The Setting Sun matched its eastern twin in every dimension and closed the west side of the court, opening through the Venetian Court toward the Court of the Four Seasons and the Palace of Fine Arts. Looking east from the Venetian Court, a visitor could see straight through the Court of the Universe, the Florentine Court, the Court of Abundance and the Court of Mines to the Machinery Palace.
Its inscriptions gave the Western answer to the other arch's Asian sages. On the court side were Shakespeare ('In nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read'), Walt Whitman's 'Facing west from California's shores' and Cervantes. On the west face were Dante, Pascal, and a remark attributed to Goethe predicting that the United States would cut a passage from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific: 'Would that I might live to see it, but I shall not.'
Inside the vault hung Frank Vincent Du Mond's murals of westward migration, 'Leaving the East' and 'Arrival in the West,' among the few pieces of the court's decoration that survived the wreckers.
At a glance
- Built entirely of timber, like its twin (Todd vol. 2, ch. V).
- Du Mond's two murals went to the San Francisco Public Library after the fair (Todd vol. 2, ch. LXI; vol. 5).
- Dynamited with the Arch of the Rising Sun in spring 1916, about 28 sticks per arch (Todd vol. 5).
Afterward
Dynamited in 1916 (Todd vol. 5). Du Mond's murals were given to the San Francisco Public Library.
Sources
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2, ch. V, chs. LIV, LVII (inscriptions), LXI (murals)
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5, ch. XXXVII
- Barry, The City of Domes (1915), Court of the Universe notes