Produced by David Schwan
Panama-Pacific International Exposition
The Jewel City:
Its Planning and Achievement; Its Architecture, Sculpture, Symbolism,
and Music; Its Gardens, Palaces, and Exhibits
By
Ben Macomber
With Colored Frontispiece and more than Seventy-Five Other Illustrations
Introduction
No more accurate account of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
has been given than one that was forced from the lips of a charming
Eastern woman of culture. Walking one evening in the Fine Arts
colonnade, while the illumination from distant searchlights accented the
glory of Maybeck's masterpiece, and lit up the half-domes and arches
across the lagoon, she exclaimed to her companion: "Why, all the beauty
of the world has been sifted, and the finest of it assembled here!"
This simple phrase, the involuntary outburst of a traveled visitor, will
be echoed by thousands who feel the magic of what the master artists and
architects of America have done here in celebration of the Panama Canal.
I put the "artists" first, because this Exposition has set a new
standard. Among all the great international expositions previously held
in the United States, as well as those abroad, it had been the fashion
for managers to order a manufactures building from one architect, a
machinery hall from another, a fine arts gallery from a third. These
worked almost independently. Their structures, separately, were often
beautiful; together, they seldom indicated any kinship or common
purpose. When the buildings were completed, the artists were called in
to soften their disharmonies with such sculptural and horticultural
decoration as might be possible.
The Exposition in San Francisco is the first, though it will not be the
last, to subject its architecture to a definite artistic motive. How
this came about it is the object of the present book to tell,--how the
Exposition was planned as an appropriate expression of America's joy in
the completion of the Canal, and how its structures, commemorating the
peaceful meeting of the nations through that great waterway, have fitly
been made to represent the art of the entire world, yet with such unity
and originality as to give new interest to the ancient forms, and with
such a wealth of appropriate symbolism in color, sculpture and mural
painting as to make its great courts, towers and arches an inspiring
story of Nature's beneficence and Man's progress.
Much of Mr. Macomber's text was written originally for The San Francisco
Chronicle, to which acknowledgment is made for its permission to reprint
his papers. The popularity of these articles, which have been running
since February, has testified to their usefulness. In many cases they
have been preserved and passed from hand to hand. They have also won the
endorsement of liberal use in other publications. It is proper to say,
however, that similarity of language sometimes indicates a common
following of the artists' own explanations of their work, made public by
the Exposition management.
Mr. Macomber has revised and amplified his chapters hitherto published,
and has added others briefly outlining the history of the Exposition,
and dealing with the fine-arts, industrial, and livestock exhibits, the
foreign and state buildings, music, sports, aviation, and the amusement
section. Apart from the smaller guides, the book is thus the first to
attempt any comprehensive description of the Exposition. Without
indiscriminate praise, or sacrificing independent judgment, the author's
purpose has been to interpret and explain the many things about which
the visitors on the ground and readers at home may naturally wish to
know, rather than to point out minor defects.
For the general exhibit palaces, anything more than a brief outline of
their contents would fill several books. But the chapter entitled "The
Palace of Fine Arts and its Exhibit, with the Awards," supplies such an
account of the plan of the galleries and of the important works therein
as will furnish a clear and helpful guide to this great collection. The
awards of the Fine Arts juries, just announced, have been incorporated
in the account, while a full list of the grand prizes, medals of honor
and gold medals also follows the chapter. With the artists thus named
are noted the rooms where the works of each may be found. The Appendix
offers a practical aid to the study of the "Exposition Art" in the list
there given of the mural paintings and sculptures which form the notable
decorations of palaces and gardens. With these are cross-references to
the pages in the text where they are described.
In selecting the photographs here reproduced, the aim has been not so
much to show exhibits as to illustrate the plan, architecture and
decorative art of the Exposition, and to indicate the advance which it
scores over its predecessors. The pictures, with their full
"underlines," will aid those who have not yet visited the Exposition to
apprehend its spirit and much of its unprecedented beauty.
Cross-references from text to illustrations increase their helpfulness.
But even these abundant illustration can do little more than suggest how
far the artistic achievement is the finest yet seen in America. No book
can adequately represent this World's Fair. Its spell is the charm of
color and the grandeur of noble proportion, harmonizing great
architectural units; its lesson is the compelling value, demonstrated on
a vast scale, of exquisite taste. It must be seen to be understood.
John H. Williams.
San Francisco, July 15, 1915.
Contents
I. Motive and Planning of the Exposition
II. Ground Plan and Landscape Gardening
III. The South Gardens
IV. "The Walled City": Its Great Palaces and their Architecture,
Color and Material
V. The Tower of Jewels
VI. The Court of the Universe
VII. The Court of the Ages
VIII. The Court of the Seasons
IX. Courts of Flowers and Palms
X. The Fountains
XI. The Palace of Machinery
XII. The Palace of Fine Arts and its Exhibit, with the Awards
XIII. The Exposition Illuminated
XIV. Music at the Exposition
XV. Inside the Exhibit Palaces
XVI. The Foreign Pavilions
XVII. The State Buildings
XVIII. The Live-Stock Exhibit
XIX. Sports and Games; Automobile Races; Aviation
XX. The Joy Zone
Appendix: Lists of Sculptures, Mural Paintings, and Artists. Roster of
the Exposition. Index.
Illustrations
Unless otherwise noted, these are from photographs by the official
photographers, the Cardinell-Vincent Company.
Roman Arch of the Setting Sun, Color Plate from Photo by Gabriel Moulin
Ground Plan of the Palace of Fine Arts
Aeroplane View of the Exposition, Photo copyrighted by Gabriel Moulin
Avenue of Palms
The South Gardens
The Palace of Horticulture
Festival Hall--George H. Kahn
Map of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
"Listening Woman" and "Young Girl," Festival Hall
South Portal, Palace of Varied Industries--J. L. Padilla
Palace of Liberal Arts
Sixteenth-Century Spanish Portal, North Facade
"The Pirate," North Portal
"The Priest," Tower of Jewels
The Tower of Jewels and Fountain of Energy
"Cortez"--J. L. Padilla
Under the Arch, Tower of Jewels
Fountain of El Dorado
Column of Progress--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
"The Adventurous Bowman"
Arch of the Setting Sun--J. L. Padilla
Frieze at Base of the Column of Progress (2)
The Court of the Universe and Arch of the Rising Sun
"Earth" and "Fire" (2)
"The Rising Sun" and "The Setting Sun" (2)
Tower of the Ages--J. L. Padilla
Fountain of the Earth--J. L. Padilla
"Air," one of Brangwyn's Murals
The Court of Seasons
Arch in the Court of Seasons--George H. Kahn
Court of Flowers, Detail--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
"The End of the Trail"--J. L. Padilla
"The Pioneer"
The Court of Palms.
Portal between the Courts of Palms and Seasons--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
Fountain of Summer--J. L. Padilla
The Mermaid Fountain
Fountain of "Beauty and the Beast"
The Palace of Machinery
Palace of Machinery, Interior
Vestibule, Palace of Machinery--Gabriel Moulin
Palace of Fine Arts
Open Corridor, Palace of Fine Arts
Detail of Rotunda, Palace of Fine Arts
Colonnade, Fine Arts, and Half-Dome, Food Products Palace
--J. L. Padilla
"The Mother of the Dead"
"High Tide; the Return of the Fishermen"--Gabriel Moulin
"Among the White Birch Trunks"--Gabriel Moulin
Tower of Jewels at Night--J. L. Padilla
"The Outcast"
"Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus"
Palace of Fine Arts at Night--Paul Elder Co.
Tympanum, Palace of Varied Industries
Tympanum, Palace of Education
"The Genius of Creation"
Pavilions of Australia and Canada (2),--H. W. Mossby, J. L. Padilla
Pavilions of France and the Netherlands (2)
Rodin's "The Thinker"--Friedrich Woiter
A Court in the Italian Pavilion
The Pavilion of Sweden
Pavilions of Argentina and Japan (2)
The New York State Building--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
California Building
Illinois and Missouri (2)
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania (2)
Inside the California Building
Oregon and Washington (2)
Aeroplane Flight at Night
The Jewel City
I.
Motive and Planning of the Exposition
The Panama Canal a landmark in human progress--Its influence through
changes in trade routes San Francisco determines, in spite of the great
fire, to celebrate its completion--Millions pledged in two hours--
Congressional approval won--The Exposition built by California and San
Francisco, without National aid--Only two years given to construction--
Fifty millions expended.
Human endeavor has supplied no nobler motive for public rejoicing than
the union of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Panama Canal has
stirred and enlarged the imaginations of men as no other task has done,
however enormous the conception, however huge the work. The Canal is one
of the few achievements which may properly be called epoch-making. Its
building is of such signal and far reaching importance that it marks a
point in history from which succeeding years and later progress will be
counted. It is so variously significant that the future alone can
determine the ways in which it will touch and modify the life of
mankind.
First of all, of course, its intent is commercial. Experts have already
estimated its influence on the traffic routes. But these experts, who
can, from known present conditions, work out the changes that will take
place, that are already taking place, in the flow of commerce on the
seven seas, cannot estimate the effect those changes will have on the
life of the people who inhabit their shores. Changes in trade routes
have overwhelmed empires and raised up new nations, have nourished
civilizations and brought others to decay. From the days when merchants
first followed the caravan routes, nothing has so modified the history
of nations as the course of the roads by which commerce moved. Huge as
was the Canal as a physical undertaking alone, it is not less stupendous
in the vision of the effects which will flow from it.
In this vision, the Western shore of the United States feels that it
looms largely. No small part of the benefits of the Canal are expected
to fall to the Pacific States. Long before it was completed, the minds
of men in the West were filled with it. Its approaching completion
appealed to everyone as an event of such tremendous significance as to
deserve commemoration. Thus when R. B. Hale, in 1904, first proposed
that the opening of the waterway should be marked by an international
exposition in San Francisco, he merely gave expression to the thought of
the whole West.
The Canal is a national undertaking, built by the labor and money of an
entire people. It is of international significance, too, for its
benefits are world-wide. The Exposition thus represents not only the
United States but also the world in its effort to honor this
achievement. San Francisco and California have merely staged the
spectacle, in which the world participates.
An international exposition is a symbol of world progress. This one is
so complete in its significance, so inclusive of all the best that man
has done, that it is something more than a memorial of another event. It
is itself epochal, as is the enterprise it commemorates. It bears a
direct relation to the Canal. The motive of the Exposition was the
grandeur of a great labor. Completed, it embodies that motive in the
highest expression of art.
It took eleven years to prepare for and build the Exposition. The first
proposal in 1904 was followed by five years of discussion of ways and
means. Two years were occupied in raising the money and winning the
consent of the Nation, and then four years more in planning, building,
and collecting the exhibits. The first plans were interrupted, but not
ended, by the most terrible disaster that ever befell a great city--the
fire of 1906, which wiped out the entire business portion, with much of
the residence section, of San Francisco, and destroyed hundreds of
millions of wealth. Before that year ended, and while the city was only
beginning its huge task of rebuilding, it again took up its festival
idea. A company was formed, but, until reconstruction was largely out of
the way, it was impossible to do more than keep the idea alive.
In October, 1909, the idea began to crystallize into a definite purpose.
In that month President Taft, at a banquet at the Fairmont Hotel,
declared that the Canal would be opened to commerce on January 1, 1915.
That announcement gave the final impulse to the growing determination.
The success of the Portola celebration that summer had given the city
confidence in its ability to carry out a great festival undertaking. In
fact, it was at a meeting of the Portola committee that the first move
was made toward the organization that later became effective.
A mass-meeting in the Merchants' Exchange, on December 7, 1909, ended in
a resolve to organize an exposition company. This found such strong
popular support that at a second mass-meeting on April 28, 1910,
$4,089,000 was subscribed in less than two hours. In two months the
subscription had risen to $6,156,840. Governor Gillett called the
California legislature in special session in August to submit to the
people constitutional changes enabling San Francisco to issue exposition
bonds in the amount of $5,000,000, and the State to raise another
$5,000,000 by special tax. In November the people of State and city
voted the two amounts. That placed a minimum of $16,000,000 to the
credit of the Exposition Company and assured the world that California
meant business.
Then followed the struggle for Congressional approval. New Orleans
demanded the right to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. All the
resources of both cities were enlisted in a battle before Congress that
drew the attention of the Nation. Three times delegations went from
California to Washington to fight for the Exposition. California won, on
January 31, 1911, when, by a vote of 188 to 159, the House of
Representatives designated San Francisco as the city in which the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition should be held in 1915 to
commemorate the opening of the Canal.
During this struggle California gave her word that she would not ask the
Nation for help in financing the Exposition. The promise has been kept.
The Government has not even erected a national building. It has,
however, helped in material ways, by granting the use of portions of the
Presidio and Fort Mason reservations, by sending naval colliers to bring
exhibits from European countries, and by becoming one of the heaviest
exhibitors. The national exhibits include three companies of marines
encamped on the grounds, and the battleship Oregon anchored off the
Marina.
After Congress had acted, half a year was spent in choosing a site. It
was at first expected that the Exposition would be built in Golden Gate
Park. A compromise among advocates of different sites was reached on
July 25, 1911, when a majority vote of the directors named a site
including portions of Golden Gate Park, Lincoln Park, the Presidio, and
Harbor View. Before 100,000 people President Taft broke ground for the
Exposition in the Stadium of Golden Gate Park. But it was not long
before the choice settled finally on Harbor View alone.
The work began with the organization of the architectural staff. The
following architects accepted places on the commission: McKim, Mead and
White, Henry Bacon, and Thomas Hastings of New York; Robert Farquhar of
Los Angeles; and Louis Christian Mullgardt, George W. Kelham, Willis
Polk, William B. Faville, Clarence R. Ward, and Arthur Brown of San
Francisco. To their number was later added Bernard R. Maybeck of San
Francisco, who designed the Palace of Fine Arts, while Edward H.
Bennett, an associate of Burnham, of Chicago, made the final ground plan
of the Exposition group. When San Francisco had been before Congress
asking national endorsement for the Exposition here, the plans which
were then presented, and on which the fight was won, were prepared by
Ernest Coxhead, architect, of this city. These proposed a massed
grouping of the Exposition structures, around courts, and on the Bay
front. They were afterwards amplified by Coxhead, and furnished the
keynote of the scheme finally carried out. While the Exposition belongs
not to California alone, but to the whole world, it is pleasant to find
that so much of what is best in it is the work of Californians and San
Franciscans.
The architects perfected the plan in 1912. At the same time the actual
work of preparing the site was completed with the filling of the
tide-land portions by hydraulic dredgers and the removal of the standing
buildings. In the same year the department chiefs were named and began
their work. John McLaren, for many years Superintendent of Golden Gate
Park, was put in charge of the landscape engineering; W. D'A. Ryan was
chosen to plan the illumination, and Jules Guerin and K. T. F. Bitter
were placed at the heads of the departments of color and sculpture. With
these details behind, the ground-breaking for Machinery Palace in
January, 1913, marked the beginning of the final stage. In the two years
that remained it was necessary only to carry out the plans already
perfected. No other exposition has been so forehanded. When the gates
opened on February 20, 1915, to remain open till December 4, the
Exposition was practically complete. Some of the exhibitors had not
finished their installation; some of the foreign nations were not ready,
but the Exposition had kept a promise made two years before to have its
own work done on time. This achievement was quite unprecedented. It is
the more remarkable in that the record was made by a city which had been
almost annihilated by fire a few years before.
The entire cost of the Exposition, exclusive of the value of exhibits,
is estimated by the Controller at $50,000,000. This total is made up of
$20,000,000 spent by San Francisco and California, $10,000,000 laid out
in state and foreign buildings and displays, $10,000,000 by private
exhibitors, and $10,000,000 by the one hundred concessionaires on the
Joy Zone. San Francisco contributed $12,500,000, the State of California
$5,000,000, and its fifty-eight counties, $2,500,000. The amounts
expended by foreign nations range from $1,700,000 by Argentina to sums
as low as $100,000. The State of New York spent nearly $1,000,000.
II.
Ground Plan and Landscape Gardening
The Exposition a product of co-operation of the arts--The landscape
made part of the scheme--Block grouping of palaces and courts--Plan of
the buildings--McLaren's wonders in gardening--Succession of flowers
throughout the Exposition--Changes overnight--Unique wall of living
green.
The artistic quality which distinguishes this Exposition above all
others in America or Europe rests on two outstanding facts: the
substantial unity of its architectural scheme, and its harmony of color,
keyed to Nature's coloring of the landscape in which it is placed. The
site furnished the clue to the plan; co-operation made possible the
great success with which it has been worked out.
"Centuries ago," said George W. Kelham, chief of Exposition
architecture, "before the modern age of advanced specialization was
dreamed of, had an architect been asked to create an exposition, he
would have been not only an architect, but painter, sculptor and
landscape engineer as well. He would have thought, planned and executed
from this fourfold angle, and I doubt if it would have even occurred to
him to think of one of the arts as detached from another." These words
express the method of the Exposition builders. The scheme adopted was a
unit, in which all of the arts were needed, and in which they all
combined to a single end. Each building, each court, every garden and
large mass of foliage, was designed as part of a balanced composition.
To make the landscape an integral part of the Exposition picture, by
fitting the Exposition to the landscape, was the common aim of
architect, colorist, sculptor and landscape engineer. The Mediterranean
setting offered by a sloping bench on the shore of the Golden Gate
suggested, as most capable of high expression of beauty, the scheme of a
city of the Far East, its great buildings walled in and sheltering its
courts. The coloring of earth, sky and sea furnished the palette from
which tints were chosen alike for palaces and gardens.
The beauty of this plan is matched by its practical advantages. The
compact grouping of the Exposition palaces not only meant a saving of
ground and labor, but it makes it easier to handle the crowds, and
lessens the walking required of the visitor. There is no monotony. In
developing the general idea, each architect and artist was left free to
express his own personality and imagination. The result is that varied
forms and colors in the different courts and buildings blend truly into
the whole picture of an Oriental city, set in the midst of a vast
amphitheater of hills and bay, arched by the fathomless blue of the
California sky.
The ground plan is as simple as it is compact. Entering through the main
gate at Scott Street, the visitor has the Exposition before him,
practically an equal section on either hand. (See map, p. 30, 31.) On
right and left in the South Garden are Festival Hall and the Palace of
Horticulture. (p. 23, 24, 29.) In front is the Tower of Jewels, before
it the Fountain of Energy. (p. 47.) The tower centers the south front of
a solid block of eight palaces, so closely joined in structure, and so
harmonized in architecture, as to make really a single palace. On the
right and left of the tower are the Palaces of Manufactures and Liberal
Arts; beyond them, on east and west, are Varied Industries and
Education. Behind these four, and fronting on the bay from east to west,
are Mines, Transportation, Agriculture and Food Products. In the center
of the group, cut out of the corners of the Manufactures, Liberal Arts,
Agriculture and Transportation Palaces, and entered from the south
through the Tower of Jewels, is the great Court of the Universe, opened
on east and west by the triumphal Arches of the Nations. (p. 59 and
63.) The Court opens northward between the Palaces of Transportation and
Agriculture in a splendid colonnaded avenue to the Column of Progress,
near the bay. (p. 57.)
Through the arch on the east the Court of the Universe opens into an
avenue which leads to the Court of the Ages, cut out of the intersection
of the four Palaces of Manufactures, Varied Industries, Mines and
Transportation. (p. 70.) A similar avenue on the west passes to the
Court of Seasons, carved from the common junction of Liberal Arts,
Education, Food Products and Agriculture. (p. 79 and 80.) Avenues pass
east and west and to the north from each of these two courts, and on the
south each connects through an arch with a court set back into the south
front of the palace group, the Courts of Flowers and Palms. (p. 85, 87,
88, 93, 100.) On east and west of this central group of eight palaces
are the Palace of Machinery and the Palace of Fine Arts (p. 105, 112),
serving architecturally to balance the scheme. East of the exhibit
palaces is the Joy Zone, a mile-long street solidly built with bizarre
places of amusement. Balancing the Zone on the west is the State and
Foreign section, with the live-stock exhibits, the polo field, race
track and stadium beyond, at the western extremity of the grounds. The
state buildings stand along two avenues on the north side of the
section; the foreign pavilions occupy its southern half.
The Tower of Jewels and the central palace group face south on the
Avenue of Palms (p. 18), which, at its west end, turns as it passes the
Fine Arts lagoon, and becomes the Avenue of Nations. This latter
highway, bordered by the foreign buildings, joins at its western
extremity the Esplanade, a broad avenue passing the north face of the
palace group and continuing westward between the state and the foreign
sections.
On the east, the Avenue of Progress divides the central group from the
Palace of Machinery. Administration Avenue on the west separates the
central group from the Palace of Fine Arts. Along the bay shore is the
Marina, and between it and the Esplanade are the Yacht Harbor and the
lawns of the North Gardens.
Surrounding all these buildings, filling the courts and bordering the
avenues, are John McLaren's lovely gardens. For multitudes of visitors
this landscape gardening is the most wonderful thing about the
Exposition. The trees and flowers have been placed with perfect art;
they look as though they had been there always. It is hard for a
stranger to believe that three years ago the Exposition site was a
marsh, and that these trees were transplanted last year.
The Avenue of Palms is bordered on each side for half a mile with a
double row of California fan palms and Canary date palms, trees from
eighteen to twenty-five feet high and festooned higher than a man's head
with ivy and blooming nasturtium. (See p. 18.) These massive plants,
soil, roots, vines and all, were brought bodily from Golden Gate Park.
Against the south walls of the buildings facing this avenue are banked
hundreds of eucalyptus globulus, forty to fifty feet high, with smaller
varieties of eucalyptus, and yellow flowering acacias.
The Avenue of Progress is bordered with groups of Draceona indivisa,
averaging twenty feet in height. The walls of the palaces on either hand
are clothed with tall Monterey and Lawson cypresses and arbor vitae.
Between these and the Draceonas of the avenue are planted specimens of
Abies pinsapo, the Spanish fir. Banks of flowers and vines cover the
ground around the bases of the trees. Administration Avenue has on one
side the thickets of the Fine Arts lagoon, on the other, masses of
eucalyptus globulus against the palace walls, finished off with other
hardy trees and shrubs. Against the north front of the palaces are set
Monterey cypresses and eucalyptus, banked with acacias.
The entire city side of the South Gardens is bordered by a wondrous wall
of living green,--not a hedge, but truly a wall,--the most surprising
of all McLaren's inventions. For this wall, though living, is not rooted
in the ground, but is really a skeleton of timbers, three times the
height of a man, paneled solidly on both sides with shallow boxes of
earth thickly set with a tiny green plant, which, as though crushed down
by the weight of its name, Mesembryantliemum spectabilis, hugs the soil
closely. Each box, really nothing more than a tray, is barely deep
enough to contain a couple of inches of earth, and is screened over with
wire mesh to prevent the slice of soil from falling out when it is set
on edge. Some thousands of these boxes are required to cover the entire
wall, which thus appears a solid mass of greenery. The little plant
looks like the common ice-plant of old-fashioned gardens, and is
actually kin to it. It asks little of this world, is accustomed to grow
in difficult places, and is kept green by sprinkling. If a section of it
gives up the struggle, the tray may be replaced with a fresh one. From
time to time a blush of tiny pink flowers runs over the wall. There
seems to be no season for the blossoms, but whenever the sun shines,
this delicate shimmer of bloom appears.
The season opened in the great sunken garden of the Court of the
Universe with solid masses of rhododendron. The Court of the Ages was a
pink flare of hyacinths, which, with an exquisite sense of the desert
feeling of the court, were stripped of their leaves and left to stand on
bare stalks. The South Gardens and the Court of Flowers were a golden
glow of daffodils. Daffodils, too, were everywhere else, with
rhododendron just breaking into bloom. The daffodil show lasted several
weeks until, over night, it was replaced by acres of yellow tulips
blooming above thick mats of pansies. This magic change was merely the
result of McLaren's forethought. The daffodils had all been set at the
right time to bloom when the Exposition opened. The pansies were set
with them, but were unnoticed beneath the taller daffodils. Unnoticed
also were the tulips, steadily shooting upward to be ready in bloom the
moment the daffodils began to fail. One night and morning scores of
workmen clipped off all the fading daffodils, and left a yellow sea of
tulips with cups just opening. When the tulips faded early, because of
continued rains, the solid masses of pansies remained to keep up the
golden show. With the end of the yellow period came three months of pink
flowers, to be followed in the closing third of the Exposition's life by
a show of variegated blooms.
This marvelous sequence of flowers without a gap is not the result of
chance, or even of California's floral prodigality, but of McLaren's
hard-headed calculation. He actually rehearsed the whole floral scheme
of the Exposition for three seasons beforehand. To a day, he knew the
time that would elapse between the planting and the blooming of any
flower he planned to use. Thus he scheduled his gardening for the whole
season so that the gardens should always be in full bloom. In McLaren's
program there are ten months of constant bloom, without a break, without
a wait. No such gardening was ever seen before. Needless to say, it
could hardly have been attempted elsewhere than in California.
III.
The South Gardens
A charming foreground to the great palaces--Palace of Horticulture and
some of its rare plants--Food for pirates--Ancient and blue-blooded
forest dwarfs--The Horticultural Gardens--House of Hoo Hoo--Festival
Hall, with its fine sculptures by Sherry Fry--A remarkable pipe organ.
Entering the Exposition by the main or Scott Street gate, the visitor
has before him the beautiful South Gardens. (See p. 23.) These form an
animated and effective foreground for the Exposition palaces. Except for
their fountains, the gardens and the structures in them are less notable
for sculpture than the central courts of the Exposition. Most of the
plastic work here is purely decorative. The gardens are formal, French
in style, laid out with long rectangular pools, each with a formal
fountain, and each surrounded by a conventional balustrade with flower
receptacles and lamp standards. In harmony with their surroundings, the
buildings, too, are French, of florid, festival style.
The Palace of Horticulture, Bakewell and Brown, architects, is the
largest and most splendid of the garden structures. (p. 24.) Byzantine
in its architecture, suggesting the Mosque of Ahmed I, at
Constantinople, its Gallic decorations have made it essentially French
in spirit. The ornamentation of this palace is the most florid of any
building in the Exposition proper. Yet this opulence is not
inappropriate. In size and form, no less than in theme, the structure is
well adapted to carry such rich decoration. This is the palace of the
bounty of nature; its adornment symbolizes the rich yield of California
fields.
In harmony also with the theme, the human figure is absent from the
sculpture, save in the caryatids of the porches and the groups
supporting the tall finials. Fruits and flowers, interwoven in heavy
garlands and overflowing from baskets and urns, carry out the idea of
profuse abundance. The great dome, larger than the dome of either St.
Peter's at Rome or the Pantheon at Paris, is itself an overturned fruit
basket, with a second latticed basket on its top. The conception of
profusion becomes almost barbaric in the three pavilioned entrances,
flanked on either side by the tall finials suggesting minarets. Here the
Oriental influence of the architectural form, the mosque, becomes most
pronounced, changing to French again in the caryatid porches.
Altogether, the Palace of Horticulture is a beautiful building, but
rather hard to see properly from the ground. From an elevation, where it
appears more as a whole, it is far more effective. Curiously, it
photographs better than any other building here, save the Fine Arts
Palace, but in actual view it hardly lives up to the pictures. Perhaps
this is because the comparatively small portions of the structure seen
between the trees near-by are dwarfed by the huge dome, while in
photographs the camera emphasizes the lower and nearer sections and
reduces the proportions of the dome.
The exhibit housed under the great dome should not be passed by. A vivid
bit of the tropics is the Cuban display. Here, in an atmosphere
artificially heated and moistened to reproduce the steaming jungle, is
massed a splendid exhibit of those island trees and flowers that most of
us know only through pictures and stories of southern seas. Around the
central source of light, which is hidden under tropic vines, stands a
circle of royal palms; and planted thickly over the remaining space are
jungle trees, vivid enough to our imagination, but many of which have
never before been seen in this country.
Boys who feel pirate blood in their veins will revel in this
reproduction of the scenes of imagined adventure. Any reasonable pirate
could be quite happy here. For here is the breadfruit tree, read of in
many a tale of castaways; also the cocoanut palm, with the fruits
hanging among the fronds, waiting for the legendary monkey to scamper up
the trunk and hurl the great balls at the heads of the beholders. Here,
too, are the mango, and many sorts of bananas, and the cabbage palm,
another favorite resource of starving adventurers. With these there are
other jungle denizens,--the bamboo palm, the paperleaf palm, splendid
specimens of the world-old cycad family, the guanabana, and a Tom Thumb
palm, which, full grown, is no more than a handbreadth high.
Ancient among trees are the two specimens of microcycas from the swamps
of Cuba. These Methuselahs of the forest are at least 1,000 years old,
according to the botanists. They are among the slowest growing of living
things, and neither of them is much taller than a man. They were
seedlings when Alfred the Great ruled England, and perhaps four feet
high when Columbus first broke through the western seas. In the four
centuries of Cuban history they have not grown so much again.
These venerable trees belong to the bluest-blooded aristocracy of the
vegetable world. Ages ago they inhabited our northern states. Their
family has come down practically unchanged from the steaming days of the
Carboniferous period, when ferns grew one hundred feet high, and
thronged with other rank tropical growths in matted masses to form the
coal measures. The fossil remains of cycads in the rocks of that period
prove that they once flourished in the tropic swamps where now are the
hills of Wyoming and Dakota.
Scattered among the trees is a host of flowering vines, of huge crotons
with variegated leaves, giant gardenias and tropical lilies. When these
bloom, the air of this transplanted jungle is heavy with the perfume of
their own island habitat.
The Horticultural Gardens south of the Palace belong to it, and contain
a large part of the horticultural exhibits. As they were planted for
competitive exhibition purposes, they will not show the constant beauty
that appears in the South Gardens. Here we must wait for the flowers in
their season, and not expect to have them changed overnight for us by
the gardeners' magic.
Back of this horticultural garden is the House of Hoo Hoo, in Forestry
Court, flanked by the Pine and Redwood Bungalows. It needs but a glance
at its beguiling loveliness to know that here is another lesson in art
and architecture by Bernard Maybeck. Here again is poetry in
architecture, of a different order from the noble theme of Maybeck's
Fine Arts Palace, but none the less poetry. This is a sylvan idyll,
telling of lofty trees, cool shades, and secret bowers of fern and vine
and wild flower, in the moist and tangled redwood forests. There is
little used but rough-barked tree trunks, but what delicate harmony of
arrangement!
This lumbermen's lodge is one building outside the Exposition palaces
that should not be missed, even though almost hidden away against the
south wall. It is worth pondering over. No one may want to build a house
like it, but it proclaims how beauty can be attained with simple
materials and just proportions.
Festival Hall, Robert Farquhar, architect, balances the Palace of
Horticulture in the architectural plan of the South Gardens. (p. 29.)
It, too, is French in style, its architecture suggested by the Theatre
des Beaux Arts in Paris, a design which furnished the dome necessary to
harmonize with that of the palace to the west. As architecture, however,
it fails to hold up its end with the splendid Horticultural Palace. Its
dome is too large, and has too little structure around it, to be placed
so near the ground without an effect of squattiness. Its festive
adornment is extremely moderate. On the cornice above the main entrance
is the rhyton, the ancient Greek drinking horn, symbol of festivity.
The sculpture, all done by Sherry E. Fry, carries out the same idea. The
graceful figures poised on the corner domes are Torch Bearers. On the
pylons at either end of the semicircular arcade of the main entrance are
two reclining figures. On the right is Bacchus, with his grapes and
wineskin,--a magnificently "pickled" Bacchus! On the left a woman is
listening to the strains of festal music. (p. 32.) Each of the pedestals
before the false windows at the ends of the arcade supports a figure of
Flora with garlands of flowers. On the ground below the two Floras are
two of the most delightful pieces of all the Exposition sculpture. One
is a little Pan, pipes in hand, sitting on a skin spread over an Ionic
capital. This is a real boy, crouching to watch the lizard that has
crawled out from beneath the stone. The other is a young girl dreaming
the dreams of childhood. There is something essentially girlish about
this. Unfortunately, it is now almost hidden by shrubbery.
Within Festival Hall is one of the half-dozen greatest organs in the
world. It has more than 7,000 pipes. The heaviest of them weigh as much
as 1,200 pounds apiece. Though mere size is not the essential quality of
a fine instrument, it is hard to ignore the real immensity of this. The
echo organ alone is larger than most pipe organs. This complementary
instrument, which is played from the console of the main organ, is
placed under the roof of the hall, above the center of the ceiling. Its
tones, floating down through the apertures in the dome, echo the themes
of the great organ.
Few organs have so mighty a note as the sixty-four-foot open pitch
attainable on the Exposition's instrument. Speaking by itself, this note
has no sound. It is only a tremendous quaking of the whole building, as
though the earth were shuddering. By itself it has no place in organ
music. It is not intended to be struck alone. It is used only as a
foundation upon which to build other tones. In combination it adds
majesty to the music, rumbling in a gigantic undertone to the lighter
notes.
Even the open stops in this organ are of more than ordinary dimensions.
The usual limit in a pipe organ is the sixteen-foot open stop. But in
this organ there are several pipes, both of wood and of metal,
thirty-two feet or more in length.
Two small buildings, balanced on either side of the Scott-street
entrance, are the Press Building and the Exposition home of the National
Young Women's Christian Association. They are alike, French in style,
and fronted with caryatid porches.
The real glory of the South Gardens lies in their flowers, and in the
charming setting the landscape engineers have here given to the south
facade of the palace group. There is the air of Versailles in the
planned gayety of the scene. In this the pools and fountains, the formal
gardens, the massed trees and shrubbery, and the two palaces themselves,
play their part.
IV.
"The Walled City": It's Great Palaces and their Architecture,
Color and Material
The central group of Exposition structures really a single vast palace,
behind a rampart--Historical fitness of such architecture here--The
south facade--Spanish portals of Varied Industries and Education
Palaces--Italian Renaissance portals of Manufactures and Liberal Arts,
and of the Courts of Flowers and Palms--The Roman west wall--Ornate
doorway of north facade Interior courts and aisles--A balanced plan--
This the first exposition to adopt the colors of nature for its
structures--Jules Guerin's color scheme, designed for an artificial
travertine marble--Simplicity of his palette, from which he painted the
entire Exposition--Even the flowers and sanded walks conform.
Although there are eight buildings named in the central palace group,
these are so closely connected in design and structure that in reality
they make but one palace. Here is seen the unity with variety which
marks this Exposition above all others. Commemorating a great
international event, its architecture is purposely eclectic,
cosmopolitan. Under a dominating Moorish-Spanish general form, the
single architect of the group, W. B. Faville, of San Francisco, drawing
upon the famous styles of many lands and schools, has combined into an
ordered and vastly impressive whole not only the structural art of
Orient and of the great Spanish builders, but also the principles of the
Italian Renaissance and the architecture of Greece and Rome from which
it sprang. Thus the group is wholly Southern in its origin. There is no
suggestion here of the colder Gothic architecture of the North.
Differing from each other in many details, the eight palaces are alike
in their outer walls, their domes and gables, and similar in their
entrances. These portals give a distinctive character to each palace.
While the palaces differ widely in details of decoration, they all have
a common source; they are all Mediterranean,--not all Byzantine, or
Roman, or Italian, or Spanish, or Moorish, but some thing of each. The
manner in which these forms are carried over from one palace to another,
and the almost constant recurrence of some of them, like the Moorish
domes at the corners, blends them without jar or break. The great wall,
almost blank, except for the entrances, encloses the palaces like a
walled city of the Mediterranean or the nearer Orient. Such a walled
city it is, with its courts, its avenues, its fountains and pools, all
placed in a setting of landscape, sea and sky, that might belong to
Spain, or Southern Italy, or the lands of the Moslem.
The broad, unbroken spaces that mark each face of this vast block
greatly heighten the illusion. They lend an Old-World aspect, the
historical fitness of which must not be overlooked. For these plain
surfaces are indeed significant in the celebration of an event which was
predicted by the Spanish conquistadors a century before the English
Cavaliers and Puritans laid the foundations of our American
Commonwealth. Relieved only by the foliage that is finely massed against
them, the great blank spaces of the "Walled City" recall the severer
side of Mediterranean architecture, just as their gorgeously ornate
portals, towers and domes speak of its warmth and color. They are an
architectural feature that has traveled far. The unbroken rampart, born
of the need of defense in immemorial cities on the east and south shores
of the Mediterranean, was carried thence by the Moors to Spain, to go in
turn with the conquerors of the New World, and became a characteristic
of the civic and ecclesiastical architecture of Latin America. Hence it
is not without meaning and reason that this historic architectural form,
the blank exterior of the walled city, has found its finest use in the
far-western city of St. Francis. Quite apart from their frequent
occurrence in the mission architecture of old Alta California, these
simple wall spaces well befit the monumental structure that honors an
achievement so important to all Spanish America as the Panama Canal.
The southern front of the group, facing the Avenue of Palms, has the
aspect of a single palace, opened in the center by the noble Roman arch
of the Tower of Jewels, and indented by the Court of Flowers and the
Court of Palms. (See p. 18, 88.) Seen across the South Gardens, the
whole facade rising from the trees along the wall, is wondrously
beautiful. The wall is seventy feet high, topped with a red-tiled roof.
The pale green domes over the centers of the palaces are Byzantine, a
style much used in the mosques of Islam. The gables are each crowned
with a figure of Victory, sometimes called an "acroterium," from the
architectural name of the tablet on which it stands. The towers on
either side of the entrances to the courts are Italian. The little
towers buttressing the domes on the corners of the palaces at the
extreme right and left of the front, and from there repeated around the
east, west and north walls, are Moorish, with characteristic latticed
windows.
The Palace of Varied Industries, on the extreme right, is made entirely
Spanish in its southern front by its beautiful central portal, modeled
after the sixteenth-century entrance to the Hospice of Santa Cruz at
Toledo. (pp. 18, 37.) Except for the sculpture, in which the Spanish
saints have been replaced by figures of industry, the portal is a copy
of the original. All the figures are the work of Ralph Stackpole, whose
treatment of the subjects, no less than their exalted position in the
niches of the saints, has dignified the workman.
On each side of the entrance is the "Man with a Pick." The group in the
tympanum represents Varied Industries. (p. 138.) The central figure is
Agriculture, the basic food-supplying industry. On one side is the
Builder, on the other the Common Workman. Beyond them are Commerce
holding the figurehead of a ship, and a woman with a spindle, a lamb
before her, typifying the textile industries.
The figure in the keystone represents the Power of Industry. Under the
upper canopy is an old man handing his burden to a younger one, the Old
World passing its burdens on to the New World. The infant figures come
from the Spanish original.
The two lesser portals on the south side of this palace are likewise
Spanish. In the grill work of their openings, designed in imitation of
metal, as well as in that of the central portal, there is a strong
suggestion of the Arabian architecture brought into Spain by the Moors.
Indeed, there is something Moorish about the whole work, except that the
Mohammedans do not represent living things in art. A passage in the
Koran tells devout followers of the prophet that if they should carve or
picture a plant or animal they would be called upon at the Judgment to
make it real. Sometimes, however, they employed Christian workmen to
execute such representations, being quite resigned to let the unbeliever
risk damnation.
The bears terminating the buttresses on the walls represent California,
and hold the seal of the State. Such buttresses against a plain wall,
with a tiled roof, are common in the Franciscan missions of California.