The Zone

At the east end of the grounds, between the Van Ness Avenue gate and the Fillmore Street gate, the Exposition built an amusement street. Everything the architects had made harmonious in the courts was loud here. There were a 90-foot wooden suffragette, a 120-foot gilded Buddha, a painted Grand Canyon you rode through in railroad cars, and an arm that lifted 120 people 265 feet into the air. It was officially called the Zone; the nickname "Joy Zone" turns up even in Todd's official history, which spends three chapters walking its length and another on its troubles.

The street

The Official Guide describes the concessions district as sixty-five acres in the eastern part of the grounds. It adds that "the word 'Zone' is used to designate only the 3,000-foot long main avenue." The sources disagree slightly on size. Todd gives about 65 acres in one place and 70 acres in his table of the site, Condensed Facts lists 69.2, and Todd measures the street at "seven blocks long, or 3360 feet, and 100 feet wide." It ran from Van Ness Avenue west to Fillmore Street, south of Fort Mason. Part of it stood on 18 acres of the Fort Mason military reservation that the Army lent to the fair. The street bent at Laguna Street, where Toyland Grown Up faced the Irish village of Shamrock Isle. At Gough Street it opened into a circular plaza with a fire station and the entrance to Japan Beautiful. Counting both sides, it had more than a mile of frontage and twenty-five theaters. The shows opened at 9:30 in the morning and closed at 11 at night.

The name came from a public contest with a ten-dollar season book as the prize. Todd records that the winner, a Mrs. J. Cortissoz, died before she could collect it, and that the name was not applied until late 1914.

The Zone was a jolt to anyone arriving from the courts. John D. Barry's guidebook-in-dialogue, The City of Domes, has its architect complain about coming in through the Fillmore Street gate:

"The Fillmore Street entrance, with the Zone shrieking at you at one side, hardly puts you in the mood for the beauty in the courts."

John D. Barry, The City of Domes (1915)

The business of fun

Every show on the Zone was a private business renting space from the Exposition. The usual terms were $50 a front foot for land on the Zone "regardless of its depth." On top of that came a bonus paid when the concession was granted, and a percentage of the gross receipts, most often 25 percent, though some shows paid 20, 15, 10 or 5 percent and a few paid flat rates. The Exposition kept the right to inspect every show, set its hours and prices, and order performances and parades. It also required that nothing built for the fair be reproduced anywhere in California before closing day. Applications poured in. By July 1913 about 6,000 had been rejected, and pre-fair publicity said fewer than 100 were accepted for the street itself. Across the whole grounds, including restaurants, rides and palace booths, there were 455 concessions.

Nobody knew exactly what the Zone cost. Todd calls it "the largest amusement district ever built by an exposition" and says it was "said to have cost" $3,500,000, but he doubts anyone would ever know the exact figure. The Official Guide claimed more than $12 million, with $8 million for the hundred principal shows. The first large concession, the canal model described below, was let in December 1912. Construction on the street began in August 1913 with Frederick Thompson's Noah's Ark, part of his Toyland Grown Up.

The shows

The Panama Canal. The Zone's most admired show was a five-acre working model of the canal, which visitors rode around on a moving platform while listening to a phonograph lecture through telephone receivers. It charged 50 cents all season, never cut its price, and took in $338,227.55. See The Canal and The Panama Canal (operating model).

Toyland Grown Up. Frederick Thompson, who had built Luna Park at Coney Island, was given the concession in July 1913. His permit was the first building permit issued on the Zone, on August 25, 1913. Toyland covered five acres and employed a 300-person organization. It had giant tin soldiers, a 90-foot wooden suffragette, a Crazy Town, a flea circus, a midgets' theater, and a canal with locks running under the floors. It failed badly. Todd writes that "Toyland fell flatter than Babylon," and that by the end it had shrunk to a dog and pony circus. See Toyland Grown Up.

The Aeroscope. The Zone's sky ride was designed by J. B. Strauss of Chicago, president of the Strauss Bascule Bridge Company, who later became the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. Todd describes it as, in effect, a gigantic arm of a bascule bridge. It lifted a two-story cabin holding 120 people to 265 feet, or 330 feet above sea level, from which you could see into seven counties. A 380-ton counterweight balanced the arm, and water tanks automatically adjusted for each passenger's weight. The whole machine weighed 700 tons. It first ran on February 12, 1915, and a trip took about ten minutes. It took in over $67,000, which Todd says was almost what it had cost to build. See The Aeroscope.

The Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. Two railroads built enormous advertisements for their scenic routes. The Santa Fe's Grand Canyon of Arizona took about five acres and 300 feet of frontage, and cost about $350,000. Visitors rode through painted canyon scenery in eight standard-gauge cars, and a Hopi pueblo stood on the roof. It took in nearly $90,000. The Union Pacific's Yellowstone Park, built from 2 million feet of lumber on four acres, had a working model of a geyser. Its Old Faithful Inn restaurant was also the concert hall of the Exposition Orchestra under Max Bendix, and on opening night 2,300 people dined there. Yellowstone and its restaurant together took in $385,732, more than any other Zone concession. See The Grand Canyon of Arizona (Santa Fe Railway) and Yellowstone Park and Old Faithful Inn (Union Pacific).

Japan Beautiful. Its best-known feature was a 120-foot gilded Buddha. Admission was free and the money came from shops inside. According to Todd, a one-dollar purchase limit led the shops to offer merchandise games of chance, and he calls the venture "not an especially fortunate" one. See Japan Beautiful.

Creation, the Dayton Flood and the Submarines. Creation staged the Book of Genesis as a theatrical spectacle. It cut its price from 50 cents to 25 and took in $121,266. The Dayton Flood reenacted the Ohio disaster behind a plaster giant holding back the floodgates. It did not pay and closed after a few months. Its space was taken by a painting of the Escorial, which Todd says drew about 200,000 visitors. The Submarines show, fronted by Neptune and his sea horses, failed too, and Todd blames the name as much as anything. See Creation, The Dayton Flood (later 'Escorial') and The Submarines.

The Infant Incubators. Dr. M. A. Couney's exhibit of premature babies in incubators, with a pair of Hungarian storks out front, took in over $72,000. That made it one of the Zone's quiet successes. See Infant Incubators.

The villages. The Zone had the ethnographic "villages" that were standard at fairs of the period, and their stories are uncomfortable to read now. The Samoan Village arrived in about 200 packages in November 1914 and stayed until September. The Somali Village was asked to leave, and its people were deported by way of Angel Island. Its site became a "bloodless bullfight" called the Streets of Seville. A Mexican village from Tehuantepec, produced by G. M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, was voted the prettiest show on the street but never made money. The Hawaiian Village was renamed "Hula Dancers" after the Hawaiian commissioner objected to the original name.

The rest. The Zone also had the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Wild West show, which led daily parades until it closed. There were a Streets of Cairo, a Chinese pagoda, the Irish Shamrock Isle with a square tower of Blarney Castle, and the Safety Racer roller coaster, which took in $133,789 after costing under $42,500. Captain Sigsbee, a performing horse shown with a Madame Ellis, drew over $62,000 in 25-cent admissions.

Stella, Chinatown and the censors

The Exposition policed its amusement street, though not always consistently. The '49 Camp, a gold-rush show that Todd calls "the real bad boy of the Zone," was closed repeatedly and finally shut for good in October for running gambling. The "Bowls of Joy" ride was shut twice because it was dangerous, then closed permanently. A show called Underground Chinatown drew a protest from China's commissioner-general. The Exposition upheld the protest and renamed the show "Underground Slumming," and it went on doing good business.

The Zone's best-known moneymaker was a single painting. Stella was a nude painting that its owner, Norman Vaughan, had once kept in a garret in St. Louis. Ten cents bought a look, and the show took in more than $75,000. "Have you seen Stella?" became a catchphrase of the fair. Todd adds that the management "would tolerate no rival to Stella."

"Too much Zone"

For most concessionaires 1915 was a bad year, and Todd gives several reasons. The war cast a gloom over the season, and there had been hard times since 1907. The early months were cold and wet, and the rain hit the Zone hardest. Visitors who had paid 50 cents at the gate balked at another 50 cents for each show. Some shows had been capitalized by stock promoters who expected dividends on several times what had actually been invested. Todd's own diagnosis was structural: "There was too much Zone." Between 45 and 65 shows were open at different times. The street was too long, one end sat at an exit, and at 100 feet wide it often looked thin. He also quotes a veteran showman who thought the rest of the fair was the real competition:

"The Exposition itself is too beautiful and contains too many instructive things for people to see. We can't compete with it. By day the exhibits, vistas, courts, and color are all against us, and by night the lighting effects are more wonderful than anything we can do."

An unnamed showman, quoted in Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921)

The Exposition itself did well out of its concessions. It deferred percentages, switched some shows to flat rates and advanced money to keep valuable attractions open, and it lost $258,249 doing so. Even so, the concessionaires paying a percentage grossed $7,497,022, and the Exposition kept nearly 21 percent of that. After losses and operating costs, all concessions together returned $1,238,106 to the Exposition. The concessions department called the Zone "a beautiful picture and a financial success from the Exposition's standpoint." The concessionaires mostly lost money.

Source: Todd, vol. 5, ch. XXIV. Most of the top earners sold food, lodging or rides around the grounds, such as the Inside Inn and the Fadgl auto train, not Zone amusements.

Zone Day, May 27

The concessionaires fought back with a carnival of their own. For Zone Day, May 27, 1915, the Exposition put up $7,500 and the showmen raised the rest of a fund said to be nearly $40,000. Attendance reached 104,486, roughly double the days on either side. A penny ballot crowned Miss Maidie Roberts of Japan Beautiful "Queen Zona," and she received the keys to the street from Vice-President R. B. Hale after a massed band concert led by John Philip Sousa. A "Pageant of Nations" parade moved in fifteen divisions. At three o'clock an old ferryboat, the Amador, was blown up off the Marina. That night the aviator Art Smith wrote "ZONE" across the sky in fire (see People and Days), and the day ended with Queen Zona's ball at the Inside Inn. Todd judged the Zone Day parade "the most gorgeous of the daylight spectacles" of the year.

The Zone had a quieter side as well. The Y.W.C.A. ran a clubhouse on the street for the young women who worked there, including actresses and dancers from the shows. It served over 12,000 meals at an average of 17 cents and counted 1,150 regular members.

Afterward

Clearing the Zone took longer than emptying the palaces, because every concessionaire's account had to be settled first. Most of the buildings were sold to wrecking contractors. By June 30, 1916, the last trace of the street was gone, and the 97 parcels of land it had stood on were ready to go back to their owners. Today the area between Van Ness and Fillmore is homes and shops. See Visiting the Site Today.

Sources

• Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition (1921): vol. 1, ch. XXXIV ("Getting Ready for the Joy Zone"), ch. XXXII (site distribution), ch. LXXIX; vol. 2, chs. XVIII–XIX (concession contracts), XXVIII–XXIX (Zone building), LXIV–LXVIII ("Along the Zone" through "Troubles of a Joy Street"); vol. 3, ch. IX (the Zone Carnival); vol. 5, ch. XIX (Y.W.C.A.), ch. XXIV (concession revenue), ch. XXXVII (clearing the Zone).
• Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), "The Zone."
• Condensed Facts Concerning the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (c. 1914), and The Exposition Fact Book (3rd ed.), on the concessions district.
• John D. Barry, The City of Domes (1915).
• Modern context on Joseph B. Strauss (bascule bridges; Golden Gate Bridge): Wikipedia, "Joseph Strauss (engineer)."