PEORIA MAGAZINE June 2023

PEORIA RETRO

WHEN CORN CONQUERED ALL IN PEORIA Once upon a time, it was said that the city’s annual Corn Exposition rivaled New Orleans’ Mardi Gras

The center showplace of the Peoria Corn Exposition was on Globe Street between Main Street and Hamilton Boulevard, at a former church tabernacle. For the weeklong event, the exterior was festooned in countless corn husks. (Photo courtesy of the Peoria Historical Society Collection, Bradley University Library)

BY PHIL LUCIANO

O nce upon a time in Peoria, corn was king. It even had a palace. For six years around the turn of the 20th century, the kingdom – er, city — of Peoria hosted the Peoria Corn Exposition. The centerpiece of the weeklong festival was the Corn Palace, an auditorium festooned inside and out with corn husks that doubled as advertising and braggadocio. But the post-harvest event was not all business. The outside festivities featured a weirdly dizzying mix of charming fair and chaotic bacchanal, prompting wide

eyed visitors to describe it – good or bad or both — as nothing less than a rival to New Orleans’ Mardi Gras. The Peoria Corn Exposition would run in late summer or early fall from 1898 to 1903. The headquarters was on Globe Street between Main Street and Hamilton Boulevard. There, in 1894, several churches had built a wooden, octagonal auditorium dubbed The Tabernacle, intended as a host for religious revivals. Soon, though, it became a 7,000-seat site for political rallies, operas and rodeos – plus, in one brief and failed experiment, an ice rink.

The first Corn Expo started a tradition of covering the exterior with corn décor. One mosaic spelled out American brag ging rights regarding corn crops: “The world produces 2,800,000,000 bushels. The U.S. produces 2,152,000,000.” Inside, corn growers and enthusiasts – drawn largely by central Illinois’ reputation for above-average crop yields – could examine displays of implements or listen to lectures on cultivation. Meantime, advice and breakthroughs were reported in dispatches from newspaper scribes who had come from as far away as New York City.

42 JUNE 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE