Pennsylvania pavilion

[worldfairs]

[worldfairs]

With an appropriation of $300,000 Pennsylvania has erected a grand building and makes large displays in all departments.

[worldfairs]

One of the most magnificent buildings at the World's Fair, befitting the importance of the Keystone State.

[worldfairs]

PENNSYLVANIA BUILDING.

Pennsylvania was allotted a commanding site nearly central in the Plateau of States, on which is standing a large and handsome building, worthy of the great commonwealth it represents at the Exposition. The structure is two stories in height, of classic architecture, somewhat suggesting the State Capitol. In the center is a great square-domed rotunda, with stairways of liberal proportions and dignified lines leading to the upper rooms. Native woods and marbles are effectively used in the interior decorations and furnishings. Historic exhibits, chiefly in the form of portraits of famous sons of Pennsylvania, remind tire visitor of the important part tire State has played in tire making of the nation. ' Among the portraits is an authentic one of the great Penn himself, which serves to correct the impression most people have of his appearance. But the shrine of patriotic Americans is the Liberty Bell, standing in the center of tire great rotunda and protected by a guard of honor. Elaborate ceremonies accompanied its arrival at the Exposition grounds, after a tour through many cities where it silently taught its lesson to the thousands of persons who visited it. The Pennsylvania Building, which has the honor of housing this relic and at the same time dispensing hospitality to friend and to stranger, is 226 by 105 feet, and was erected at a cost of about $75,000.

[worldfairs]

LIBERTY BELL, PENNSYLVANIA BUILDING

The Liberty Bell is exhibited for the first time west of the Mississippi River at the World’s Fair. Upon the occasion of its arrival in St. Louis the school children of the city turned out by tens of thousands to receive the precious memento. The bell is in the rotunda of the Pennsylvania building and is the shrine of patriotic Americans who visit the Exposition. The bell was cast a quarter of a century before it called the colonists to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, but it bore a prophetic inscription from the first day of its existence, from Leviticus, xxv: 10, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.” The bell weighs 2,080 pounds, is four feet in diameter at the lip and three feet high. The familiar crack in the bell occurred while it was being tolled for the funeral of Chief Justice John Marshall, July 8, 1335. The bell was cast in London in 1752 after the mold of “the Great Tom of Westminster.” A month after it was hung in the state house at Philadelphia it was cracked and was re-cast on the same mold and with the same inscription by an American firm.