Description of the Costa Rican Building from the Book of the Fair Guidebook:
In Costa Rica’s home at the Fair is housed a choice collection of exhibits from this enterprising and prosperous nation, the connecting link between the two Americas, and often styled the Yankees of Latin-America. Here is represented a region rich in resources, mineral and agricultural, with plant and forest growth of tropical luxuriance, the former of commercial value for manufacturing purposes and the latter for cabinet and construction timber. In educational matters Costa Rica is far in advance of her sister republics, supporting some 350 primary schools, in addition to high-schools, a university, and national and agricultural colleges, for the maintenance of which was voted in 1892 more than $500,000, or one tenth of the total appropriation. In other respects the country is no less progressive, having a large and increasing trade with Europe and the United States, with excellent postal and telegraph systems, and with railroad connection between the Atlantic and Pacific.
Situated on the eastern verge of the north lagoon, the building forms a neat and airy domicile, with a score of double casement windows and ten large skylights on the roof. In the front a spacious piazza stands on the brink of the waters, and on each side is a portal flanked by Doric pilasters, above it the shield of the republic in bold relief. The iron frieze and cornices are of tasteful design; the outer surface is painted in effective colors, and the inner walls frescoed in suitable designs. The structure is partially surrounded with trees, their foliage masking the open doors and windows with a curtain of living green. The entire effect is that of a cool and cosey retreat, a pleasant resting place, but one where there is also much of interest, much that is novel and unfamiliar. The interior forms a single room or hall, without partitions and with a gallery around its walls. The exhibits suggest a country rich in raw materials, most but not all of which can be manufactured to better advantage by older communities. Coffee and bananas are the staple exports of Costa Rica, and these are freely displayed, together with other products of the soil and sea. Of agricultural and vegetable specimens there are such as are raised in common with other countries, and there is one that is probably found in no other country. This is known as "vegetable ivory," almost as hard and white as tusk of narwhal, but nevertheless a seeding plant and one that is now being cultivated for manufacturing purposes. Of rubber there are many kinds; of medicinal plants a large variety, and among woods there are mahogany, as common almost in Costa Rica as the oak in Pennsylvania, and the cedron, whose surface when polished shows colors such as no painter can depict. Of exhibits of metals and minerals there are gold, silver, nickel, copper, lead, iron, zinc, sulphur, and bismuth; these with clays, building stones, and earths of commercial value being widely distributed in Costa Rica and in paying deposits. Manufactures are shown for the most part in primary forms; but there are jewelry, hardware, and cabinet work of excellent quality, with intricate and ingenious designs in sea and tortoise shells. Of raw silk there are several cases and of textile fibres, both animal and vegetable, there is a liberal display, the latter, when passing into domestic use, being fashioned into the roughest of home-made clothing. In the gallery are landscape and other paintings by prominent artists, with portraits of historic personages, the former representing mainly the scenic wonders of the cordilleras. Here also is a collection of birds, indigenous and some of them peculiar to Central America, as the kelzal, a large and beautiful species with brilliant plumage, but one that cannot live within a cage, and hence was adopted by Guatemala as one of the emblems impressed on her seal of state. There are also varieties of the canary, which in Costa Rica is plumed in yellow, black or white, and again in a mixture of all these colors. There are no live birds or beasts within the building, except for a cage of diminutive monkeys, with abnormal tufts of hair crowing their tiny and wrinkled foreheads. Finally there are ethnological and educational exhibits, the former consisting mainly of Indian relics and weapons.