The Big E and the New England Fair

The story of the Eastern States Exposition begins with a man named Joshua Brooks and a building that did not exist. In nineteen fourteen, Brooks was trying to convince the National Dairy Show to hold its annual gathering in West Springfield. His argument was persuasive.

His evidence was thin. The fairground he promised would not be built until after the agreement was signed. It was built anyway, on one hundred seventy-five acres in West Springfield, just across the Connecticut River from downtown Springfield.

The first fair opened in October of nineteen sixteen. Ten states participated, all six of New England plus New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The organizers called it the Eastern States Agricultural and Industrial Exposition, and it was, by the standards of its first year, a success.

The fair survived both world wars only by yielding its grounds to military storage depots. It survived the Depression. For fifty years it operated without a nickname.

Then in nineteen sixty-six, for its fiftieth anniversary, the marketing changed and the Eastern States Exposition became the Big E. The E, organizers said, stood for entertainment, education, and excitement. Today the Big E draws more than a million visitors every September, making it the largest fair in the northeastern United States.

The Avenue of States, lined with buildings representing each New England state, remains its centerpiece. It is the kind of institution that seems inevitable in retrospect, a fair for a region, built on a handshake, on a field that was not yet there.