Palace of Fine Arts
Ruins of Rome made on purpose: the only 1915 fair building still standing on its site
The story
Before you is the Palace of Fine Arts. It was built for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The city was celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal and showing that it had recovered from the 1906 earthquake. The architect Bernard Maybeck designed the palace as a ruin of ancient Rome, grand and a little melancholy. He drew on ancient temples and on Arnold Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead. The rotunda, 162 feet tall, stands over the lagoon. Look up at the colonnade: on top of it stand women turned toward the wall, weeping. They are the work of the sculptor Ulric Ellerhusen. Everything was temporary: a wooden frame covered with plaster mixed with fiber. After the fair almost all its palaces were torn down. San Franciscans loved this one, and a league to save it was formed while the fair was still running. Later the Army used it as a warehouse. By the 1950s the building was crumbling. Citizens led by the philanthropist Walter Johnson won funding from the state. In 1964 the old palace was taken down and rebuilt in concrete and steel. From 1969 to 2013 the hall behind the rotunda housed the Exploratorium science museum. Today it holds a theater and event spaces.
Visiting
3301 Lyon Street, Marina District. The rotunda, colonnades and lagoon are in an open park, free to walk around. Inside the building are a theater and event spaces.
Photos
Sources
- National Park Service — Golden Gate: Palace of Fine Arts
- Wikipedia (EN) — Palace of Fine Arts
- Wikipedia (EN) — Panama–Pacific International Exposition
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