Giant Victorian Head Replica

In the year 1901, the Pan-American Exposition took place in Buffalo, NY and covered 350 acres on the property that is now Delaware Park, but the exhibition that also saw the assassination of then President McKinley is best remembered by the Giant Victorian Head replica just across town. 

Built to resemble one of the elaborately whimsical entrance arches to the fair, the huge noggin is actually entitled, Dreamland, after the ride whose entrance was formerly guarded by the colossal head. The sleeping woman's face now adorns the entrance to the Buffalo Historical Society's Resource Center for the Pan-American Exhibition. The recreation is not as classically symmetrical, or as colossal as the original, but the outsized spirit of the fair remains intact. The statue helps to remember the positive aspects such as grandeur and spectacle that the exhibition brought, and which have been overshadowed in the cultural memory by the president's tragic slaying. 

Update November 2017: The head is gone.