The 1896 Chrysanthemum Show and Exhibition of Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables was a five-day event and the first major show held in PHS's new Horticultural Hall on Broad Street. The exhibition included chrysanthemums, orchids, foliage plants, palms, ferns, Japanese evergreens, ornamental grasses and bamboos, berry-bearing plants, crotons, dracaenas, carnations, caladiums, and roses. Awarded premiums totaled $1,491. This illustration, showing the interior of the new hall, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 11, 1896.

Schedule of Prizes offered by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society at its Spring Exhibition to be Held in Horticultural Hall Broad Str., Below Locust, Philadelphia March 28th, 29th and 30th, 1905.

Wealthy estate owners, called "private growers," and commercial growers such as florists and seed and nursery businesses offered prize money, called a "premium," to winners. Private growers competed with other private growers; commercial growers did likewise. Premiums would be for a specific class, such as "cut flowers, chrysanthemums, or, group of foliage and flowering plants, arranged for effect." At the 1908 exhibition, prize money amounted to $1,152, roughly $30,000 today.