Hudson-Fulton Celebration - Parades

Parades

The historical and carnival parades took place between September 25 and October 9, 1909. The historical parade provided a visual education to the city's diverse population and visitors, and the carnival parades conveyed the city’s culture.

The parade consisted of fifty-four floats divided into four divisions, which constituted the "periods" of New York history up to 1909 – the Indian Period, the Dutch Period, the English or Colonial Period, and the American or United States Period, also referred to as the Modern Period. An enormous float preceded all four divisions – this was the title car for the event as a whole. This massive introduction to the parade’s theme depicted "The History of the Empire State," and included, among other things, a canoe and a steamboat, a wigwam and a skyscraper, and the Statue of Liberty.

The Carnival Parade was held later in the week, on the evening of October 2, 1909. It traversed the same route as the Historical Parade. The Carnival Pageant illustrated the great body of Old World folklore that has inspired so much of the beautiful imagery of the poetry, song and drama of all civilized nations. Unlike its sister event, the historical parade, the carnival parade was not divided up into divisions. It did, however, have a grand title car – a dragon spouting flames and carrying a scroll bearing the theme of the parade – "Music, Literature, and Art." The following forty-nine floats proceeded to illustrate what was suggested in the title. There were several straight allegorical floats, portraying "colors," "peace," and "song," and depicting scenes like "The Crowning of Beethoven," a float upon which a bust of the composer was crowned by "Fame," and surrounded by dancing "Muses." But the themes were also represented through mythology. Floats illustrated tales from the Bible, a Queen of Sheba float; from German folklore, floats of Lorelei, the Death of Fafner, and so on; from classical mythology, floats of Medusa and Diana; from fairytales, a fairies float and a Cinderella float; from Egyptian customs, and so on. The culture represented was extensive. The final float of the Carnival Parade brought the focus back to America, with a representation of "Uncle Sam Welcoming the Nations," displaying the hospitality and peaceful desires of the United States.

Both the historical and carnival parades were met with decent success. New Yorkers’ evident enjoyment of the spectacle indicates that the Celebration Commission did its job well. Its messages of continuity, progress, and grandeur were present along with the floats, but it is difficult to evaluate the popular response to these intended lessons. Regardless of whether they understood the Commission’s messages, the audience enjoyed both parades. The crowd itself, delighting in its city, may in fact have been the more important spectacle in New York’s history than the massive floats that depicted it.