Seattle Builds a World's Fair on the University's Front Lawn
A month before the gates open, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition is nearly finished — and when it closes, seven buildings and a $300,000 auditorium stay behind for the University of Washington.
The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition at Seattle, occupying 250 acres of the campus of the University of Washington, will result in benefits for Washington's seat of learning that the University could not have hoped to secure in many years had not the great fair of 1909 been planned. So the exposition that will exploit Alaska, Hawaii and the Philippines and emphasize the importance of the growing trade with the Orient will leave, after its gates have closed, a large number of permanent structures to constantly remind the people of the Northwest of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and the place it will occupy in the history of the Pacific — the medium through which one-half of the world was brought in such close touch with the other and a tremendous impetus to commercial intercourse given.
Seven buildings on the exposition grounds will be left for use of the University, and the auditorium, one of the finest of this group, cost the State of Washington more than $300,000. While the exposition is in progress this building will be used for conventions, congresses and conferences, and its hundreds of seats were in place and the building turned over to the exposition management three months before the opening date of the fair.
Seattle, May 4. — One month before the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition opens the buildings are practically ready. Where finishing work is done the task of placing exhibits is going on, so that May 15 will see the show almost ready to open. Henry E. Dosch, director of exhibits, states that his department would have everything in readiness before June 1. A strong program has been arranged for the opening day and the succeeding days of the first week. Children's day will be the Saturday following the opening.
“Seven buildings on the exposition grounds will be left for use of the University, and the auditorium, one of the finest of this group, cost the State of Washington more than $300,000.”
Seattle's 1909 world's fair was the region's great coming-out party, and it was pitched to Newport readers as a permanent gift to the state university — the sales job every city still runs when it hosts an Olympics or a world's fair. The fairgrounds became today's UW campus, though nearly every building the state paid for is gone; only the ground and the ambition survived.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.