Worlds fair new orleans 1884

Tour Description


Take an imaginative journey through a nineteenth-century World’s Fair. Only the beauty of the grounds exists today, for expositions were fleeting spectacles. Yet, photographic "ghost" images recall a time when the world’s products, accomplishments, and dreams were spread before eager travelers to New Orleans.


Locations for Tour


Memories of the 1884 Cotton Centennial Exposition

Imagine yourself in a mule-drawn streetcar or private carriage being transported to Exposition grounds. Hear the hooves on a shell road constructed for the occasion. You arrive at this Main Entrance. Its architecture reflects that of the gigantic…



Alley of Oaks and the 1884 Cotton Centennial Exposition

Continue on the path in the direction you have been traveling, along the Olmsted lagoon. Soon you arrive at one end of the Foucher alley of oaks, planted in the eighteenth century. Scores of exposition visitors remarked on their beauty and noted the…



Financial Failings of the 1884 Cotton Centennial Exposition

Stroll past the Newman bandstand to one last imaginative view of the vastness of the Main Building with the Me

So-Called Dollar Discussions


Quote from Pioneer on April 14, 2020, 5:56 pm

The 1884-1885 World Cotton Centennial (aka World’s Industrial & Cotton Centennial Exposition) was a World’s Fair held in New Orleans, Louisiana between Dec 1884 and June 1885.The purpose of the fair was to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the first shipment of cotton from the US to England (in 1784-1785) when New Orleans was a Spanish port.France ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1763 and reclaimed it in 1800 and sold it to the US in 1803. The fair advertised the US cotton industry to encourage world wide use of cotton.President Chester Arthur opened the fair via telegraph on December 16, 1884.

The fair was held at a time in US history when people had more disposable income and traveled more (via the railroad system) for vacations to other US cities and to national parks.The original fair site is now Audubon Park/Zoo/Golf Course in New Orleans, between St Charles street and the Mississippi River, a former plantation purchased by the city of New Orleans in 1871 after the Civil War.Many Southern states participated and erected their own buildings. The main expo building was the largest at the time,


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From December 16, 1884 until June 1, 1885, the spectacular World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition covered these grounds with gigantic wooden structures and broad, lighted paths. Too little is known of the event, even by New Orleanians, for later, grander expositions dwarfed its accomplishments. Yet, it is worth another visit, so come and re-imagine it today fanned by ghostly images from the past.

Disembark at the entrance to Audubon Park and walk through the classic Maurice Stern gates. Enter the paradise that the park-design firm of Frederick Law Olmsted created after the 1884 World's Fair. The exposition had only partially developed the grounds. The Olmsteds drew the master plan for the oasis around you. Olmsted's son Charles designed this pair of entrances that Maurice Stern's wife financed in the 1920s to honor the philanthropist.

This approximately 150-acre section of Audubon Park (from St. Charles Avenue to Magazine Street) reflects the Olmsted philosophy for public parks: quiet natural beauty designed to offer city dwellers an escape from the artificiality of city life. Now, an 18-hole public golf course occupies most of this se


It does not take long for today’s visitors to one of the Smithsonian Institution’s nineteen museums to find themselves engulfed within the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex.  The flood of world’s fairs in the late nineteenth century played a central role in placing the Smithsonian en route to that unparalleled distinction.  The New Orleans World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, open from December 1884, until June 1885, was central to the Smithsonian’s development. Secretary of the Smithsonian Spencer Baird and his right hand man, Assistant Director of the U.S. National Museum G. Brown Goode, were eager to use the New Orleans fair to draw attention to their expanding institution and fill in the exhibit space of their new building on the National Mall.



The fulsome ambitions for the Smithsonian’s display comprised “a complete representation of all the species of fishes known in North America” and “all the mammals north of the Isthmus of Panama” coupled with a sizeable display of American birdlife and minerology.  Financial and logistical restraints soon made such a comprehensive display unrealistic.  Participation in the New Orleans exposition