The tower beside the dome

The tower at the left has a tall window, bands of small circles and an elaborate crest held between corner pinnacles. A second tower repeats the pattern farther along the building. Across the gap, a pale dome rises behind a low roof. Much of the sky has washed out, but enough architecture survives to place the scene.

These are the Main Exhibition Building and Memorial Hall, the Art Gallery, at the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. The Library of Congress’s Flickr description still calls the card [Unidentified buildings, likely part of an expo] and gives it a broad date of [between 1860 and 1928].

Following the tower

The Free Library of Philadelphia holds a view called Main Building--northwest, credited to the Centennial Photographic Co. Its nearest tower has the same tall gridded window, a row of roundels above it, another band below, and the ornate crest between pinnacled corners. The long glazed facade continues behind it toward another tower of the same type.

The clearer print lets us see how the crest sits above the window and how the rows of circles frame it. Even in the smaller, hazier LOC view, those features keep the same relationship.

A second building across the avenue

The dome supplies a second test. In the Free Library’s wider view of the Main Building, Memorial Hall appears at the far right. Its broad roofline, domed drum, stepped cornices and sculpture along the roof agree with the pale building in the stereograph. Another photograph, taken from a Main Building tower, shows the Art Gallery from above.

The 1876 grounds plan places the Main Exhibition Building and the Art Gallery on opposite sides of the Avenue of the Republic, matching the grouping in the photographs.

The exhibition itself ran from May 10 to November 10, 1876, celebrating the country’s centennial with displays of art, industry and invention. Here we see two of its principal buildings from outside, with smaller structures partly blocking the view.

A name already circulating

A Wikimedia Commons copy of this exact LOC image already names the Main Exhibition Building and Memorial Hall, and deserves credit for that earlier attribution. It reproduces the LOC card; the Free Library’s photographs let us check the names against other exposures, where the tower and dome can be seen from different angles.

Dating the card

Circa 1876 is our working date for the card, although the photograph could have been made outside the months when the fair was open. The Free Library dates its wider view to March 31, 1876, with work still underway between the halls. If we can identify those intervening buildings, their construction state may help establish whether our scene came before or after that view.

Fine detail above Memorial Hall’s dome is almost lost against the pale sky. The difficulty of seeing its statue offers little help with dating: a feature washed out in this print may still have been there when the photograph was taken.

The roofs in the foreground

The broad low building in front of Memorial Hall is the next useful question. The plan and the apparent size of its footprint make the Carriage Annex a plausible candidate. A captioned tower view identifies that annex and shows a roof crowded with small raised vents. We cannot yet make out a matching pattern in the LOC card. The Photographic Art Building is another possibility; the research notes set out the competing positions on the plan.

A ground-level photograph from this side could help distinguish those buildings by their roof vents, gables and wall bays. An independently captioned print of the same exposure might also supply a photographer, publisher or date. The Centennial Photographic Co.’s credit belongs to the comparison photographs; the maker of our unmarked card is still unknown.

If you know of a ground-level photograph or another print of this exposure, send its source and reference. Either could help identify the smaller building or give us a date for the photograph.

Sources and credit

• Original: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, item 2023634000, digital resource LC-DIG-stereo-1s46611, and official Flickr description. Photographer and publisher unrecorded. The Library states “No known restrictions on publication.”
• Independent photographs: Free Library of Philadelphia, Centennial Photographic Co., Main Building--northwest, c021020; Main Building, from n.e., c020141, dated March 31, 1876; Art Gallery from a Main Building tower; and Carriage Annex tower view.
• Plan: Centennial Guide Book Company, Plan of the Grounds and Buildings of the Centennial Exhibition, 1876, c190004, Free Library of Philadelphia.
• Prior attribution: Wikimedia Commons file page. Its copy of the LOC image was already named when this investigation checked it.