In 1892, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison appointed Michael H. de Young as a national commissioner to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago.

In the summer of 1893, de Young announced his plans for the California Midwinter International Exposition to be held in Golden Gate Park.

[8] De Young and other leaders believed that a world fair in San Francisco would create jobs and stimulate the local economy.

[7] Mayor Levi Richard Ellert of San Francisco and Governor Henry Markham of California both expressed support for the plan.

As a result, the fair was financed entirely by donations, and it did not receive any federal, state, or local bonds, loans, grants, or subsidies.

The Administration Building was built at the western end of the Grand Court, where the current Spreckels Temple of Music is today.

[13] The top level of the tower housed a spotlight which was used to illuminate popular locations in the park, as well as the nearby Lone Mountain.

Many of these female artists received their education at the California School of Design, which eventually became today's San Francisco Art Institute.

Some of the other female artists featured in the Fine Arts Building included Alice Brown Chittenden, Helen Hyde, Matilda Lotz, Dora Norton Williams, Eva Almond Withrow, and several more.

"At a time when camera film could make only black and white images, their colorful paintings of famous early California subjects are visual memories of important local history.

[21] The center of the building held a gilded globe representing California's total reported yield of gold to date.

[22] The emergency hospital of the Midwinter Exposition was established in connection with the police station at the heart of Golden Gate Park in an oval of land known as the Grand Court of Honor.

[24] Lengfeld's Pharmacy in itself became an unintentional exhibit of modern, clean and efficient medicine at the Midwinter Exposition during a time that medical procedures were gaining significant societal interest.

De Young obtained an ambulance built for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago the year before and brought it to San Francisco.

Following the exposition, the ambulance was purchased by Theresa Fair, the future owner of San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel.

[29] As a last-minute decision Mayor Gaty added the El Montecito Spanish band to play string music for the delectation of sightseers.

[34] The Firth wheel, standing at 120 feet above the ground and able to carry ten people per carriage, took up to twenty minutes to complete a full rotation.

[35] The scenic railway, another ride of the midwinter fair, was "an early wooden roller-coaster with a dozen undulating rises and dips".

It was said to have caused riders to pray to the biblical saint of their choosing, as most were baffled by how the ride managed to appear to make the room spin 360-degrees vertically.

Complete with a painted backdrop of Mount Shasta, the camp and many attractions such as a stagecoach which was held up daily by bandits, gambling tables, a dance hall, saloon, and gold-panning sluices.

[42] The Mining Camp was designed to let visitors experience what life was like in San Francisco before industrialization and immigrants started moving into the city.

[45] In the late 1800s, ethnological exhibitions began to develop as a form of public entertainment and cultural education on non-Western lifestyles.

Many argued that the portrayal of these people groups were stereotypical, reductive, and racist, drawing criticism from Frederick Douglass and San Francisco's Japanese population.

Marsh's Japanese Village & Tea Garden, along with the Fine Arts building which later became the deYoung museum, are the only remnants of the Midwinter Fair that remain in Golden Gate Park.

[49] During the time of the fair, Marsh and a Japanese artist named Toshio Aoki designed and maintained the village as an attraction.

Marsh avoided the problem completely by hiring Germans to pull the tourists around, he also "darkened their faces and dressed them in oriental garb.

Beyond the Egyptian-inspired Cairo street was the "Persian Palace Theater" and dance hall, which featured performances by Turkish dancers.

Restaurants operated in the Chinese, Japanese, and Oriental Villages, in the Old Heidelberg, at the Firth Wheel, and at the base of Bonet's Tower among other places.

The Fine Arts Building, which used to be the De Young Museum (removed and rebuilt after the 1989 earthquake), the Japanese Village, along with multiple statues and parts of the Court of Honor still exist in the park.

Some of the sculptures remaining include the Apple Cider Press, Roman Gladiator, Prayer Book Cross, Doré Vase, and two sphinxes.