrounds and Union Station are colored red, and the city’s parks are green. The verso map, copyrighted 1904, is devoted exclusively to the fairgrounds, with the Grand Basin, the Fine Arts building, and the Terrace of the States in the center. This map extends from Oakland Ave at the upper edge to Lindell Bv. at the lower right. The Baseball Park, just outside the fairgrounds in Forest Park, is on the left side, and on the right are the livestock, horticulture, and agriculture areas; the Philippines area—a major feature of the fair, following the United States’s annexation of the Philippines’ in 1902, which included over a thousand Filipinos—lies just past the agriculture building. The nursery, physical culture, and green house areas are indicated beyond the map’s right margin. Both maps are bordered in gold.

The maps were drawn by Hjalmar A. H. d’Ailly, who, in the 1880s, helped compile and draw a series of eighty-nine maps, based on an extensive survey of the Mississippi River between Cairo, Illinois and Minneapolis Minnesota, for the Mississippi River Commision. Greeley Printery was active in St. Louis during the early decades of twentieth century.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also called the St. Louis World’s Fair, was intended to celebrate the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Although it did not ultimately open until 1904, it was the largest world’s fair yet, with exhibits from nearly all of the states, as well as some fifty foreign countries. Besides the Philippines exhibition, the fair’s most significant attractions included the first exhibit of private cars (Ford began producing the Model T just four years later); a speech by the young Helen Keller; an early version of the fax machine; and even the ice cream cone.

A scarce and appealing cartifact of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

Item #8048

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