RON HENGGELER

The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. After the devastation of the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was anxious to show the world that it had risen from the ashes. So in 1910, business and civic leaders gathered to discuss making San Francisco the site of the century’s first great world’s fair — a grand exposition that would honor the completion of the Panama Canal.

In just two hours, they raised $4 million — and beat out competitors New Orleans and Washington, D.C., to host the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition.

On opening day, February 20, 1915, 255,149 people walked through the entry gates to experience the first world event of the 20th century. By the time the exposition closed nine months later, more than 18 million people — about 20 times the population of San Francisco at the time — would visit the exposition.

And when this spectacular festival came to a close with fireworks and a solitary bugler playing taps, by all accounts, the crowds wept.

When the exposition ended, the Palace lived on — saved from demolition by the Palace Preservation League, founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst while the fair was still in progress.

The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Roman and Greek architecture in designing what was essentially a fictional ruin from another time.

Palace architect Bernard Maybeck was born in New York in 1862 and spent five years studying architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before setting up practice in Berkeley in 1890. Maybeck’s distinctive work, admired by architects and historians alike, includes the First Church of Christ Scientist in Berkeley and the Rose Walk, also in Berkeley.

The Palace of Fine Arts was widely considered the most beautiful structure at the exhibition, — housing art from Renaissance to Modern.

Ornamentation includes Bruno Louis Zimm's three repeating panels around the entablature of the rotunda, representing "The Struggle for the Beautiful", symbolizing Greek culture.

Ulric Ellerhusen supplied the weeping women atop the colonnade
Each of the Palace’s Corinthian columns is topped by four maidens — sometimes called “weepers.” The design for the Palace included a planter box at the top of the colonnade but, because funds ran low, nothing was ever planted. Sculptor Ulric Ellerhusen, who created the maidens, originally conceived them as nourishing the planters with tears symbolizing “the melancholy of life without art.”

Maybeck’s fantastic creation, inspired by a Piranesi engraving, featured a Roman ruin reflected in a pool.

According to Maybeck, this ruin existed not for its own sake but to show “the mortality of grandeur and the vanity of human wishes.” Like other features of the fair, the Palace was intended as ephemeral; at the close of the exposition, it would come down.

As the favorite building at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, the Palace of Fine Arts was saved from the wrecking ball and has been a San Francisco landmark to love ever since.

In 1912, colorist Jules Guerin was appointed the Panama Pacific Exposition’s chief of color. He chose colors he saw in San Francisco and the surrounding area: deep cerulean from the sea and the sky, lush greens and tawny gold from the velvet, oak-studded hills of Marin and the East Bay, and subdued hues found in the clay and sand hills of San Francisco. Guerin’s color accents recalled the ancient lands so dear to architects like Bernard Maybeck: rich bronze and copper patina, terra cotta, and above all, the mellow tones of travertine marble.

The 1915 exposition began a love affair between filmmakers and the Palace that continues to this day. Comedians Mabel Normand and Fatty Arbuckle, with director Mack Sennett, filmed a silent short at the exposition: Mabel and Fatty viewing the World’s Fair at San Francisco.

Look for scenes shot at the Palace in films such as Vertigo, The Wedding Planner, The Game, Twisted, and Foul Play. TV shows like Nash Bridges, Monk, and Crazy Like a Fox have also used the Palace as a backdrop. And the Palace of Fine Arts Theater hosts San Francisco’s annual Noir City Film Festival.

The 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition drew many famous visitors, including former presidents William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, World War I flying ace Edie Rickenbacker, Buffalo Bill Cody, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Ansel Adams, and silent film star Charlie Chaplin.

The Corinthian colonnade and Romanesque rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts were originally framed in wood, then covered with staff, a mixture of plaster and burlap-type fiber. In 2005, the Campaign for the Palace of Fine Arts supported restoration of the Palace dome, returning it to its original color from Guerin’s palette.

One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the only one still situated on its original site.
It was rebuilt in 1965, and renovation of the lagoon, walkways, and a seismic retrofit were completed in early 2009.

Today the Palace of Fine Arts is the last reminder of a great gathering that welcomed the world back to San Francisco, and it continues to hold a special place in the hearts of Bay Area residents and visitors.

During World War II, the U.S. Army used the Palace to store trucks and jeeps.

The Palace is truly a landmark to love.

Built around a small artificial lagoon, the Palace of Fine Arts is composed of a wide, 1,100 ft pergola around a central rotunda situated by the water.
The lagoon was intended to echo those found in classical settings in Europe, where the expanse of water provides a mirror surface to reflect the grand buildings and an undisturbed vista to appreciate them from a distance.