Repoet of Boaed of Cteneeal Managees. 31 



One of the first duties of the Board of Managers was, clearly, to 

 endeavor to remove such an impression. New York could not afford 

 to be held to occupy such a position toward an exposition with whos3 

 success or failure the reputation of the whole American people was 

 iudissolubly bound up. Nor was it on grounds of mere self-interest 

 held to be expedient that New York should be placed in an nnfavor- 

 able light before the community witli wliich its commercial relations 

 are of the closest. What any other State proposed to do it was 

 deemed fitting, no less with due regard to the dignity than to the 

 manifest obligations of the State, that New York should in its own 

 sphere excel. 



The fact should be recorded that it was not left entirely to the 

 ofiicial representatives of the State to wipe out the reproach which had 

 been directed against Xew York for apparent lack of appreciation of 

 the greatness of the exposition enterprise. New York architects had 

 been early called into the councils of the constructors of the fair build- 

 ings, and, as stated in the introduction, four of the chief of these were 

 the work of New Yorkers. New York sculptors and painters also 

 contributed their full share toward making the exposition grounds, and 

 the facades of the chief exposition buildings, forever memorable in the 

 history of the development of American art. 



Nor was the participation of the commercial and manufacturing 

 establishments of the State less amply significant of the strong interest 

 taken in the fair by the people of New York. Owing to the impos- 

 sibility of securing an adequate allotment of space, or from other causes 

 of difference with the exposition authorities, the exhibits of certain 

 representative New York firms were noticeably absent. Bnt in all the 

 great aggregate of the results of American industry, ingenuity and 

 taste which was so strikingly displayed at the Columbian Exposition, 

 there were but few out of the whole one hundred and seventy-six 

 groups in which some product of New York was not the dominant 

 feature. In the department of manufactures, foreign nations had, for 

 the most part, provided imposing and ornate pavilions for the collective 

 installation of their exhibits. Around the center circle of the vast 

 building were grouped the exhibits of G-ermany, France, Great Britain 

 and the United States. The last named occupied the whole northeastern 

 section of the building, and covered an area of some 300,000 square feet. 

 No attempt was made to treat this as a whole after the French and 

 German manner, the rule being that each exhibitor should be left to pro- 



