Southern Exposition

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Southern Exposition
Portion of poster for 1884 Southern Exposition
Overview
BIE-class	Unrecognized exposition
Name	Southern Exposition
Area	45 acres (180,000 m2)
Location
Country	United States
City	Louisville, Kentucky
Venue	Louisville's Old Louisville neighborhood.

The Southern Exposition was a five-year series of world's fairs held in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1883 to 1887 in what is now Louisville's Old Louisville neighborhood. The exposition, held for 100 days each year on 45 acres (180,000 m²) immediately south of Central Park, which is now the St. James-Belgravia Historic District, was essentially an industrial and mercantile show. At the time, the exposition was larger than any previous American exhibition with the exception of the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876. U.S. President Chester A. Arthur opened the first annual exposition on August 1, 1883.

One highlight of the show was the largest to-date installation of incandescent light bulbs, having been recently invented by Thomas Edison (a resident of Louisville sixteen years before), to bring light to the exposition in the nighttime. The contract with the Louisville Board of Trade was for 5,000 incandescent lamps. 4,600 lamps for the exhibition hall and 400 for an art gallery, more than all the lamps installed in New York City at that time, were used.

George H. Yater writes in his book Two Hundred Years at the Fall of the Ohio:

The Exposition was the first large space lighted by incandescence and many electrical pioneers felt that the Louisville success did more to stimulate the growth of interior electric lighting than any other Edison plant.

• Amphitheatre Auditorium, built with materials from the nearby dismantled remains of the Southern Exposition building
• St. James Court Art Show, held in the same location

• Yater, George H. (1987). Two Hundred Years at the Fall of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County (2nd ed.). Filson Club, Incorporated.

• Bush, Bryan S. (2011). Louisville's Southern Exposition, 1883-1887: The City of Progress. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press. ISBN 978-1-60949-143-7.

• "'Went to the Exposition Tonight': Louisville's 1883 Southern Exposition" — Article by Kathryn Anne Bratcher of The Filson Historical Society
• "Southern Exposition: 1883-1887" — Article by Civil War historian/author Bryan S. Bush