Industrial Exposition Louisville 1872 Size:36x24 a turn-of-the-century exercise in civic

a turn-of-the-century exercise in civic remembrance that treats the flag less as cloth than as a chronicle of the nation that raised it

the Capitol dome rising like a smaller cousin of Washington's over a city of lake steamers and university quadrangles — a postcard town where lithographed views of State Street and linen cards of the Memorial Union terrace did steady work through the golden age

the old gods reduced to radii and yet somehow more divine for the arithmetic

rendered with the ceremonial gravity the Gilded Age reserved for its rituals — a republic still binding its post-war wounds

reached back for the founder's likeness as both compass and alibi

Industrial Exposition Louisville 1872 Size:36x24 a turn-of-the-century exercise in civicIndustrial Exposition Louisville 1872 a chromolithographic herald of the Ohio River city's bid for industrial standing, all soaring halls and machine age optimism rendered in the confident strokes of a South still scrubbing off the soot of war and reaching, decisively, for capital. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives, regional historical societies, and