During a visit to Chicago, my cousin, Raynelle Falkenau, pulled a handkerchief and a note out of a musty brown tattered envelope and spread them out on her dining room table. My great-grandfather, Victor Falkenau, when he was 17 years old, and his brothers, Louis, age 22, and Arthur, age 20, had mailed the handkerchief and note to their younger brother Harry as a souvenir from the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The Centennial, officially named the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufacturers, and Products of the Soil and Mine, was the first official World’s Fair held in the United States. The Falkenau boys had written, “best love to you from your brothers.” They sent the package across the Atlantic to Harry who was with his parents and younger sister, Nelly, in Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira, where their father and oldest brother were receiving treatment for consumption. The note, mentioning they had spent the day together, August 26, 1876, contained advice: “You had better get the handkerchief ironed; I suppose it will be crumpled when you get it.”
The Centennial Exposition celebrated America’s one-hundredth anniversary of independence. The fairgrounds sprawled over 285 acres of Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park. Between May and November 1876, nearly ten-million visitors from all over the world traveled to the event. Thirty seven countries and 24 states set up displays. Attendees could stroll through 200 buildings and ogle at 40,000 exhibits. The celebration aimed to demonstrate America’s prowess and progress in technology, science, and invention at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It signaled America’s emergence as a world leader.
The handkerchief and note displayed on the table filled in some gaps about Victor’s youth. I’ve found facts I’ve used in the book in letters he wrote as an adult in which he described his two years on Madeira in the first of the family’s three stays. I plucked scant material about his adolescence from the archives at the City College of the City of New York where Victor attended introductory school (high school) and nearly four years of college. Here, I paged through records of the courses he took and his grades. My grandmother’s handwritten chronology of her father’s life mentioned at college Victor played football, a nascent game in 1876, and rowed. The Book of Chicagoans informed me he took engineering classes at the Cooper Institute, now Cooper Union, in lower Manhattan.
The present and note to their brother allowed me to make some inferences in Victor’s story:
1. The brothers maintained a close relationship despite long separations while Victor, Harry and Nelly were in Funchal from 1868 to 1870, and Louis and Arthur studied at Cornell University. The family was apart again when the parents, Harry, and Nelly returned to Funchal from 1875 to 1877, while Victor attended City College, and his older brothers were in Ithaca.
2. Victor’s attendance at the fair with his brothers confirmed that he was living in New York, not Funchal. The other indication I have of Victor’s whereabouts came from the College of the City of New York Directory. This showed he lived at 27 East 74th Street during his freshman year in 1875 and his junior year in 1877.
3. The brothers didn’t expect their mother, Therese, or sister to iron the handkerchief. Therese would give it to the household help or a townswoman to eliminate the wrinkles.
4. The exhibition helped shape Victor’s future as a contractor, engineer, technology enthusiast, and visionary for social change.
Victor, Louis, and Arthur, along with thousands of fairgoers, trooped through Machinery Hall, where the brothers had purchased the handkerchief. This wood and glass space sitting on a huge foundation of stone was the second largest building on the grounds. It had to be enormous to contain the country’s most up-to-date machines and emerging technologies, including the Corliss Centennial Steam Engine. This gargantuan contraption, a 1,400 horsepower engine, was 45 feet tall and weighed 700 tons. One mile of overhead line belts ran 800 machines that combed wool, spun cotton, printed newspapers and wallpaper, sewed cloth, made shoes, sawed logs, and pumped water throughout the 13 acres of the fair.
Attendees glimpsed newfangled inventions such as Alexander Graham Bell’s Telephonic Telegraphic Receiver, a precursor to today’s telephone, a Type-Writer, and a mechanical calculator. The Falkenau boys and all those people attending the exhibition witnessed how America’s technologies were changing the country and the world.
For Victor, Louis, and Arthur, attending this event was historical and significant enough for them to buy a souvenir for Harry and send it across the ocean to him. They wandered through Machinery Hall looking at the future and imagining their role as builders and engineers in it.
Victory’s memories of the Centennial may have influenced how he prepared for and participated in the nation’s next World’s Fair, the Columbian Exposition. This took place in Chicago from May to October 1893. Over 28 million people from around the world thronged to the city. Victor, recognizing a business opportunity in the upcoming global event, commissioned in 1892 a renowned Chicago architectural firm Adler and Sullivan to design for him a three-story hotel with over 100 rooms that would house tourists streaming to the fair. Fifty of the rooms were “first class,” meaning they contained a private bath. As was the fashion, the hotel was complete with writing rooms. He called it the Victoria Hotel. He built it in a developing industrial and residential area, Chicago Heights, 32 miles south of Chicago. A network of trains connected the two sites so tourists could conveniently travel to the fair.
Adler and Sullivan awarded Victor in 1892 the contract to build the 10-story, 500-room Auditorium Annex, now the Congress Hotel, in downtown Chicago to welcome visitors eager to ride the Ferris wheel, and experience a movie projector, searchlights, an escalator, a gasoline-powered automobile, all-electric public buildings, and a monorail. A Corliss engine showed up at this exhibition too. This time it powered an electrical dynamo, which turned on thousands of incandescent bulbs and electrical appliances.
As an adolescent meandering around the Centennial Exhibition, a “world’s university” as organizers and visitors called the prior World’s Fairs, Victor could imagine a future filled with the wonders of technology and building. It left a mark that helped him play a role in the Industrial Revolution and the revitalization of Chicago after the fire. A creased blue and white scarf signified much more than the Falkenau boys anticipated nearly 150 years ago.
Wow, this was so interesting! You are going a great job of bringing his story to life! Can't wait to read more!
...a battle took place that the whites called "The Battle of the Little Bighorn." A railway would pass by near that battle site in about 10 year. Thanks for your piece!