Between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 20th century, wilderness regions of Maine such as Rangeley and Moosehead Lake became popular destinations for hunters and fishermen. To accommodate this influx of sportsmen, local builders constructed sporting camps that ranged from privately owned cabins to commercial complexes. In keeping with the wooded environment, many of these camps were built of logs in a manner akin to the Adirondack style. By the early 1900s, this vernacular architecture had come to symbolize the Maine wilderness experience.
In 1903 the Maine Commissioners to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, had the state’s wooded image in mind when they adopted John Calvin Stevens’s proposal for a large log pavilion, the State of Maine Building, for the upcoming World’s Fair.
A decade before, Maine had been represented at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago by an octagonal Queen Anne-style building that was criticized for its lack of stylistic connection to the state. Also known as the State of Maine Building, it was relocated after the exposition to the Poland Spring Resort, where it now serves as a museum.
Not wishing to repeat past concerns in St. Louis, the commissioners opted for a design they believed would represent Maine to the nation. Despite some initial criticism in the press that a farmhouse would have been a more appropriate choice than a sporting camp, the project moved forward. The November 1903 issue of Bangor’s Industrial Journal described the building as follows:
“Including piazzas the building will have a length of 140 feet and a width of 68 feet. The front is broken into gables, in such a way as to give it a more ornamental appearance without robbing it of the likeness of a log house. The exterior will be peeled logs. In the interior, the house will be divided into a main reception room, ladies’ room, smoking and lounging area, bathrooms, and rooms for the custodian and the secretary of the commission.”
By November 1903, the commissioners had awarded the contract for a new State of Maine Building to Albert E. Astle, a prominent Houlton contractor. Employing a crew of 30 men, Astle constructed the building at the Little Machias Lake siding on the Fish River division of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. The foundation stones and the logs came from the Little Machias Lake area. Construction took place in December 1903 and January 1904.
Stevens visited Aroostook County to inspect the structure. It was then dismantled and loaded on 20 box cars of a special Bangor & Aroostook Railroad train that traveled to St. Louis in February 1904. This train was accompanied by Astle and 20 of his workmen, who reconstructed the building on a section of the fairgrounds known as the Plateau of the States. There, Maine’s log pavilion joined other state buildings, where it was visited by 6,000 people each day.
One of the first to report on the State of Maine Building was Edward M. Blanding, the editor of the Industrial Journal, who wrote in June 1904, “The State of Maine Building attracts much attention because of the uniqueness of its design, and it is visited daily by large numbers. Designed by John Calvin Stevens and constructed of Maine logs by workmen from Maine, the Maine headquarters are now complete and elicit much favorable comment from visitors.”
A souvenir booklet of the fair, The Universal Exposition Beautifully Illustrated, observed “The State of Maine has erected a hunter’s lodge, intending to call attention not only to the timber resources of the state but to the resources of pleasure for the sportsmen. The material and the logs used in the construction of the building were brought from Maine.”
When the fair ended in the fall of 1904, the State of Maine Building was sold for $2,000 to a group of sportsmen known as the St. Louis Log Cabin Club. The club moved the building 30 miles to Hollister, Missouri, locating it on Point Lookout, two hundred feet above the White River. After serving as a hunting and fishing camp, in 1915 the building became Dobyns Hall, a classroom, dormitory, and chapel for the School of the Ozarks, a Presbyterian boarding school for children.
Dobyns Hall burned in 1930. Over time the School of the Ozarks was transformed into the College of the Ozarks. In 2004 the college opened the Keeter Center, the design of which is based on Stevens’s State of Maine Building at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The center houses the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management. Within the center, a model hotel and dining room are staffed by students learning how to serve guests.
Exposition buildings usually have short lives governed largely by the length of a fair. Thanks to a series of unusual circumstances, John Calvin Stevens’s distinctive log design for the State of Maine Building at the St. Louis World’s Fair lives on in the Keeter Center at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri.
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Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. directed the Maine Historic Preservation Commission from 1976 to 2015, and he has served as Maine State Historian since 2004.
