Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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