The Plaster Lighting Catcher of the 1893 World’s Fair: Carl Rohl-Smith’s Benjamin Franklin statue (Part 1)

“The scientists says that electricity is life. Then Jackson Park is of a truth a living thing.” — H. D. Northrop, The World's Fair as Seen in One Hundred Days (1893) A crowd of fans sporting blue and red poured out of the new Franklin Field in Philadelphia on the first day of October in 1895, a warm and sunny start to the college football season. Elated with the Quaker’s 40–0 victory over the visiting team from Swarthmore College, [...]

Out Like a Lamb

March came in like a lion, so it should go out like a lamb, right? "Mary & Her Lamb" [Image from the Keystone-Mast Collection, UC Riverside, California Museum of Photography.] Choosing a lion from among the many prominent felines present at the 1893 World’s fair was quite easy for our post back on March 1. Finding a lamb for this accompanying end-of-the-month post has been a much more challenging hunt! We present here a photograph of the sculpture [...]

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