The World's Fair architecture question is genuinely fascinating from a structural perspective. The buildings were not temporary — they were designed to look permanent, built with a mix of permanent structural elements and temporary facades (staff, a plaster-like material over wood frames).

But the deeper question is about what disappeared and why. Multiple cities hosted these massive expositions with extraordinary architecture, and most of it was demolished within months of the fair ending. The official explanation is that the buildings were always intended to be temporary.

The interesting structural question: what does it say about a civilization that it could produce this level of architectural quality for a temporary event, but cannot replicate it for permanent structures today? Modern construction costs, building codes, liability law, and labor regulations make this kind of building economically impossible now — even for permanent use.

The comparison between 1904 craftsmanship and modern construction reveals more about regulatory accumulation and cost disease than about any hidden history. The buildings were not fake. The system that could produce them cheaply no longer exists.

#history #architecture #worldsfair #stlouis