Two offerings for today’s #stampoftheday which, as seems increasingly be the case, will take on digressions that will include 26,000 lightbulbs, the Grateful Dead, an unsuccessful effort to monopolize the American organ industry, 10,000 pairs of left shoes, and a flag blowing the wrong way in the wind, and “if only he were around,” a legendary uncle (legendary in my family, at least)…
Our sage begins with a 2-cent stamp to honor the 1926 Sesquicentennial Expo, a world’s fair held in Philadelphia. The second is a 3-cent stamp issued in 1944 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
The 1926 Expo celebrated the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the 50th anniversary of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. A centerpiece of the 1926 event was an 80-foot replica of the Liberty Bell, which was covered with 26,000 light bulbs. Not surprisingly, the Liberty Bell also is featured on the stamp.
John Wanamaker (founder of one of the first department stores in the US) conceived of the idea for the world’s fair in 1916. At that time, Philadelphia had gained a reputation for being politically corrupt and Wanamaker believed that a world’s fair could help improve how people saw the city.
Wanamaker earned some support locally, but then America’s involvement in World I delayed progress. After the war, planning was further delayed as the city was struck with Spanish Influenza. But Wanamaker, who died in 1922, continued to push and gain additional support. In 1921, Philadelphia received the official appointment as host city for the 1926 world’s fair.
As planning progressed, the budget problems led organizers to scale back their grand plans had to be scaled back because of budget cuts. Nevertheless, in addition to the 26,000-light bulb Liberty Bell, the expo had one of the largest pipe organs in the world, designed by a committee of the city’s most prominent organists. The organ, which had over 10,000 pipes, was designed to be a public instrument capable of providing entertainment to large numbers of people.
Its facilities also included Sesquicentennial Stadium, which hosted the Freedom patriotic pageant, religious ceremonies, and sporting events, most notably, a September 1926 boxing match between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey that attracted a crowd of 125,000 people.
Later renamed after John F. Kennedy, the stadium also was the “neutral turf” home to the annual Army-Navy football game from 1936 until 1979 and was home to a variety of other sporting events and concerts, including appearances by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Judy Garland, the Who, and the US portion of the 1985 LiveAid concert. In 1989, the Grateful Dead played what turned out to be the last concert in the by-then crumbling stadium. The stadium was demolished in 1992 and the arena now known as the Wells Fargo Center, was built on the site. The facility, which is home to the city’s hockey, basketball, and lacrosse teams, is part of a larger complex that includes the city’s baseball and football stadiums.
However, while it attracted about 10 million visitors, the expo, whose organizers projected double that attendance, was a financial flop. Several factors contributed to its demise including arguing among the organizers, poor advertising, and the fact that it rained on 107 of the 184 days it was open. Consequently, in 1927 organizers, who had hoped to turn a profit on the event, declared bankruptcy and the fair’s assets were sold.
The organ—which is the 22nd largest organ in the world—was purchased by Cyrus Curtis, publisher of the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal and one of the richest men in America. He donated it to UPenn, where it is housed in Irvine Auditorium, which opened in 1929. (Curtis’ daughter founded the Curtis Institute of Music).
Two random asides of tenuous family connections to the expo. First, my grandfather, Louis Luberoff, who lived in Philadelphia, was the nation’s leading organ salesman at the time. Between 1916 to 1929, “Poppy Lou,” who worked for the M.P. Moller Pipe Organ Company, sold 1,156 organs for a total of $6,742,453-almost $1 billion in today’s dollars. (Louis, who got a 7.5% sales commission was a legendary salesman; one writer supposedly said he could “sell a snow bank in hell and offer a five-year warranty.”)
As best I can figure, he wasn’t involved with the Curtis organ, which was built by the Austin Organ Co, one of Moller’s rivals. But I have to think he went and listened to it, and, perhaps, brought my father, who was born in 1925. And the Austin Organ Co., was among the companies he planned to purchase as part of detailed, apparently funded, and ready-to-implement plan to buy “the best [organ] builders, supply houses, and factories making valuable by-products, and apply a centralized, concentrated management, for instance, reducing the overhead and increasing profits, etc.; also standardizing wherever possible, even to the extent of making the parts interchangeable in any four or five makes of organs.” This initiative, however, was derailed by the Great Depression.
Second, my father’s uncle George Luberoff, who ran away to enlist during the Spanish American War, rose to become a Brigadier General in the Quartermaster Corps. Every year, he would arrange for my grandfather, grandmother, father (and later my mother) to get tickets to the annual Army-Navy game (held at the stadium built for the expo)….Digressing even further…George was commanding officer of the Army’s Boston Quartermaster Depot from 1934 until 1940. His responsibilities including purchasing boots. Family legend was that he once got a great price on an order but forgot to specify that pairs of boots had to include a right and left boot so he got 10,000 left boots and, of course, wound up paying much more when he went back to get 10,000 right ones.
…And digressing still further…There’s another family story, that my mother told so often we could repeat it verbatim, about how my father dropped George’s name and rank to convince an Army rabbi in Baltimore to help them get a marriage license from the marriage bureau (which closed early) so that my parents, who had semi-eloped and gone to get married in Baltimore since Maryland didn’t have a waiting period for a marriage license. Time was of the essence, because my father, who was in training in an Army camp in Kentucky, had only a few-day pass given to him so he could get married. (If you see any of his grandkids, say the phrase “if only my uncle were here” and see what they say…”)
…as for the other stamp…
The 1944 stamp celebrating the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad pictures depicts the ceremony that was held on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah. The stamp design selected by President Franklin Roosevelt, who was an avid collector (and apparently had nothing better to do in the middle of the second World War). There’s an interesting flaw in its design. The flag in the stamp seems to be blowing in a different direction than the smoke. Many expected the stamp to be recalled, but Post Office Department officials said the flag had to be shown waving in that direction, otherwise, it would have been outside of the stamp design.
There you have it. If only my uncle were here to weigh in on all of this.
Stay safe and be healthy!