  Title: The Jewel City Author: Ben Macomber Edition: 10 Language: English 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 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 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 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, 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. The Palaces of Manufactures and Liberal Arts, on either side of the Tower of Jewels, are alike on the south, and Italian. The Moorish corner domes are omitted here, as the palaces terminate on one side in one of the Italian towers and on the other in the wings of the Tower of Jewels. The central portals are Italian, with tiled roofs and latticed grills, with handsome imitations of bronze work under the arches. The friezes over the arches as well as the figures in the niches are by Mahonri Young, of New York. The frieze represents industries of various kinds, the work of women as well as of men. In the niche on the left is a woman with a spindle, on the right a workman with a sledgehammer. Like Stackpole's figures on the portal of Varied Industries, Young's sculptures are simple and strong. The lion used as the keystone figure of the arch and the lions and elephants alternating as fountain heads in the niches in the wall give an Oriental touch to these palaces. Of their portals none are more beautiful than those leading from the Courts of Flowers and Palms. All four are finely expressive of the noblest architecture of the Italian Renaissance. They glow with the sunshine and color of Italy. Those entering the Palaces of Liberal Arts and Education from the Court of Palms are identical in design, and seem almost perfect in their harmonious lines and warm color. (p. 88.) The other pair, opening from the Palaces of Manufactures and Varied Industries into the Court of Flowers, are cheery portals, made more domestic in feeling by the loggia between the colonnade and the tiled roof. (p. 85, 100.) The three portals of the Palace of Education are of the Spanish Renaissance, and the Moorish towers reappear at the corners. The twisted columns of the entrances are Byzantine. The tympanum above the central portal contains Gustav Gerlach's group "Education." (p. 138.) In the center is the teacher with her pupils, seated under the Tree of Knowledge; on the left, the mother instructs her children; on the right, the young man, his school days past, is working out for himself a problem of science. Thus the group pictures the various stages of education, from its beginning at home to that training in the school of life which ends only at death. The cartouche just above the entrance bears the Book of Knowledge, shedding light in all directions, the curtains of darkness drawn back by the figures at the side. The hour glass below the book counsels the diligent use of time; the crown above symbolizes the reward of knowledge. The banded globe over the portal signifies that education encompasses the world. Above each of the flanking portals is an inset panel representing the Teacher, a woman at the left, a man at the right. The man looks toward the woman, thus signifying that the world is no longer dependent on man alone. Turning the corner, the entire west wall of the palaces becomes Roman to accord with the Roman Palace of Fine Arts across the lagoon. The characteristic features are the Roman half-domes above the entrances, and the sculptures repeated in the niches of the walls. (p. 119.) On this side, the Palaces of Education and Food Products are alike, except for a slight difference in the vestibule statuary and the fountains. On the great Sienna columns beside the half-domes stands Ralph Stackpole's "Thought." The semicircle of female figures in the vestibule of the dome of the Palace of Education, bearing in their hands books with the motto "Ex Libris," though the preposition is omitted, represents the store of knowledge in books. The similar array of men bearing wreaths of cereals in the half-dome of the Palace of Food Products signifies the source of vigor in the fruits of the soil. The simple Italian fountains in the vestibules, the work of W. B. Faville, are decorative and beautiful. The alternated groups in the niches along the wall are "The Triumph of the Fields" and "Abundance." This is well called archaeological sculpture, for the emblems are from the dim past, and can be understood only with the help of an archaeological encyclopaedia. In the first are the bull standard and the Celtic cross, which were carried through the fields in ancient harvest festivals. In the second, the objects heaped around the lady suggest abundance. The north facade of the palace group is an unbroken Spanish wall, blank, except for the four beautiful and identical sixteenth-century portals. (See p. 43.) This magnificent decoration, suggestive of the finest work in rare metals, is, in fact, called "plateresque," from its resemblance to the work of silversmiths. The figures looking out on the blue water that reaches to Panama and the shores of Peru, are historical. In the center is the Conquistador. Flanking his stately figure on each side is the pirate of the Spanish Main, the adventurer who served with but a color of lawful war under Drake, the buccaneer that followed Morgan to the sack of Panama. (p. 44.) These statues are by Allen Newman. Every man jack of the eight pirates on the four portals is apparently bow-legged. There is a vast space between the knees of these buccaneers of Panama, but when you look more closely it is hard to decide whether those pirate knees are really sprung, or whether it is the posture of the figures that suggests the old quip about the pig in the alley. The sculptor has at least given to the figures a curious effect of bandy legs. The feet are set wide apart, the space between and behind the legs is deeply hollowed out, and the rope which hangs from the hands curves in over the feet to add to the illusion. There used to be a saying that cross-eyed people could not be honest. Similarly, perhaps, Newman thought the appearance of bow-legs would increase the villainy of his pirate. Certainly, no such blood-curdling ruffian has been seen out of comic opera. The east wall of the palace group becomes Old Italian, to harmonize with the Roman architecture of the Machinery Palace opposite. The portals suggest those of ancient Italian city walls. In the niches stands Albert Weinert's "Miner," here used because the Palace of Mines forms one half the wall. In the long avenue that runs east and west through the center of the group, the unity of the eight buildings becomes more apparent as we view the noble arches which join them, and note the character of their inner facades. Education and Food Products are alike in the walls and portals fronting on the dividing aisle. The Spanish architecture of the south facade of Education is here carried over to Food Products. Similarly, the avenue between Mines and Varied Industries is the same on both sides, carrying out the Old Italian of the east front, and with The Miner repeated in the portal niches of both palaces. The avenues leading from the Court of the Universe to the Court of Ages and the Court of Seasons have been variously called the Aisles of the Rising and the Setting Sun, or the Venetian and Florentine Aisles. Their four walls are in the style of the Italian Renaissance, and show a diaper design similar to that on the Italian towers of the Courts of Flowers and Palms. In an artistic sense, this group is incomplete without the Palace of Fine Arts on the west and Machinery Hall on the east. (p. 105, 106.) Balancing each other in the general scheme, they form the necessary terminals of the axis of the Exposition plan. This matter of balance has been carefully thought out everywhere, and affords a fine example of the co-operation of the many architects who worked out the vast general design. The Courts of Seasons and Ages are set off against each other; the Courts of Palms and Flowers weigh equally one against the other; the Arches of the Nations not only balance but match; even the Tower of Jewels, which is the center of the whole plan, is offset by the Column of Progress. In the South Gardens, the Palace of Horticulture is balanced against Festival Hall. Color and Material.—All other Expositions have been almost colorless. This is the first to make use of the natural colors of sea and sky, of hill and tree, and to lay upon all its grounds and buildings tints that harmonize with these. Jules Guerin, the master colorist, was the artist who used the Exposition as a canvas on which to spread glorious hues. Guerin decided, first, that the basic material of the buildings should be an imitation of the travertine of ancient Roman palaces. On this delicate old ivory background he laid a simple series of warm, yet quiet, Oriental hues, which, in their adaptation to the material of construction and to the architecture, as well as in their exquisite harmony with the natural setting, breeds a vast respect for his art. The color scheme covers everything, from the domes of the buildings down to the sand in the driveways and the uniforms of the Exposition guards. The walls, the flags and pennants that wave over the buildings, the shields and other emblems of heraldry that hide the sources of light, draw their hues from Guerin's plan. The flowers of the garden conform to it, the statuary is tinted in accordance with it, and even the painters whose mural pictures adorn the courts and arches and the Fine Arts Rotunda were obliged to use his color series. The result gives such life and beauty and individuality to this Exposition as no other ever had. It makes possible such beautiful ornamentation as the splendid Nubian columns of the Palace of Fine Arts, and the glories of the arches of the Court of the Universe. (See frontispiece.) Go into that Court on a bright day and take note of the art that has made Nature herself a part of the color plan. From a central position in the court, where one can look down the broad approach leading from the bay, Nature spreads before the beholder two expanses of color, the deep blue of salt water sparkling in the sun, and the not less deep, but more ethereal, blue of the California sky. With this are the browns and greens of the hills beyond the bay, and, nearer at hand, the vivid verdure of lawns and trees and shrubs. All these the designer used as though they were colors from his own palette. To go with them in his scheme he chose for pillar and portico, for the wall spaces behind, for arch and dome, for the decorations and for material of the sculptures, such hues that the whole splendid court and its vistas of palaces beyond blend with the colors of sea and sky and of green living things in a glorious harmony. Such a view of the heart of the Exposition at its best compels recognition of Guerin's skill in color. It needed a vivid imagination to realize the possibilities of the scene, and visualize it. It required infinite delicacy and a fine sense of the absolute rightness of shade and tint to produce such harmonious beauty. The mere thought of it is a lesson in art. The decision of the architects to develop the theme of an Oriental walled city, and the natural setting of the site, Mediterranean in its sea and sky, led Guerin to select Oriental colors. Aiming at simplicity, he decreed that not more than eight or nine colors should be found upon the subdued palette from which he would paint the Exposition. Then he took into consideration the climate and atmospheric conditions peculiar to San Francisco. Every phase of sky and sea and land, every shadow upon the Marin hills, across the bay, was noted in choosing an imitation of natural travertine for the key color of the Palaces. This is a pale pinkish-gray-buff, which may be called old ivory. It is not garish, as a dead white would be, especially in the strong California sunlight, but soft and restful to the eye. It harmonizes with the other colors selected, and, most important of all, it avoids a certain "new" effect which pure white would give, and which is deadly to art. Paul Deniville, who had already developed a successful imitation of travertine, was engaged to make the composition to be applied over the exterior walls. This is a reproduction in stucco of the travertine marble of the Roman palaces of the period of Augustus. This marble is a calcareous formation deposited from the waters of hot springs, usually in volcanic regions, and is common in the hills about Rome. It often contains the moulds left by leaves and other materials incorporated in the deposit. These account for the corrugations of the stone when it is cut. In California, as in other regions where hot springs are found, travertine is not uncommon. It is found notably in the volcanic district of Mono County, and elsewhere, sometimes in the form of Mexican onyx, which is only a translucent variety of the same marble. In its reproduction here the marble has been imitated even to the natural imperfections which roughened the Italian stone. In the concave surfaces of the ornamentation the color has been deepened, so that it appears sometimes as a rich reddish brown. All this enhances the antique effect, making the palace walls and columns still more like those of the old Roman construction. Besides the travertine the eight other colors employed are: 1. French Green, used in all lattices, flower tubs, curbing of great plats, where it complements the green of the grass, In the exterior woodwork and some of the smaller doors. 2. Oxidized Copper Green, a peculiar mottled light green. All the domes, except the six yellow ones in the Court of the Universe, are of this light green. It forms a sharp contrast with the blue sky and a pleasing topping to the travertine walls. 3. Blue Green, found in the ornamentation of the travertine, and in the darker shades at the bases of the flag poles. These first three colors, all in tones of green, are regarded as one unit in the spectrum of nine colors allowed by Guerin. 4. Pinkish-Red-Gold, used in the flag poles and lighting standards only. It is a very brilliant and striking pigment, and is always topped with gold. 5. Wall-Red, used in three tones. They are found in the backgrounds of the colonnades, courts and niches, on the tiled roofs, and in the statuary. These reds run from terra-cotta to a deep russet, and predominate in the interiors of the principal courts. 6. Yellow-Golden-Orange, largely used in enriching the travertine and in enhancing shadow effects. It is found in the architectural mouldings and in much of the statuary. The following rule was adopted in regard to the coloring of the statuary: That which is high off the ground, that is, the figures surmounting the domes and spires, is of golden yellow, while that close to the eye of the beholder is of verde-antique, a rich copper-green streaked with gray, and much is left in the natural travertine tint. 7. Deep Cerulean Blue and Oriental Blue, verging upon green, are used in the ceilings and other vaulted recesses, in deep shadows, in coffers and in the background or ornamentation in which travertine rosettes are set in cerulean blue panels. It might be called electric blue. It is brilliant and at the same time in harmony with the other colors. 8. Gray, very similar to the travertine. 9. Marble Tint, spread over the travertine in places with a transparent glaze. 10. Verde-Antique, really one of the many shades of green—a combination of the copper-green and a soft gray, and therefore not to be counted as one of the nine cardinal colors. It simulates corroded copper, and has faint yellow and black lines. With the gamut thus restricted by the taste and discrimination of a master, the decorators and artists were strictly limited to the nine colors named. No one might use other than cerulean blue, if he employed blue at all; no other red than the tone popularly known as "Pompeiian" has been admitted in the scheme. In this red the admixture of brown and yellow nullify any tendency towards carmine on crimson. The French and the copper greens and the intermediate shades approved by Guerin are the only greens allowed. Here is seen the great advantage of a one-man idea. No other exposition was ever so carefully or successfully planned in this particular. There is no court of one color clashing with a dome, palace or tower of conflicting tone, whether near by or at a distance. All is in harmony. Working with Guerin, John McLaren, in charge of the landscape gardening, so selected the flowers which border the paths and fill the parterres that they too conform to the color scheme. Though three different complete floral suits are to be seen at the Exposition in three periods, each one accords with the hues of wall and tower, completing in harmony the effect of the whole. The pinkish sand spread on the paths and avenues to harmonize with other ground colors was not always tinted. Some one had noticed that the white beach sand at Santa Cruz turned pink when heated. Seizing upon this fact, McLaren and Guerin used it to give a final touch to their scheme of color. They drew another lesson from the washerwoman. A familiar laundry device was used to give sparkle and brilliance to the waters of the pools and lagoons. They were blued, not by dumping indigo into the water, but by tinting the bottoms with blue paint. |
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