Annual International Exhibition

The Annual International Exhibitions were an ambitious attempt to institutionalize the world fair experience. Between eighteen seventy-one and eighteen seventy-four, this site in Brompton hosted a yearly event that moved away from the one-off spectacle of the Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty-one. Organizers intended these to be a rotating series of ten specialized shows, each focusing on different branches of art and industry, such as pottery, woolens, or scientific inventions. While the first year attracted over one million visitors, public interest waned rapidly, and the series was abandoned after only four years. These exhibitions were held in permanent, terra-cotta-trimmed brick buildings designed by Colonel Henry Young Darracott Scott, which stood in stark contrast to the temporary, iron-and-glass structures common at other world fairs of the era. Much of the site was later reclaimed for the grand museums that define the district today.