288 DAYSSan Francisco · 1915
Gazetteer

Every place at the fair

125 palaces, courts, towers, sculptures, pavilions and shows, each with its architect, dimensions, what became of it, and the sources.

The Walled City (24)

Triumphal arch

Arch of the Rising Sun

The eastern triumphal arch of the Court of the Universe, built entirely of wood and crowned by the colossal Nations of the East.

Triumphal arch

Arch of the Setting Sun

The western triumphal arch of the Court of the Universe, crowned by the Nations of the West with its prairie schooner, and inscribed with Western voices from Shakespeare to Whitman.

Court

Court of Abundance (Court of Ages) and the Tower of Ages

Mullgardt's dark, dramatic east court, a Spanish-Gothic fantasy on the ascent of man, crowned by the 219-foot Tower of Ages and lit at night by gas-breathing serpents and red fire.

Court

Court of Flowers

Kelham's second half-court, a 'fairy place' of paired columns and flower beds between Manufactures and Varied Industries, opening north into the Court of Abundance.

Court

Court of Palms

A half-court open to the South Gardens between two pink Italian towers, planted with fan palms around a long sunken pool, with The End of the Trail at its door.

Court

Court of the Four Seasons

Henry Bacon's serene west court, an octagon of plain columns, murmuring niche fountains and the seasons in sculpture, the quiet counterpart to the Court of Abundance.

Court

Court of the Universe

The ceremonial heart of the fair: a vast elliptical court of double colonnades, sunken gardens and colossal sculpture where the Nations of the East met the Nations of the West.

Getting around

Fadgl Auto Train

Little white trackless 'trains' of low open cars pulled by a motor tractor, which carried more than 4.2 million riders around the grounds for a nickel or a dime.

Fountain

Fountain of El Dorado

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's mural fountain of the rush for El Dorado, a crowd straining toward a half-open door before 'the magic doors of Opportunity should close.'

Fountain

Fountain of Youth

Edith Woodman Burroughs' quiet mural fountain in the east wing court of the Tower of Jewels, a slim adolescent girl above a frieze of youth's voyages.

Sculpture

Nations of the East and Nations of the West

Two colossal plaster processions atop the triumphal arches of the Court of the Universe: the peoples of Asia on elephant and camel, and the westward pioneers with their prairie schooner.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Agriculture

The largest palace of the walled city, one of the four that faced the bay, filled with state farm displays, machinery and the agriculture of the world.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Education and Social Economy

The southwest corner of the walled city, entered from the west through the huge coffered Half Dome of Philosophy facing the Fine Arts Lagoon.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Food Products

The walled city's northwest palace, where visitors watched a working flour mill and ate their way around the world a nickel or a dime at a time.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Liberal Arts

The palace of printing, photography, instruments and communication, standing just west of the Tower of Jewels and directly opposite the main Scott Street gate.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Machinery

The Roman-scaled timber giant at the east end of the main axis, the largest building at the exposition, where Lincoln Beachey flew the first airplane ever flown indoors.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Manufactures

The south-row palace east of the Tower of Jewels, crammed with the world's finished goods, from English pottery to Japanese culture pearls.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Mines and Metallurgy

The northeast palace of the walled city, with a mine in its basement and the federal government's mining and safety exhibits on its floor.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Transportation

The north-row palace of locomotives, automobiles, ships and aircraft, with railroad tracks running right onto its floor.

Exhibit palace

Palace of Varied Industries

The southeast corner of the walled city, famous for its florid Spanish portal filled with Ralph Stackpole's laborers.

Sculpture

The End of the Trail

Fraser's image of an exhausted Native rider at the edge of the Pacific, the most popular sculpture at the fair and a lasting symbol of the 'vanishing race' idea.

Sculpture

The Genius of Creation

Daniel Chester French's allegory of creation, placed before the great west portico of the Machinery Palace at the eastern end of the fair's main axis.

Sculpture

The Pioneer

Solon Borglum's grizzled horseman with axe and rifle, the hopeful counterpart to The End of the Trail, at the entrance to the Court of Flowers.

Tower

Tower of Jewels

The 435-foot centerpiece of the fair, a Roman arch-and-tower hung with some 102,000 glass 'Novagems' that shook in the wind and blazed under searchlights at night.

South Gardens (7)

Fine Arts (3)

Marina & North Gardens (6)

States & Nations (55)

Foreign pavilion

Argentine Pavilion

A bold French-Renaissance palace with a commanding dome and caryatid portico, holding a jewel-box theater that screened the whole Argentine Republic.

State building

Arkansas and Oklahoma Building

One building shared by two states, the westernmost refuge on the grounds, with a glazed observation room over the Golden Gate.

Foreign pavilion

Australian Pavilion

The 'shop window of the Commonwealth', an open-towered pavilion with opals, wheat and wool inside and kangaroos, wallabies and a Laughing Jackass outside.

Avenue

Avenue of Nations

The diagonal boulevard through the foreign section, running northwest from the Avenue of Palms past the Palace of Fine Arts to the Federal Concourse and the Marina.

Avenue

Avenue of States

The bayside street of the State section, running between two ranks of State buildings, one facing the Esplanade, the other the Marina and the Golden Gate.

State building

California Building (California Host Building)

The Exposition's official host building, a vast Mission-style complex of towers, patios and county exhibit halls on the bay shore, covering about five acres.

Foreign pavilion

Canadian Pavilion

The largest foreign pavilion, three 220-foot halls of dioramas, live beavers, wheat-belt trains and real apples behind a colonnade guarded by British lions.

State building

City of New York Building

Bertram Goodhue's windowless, temple-like hall, lit from the roof, where a great model of Manhattan rolled aside on rails for daily films.

Avenue

Federal Concourse

The circular plaza where the Esplanade, the Avenue of Nations and the Olympian Way met, closed on the west by the golden dome of the Massachusetts Building.

Foreign pavilion

French Pavilion (Palace of the Legion of Honor)

A replica of the Paris Palais de la Légion d'Honneur, built in nine weeks amid the war, later the model for San Francisco's Legion of Honor museum.

State building

Hawaiian Building

A small travertine pavilion with the fair's most crowded aquarium, reef fish in water hauled weekly from beyond the Farallones.

State building

Idaho Building

A simple two-story travertine building with end pavilions on the Marina, the first State building completed, and the only one with rooms for visiting teachers.

State building

Illinois Building

A three-story shrine to Lincoln facing the Esplanade, with a room of his portraits, letters and life mask, and a great organ.

State building

Indiana Building

A Queen Anne-style manor house of Bedford stone in the gore at the Federal Concourse, no exhibits, just a library of Hoosier authors.

Service building

Inside Inn

The only hotel inside the fairgrounds: a 638-room concession near the Baker Street gate that did more business than any other concession at the fair.

State building

Iowa Building

A long, low building with a deep portico of paired columns, built with money Iowans raised themselves, next to the livestock show ring.

Foreign pavilion

Italian Pavilion

A little gray Italian town of eight buildings, with a Palazzo Vecchio-style tower and a Piazza Grande, 'It did more than represent Italy. It was Italy.'

State building

Kansas Building

A two-story colonial building whose porch capitals, fittingly, hung ears of corn from Ionic volutes.

Grounds

Live Stock Section

The model stock farm at the west end of the grounds: eight big barns around an oval show ring where livestock competed for $426,950 in premiums.

State building

Maryland Building ('Homewood')

A brick copy of Homewood, the Carroll family mansion near Baltimore, furnished as two historic period rooms.

State building

Massachusetts Building

A two-thirds-size copy of Bulfinch's Massachusetts State House, its golden dome closing the vista down the Esplanade at the Federal Concourse.

State building

Mississippi Building

A travertine copy of the Governor's Mansion at Jackson, with a semicircular Ionic portico, built without a state appropriation.

State building

Missouri Building

A colonial mansion with a two-story portico and an octagonal cupola, whose big hardwood dance floor made it a social favorite.

State building

Montana Building

A ranch-house-like building with extended wings and a broad veranda on the Marina, thought by many the most homelike of the State buildings.

Foreign pavilion

Netherlands Pavilion

A rose-domed, tile-banded pavilion with a 128-foot tower, big clock dials and 44 flagpoles, devoted largely to the Dutch East and West Indies.

State building

Nevada Building

A classical building with a broad veranda facing the Marina, the first State building opened, with a Western housewarming on February 22, 1915.

State building

New Jersey Building (Trenton Barrack)

A travertine copy of the old Trenton Barrack of the Revolution, with tall-posted galleries, dormers and green blinds around a hollow square.

State building

New York State Building

The first State building on the Esplanade, a three-story classical clubhouse of broad porches and columns, set in a garden of Empire State trees.

Foreign pavilion

New Zealand Pavilion

A domed, east-facing pavilion of trophies, trout and geyser films, built to lure travelers and sportsmen to the Dominion.

State building

North Dakota Building

A triangular two-story building shaped to its triangular lot, where the state's grain, coal and potatoes were piled 'in heaps and pyramids.'

State building

Ohio Building

A copy of the Ohio Statehouse at Columbus, with a broad Doric portico; after the fair it floated down the Bay on a raft and lasted until 1956.

State building

Oregon Building

'A Parthenon with the bark on': 48 unpeeled Douglas-fir logs, one for each state, standing in for the marble columns of Athens.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion and Gardens of Japan

Three acres of transplanted Japanese garden, ton-weight rocks, cascades, dwarf trees and tea houses, around a golden pavilion modeled on Kyoto's Kinkaku-ji.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Bolivia

A Spanish-colonial house with the portal of Potosí's San Lorenzo church and a patio copied from the old Potosí mint, flanked by Tiahuanaco pylons.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Cuba

A rose-tinted Havana mansion whose tower closed the vista down the Avenue of Palms, with a fountain patio where Sunday dances were held.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Denmark

A shingled medieval castle of three towers, one echoing Kronborg at Elsinore, a Danish-American meeting hall with no exhibits at all.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Greece

A German potash syndicate's abandoned building, finished by the Exposition and sold to Greece, where casts of 180 Greek sculptures stood above a sunken garden.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Guatemala

A palatial domed pavilion on the high ground south of Japan's garden, where coffee was served and a marimba band drew crowds onto the stairs.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Honduras

The first foreign pavilion begun and finished, a two-story classical house behind three arches, standing alone for months as proof the world was coming.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Norway

A rugged timber chieftain's hall on boulder foundations, set among young spruce on a rise with a view of the whole fair.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Panama

The last foreign pavilion dedicated, and, oddly for a fair celebrating the Canal, empty and closed all season.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Portugal

A small Manueline-Gothic pavilion guarded by statues of Prince Henry the Navigator and Pedro Cabral, filled with photographs and dioramas of Portugal's monuments.

Foreign pavilion

Pavilion of Siam

A royal residence built in Bangkok, shipped across the Pacific in pieces and reassembled, tiered, lacquered and walled in translucent glass.

State building

Pennsylvania Building

Henry Hornbostel's Independence Hall-inspired building, two red-brick wings joined by a columned loggia that became the shrine of the Liberty Bell.

State building

Philippine Building

A long, low building of island hardwoods, capiz-shell windows and palma-brava columns around a patio where the Constabulary Band played.

Grounds

Race Track, Aviation Field, Drill Grounds, Polo Field and Stadium

The fair's western sports ground on Presidio land, a mile horse track enclosing polo, drill and athletic fields, whose infield became the Army's Crissy Field.

Foreign pavilion

Swedish Pavilion

Ferdinand Boberg's cluster of gambrel-roofed halls under a chiming bell tower, packed with Swedish steel tied in knots and home crafts.

State building

Texas Building

A Spanish-mission building suggestive of the Alamo, created by an all-woman commission after the Legislature balked.

Foreign pavilion

The Forbidden City (Chinese Pavilion)

A walled compound of Chinese palace halls, prefabricated in Shanghai and erected by Chinese workmen admitted by special act of Congress.

Foreign pavilion

Turkish Pavilion

A domed and minareted palace with a copy of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque beside it, where Muslim visitors came to pray.

State building

Utah Building

A Corinthian building faced in Utah plaster, famous for its working model of the Bingham copper mine, two floors high.

State building

Virginia Building (Mount Vernon)

A careful copy of Washington's Mount Vernon, furnished with his relics, including the bed he died in.

State building

Washington State Building

A French-Renaissance hall with eagle-topped pavilions, a skylit central court and a column of apples slowly revolving in the middle.

State building

West Virginia Building

A colonial mansion with a Tuscan portico facing the Marina, famed for its nine-foot open fireplace.

State building

Wisconsin Building

A two-story classical mansion with paired-column porticos; after the fair it was barged to Marin County.

The Zone (29)

The Zone

101 Ranch Wild West

The Oklahoma 101 Ranch's Wild West show, housed by the Exposition itself, whose cowboys and Indians led a daily parade around the grounds.

The Zone

Alligator Farm

Crocodiles from the Nile and alligators from the Everglades behind an Egyptian gateway and a plaster Memnon.

The Zone

Alt Nürnberg (Old Nuremberg)

A German restaurant village in the style of old Nuremberg's market place, the fair's fifth-highest-grossing concession.

The Zone

Captain, the Educated Horse (and Madame Ellis)

A counting, color-matching, bell-ringing horse named for the captain of the Maine, sharing a theater with a blindfolded mind-reader, one of the Zone's best-paying acts.

The Zone

Chinese Pagoda and Village

A tall pagoda and walled village at the Laguna bend whose 'Underground Chinatown' drug-horror show outdrew its Chinese culture.

The Zone

Creation

A theatrical spectacle of the first chapter of Genesis, the parting of the waters to Adam and Eve, and one of the Zone's top earners.

The Zone

Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg

A round cyclorama building on the Zone's south side showing the Battle of Gettysburg in a 360-degree painting.

The Zone

Infant Incubators

Dr. Martin Couney's glass-walled nursery, where premature babies were kept alive in incubators as the public looked on.

The Zone

Japan Beautiful

A free-admission Japanese village of games, tea houses and bazaars behind a 120-foot gilded Buddha that faced the Zone's Plaza.

The Zone

London to the South Pole

A theatrical re-creation of Antarctic exploration and Scott's last expedition, admired, unprofitable, and finally recycled as a set for girl shows.

The Zone

Mysterious Orient / Streets of Cairo

An 'Oriental village' of Turkish theater, coffee booths, camels and sword dancers at the far Van Ness end of the Zone.

The Zone

Neptune's Daughters (the Diving Girls)

A water show in the Zone's Natatorium: Neptune rose from a great round pool and lured the Diving Girls down into his realm.

The Zone

Safety Racer

L. A. Thompson's twin-track racing coaster: two trains launched together and the heavier load won, one of the Zone's surest moneymakers.

The Zone

Samoan Village

A village of Samoan huts shipped from the islands in some 200 packages, and the most popular of the Zone's 'native villages.'

The Zone

Shamrock Isle / Streets of All Nations

An Irish village with a Blarney Castle tower that failed as Irish and succeeded, retitled, as the Streets of All Nations.

The Zone

Somali Village (later Streets of Seville)

A 'native village' of Somali performers near the Van Ness gate that ended in deportation; its space became a bloodless Spanish bullring.

The Zone

Stella

A painted nude in a lighted frame, ten cents a look, the Zone's great mystery hit and the source of 1915's catchphrase 'Have you seen Stella?'

The Zone

Tehuantepec Village

A Mexican village of artisans, garden and theater, fronted by painted Aztec gods and the spieler King Karlo, by popular vote the prettiest show on the Zone.

The Zone

The '49 Camp

A gold-rush mining camp with a saloon, dance hall and suspiciously authentic gambling, 'the real bad boy of the Zone.'

The Zone

The Aeroscope

Joseph B. Strauss's counterweighted steel arm that lifted a two-story cab of 120 passengers in a slow spiral to 265 feet above the Zone.

The Zone

The Dayton Flood (later 'Escorial')

A miniature Dayton swept by the 1913 flood, fronted by a plaster giant holding back the floodgates; it failed and gave way to the hit painting 'Escorial'.

The Zone

The Evolution of the Dreadnaught (later 'World Wars')

A naval spectacle tracing fighting ships from ancient galleys to the modern dreadnaught, later restaged around the sinking of the Lusitania.

The Zone

The Grand Canyon of Arizona (Santa Fe Railway)

The Santa Fe Railway's five-acre painted canyon, ridden in open-sided railway cars, with a Pueblo village on the roof of its entrance.

The Zone

The Panama Canal (operating model)

A five-acre working model of the Canal, toured from a moving grandstand while phonographs piped a lecture into telephone receivers at every seat.

The Zone

The Submarines

A simulated undersea voyage entered through the mouths of giant plaster bullheads beneath Neptune and his rearing sea horses, admired from outside, avoided inside.

The Zone

The Zone

A 65-acre amusement city strung along one 3,360-foot street from Fillmore to Van Ness, the largest midway any exposition had yet built.

The Zone

Thompson's Scenic Railway

The first Zone concession finished and running, a scenic coaster whose front of elephants was colored to Jules Guerin's order.

The Zone

Toyland Grown Up

Frederic Thompson's five-acre 'exposition of amusements', giant tin soldiers, a 90-foot suffragette and a boat canal under the floors, and the Zone's most expensive flop.

The Zone

Yellowstone Park and Old Faithful Inn (Union Pacific)

The Union Pacific's four-acre topographic model of Yellowstone, with erupting geysers and a copy of Old Faithful Inn where the Exposition Orchestra played.

Off the grounds (1)