ABSTRACT
In October 1901, Philadelphia architect and urban reform advocate Albert Kelsey delivered a speech to a large audience at Memorial Hall in St. Louis. Using lantern slides, he lectured on municipal improvement projects around the world. He introduced the audience to river esplanades, bridge construction, underground railways, sewers, public building groups, and all of the ‘arrangements of the component parts of a city’. The major agenda for Kelsey’s visit to St. Louis, however, was to sell the idea of a Model City installation to the organizers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, otherwise known as the 1904 World’s Fair. Shortly after Kelsey’s appearance at Memorial Hall, the World’s Fair Bulletin – ocial organ of the exposition – announced that ‘whatever the fair can do towards exhibiting the best models of municipal eort, the best appliances and methods of municipal service, the best guides toward municipal growth and improvement, will be in discharge of its most important duty as a public educator’.1
