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