The Machinery Palace closed the east end of the main axis the way the Palace of Fine Arts closed the west. Ward & Blohme modeled it on the Roman baths of Caracalla and Diocletian, with triple connected pediments on every face and long runs of cornice. Todd said it looked 'immensely solid and enduring' and 'successfully inhibited any disquieting thought of the ephemeral nature of the Exposition architecture.' The entrance porches had lofty coffered vaults, and their columns rose from man-high friezes of figures working chain pulleys, gears, tongs and crucibles.
It was all wood. Todd calls it in cubic contents 'one of the largest wooden structures ever erected.' It took 7,500,000 ft of Douglas fir, 45,187 linear ft of piling and 1,447 tons of bolts, rods and small steel. Inside, nothing was hidden: the great barrel trusses stood exposed, 'a huge webbing of timber and rods.' Traveling cranes ran 50 ft up (two of 30 tons over the nave and one of 20 tons over each side aisle), and railroad tracks crossing the building beneath them let heavy machinery be set down almost anywhere.
It was the first palace started, with its contract let in January 1913, and the first finished, more than a year before opening. That early completion made it useful. The painters of the courts' murals worked together in a studio set up inside it under Jules Guérin's direction. Finished colossal sculptures were stored there. In May 1914 it held the Ball of All Nations, watched over by the plaster giants of the Nations of the East. It was also the building in which Lincoln Beachey made what Todd calls the first indoor flight ever undertaken in an airplane.
Exhibits were about half foreign and half domestic, and nearly three hundred American exhibitors ran working machines. Electricity had so thoroughly won out that the steam boiler installed for exhibitors was never operated, and no compressed-air plant was built.
It looked immensely solid and enduring, and successfully inhibited any disquieting thought of the ephemeral nature of the Exposition architecture.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LIII
At a glance
- Cost: $659,665 (Official Guide); $659,655 (Condensed Facts).
- Contract let to W. W. Anderson & Co. January 7, 1913 (Todd vol. 2, ch. V; ch. IV gives the general contract as filed January 31); completed by March 1914.
- Lumber $130,452; piling $11,785; bolts and small steel $115,716; 18,100 sq ft of chipped window glass and 88,000 sq ft of ribbed skylight glass cost $21,200 (Todd vol. 2).
- Floors designed for 200 lb per sq ft live load; heavy exhibits sat on special pile foundations (Todd vol. 2).
- The Official Guide says six million feet of lumber went into sheathing it, and its cornices ran to miles; Condensed Facts says a mile and a half of cornice, four carloads of nails and 1,500 tons of bolts and washers.
- Patigian's Powers stood 14 times repeated on tall columns at the portals (Todd vol. 2, ch. LXI).
- The first planting around any of the palaces began here, at Machinery Hall, in April 1913 (Todd vol. 1).
Afterward
Wrecked in 1916 by the exposition's own forces (Todd vol. 5); the site is now Marina District blocks near the Marina Green.
The site today
Present-day photographs and video of this spot are being made for the film; each frame below is a slot for one of them.
Fillmore St at Bay, by Marina Middle School
Have a photo of this spot? Email it to hello@288days.com with code S19 and up to 50 characters of credit. It appears here and in the film.
Sources
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2, ch. V (structure), ch. LIII (architecture), ch. LXI (sculpture)
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 1, chs. LXI, LXXI, LXXII
- Official Guide of the PPIE (1915), The Palace of Machinery
- Condensed Facts concerning the PPIE (1915), The Great Palace of Machinery
- Barry, The City of Domes (1915), Machinery Palace notes