TEMPLE OF MIRTH
Exhibit Statictics:

Building cost:     5,000  dollars
Price of Admission-  10 cents 
Exhibition Profit-    39,232.15  dollars
The one  attraction that  was most indicative of the `flavor’  of the Pike was the Temple of Mirth. A huge sculptured  winkingn  clown face and four grinning female faces
completed the facade. Nicknamed  the Foolish House,  Crystal Maze,  and  Fun Factory,  the Temple of Mirth
used barkers to draw in the busy Pike crowd.

Screams of laughter could be heard through  the structure’s  portals,
thus  grabbing the curious pike.


Inside the attraction, there was an enormous mirror maze, then a  succession of 150 French plate convex  and concave mirrors  that distorted the visitor’s  reflection in  hundreds of grotesque and ridiculous manners, always creating infectious   laughter.. A mysterious  collection of cabinets, contained  surprises, tricks and jokes.
The funhouse included  outrageous art work and scenery,  volcanic fires, a crowd-watched  collapsing chair trick, a dark winding tunnel, Cave of the Winds  (blasts of compressed air spouted up from the  floor, Hall of Laughter, Mystic Bottomless Well, Spring of Mirth, a 3-story circular slide  called Helter Skelter and  ended in-  Dead Man's Alley, a  circular slide.

You had a choice of exiting through a door or down a two story  slide to the outside.

On Nov. 14, 1904,  Temple of Mirth manager Ferdinand Akoun was shot in the head and seriously wounded by Alfred Laws, a watchman employed by the Mysterious Asia attraction. The shooting occurred on the street, packed with sightseers. A crowd chased Laws to The Pike entrance, where he was arrested by a police officer goer’s attention.

MAIN
PIKE
Lee  Gaskins'   AT THE FAIR  The 1904 St. Louis World's   Fair 
                   Web  Design and Art/Illustration   copyrighted  2008
Attraction during construction
The clown didn't seem full of mirth.