This Was St Louis in 1904 - The City That Vanished

St. Louis in 1904, filmed that year. Real archive footage and photographs of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, with every source named on screen. This is Sepia Cities: one city, one year, and the people who were standing in it. In 1904 St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in America, and that spring it threw the world a party - the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a world's fair the size of a small city. Nearly twenty million people came in seven months. That same summer the Olympic Games crossed the ocean for the first time, and turned into the strangest marathon ever run. It was a fair of wonders and of cruelty: a mile-long midway called the Pike, a wall of electric light, and a human zoo that put more than a thousand people on display. When the gates closed, they tore almost all of it down. Almost nothing still stands. Everyone in this film is gone. Every number on screen carries its source. Where the sources disagree, we say so. 1904 or today - which corner of that fair would you step into? Tell me in the comments. I read them. CHAPTERS 0:00 Every face here is already gone 0:32 You are a witness, not a tourist 1:21 Saint Louis, by the census 1:38 The fourth-largest city in America 2:44 Nearly twenty million visitors 2:55 A city built for one summer 4:25 The Pike - a mile of pure spectacle 6:45 The first Olympics in America 6:56 The strangest Olympics ever run 9:32 The human zoo 12:01 Then and now, by the numbers 12:27 What is still standing 13:44 The people are gone FOOTAGE & PHOTOGRAPHS Almost all of the moving footage was shot in St. Louis in 1904, most of it by the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, with films by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. and the Biograph Co. It survives in the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection - actuality film from before 1906, in the public domain, here by way of the Internet Archive. The photographs are public-domain and CC0 images from Wikimedia Commons. Every archive clip and photograph carries its year and source on screen. SOURCES (all public domain or CC0 - no rights reserved): Internet Archive (LOC Paper Print Collection compilation) - Public domain Wikimedia Commons - CC0, Public domain A full, itemized source list for every clip and photograph is kept on file. MUSIC Three solo-piano nocturnes by Frederic Chopin (d. 1849; the compositions are public domain), performed and recorded by Musopen and released into the public domain under Creative Commons Zero (CC0 1.0). Both the composition and these recordings are public domain - no rights reserved, no attribution required. Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9 No. 2 (the fair and the Pike) Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48 No. 1 (the Olympics and the human zoo) Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. posth., B. 49 "Lento con gran espressione" (the reckoning and the closing) Recordings: Musopen (musopen.org), CC0 1.0. Source: Internet Archive, item "musopen-chopin-complete-works-flac" - archive.org/details/musopen-chopin-complete-works-flac #stlouis #history #thenandnow #worldsfair #1904 #vintage #documentary