Netherlands Pavilion

The Netherlands pavilion, designed by W. Kromhout of Rotterdam, was festive and a little exotic. It had a rose-tinted dome, clock dials more than six feet across, outside stairways, 44 flagpoles and a tower 128 feet high. The walls were travertine banded with encaustic tile. The south side showed tile allegories of the East and West Indian colonies, the north side the industries of the mother country. Todd called the style Byzantine or even Romanesque. The Official Guide, written earlier, described an old Dutch manor-house, which does not match the building as built.

Visitors came in past a fountain of rose-tinted Dutch tiles into a lobby with a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina. There were a tea room, a reading room and upstairs a reception room. The largest hall was given to the East Indies, with a batik kiosk, Java dioramas and colonial products. Other halls covered the West Indies and the homeland, with dioramas of a 1670 West India Company fleet and of Amsterdam. Holland also planted a bulb garden of about three acres near the Baker Street entrance, tended by a government horticulturist, A. van Vliet.

At a glance

• About 25,000 sq ft of ground; tower 128 feet; clock dials over six feet across; 44 flagpoles.
• Participation about $400,000 in all ($300,000 before the war, $100,000 after).
• Dedicated March 11, 1915.
• Separate bulb garden of about three acres near the Baker Street entrance.

Afterward

Not recorded; presumably auctioned and wrecked.

Sources

• Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XXXV, pp. 199-200
• Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. LII, pp. 275-282
• Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), pp. 47-48