A Tour of the Palace of Agriculture
The Palace of Agriculture had a twenty three acre roof. The building measured 546 feet wide and 1,660 feet long. Inside the palace were 148 blocks. Many blocks housed multiple exhibits. There were many buildings built within the palace as part of individual exhibits. Some exhibits were complete with roofs of their own while others were walls only. Building limit were set during construction, but exhibitors were allowed great flexibility. These restrictions were adhered to more with the state exhibits than they were for foreign nation exhibits. The fixtures for each display were generally shipped in and workers hired by the company, country, or state came to assemble each display. Some plans even included ripping up the floor so that the display could start below ground level. Others extended up among the rafters or into skylights.
Here is the floor plan for the Palace of Agriculture. The right end of this graphic was to the north. This Palace would have been running parallel to the street that is today called Skinker Boulevard.
Here's how to tour the Agriculture Palace
We have set this page up so that visitors tour the Palace of Agriculture as one might have in 1904. Just go the the floor plan below and click on the block that you would like to visit. This is a work in progress and we will be adding information as we find it. Jackson's Famous Photographs of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition tells that there were 10,000 exhibitors in the Agricultural Palace. Therefore, it is doubtful that we will ever identify them all. However, at this point, you may visit some blocks. If you click on a block that we have identified, you will be taken to that page. If nothing happens, that means that either we have not yet identified what was in that block or we know, but have little or no information about it.
This is the south half of the Palace. Move your mouse over the page and click to see what was there.
This is the north half of the Palace. Quite a few of the exhibits have web pages. Move your mouse over the diagram below to see what was where.
Below is a table listing many of the exhibits that can be visited above. Maybe you will fine it easier to just click on these links if you don't really care exactly where the exhibit was in the Palace of Agriculture.
Have fun. Remember, it took many visitors more than a day to tour the Palace in 1904 because it was so large and there was so much to see.
This page was created and is maintained by Lyndon Irwin.