[Souvenir Lapel Pins]

The six-month Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition attracted over one-and-a-half-million tourists to see the “Athens of the South.” Despite extensive railway promotion by W.A. Henderson and other railroad executives, attendance was low due to an outbreak of yellow fever across the Gulf States. Like San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, Nashville's Parthenon was recreated in the 1920s. Souvenirs like these circulated widely in the United States after expositions in Philadelphia (1876) and in Chicago (1893).