History and Memory > The Panama Exposition
A YEAR AFTER BABY WEEK, the Chamber of Commerce participated in another celebration of engineering, the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Overcoming a general feeling of World’s Fair fatigue, President Seth Low traveled to California to preside over the dedication of the New York State pavilion.
While the Empire City’s role, said Low, was “to interpret America to Europe and Europe to America,” San Francisco should do the same for the Orient, in a way that “will involve no discrimination based upon race or nationality,” while still preserving “the Pacific slope for Occidental civilization.”
Other states had created particularly relevant structures. Oregon submitted an enormous log cabin, while New Jersey and Virginia had reconstructed Colonial-era houses. New York’s contribution, a critic decreed, was impressive mostly for its cost.