To get ready, the city buzzed with projects. Rail lines were laid to stretch from Center City into the suburbs, changing the area for generations to come. New bridges were built across the Schuylkill, including one at Girard Avenue that, at 100 feet wide, was believed to be the widest of its kind in the world.
The busiest construction zone was in West Fairmount Park, where 200 buildings rose. The largest were the Main Exhibition Building, Machinery Hall, Agricultural Hall, Memorial Hall and Horticultural Hall. Only the latter two remain.
Just outside the park, builders constructed temporary hotels that housed thousands of visitors at a cost of about $1 a night, and offered beer for five cents a glass.
The ports and streets bustled as visitors from 50 countries arrived to set up displays. The French ship Labrador - 400 feet long, and carrying 5,000 tons of goods - attracted much attention, as it was the largest vessel that had ever come up the Delaware.
Visitors from Japan drew stares when, instead of using the wheelbarrows they were given to roll goods across town, they picked up the wheelbarrows and carried them as well.
While the exhibition was originally slated to open in April 1876 to mark the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, construction delays pushed the unveiling to May. On May 10, The Inquirer devoted almost the entire front page to a map of the fairgrounds, and gave over most of another page to the details of what was to come.
"The occasion will be grand and imposing," the paper promised, "as the magnificence of the event itself demands." Four thousand soldiers from the local militia escorted President Ulysses S. Grant to the fairgrounds.
