Louisiana Purchase Exposition
1904 world's fair in St. Louis, Missouri, US
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was an international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Local, state, and federal funds totaling $15 million (equivalent to $538 million in 2025) were used to finance the event. More than 60 countries and 43 of the then-45 American states maintained exhibition spaces at the fair, which was attended by nearly 19.7 million people.
Historians generally emphasize the prominence of the themes of race and imperialism, and the fair's long-lasting impact on intellectuals in the fields of history, architecture, and anthropology. From the point of view of the memory of the average person who attended the fair, it primarily promoted entertainment, consumer goods, and popular culture. The monumental Greco-Roman architecture of this and other fairs of the era did much to influence permanent new buildings and master plans of major cities.
Background
In 1904, St. Louis hosted a world's fair to celebrate the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Louisiana Purchase Exposition” is 1904 world's fair in St. Louis, Missouri, US. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Louisiana, Purchase and Exposition, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1904 world's fair in St. Louis, Missouri, US” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1520847. VIAF identifies the subject as 41147422908244880196. The Library of Congress control number is n79041776. Authority coordinates are 38.639, -90.286. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 2025 and 1803.
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This entry incorporates text from “Louisiana Purchase Exposition” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.