THE GRAND BASIN AND CASCADES
Behind the Festival Hall was the Colonnade of States, which  featured a monument to the thirteen states and the `Indian Territory' that was gained by the United States from the  Louisiana Purchase.  This striking feature was 52 foot high and was a quarter of a mile long. The colonnade  cost  an additional 59,740 dollars to build. It  symbolically represented the success, wisdom and foresight of the Louisiana Purchase.

In front of the Festival Hall were the Cascades located in front of Festival Hall and the Grand Basin. Pumps pushed  45,000 gallons of water a minute  through  man-made falls into the Grand Basin. The centerpiece of the Fair, the East and West Cascades represented the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and symbolized man’s control over nature. The Cascades were  three in number,  the largest of the three is the central Cascade. The water gushed forth from a fountain  24 feet above the  level of the terrace, and spread out into a stream 45 feet  wide and 14 inches deep, falling  down  the long slope of   ledges or steps, spreading to a width of 150 feet as it  took its final plunge into the Grand Basin.

This Grand Basin was semi-circular in shape and 600 feet in diameter.

Four magnificent  artificial fountains shot water up to 76 feet high  from the Grand Basin 

The three Cascades  were lined with an massive amount of  sculptures from the the top of the hill to the basin.  Along the edges of the Cascades, powerful vertical and  horizontal jets of water shot  from artistic sculptures and fell into the Cascade basin.  The Cascades roughly cost 120,000 to build, with another 100,000 dollars in  additional costs of staircases and balustrades,*  etc. 

At night,  thousands of lights  had been placed on the  Hall's   exterior and along the Cascades as a
celebration of electricity  and combining the classicalartistry of beauty with modernization and invention.



* balustrades are  rows of repeating  small posts which support the upper rail of a railing.

seepage and evaporation and was operated continuously during the life of the Fair.

The most elaborate  formal gardening display was  upon the slope  that was called the Cascade Gardens,  which was located  in the  southern part of the `central  picture,' south of the Grand Basin. 

Between the Education and Electricity Palaces, the gardens were half a mile in length, extending in a longsouthern  sweep around the end of the Basin and  lagoons. The slope was 300 feet wide, and 60 feet high.Between and beyond  the Cascades were huge  lawns, accented with  rich embroideries of flowers. Cementwalks and flights of easy steps  provided  throughout the vast gardens. 

The Colonnade of States stretched east and west of Festival Hall. The large female statues represented the 13 US States that had been ‘carved’ from the Louisiana Purchase  and Indian Territory, (which in 1904 was separate from Oklahoma Territory.)  The Indian Territory became part of Oklahoma when it was admitted as a state in 1907.  The Missouri statue was sculpted by Alexander Stirling Calder.

Lee  Gaskins'   AT THE FAIR  The 1904 St. Louis World's   Fair  
                     Web  Design and Art/Illustration   copyrighted  2008 
Main
Misc.
Spirit of the Pacific Fountain at the Cascade Gardens
Terrace of the States
Main Cascades, the scale  was   enormous. 

One  of  the  huge electric centrifugal pumps  that powered  the  fountains  underneath  the  Cascades.