Taking place in 1901, the Pan Am was not only the first fair of the twentieth century, but it was also one of the last fairs of the Victorian Era. Traditional Victorian gender norms dictated a separate sphere ideology where “respectable” women were associated with the domestic realm and men, the public realm. Buffalo’s elite women turned this notion on its head and used their power as well as social standing to overtly claim public space for women and challenge these traditional Victorian gender norms.

The most well-known group of women at the Pan American Exposition was the Board of Women Managers (BOWM). While other world’s fairs, like Chicago and Omaha, did incorporate a women’s planning board  ̶  separate from the men’s board they often lacked genuine authority. It took nearly 50 years since the first International World’s Fair at London’s Crystal Palace in 1851 for women to play an active role in the planning process. Despite being “formed by the organizing Pan American Expositions’ Board of Managers,” and, “...consisting of several wives of the men involved with the Exposition Board and committees,” Buffalo’s BOWM was not a mere appendage to the all-male Board of Managers. Buffalo’s BOWM played an active role in the planning process and employed tactics that would later become commonplace by other women activists during the suffrage movement of the 1910s. 

Previously, women’s work was displayed in separate buildings. At Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition, the woman’s building received an additional, unfortunate association with a highly racist, ethnological display in their building. Rather than champion women’s work, the racist display turned the public’s focus away from the achievements of women. One article in the Buffalo Enquirer notes that at the Chicago Exposition, “a cardinal error was committed by those who arranged for a separate exhibit of women’s work.” This ethnological exhibit sidelined women by regurgitating dominant colonial and racial discourse that reinforced separate sphere ideology and ignored difficult conversations surrounding expected gender norms.

Buffalo women, led by Marian De Forest, would not be sidelined as in previous fairs. They clearly understood that separate did not mean equal. The Pan Am was the first fair in history where women’s artwork was displayed side-by-side with men’s.  In Buffalo, elite women decided that they would not be seen as equal until their work was displayed next to men. At the Pan Am, women wished to be seen as one and the same with men, judged by ability, not gender. In a statement for the Enquirer, De Forest remarked:

Suppose a man paints a picture and a woman paints one equally good. Because one is the work of a man and the other of a woman, they will not be placed in separate corners, but will be hung side by side, each to be adjudged on its merits.

Buffalo’s artistic community was already recognized for its ability to create healthy discourse on contemporary issues. In fact, Buffalo Society of Artists member Raphael Beck’s creative submission was selected as the official logo for the Pan Am in 1901. Beck’s logo, despite its racial, imperial message, placed women at the center of the fair and would foreshadow the unprecedented involvement of other women artists at the Pan Am.

Architect Josephine Wright Chapman was one of many professional woman chosen by the BOWM to participate in the fair. Resembling a colonial mansion, the New England Building was well documented as being the handiwork of the professional architect. Already a well-established architect in the Boston area, she had clearly entered the traditionally male realm of architecture. Chapman noted this achievement in one interview saying, “that the former prejudice against employing a woman architect is slowly but surely dying away.” The New England building, designed by a woman, was a main attraction for fairgoers.

Interior designer Adelaide Thorpe was another professional woman hired by Pan Am organizers and welcomed by the BOWM to execute a comprehensive interior color scheme for all the Exposition buildings. Interior design suited Thorpe’s failing eyesight better than the fine lines of needlework and she became a renowned interior designer who caught the attention of Exposition colorist Charles Turner. Together, Thorpe and Turner created the interior color schemes of fair buildings, proving, yet again, that a modern woman could do a man’s work. At one point, she had 150 men working for her. Despite her poor eyesight, she also designed the official flag for the Pan American Exposition.

Board member Evelyn Rumsey Cary was chairman of the Women’s Fine Arts Committee and sister-in-law to Pan Am board member Charles Cary. Evelyn Cary beat out both male and female artists to produce the winning design for what would become the official poster of the Pan Am, the Spirit of Niagara. Runners up included local artist Alice Russel Glenny whose Coral Harp was featured on the Music at the Pan-American Exposition guide. Cary’s design was selected for its ability to tie in business interests to the Buffalo region for the Exposition exhibited by the city’s skyline in the background. Both posters designed by women artists were publicly acknowledged as being “works of art” and “well designed,” granting them public legitimacy. Challenging many conceptions of fine art, poster artists were radical in their content and more accepting of women artists. Women poster artists like Glenny and Cary used the patronage of businesses to promote ideas that challenged the Victorian status quo and displayed their fine artistic talent.

While catering to popular notions of female respectability by tempering her nude figure, Cary’s work also depicts an embrace of the public, female body during a time of strict social regulation. Unlike contemporary artists’ controversial renderings of nude figures, like Maxfield Parrish’s seductive and lewd posters, Cary’s Spirit of Niagara and later her Women’s Suffrage poster are nearly rendered asexual with a warming facial expression and an allegorical identity. Her eyes and lips are blurred to avoid any confusion with promiscuity. In addition, the sheer, draped cloth of her gown hints at her femininity, yet appears to cleanse the woman of any immodest intentions. Cary is careful not to break artistic conventions of painted women in order to make the poster seem modest. At the same time, she constructed an image of a modern, independent woman’s body that flooded public spaces, a striking feat in itself. Historians have noted the ability of suffragists to use mass media by wearing pins and printing easily replicated symbolic posters during their campaigns. Likewise, Cary experimented with techniques of mass advertising to promote a positively framed image of a public woman.

Buffalo’s elite women also used their power and social standing to overtly claim public space for women. Because their work was displayed side by side in the same buildings as men, the woman’s headquarters at the Pan Am was used more as an administrative station for the Women’s Board. The actual building itself was made from the old Buffalo Country Club building near Hoyt Lake in Delaware Park. A symbol of white privilege, country clubs have been a closed community for society’s wealthiest citizens. Traditionally inhabited by white men who were able to maintain the salaries required to be a member, these “boys’ clubs” were viewed as manly spaces. When Buffalo women converted the physical building into their headquarters for the Pan Am, they changed the meaning of the country club. By reimagining the intended use of the landscape these women activists politicized the everyday nature of the clubhouse while also claiming class privilege for themselves. 

While the women used this building as a headquarters to organize their speeches and parades, they also used the space to invite many famous women to tea including Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. McKinley. While no formal minutes were recorded, it is well known that these women used the space to welcome guests and prepare for the day’s events including public speeches. The public space of the old Country Club thus became an arena of discussion for women’s right to participate in the public, political sphere. Reminiscent of late 19th century “parlour meetings,” Buffalo women used the ideology of a separate women’s space to advance their own political agenda by speaking about politics at designated luncheons.

Additionally, the BOWM invited women activists like Susan B. Anthony to speak publicly at the Exposition. Even before the fair had begun, Buffalo’s elite women reached out to over 3,000 women’s clubs in cities as far away as Toronto, Canada, and Portland, Oregon, to come to the Exposition and deliver political speeches. This itself contrasted with acceptable female activism in the Victorian Era when many politically active women were forced to debate in private settings. In planning for guest speakers, like the President of State Federation of Women’s Clubs of New Jersey, Emily Williams, the BOWM were well ahead of modern suffragists in their overt political activism. The very act of speaking publicly was political in nature; these women were claiming public space and in doing so legitimizing public women’s voices.

Perhaps the most famous day of women’s activism at the Pan Am was September 12. Noted as “Florida Day” in the official daily program, the BOWM organized a meeting of the National Council of Women (NCW), the domestic counterpart to the International Council of Women. Exposition organizers took this seriously. Taking place midday at the famed Temple of Music, the itinerary included a speech by Susan B. Anthony on “The Council Idea.” An ardent activist and US representative to the International Council of Women, Anthony’s appearance at the Exposition was taken seriously as her name received public recognition. While Victorian women were expected to discuss politics privately, the BOWM explicitly brought in political speakers to Buffalo, promoting an acceptable image of a public, political woman. Overshadowed by the assassination attempt on President McKinley 6 days earlier, the Exposition’s planned “woman’s day” was still considered a success. Visitors returned to the Pan Am en masse in an attempt to buy souvenirs from McKinley’s fatal day, and continual days of high attendance provided an abundant public platform for these early women activists.

Despite the achievements of the Board of Women Managers during the planning process, the public was eager to criticize the modern image women were projecting for themselves. Architect Josephine Chapman’s New England Building was criticized when newspapers emphasized the traditional, domestic aspects of colonial culture surrounding her achievement. Connections between the “old colonial way of doing things” contradict media sources praising her professionalism. These associations with colonial life were reinforced with vivid descriptions of the “comfy interior” of the building, domestic spaces traditionally reserved for women. Highlighting the domestic nature of the building rather than its public legitimacy, shows a public audience uneasy with Chapman’s feminine independence. 

Similarly, two newspaper articles indicate the reluctance of the public to connect Adelaide Thorpe’s gender, independence and talent. One article in the International Gazette notes that although Thorpe worked independently, she was “preliminarily under control by CY [Charles] Turner,” the director of color for the Pan Am. Another article mentions twice that Miss Thorpe is the assistant to Mr. Turner and notes that Turner had granted Thorpe permission to design the interiors. Both articles ensure that descriptions of her independence as a female artist are accompanied by the fact that she was working under a man. In reality, Adelaide Thorpe like Josephine Chapman was an independent woman professional who was condescendingly received in public because of her success in a male dominated realm. 

Pan Am organizers also seemed content to award Evelyn Cary’s poster design victory, but hesitated to credit a woman artist of such achievement. Cary’s name does not even appear in the initial Buffalo Times article announcing winning designs. Noted in newspapers across the country in cities as large as Chicago and Boston, the Spirit of Niagara received harsh criticism for its controversial female figure and its perceived corrupting influence. One article in The Buffalo Times reported that when a “well dressed young woman disrobed on the boardwalk” and was arrested for skinny dipping, “she calmly informed the sergeant that she was the Spirit of Niagara and had full right to take a morning plunge.” Another Times article notes the battle between the postmaster of Beverly, New Jersey, and the disgruntled community. As per the direction of the Publicity Department, Cary’s poster was displayed in the public post office to attract attention to the Pan Am. On the night it was put up, an angry crowd gathered near the poster. Passers-by thought there was a “dog fight” because of the commotion. One pastor gathered the community together and held a meeting where he is quoted as saying, “the afrodisiac dame must go.” The angry mob removed the poster the next day. The article text: “The war was short and decisive” displays the public’s perception of the advertising poster as a battleground for morality. Abundant critical response to Cary’s Spirit of Niagara poster showed that not all of American society was ready for such a political statement during a time of shifting gender norms.

Even the separated nature of the women’s headquarters at the Exposition came under public scrutiny for those looking to curb women’s activism. Described in the papers as “a handsome headquarters” and as “one of the most attractive structures… for courteous hospitality,” men sought to detract from the seriousness of the political organizing occurring inside the old clubhouse. One political journal in San Francisco chimed into the conversation surrounding the administration building by emphasizing a “fainting room” in the woman’s headquarters. Combining notions of women as weak and overexerted, the article goes on to describe the well-kept nature of the room. Further reinforcing the gendered stereotype of women as trustworthy caretakers, the article emphasizes the domesticity and trivializes the building’s political importance.

Bolstered by the early successes of professional women like Cary, Chapman, and Thorpe, Buffalo’s BOWM revolutionized dominant understandings of separate sphere ideology at the Pan American Exposition by electing to display their artistic work side by side with men.  Yet, while Buffalo women made tremendous strides under reformers like DeForest and Cary, authors have noted the darker underside of a whitewashed Suffragist movement. While revolutionary for their own social class, Buffalo’s elite, white women missed opportunities of intersectional coalition building at the Pan Am. For example, local African American leader Mary Talbert was one individual who protested the exclusion of people of color from the Board of Women Managers on behalf of the Phyllis Wheatley Club of Colored Women. Indicative of prevalent, contemporary racist attitudes and obscured from collective memory, club women of color decided to exercise their activism in separate areas of Buffalo from the official BOWM.

Covered in the Buffalo Enquirer, on July 10, 1901, the second biennial convention of the National Association of Colored Women met in the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union Building on Niagara Square. Members including Booker T. Washington's wife and Mary Church Terrell, the association’s president, were in attendance. While celebrating the $300 sum gain by the Woman’s Aid Club in Peoria, Illinois, the meeting was important for its discussion of exclusion by elite, white women of Buffalo at the Pan Am. Lottle Wilson of Bay City Michigan stated that: 

We wish to say that the colored women are too busy to argue the question. It does not mean anything to us to be able to participate in the work of white women’s clubs. We have a great mission to carry out, and we mean to do it.

In addition to obtaining W. E. B. Du Bois Paris Exposition exhibit for the Pan Am, these African American women conducted their own meetings parallel to the BOWM at locations offsite like the Women’s Union Building and the Michigan Street Baptist Church. Aware of the publicity of the convention and the Exposition, these women of color similarly used the publicity of the Pan Am as a platform of debate to argue for social and political equality on a public scale. In the excerpt above, Lottle Wilson makes it clear that the colored women of Buffalo were too busy to care about racial exclusion of the white BOWM. In fact, she even seems to be protesting that exclusion by illuminating it to the wider public. It is evident that the African American women of Buffalo intended to carry on with their work despite the racial exclusion from the white board of elite women.

Sources indicate that international women also met via their organizations at the Pan Am. The official daily program for September 21 (Nurses’ Associated Alumnae Day) listed multiple international women speakers including Mrs. Bedford Fenwick who talked about higher education for nurses. Miss Louisa Stevenson and CJ Wood, both from England, also gave speeches in the Temple of Music. However, beyond surface level assessments of sources, it is difficult to identify evidence of elite women defending or working with women of other cultures, including the 32 honorary women’s board members from the visiting countries of South and Central America. While the visitation of women from the southern cone is well documented in sources like the official guest list of notable visitors, it is unclear how much cross-cultural interaction occurred.

One article in the Buffalo Courier covered the in-depth preparation these women from the Southern Hemisphere accomplished before presenting their nations at the Pan Am. Not only were the South and Central American women described in sexualized terms as dark-complexioned beauties, but they were also clearly restricted in their movements in America. They were shielded from all publicity and educated in English in a convent school at a convenient distance from urban centers. Segregated from the public, urban world, the article highlights associations with these international women and the domestic realm. Furthermore, the article notes that in addition to being under surveillance in public, they were not to go anywhere without a chaperone. The Courier also makes a clear distinction between the submissive women from South American and her aggressive sisters in the United States. Downplaying the movement of these women across international borders, the press stripped these international women of their political activism and cosmopolitan status. 

On tour with their husbands, women like Senora Vicuna, wife of the Chilean minister to the United States, were “expected to enliven the social campaign which will, of course, be waged simultaneously with the Exposition in Buffalo.” Contradicting itself, the article shows the conflicted nature of the public concerning the appropriate role for active, public women. The international women were defying traditional American and international gender norms by moving across public, international borders. Yet they are portrayed in the press as stationary and secluded, negating their unique autonomy. Like their African American counterparts, elite Buffalo women failed to come to the public defense of their southern sisters who were depicted as passive participants at the Pan Am despite their ability to move across international borders and attend institutions of higher education in America.

By displaying their work next to men in the Applied Arts, Manufacturing, and Fine Arts Buildings, Buffalo women claimed public space side by side with men and made these everyday spaces political at the Pan Am. While the Exposition was designed to privilege white, masculine civilization, Buffalo women were able to reimagine the landscape of public spectacle to encompass both sexes, male and female. In doing so, elite women made an important claim to social equality and public citizenship nearly twenty years before they would gain the legal right to vote. In response to this newfound activism, the Buffalo Board of Women Managers faced a fierce public backlash to their newfound independence. Despite missed opportunities of intersectional coalition building, the Pan Am’s BOWM experimented with new advertising strategies that allowed them to manipulate popular understandings of public space and gender.