Before the Midwinter: the Mechanics’ Institute’s “Pacific Rim” Industrial Exhibitions of 1869 and 1871

The Pavilion of the Mechanics’ Institute at Union Square. Image courtesy of the Mechanics’ Institute Archives.

This is part one of an article that was published in The Argonaut: Journal of the San Francisco Historical Society, Summer 2019, v30, no 1.

Lai Yong carefully hung his second portrait on the wall of the picture gallery and stepped back to admire how they looked. The subjects, a Chinese man and woman in traditional garb, gazed back at him with slight smiles playing on their lips. It was a few days before the opening of the 1869 Industrial Exhibition, the seventh hosted by the Mechanics’ Institute of San Francisco. The Pavilion at Union Square was loud with the clamor of saws, hammers, and shouts as other exhibitors hurried to construct their booths.  The picture gallery was one of three spaces set aside to show the talent of San Francisco’s burgeoning art community. Lai Yong cleared away the paintings’ wrappings and with them under his arm, ducked his head into the adjoining photograph gallery to admire what was presented there, before he strolled further down the arcade. Everything from locally made wire to wine was staged to entice fairgoers, potential customers and judges responsible for awarding the coveted gold and silver medals to the best in each category. This was Yong’s first public exhibition of his work since arriving three years earlier from China where he had studied portraiture under the master Chay Hin. He was eager to promote himself and attract new clients to his small studio on Clay Street.[i]

It is not certain how Yong found out about the Exhibition – perhaps he noticed an advertisement in one of the city’s papers or had been solicited by a fair manager when they canvassed the city. Or perhaps he had attended the previous year’s fair.  He might have decided to exhibit this time because he had heard that this year’s fair, that of 1869, was special because China, Japan, and most of the countries of the Pacific Rim had been invited. It was the first attempt in California to host an international exhibition.

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The California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 is described as the state’s first World’s Fair. But there were many fairs before the Midwinter that attempted to involve multiple countries. Those attempts include the fairs held in 1869 and 1871 organized by the Mechanics’ Institute of San Francisco. Both fairs were efforts to engage countries, especially those on the Pacific Rim; to foster international communication, trade, and to develop San Francisco’s worldwide reputation as a center of industry and culture.

Talk of California, especially San Francisco, as the potential site of a World’s Fair started after the success of New York’s Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in 1853, but at that time, California was too young a state and too far away from the rest of the world for the idea to be feasible. That distance however was getting smaller every day as work on the local and long-distance railroads continued at a feverish pace and engines and steam-powered ships grew cheaper to build and more efficient.

Congress, eager to improve the mail service and capitalize on trade with Asia in February of 1865, passed an act to authorize the establishment of ocean mail-steamship service to Asia. Advertising in cities such as Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco, Congress called for proposals from relevant companies to serve as contractors to carry the mails of the United States between San Francisco “and some port or ports in the Chinese empire, touching at Honolulu, in the Sandwich Islands, and one or more ports in Japan, by means of a monthly line of first-class American sea-going steamships.” The contract was to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company which immediately commenced building four side-wheel steamships with the deadline of starting service by the 1st of January 1867.[1]

A view of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company docks at foot of Brannan Street. The ship in the foreground is the SS Senator, and behind is the SS Colorado. Image courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

As the date approached, the state-of-the-art vessels weren’t quite ready. Unwilling to risk delay, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company employed its then fleetest ship, the SS Colorado, which on its first run made a record setting trip to Yokohama in twenty-two days. Its return to San Francisco on March 20 brought 178 passengers, including two representatives and their assistants from the Japanese government, along with a full hold of tea, opium, silk, seaweed, cuttlefish and firecrackers.[2] Eventually monthly trips were made to Yokohama, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The route led to an immediate influx of Japanese and Chinese immigrants and opened up extraordinary new trade vistas that titillated business leaders about what was to come.

Meanwhile, California readied its contribution to the International Exposition in Paris set to open the following week on April 1, 1867. Several civic leaders planned to attend and those who did returned with their minds full of glorious stories and future promise. Everyone who could not afford the trip to Paris eagerly read the telegraphed accounts that arrived in San Francisco about six weeks late.  The Daily Alta California advised, “If the Government of the United States is wise it will profit by this French example, and take steps for the inauguration of a “World’s Fair” in this country…and not later than the summer of 1869.”[3]

The combination of the success of the China line and the excitement surrounding the Paris Exposition set business leaders and newspaper editors in San Francisco on fire. Among those whose imaginations were aroused to action were James Warren, Andrew Hallidie, Horace Dunn, and the Mechanics’ Institute.

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[i] Lai Yong took out several advertisements in the Daily Alta California starting in September 1866 until December of that year. Evidence of his participation in the 1869 fair includes mention in: 1) Mechanics’ Institute, Report of the Board of Managers of the Seventh Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics' Institute, San Francisco, 1869, page 71.; 2) Advertisement. San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 1869, page 3.

[1] An Act to authorize the Establishment of Ocean Mail-Steamship Service between the United States and China, United States, Statutes at Large Thirty-Eighth Congress, Session II, Chapter 37, Page 430. Retrieved from Library of Congress, February 26, 2019. The Pacific Mail Steamship contract is detailed in Sacramento Daily Union, August 31, 1865, Page 2

[2] Daily Alta California, March 21, 1867, Page 1. “Arrival of the Colorado”, Mining and Scientific Press, March 23, 1867, Page 1.

[3] “The Paris Exposition: a Hint to this Country”, Daily Alta California, March 27, 1867, Page 2.