Argentina built one of the most striking and costly buildings in the foreign section. It was bold French Renaissance on a steel frame, with a commanding dome, stained glass, and a portico whose curving entablature rested on caryatids. The architect Eduardo Sauze came from Argentina, with A. Huguier as associate and Julio Semillosa assisting in San Francisco. It cost about $200,000 to build and another $20,000 to furnish, even though sixty-three cases of plaster ornament went down with a British ship off Pernambuco.
The pavilion had about 30,000 square feet of floor. Its best feature was a small theater Todd compared to a miniature opera house, where moving pictures showed the life of the whole country. A foyer of dioramas surrounded it, and upstairs were a gallery, a library and a reading room with newspapers in many languages. The tenor Florencio Constantino sang in the theater at the dedication on April 20, 1915.
At a glance
- About 30,000 sq ft of floor.
- Cost about $200,000, plus $20,000 to furnish (Todd). The Official Guide gives a total appropriation of $1,700,000 for participation; Todd says 'a million dollars gold' over three years.
- Dedicated April 20, 1915; site dedicated June 23, 1913.
Afterward
Dome not felled until March 1917 (Todd V, p. 247); the building was then wrecked. The site is Presidio land.
Sources
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XXXV, pp. 203-204
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. LIII, pp. 283-286
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. V (1921), ch. XXXVII, p. 247 (dome felled)
- Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), pp. 42-43