Court of the Universe

Everything radiated from here. Visitors passed north under the Tower of Jewels into an ellipse that Todd says the Roman Colosseum 'could have been set down inside.' It was the stage for the fair's great speeches, processions and pageants, the 'meeting place of the hemispheres' (Condensed Facts). McKim, Mead & White designed it after Bernini's colonnade at St. Peter's, according to Barry, and its first name was the Court of the Sun and Stars.

Four quadrants of double Corinthian colonnades, 14 pairs to a quadrant, curved around it. The columns were cast travertine, 5 ft thick and 48 ft tall, set against dull red walls, and the ambulatory behind them had a celestial-blue vault with gold stars. On the balustrade above every column of the inner rank stood Calder's Star, a figure with seven jeweled rays around her head, 90 of them in all. At north and south the quadrants ended in pylons with burnt-orange domes carrying MacNeil's zodiac frieze. The vermilion flagpoles at the entrances rose from the backs of modeled elephants. East and west rose the two triumphal arches, the Rising Sun and the Setting Sun, topped by the colossal Nations groups.

From the ambulatory, five steps led down to a 75-ft ring road. Beyond the Italian balustrade, with its 52 lamp-bearers, fourteen more steps descended into the sunken gardens, planted with some 7,000 rhododendrons and later hydrangeas. In the oval were long pools with jets and two circular fountains. Out of each rose a hollow glass column carrying one of Weinman's figures, the 'Rising Sun' and 'Descending Night,' about 85 ft above the water. Aitken's Elements reclined by the north and south stairs, and Manship's Music and Dance by the east and west.

To the north the court ran out through the Forecourt of Stars, with a Moorish bandstand and a long pool with jets like the one at the Generalife, to the Column of Progress and the bay. At night it was one of the great spectacles of the fair. Each glass column held 96 lamps of 1,500 watts, lamps under the water turned the jets to 'molten silver,' and the last beam on closing night, December 4, was turned on Descending Night.

The Roman Colosseum could have been set down inside it.

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LIV

At a glance

• Cost of the Court of the Universe with its approaches, the Court of Stars and the Column of Progress: $492,304 (Todd vol. 2, ch. LXII).
• Contract filed March 10, 1914; built by F. Rolandi, including both arches, with staff work subcontracted to Strehlow, Freese & Petersen (Todd vol. 2).
• Each glass fountain column was 5 ft in diameter and 30 ft high, sprayed with travertine-colored lacquer by day (Todd vol. 2, ch. LXIII).
• Palaces at its corners: Liberal Arts (southwest), Manufactures (southeast), Agriculture (northwest), Transportation (northeast) (Barry).
• The municipal Christmas tree festival was held here on Christmas Day 1915, after the fair had closed (Todd vol. 5).
• The Rev. F. B. A. Lewis fed the court's pigeons daily, missing only two days all season, until the wreckers felled the last colonnade (Todd vol. 2).

Afterward

Demolished in 1916. The colonnades were pulled down by a donkey engine hauling a wire cable behind each row, and the arches were dynamited (Todd vol. 5). Descending Night lives on in the small bronze reproductions Weinman sold afterward (Wikipedia). The site is now residential Marina District.

Sources

• Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2, ch. LIV (Heart of the Exposition), chs. LXI–LXIII
• Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5, chs. XXXV, XXXVII
• Barry, The City of Domes (1915), Court of the Universe notes
• Official Guide of the PPIE (1915), Exposition Sculpture; Courts and Gardens
• Condensed Facts concerning the PPIE (1915), The Court of the Universe
• Wikipedia: Adolph Alexander Weinman, Descending Night reductions