WHILE IT IS generally known that American architects did not enter the architecture competition at the Paris Exposition of 1867 with drawings and models, even though juror Richard Morris Hunt urged them to do so, it has escaped our notice that the United States was represented on the Champs de Mars by actual buildings. Standing among the exotic array of elaborate national pavilions-the Turkish mosque, the Sultan's kiosk, the Egyptian Salemlick, the Palace of the Bey of Tunis, the Russian stables, the Japanese, Chinese, and Siamese temples, and Napoleon III's own Russo-Moorish extravaganzawere two plain prefabricated structures, remarkable for their simplicity: a balloon-framed cottage and a schoolhouse, both from Chicago. They stood where the south leg of the Eiffel Tower rests now (Fig. 1). Although designed originally for the humble purpose of housing settlers on the western plains, these structures became, in their Parisian manifestation, icons of American ideology, bearers of cultural messages usually entrusted to high style rather than to vernacular forms. Descriptions of the American Farmer's Cottage (Fig. 2) abound in the various reports on the fair.1 It had a kitchen, dining room, and parlor on the first floor and three bedrooms on the second, with an outhouse to be at some remove, it was pointed out, if in its intended setting on a Homestead Act quadrant. One room could be built for $300 and the rest added, as prosperity increased, for a total of $1,500. In Paris, the cottage interiors displayed maps, photographs, and statistical information about western agricultural conditions, and an Italian-born Civil War veteran stood by to answer questions. Thus, the cottage acted as a U.S. theme pavilion, attracting immigrants with graphic instruction about how the diligent yeoman could attain the luxury demonstrated by the building itself.