Bullet-Probing Kits and Dancing Xylophonists!! Libraries to Present Celebrated and Arcane Aspects of Pan-Am

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Buffalonians can spend the summer strolling through a forest of historical photographs, musical presentations, official documents and ephemera ranging from political cartoons about anarchists to discussions of scientific marvels.

"Illuminations: Revisiting Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition" is a summer series of collaborative on-site and on-line exhibitions produced by eight of the University at Buffalo Libraries and Special Collections. It will illustrate the cultural and historical underpinnings of Buffalo's 1901 Pan-American Exposition, a Gilded-Age international celebration of technology and industry that heralded the dawn of the 20th century.

The exhibitions will open with a gala public reception July 12 in the Special Collections and University Archives Reading Room, 420 Capen Hall on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

Each library will offer on-site and on-line exhibitions focused on its own area of expertise. Walking tours of the exhibitions will be conducted. For exhibition times, go to http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/hours//.

Exhibition visitors will be able to learn about many aspects of the Pan-Am, from its music and architecture to the food served in its dozens of restaurants. Indian mounds and the treatment of immigrants and minorities in 1901 will compete with the controversy surrounding the medical treatment accorded President William McKinley after he was wounded fatally during his visit.

The exhibitions will be tied to a gala, a program of symposia, lectures, public demonstrations, period concerts and on-line presentations developed along with UB academic departments and faculty members, the Buffalo and Erie County Library, the Niagara County Libraries and other cultural institutions. Graduate students in the UB School of Information Studies provided assistance to the libraries.

Lockwood Memorial Library (North Campus) will mount exhibitions on varying themes. One will look at the "melting pot" ideal of 1901 America and the reaction of Buffalo's foreign populations to Pan-Am depictions their homelands and to the entire enterprise of defining ethnic characteristics in the exposition milieu.

Librarians Jean Dickson and Susana Trejada, who are supervising the construction of the exhibit, note that German Americans, for instance, were proud of the "Alt-Nurnberg," a midway attraction complete with reproductions of medieval and renaissance buildings, stereopticon slides of famous German paintings and an excellent concert band, as well as good imported German beer, pastries and other German delicacies. German Americans were enthusiastically involved in choral singing, and a huge convention called a Saengerfest was held during the Pan-Am. Several successful German American manufacturers and merchants were involved in promoting their soaps, beer and pretzels.

Italians and Italian Americans in Buffalo likewise were proud of the beautiful "Venice in America" pavilion on the midway that featured gondola rides on the canals and lake, and the music of mandolins and guitars. Many musicians were hired in Italy, but a young Buffalo girl named Nina Morgana who sang "Santa Lucia" and other Italian songs, was discovered by Enrico Caruso, and later sang at the Metropolitan Opera. Few Italians could afford to go to the Pan-Am, because -- as a new immigrant group -- most of them worked in the lowest-paid jobs.

Neither Poland nor Polish Americans was represented by a pavilion because Poland had not had its own government for more than 100 year and was ruled then by Germany, Austria and Russia, which provoked much Polish emigration to the U.S.

Like the Italians, Poles lived in very crowded conditions and worked very long hours for low pay, and often could not afford to keep their children in school. Like the Germans, Poles were very involved in choral singing, and also held a major convention during the Pan-Am. A major blow to the Polish community was the assassination, in part because assassin Leon Czolgosz, a Czech-American born in Detroit, was linked in the public mind with the Polish community. The carefully planned Polish Day at the Pan-Am was cancelled by the Poles themselves after the shooting of President McKinley.

Lockwood Library also will present an exhibition titled "Food, Drink and Eating at the Pan-American Exposition: Images, Memories, and Analysis," curated by librarian Charles D'Aniello.

He notes that food and drink, served elegantly or simply, were abundant and diverse at the exposition. Visitors enjoyed turn-of-the-century culinary favorites, as well as foods from distant lands.

"Generous samples were freely available at exhibits and restaurants," he says, "and food concessions were sited throughout the grounds -- notably the beautiful German Alt Nurnberg on the midway and large restaurants on either side of the Sunken Gardens."

Roswell Park, medical director of the Pan-Am, noted in the Buffalo Medical Journal (December 1901) that by the end of July 1901, there were 36 restaurants and eating places, 14 kitchens in concessions and villages, and 57 soft-drink stands.

"Digestive ailments" were the most common health complaint among visitors, followed by toothaches.

"There was some labor unrest among cooks and waiters, who were not always pleased with their lot," D'Aniello says, "and dining at the exposition was not cheap, so many visitors brought food with them to save money. Thirsty visitors could buy a beer or two or three."

Among food exhibitors were companies (many still commercial giants today) associated with baked goods, canning, cereals, chocolate, coffee, condiments, diary products, flour, meatpacking and spring water.

D'Aniello says the purity of foodstuffs received much attention, not only as an operational concern of the exposition's managers, but as an exhibition topic. Housewives learned how science, technology and organization could enhance family meals and save money and could take cooking lessons in the exposition's much-touted electrical kitchen.

A third Lockwood Library exhibition will focus on the Pan-Am's exhibition of works of more than 650 American artists, as well as artists from Canada and Latin America. It also will assess the exposition's grounds and those who contributed to the overall mis en scene.

The University Archives, Special Collections and Poetry Collection (Capen Hall, North Campus) will present an exhibition titled, "Land, Lust and Murder: An Expose of Historic Deeds Done Circa 1901." It will feature the original proposal for the Pan-Am, describing plans for the exposition and requesting state financial assistance, and material from the archive's Fenton Park Collection. Park was a president of the New York State Board of realtors whose courtship correspondence spanned the period of the Pan-Am Exposition. Among his papers are descriptions of the exhibits and ephemera from his visits, listings for lodging around the Pan-Am grounds and rare street maps of the city during this period.

U.S. Geological Maps from the Maps Collection will show the extensive network of paved streets in Buffalo at the time. It was one of the first cities in the country to have them, a rarity since the era of the automobile had not yet begun.

The exhibition also will feature photographs of Native Americans by noted photographer Edward S. Curtis, and will look at contributions by Native Americans to the Pan-Am. These include those of the Seneca Nation laborers who helped build it, the exposition's anthropologically correct Indian Mound exhibition and the Indian Congress showcase that exploited commonly held racial stereotypes about Native Americans and made famed Apache Geronimo something of a sideshow attraction.

The exhibit will present assassination scrapbooks compiled by Roswell Park and Stockton Kimball, both of whom attended President McKinley during the period of his mortal wounding. They include correspondence from interested individuals throughout the country offering restoratives for patients like President McKinley "who are wounded, not ill."

The Charles B. Sears Law Library (O'Brian Hall, North Campus) will approach the Pan-Am from a legal perspective. It will focus in particular on the legal proceedings surrounding the arrest, trial and execution of presidential assassin Leon Czolgosz, who was badly beaten by police (despite the wounded president's pleas to "go easy on him, boys") and alleged by some to have suffered from demonstrable mental illness.

Among the items on display will be photographs of the gun used by Czolgosz, materials related to the evolution of state and federal immigration and sedition laws (which were changed as a result of the assassination), a selection of congressional resolutions and records, and photos of Czolgosz, as well as political and judicial players involved in his prosecution. There also will be a first-hand account of the events surrounding the assassination written by famed anarchist Emma Goldman and evidence of Czolgosz' public pre-assassination rejection by the anarchist groups he wanted so badly to serve.

Law librarian Leslie Wolf, who is constructing the exhibit, says the libraries' on-line exhibit will link to films of the era held in the Library of Congress, which include a simulated electrocution of Czolgosz and photographs of the actual execution. Plans are afoot by a group of Buffalo attorneys to present a public reenactment of the Czolgosz trial in September.

The exhibit also will include papers relating to Native-American legal issues of the time from the library's Howard Berman Collection.

The Science and Engineering Library (Capen Hall, North Campus) will present exhibits on the presentation of electricity, chemistry and architecture at the Pan-Am, a grand industrial show celebrating the wonders of technology and industry. Its celebration of the glories of electricity was so spectacular that it earned Buffalo the sobriquet "Electric City of America."

Librarian assistant Ruth Oberg and Librarian Shannon Wilson, who are responsible for SEL exhibition, say that visitors will learn about the "miraculous" role of electricity in the country's cultural, social and economic development. They also will see photos of the world's first batteries, which were exhibited at the Pan-Am and of the many power companies that operated at one time along the Niagara River.

Intriguing electricity-related documents and souvenirs of the exposition also will be on display, says Wilson, including paperweights featuring models of the "lit-up" Electric Tower and Temple of Music and promotions for the exposition's Acetylene Gas Building.

The exhibit will discuss the exceptionally dangerous method by which the exposition's fabulous illumination effects were raised and dimmed and witness the involvement of Thomas Edison and Nikolai Tesla, the era's feuding giants of electrical transmission.

The libraries' on-line exhibition also will feature the roles played by famed architects in designing the Pan-Am's elaborate buildings and look at exhibitions by major chemical producers.

Bach and African drumming were among the musical entrees at the Pan-Am and the Music Library (Baird Hall, North Campus) will exhibit texts and documents related to its extensive musical programs. It also will present illustrations of the Pan-Am's Temple of Music and other concert venues. Music librarian and exhibition coordinator John Bewly says there will be descriptions of music played at the Pan-Am, including musical memorials composed in commemoration of the president's death.

Lists will be displayed of the hundreds of musicians who performed at the exposition. They included John Philip Sousa; Victor Herbert; Francesco Fanciulli, director of the 71st Regimental Band of New York City, and other artists of international reputation; local bands and individual artists, and visiting groups like the Carlyle, Pa., Indian School Band.

Information about the exposition's other ethnomusical performances and sheet music, daily music programs and postcards will be available. The libraries' online exhibit also will feature recordings by members of the UB music faculty of music performed at the Pan-Am. The department also will present lectures on the music of the day and an extensive concert of Pan-Am music on June 9 as part of UB's annual June in Buffalo Festival of New Music.

A bullet-probing set circa 1901 is just one of the items contemporaneous with the Pan-Am to be shown by the Health Sciences Library (Abbott Hall, South [Main Street] Campus) in its exhibit, "Birth, Death and Everything in Between: Keeping People Healthy at the Pan-American Exposition." It will focus on the enormous task faced by Pan-Am medical director, Roswell Park, in protecting the exposition visitors from contagious diseases, food contamination and unhygienic facilities.

It will exhibit 1901 medical journals published here, a physician's bag, stethoscope and photos of the exposition's ambulances and on-site emergency hospital.

Since the president's assassination was the biggest medical news of the exposition, the library will display a collage of newspaper articles about the president's medical condition following his wounding. A copy of President McKinley's autopsy announcement will be shown along with examples of homeopathic remedies and illustrations of the microscope and X-ray machine exhibited at the Pan-Am, the latter of which might have saved President McKinley's life had either he or it been portable at the time.

The exhibit to be mounted by the Oscar Silverman Undergraduate Library (Capen Hall, North Campus) is titled "The Uncrowned Queens." It is based on research by Barbara Seals Nevergold, coordinator of student support services in UB's Educational Opportunity Center, and Peggy Brooks Bertram, an associate for faculty development and graduate fellowship programs in UB's Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs. The exhibit will celebrate the accomplishments of African-American women of Western New York from the past and present.