This had to be the biggest day for the San Francisco Historical Society since the centennial of the Fire and Earthquake of 1906. It was one hundred years to the day that the Panama-Pacific Exposition opened. February 20th. The celebration would be held at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco’s Marina district. It is the only building from the fairgrounds left standing in its original spot.
A colorful crowd was gathering under the pink rotunda. Most of them looked like locals out for a day in the glorious weather. People dressed in period costume stood out. There were derby hats and some women sported large hats with feathers sticking out. The clothes looked authentic. There were people standing near a small stage waiting to perform. One group wore the clothes of the Ohlone, the tribe that had lived here for centuries. Members of the Nemenzo Polynesian Dance Company waited to go onstage. The women wore grass skirts. A group of Taiko drummers in robes got ready to perform.
Once I got under the rotunda I realized there were more people here than I thought. Most of them were waiting in line to be among the first to see the exhibit that would open today in the Palace of Fine Arts building. The line snaked around the back of the rotunda.
The members of Emeryville Taiko got the day off to a bone rattling start. There’s always an adrenaline rush when a Taiko group starts playing. The sound of the drums was echoing off the rotunda. It was loud! The members of the Taiko looked like they enjoyed starting the day’s festivities. We’re going to party like it’s 1915!
Cheryl Jennings was our MC. She’s a reporter for ABC. She was vivacious and charming and did a great job getting things started. She looks like a veteran of these civic and social events. She gave a little introduction. The Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) was “the birth of innovation.” We were standing on the site of a very exciting event a hundred years ago.
I’m not sure, but I think something was invented before 1915. Other speakers touched on the innovation theme, and the idea was that the Bay Area is still a center of innovation because of nearby silicon valley. It was a bit patronizing, but the Bay Area can lay claim to being a center of innovation now.
Cheryl was looking for her speakers. They were inside getting a VIP tour of the exhibit. There was a slight delay and then they came out and joined the festivities.
Anthea Hartig is the executive director of the San Francisco Historical Society. She told us to close our eyes and imagine thousands of people on this very spot. They’re thrilled to be walking through the fair. It had taken years of planning, and the opening was a huge event in the City that drew 250,000 people.
Back in the present, there would be a long list of people to thank, but Hartig wants to start with Phoebe Apperson Hearst. She led the original campaign to save the Palace of Fine Arts.
Other speakers had their turn at the mike. Philip Ginsburg, the General Manager of the San Francisco Department of Parks and Recreation encouraged us to enjoy the parks. The parks are treasured by the people of San Francisco because most of San Francisco is “dense.” The parks offer relief from a crowded city.
One of the guests is Henry Ford III. He told how his great grandfather had a working assembly line at the fair. It turned out eighteen Model Ts a day! We will see some of them in the exhibit. Henry Ford took Thomas Edison for a ride in a new Model T at the PPIE. His great grandson wondered what the two titans of the day talked about while riding through the fair. He talked about visiting a Ford research facility in Palo Alto. He assured us the Ford Motor Company was continuing its tradition of innovation.
Supervisor Mark Farrell is young and collegiate looking. He grew up a block away from the Palace and he talks about growing up with The Palace being his backyard.
The speechifying went on and I wandered out of the rotunda to take a look at the birds. Night Herons roost in the trees at the end of the lagoon. Stately Great Blue Herons and Egrets stood in the sun. They didn’t seem very impressed by the festivities.
Mayor Ed Lee came to the microphone and assured us he would keep his comments short because, “I am.” Our mayor is short. He told us that the Palace was a romantic spot. It had been lit up last night as it had been illuminated for the fair. Mayor Lee had his wedding pictures taken there thirty years ago.
The Palace is a part of many San Franciscan’s lives. My daughter had quickly named the Palace, The Duck Castle. We buried family pets there. It just seemed to be an appropriate spot.
Some of the big, corporate sponsors are thanked: AT&T, Wells Fargo, the Hearst Corporation and the Ford Motor Company.
Members of the Ohlone tribe led the waiting crowd into the exhibit. They were the “original caretakers” of the area. Even with their feathered headdresses on I lost them in the crowd in front of the large entrance doors.
People crowded to be among the first to enter the exhibit. The crowd was large, but not as overwhelming as the crowds at some of these events can be. It was never really uncomfortable. I took a break and went to take a look at the Bay.
When I got back the afternoon Bay breeze had started up. The Marina can be windy in the afternoon. The PA played Frank Sinatra singing “Summer Breeze.” It was a perfect time for this song.
A very serious Buffalo Bill Cody wandered the crowd. He seemed to be perturbed about something.
There’s always the fantasy of going back in time, but one thing I’m glad we don’t have to deal with now is Victorian clothes. The buttons alone would have drove me crazy. It looked restrictive and a bit uncomfortable to me, but it looked like re-creators were enjoying being walking history.
A woman in an authentic looking dress was explaining her hobby to several curious bystanders. She looked like she had just stepped out of a vintage photograph. She wore a large hat with feathers and there were many buttons on her dress. She’d been collecting antique clothes for thirty years. It had been very inexpensive at first, but it was getting harder to find real vintage clothes. “I don’t get to wear them that often.”
Next up onstage was the San Francisco Opera Fellows. Some opera would fit. At one time the Marina neighborhood had been largely Italian.
After finishing one song, the sound on the piano goes out. “One of the singers asked, “Does anyone know a good joke?” A woman with gray hair near us jumps at the opportunity. She yells, “Yes! What’s the difference between the Hindenberg and Rush Limbaugh?” One is a Nazi windbag...” The piano regained its sound and drowned out the punch line, but I think we can figure that one out.
The young singers finished with “San Francisco (Open Your Golden Gates)” the song Jeannette McDonald sang in the movie. It’s a corny, but stirring moment. “Corny is real,” someone had told me earlier that week. The song is sung at many San Francisco events. The crowd clapped along. They weren’t as enthusiastic as a Castro movie audience, but it was a spirited rendition. There’s still some magic moments in San Francisco. For those that are left.
It had been a while since the doors to the exhibit had opened and the line wasn’t that long. The exhibit will be open for a year, but people had patiently waited to be among the first to get in. To the left was the tribute to the fair. White columns separated the exhibits. There was a large map of the fair grounds. There were very large photos of the fair, including one of the Tower of Jewels. The size of the people passing the buildings gave an idea of the size and scope of the fair.
There was a five minute film. We’re shown the bare hills of San Francisco before the Gold Rush. As settlers moved in buildings pop up on the screen. They appear slowly and then there’s a spurt of growth. The destruction of the quake and fire is shown. The City began to rebuild and buildings popped up again, taller than before. The Phoenix rises from the ashes. The buildings of the fair go up quickly and then disappear. The bridges are built. The short film ends with the question: What will the future of San Francisco look like?
The exhibit area is large. This was once the Exploratorium, a revolutionary museum for kids. The Exploratorium has reopened in a new facility on the Bay. It was a bit of a nostalgic trip. The last time I was in here I was with my daughter when she was in grammar school. There were interactive exhibits explaining science. This was a relatively new idea at the time. It wasn’t a dry old museum. Kids and chaperones loved it.
A stern, imposing woman in black Victorian dress sits in one of the model T cars that were manufactured at the fair. She looks a bit autocratic. It must be Phoebe Apperson Hearst. She led the campaign to save the Palace of Fine Arts.
The reopening of the Palace of Fine Arts is being presented by a company called Innovation Hangar. It’s “a unique social innovation space that facilitates connections, ideas and investments.” Innovation Hangar is trying to create a space where people can meet in the real world, off line. It was a touch of the old Exploratorium.
This was Community Day at the Palace of Fine Arts. There were more than thirty groups with tables or booths. Many local museums are represented including the California Historical Society, the Museum of San Ramon Valley, the Saratoga History Museum, the Society of California Pioneers, the California State Capitol Museum and the Wells Fargo History Museum. So many museums, so little time.
Signs at a table explained Historypin.com. It looked interesting. You pick a location on a map and historic pictures pop up.
There are four fire engines from the fair known to still exist. Three of them are in the building today. Fire was still a threat to the San Francisco of a hundred years ago, and fire fighters were a big presence at PPIE. They were the “The Guardians of the City.”
I had bad timing and missed the Uke-A-Thon while I was inside the Palace at the exhibit. A thousand ukulele players were expected to play together under the dome of the Palace. It would have been another bizarre music event to add to my collection.
Laura Ackley is signing copies of “San Francisco’s Jewel City.” She’s in full Victorian dress with a plumed hat. Her book, “San Francisco’s Jewel City” is full of stories, photos and ephemera from PPIE. It may be the best way to imagine being at the fair.
A table for “The Friends of the Exposition Organ” caught my eye. After the fair, the organ had found a home at the Exposition Auditorium. (Now the Bill Graham Memorial Auditorium.) It was kept in storage for years. A film explains that it was badly damaged in the quake of ’89. The entire huge instrument was shipped back east for repairs. The city government got cold feet and stopped the renovation. People who knew the value of the organ intervened and it was repaired and shipped back, but it’s still in storage. The “Friends” are working to have it reinstalled somewhere.
There were some cases filled with PPIE souvenirs: buttons, programs and even some Novagems. There were books about the fair and other artifacts, including a copy of “The Boy Scouts At the Fair.”
“The world gathered,” at the Expo. Among celebrities attending were Theodore Roosevelt, Helen Keller and Buffalo Bill Cody. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were there. Fatty Arbuckle, a huge star at the time, filmed a short with the Fair as a backdrop. Luther Burbank came over from Santa Rosa. Others at the Fair included: Charlie Chaplin, Maria Montessori and William Jennings Bryant. Among the music titans were John Philip Sousa and Camile Saint-Saens. Saens introduced William Randolph Hearst to Auguste Rodin. Aviators and race car drivers were the Rock star heroes of their day. Lincoln Beachey and Art Smith flew over the fair. Eddie Rickenbacker drove race cars on the track near Crissy Field. Houdini performed!
A half hour film was shown in the lobby of the Palace’s theater. Most people sat on the carpeting to watch. The film was “The Palace After Dark.” It was a great look at the fair and a relaxing way to end the day.
The Palace of Fine Arts’ rotunda had been relit in 1999, but tonight it would be lit like it had been at the fair. Searchlights swept across the Palace’s rotunda, dome and other buildings. They crossed the water and reflected on the residential buildings across the street. The searchlights shone in the same pattern that the ceiling of the rotunda has.
The light shows were a big part of the entertainment of the fair. Fifty years later people would enjoy light shows again in the Rock halls of the Sixties. People from these different eras shared something in common. They enjoyed a good light show.
It’s impossible to recreate the excitement and spirit of the 1915 San Francisco World’s Fair, but this had been a charming local event. It was great to see this part of San Francisco’s history brought to life. San Francisco has seen big change in the past, but it may be facing more change than it’s ever seen. The big crowd showed that many people still care about the history of San Francisco.
Postscript.
The California Historical Society (CHS) has an exhibit honoring PPIE. “The City Rising. San Francisco and the 1915 World’s Fair” runs until December 6, 2015. CHS is located in an original storefront style building at 678 Mission Street. It’s not far from the Moscone Convention Center and Yerba Buena Gardens. It has an interior fitting for a historical society. Woodwork and vintage paintings line the walls upstairs.
The exhibit starts with a large diorama of the Fair. It really shows the size and grandeur of the temporary city. It’s accurate down to little dots of people wandering the fairgrounds.
The diorama used to be in the Military Museum which had been in the Presidio. The Military Museum was a fantastic little history museum that I had stumbled on years ago. After the base changed hands it was closed. It had been a great place to see relics of San Francisco history. The diorama was stored in City Hall and abandoned for years. It was carefully cleaned up and moved here for another moment in the sun during the PPIE centennial.
The exhibit has many photos, pictures and ephemera of the PPIE. I’d seen most of them before in Laura Ackley’s book: San Francisco’s Jewel City. There are many souvenirs from the fair, including Novagems, and ads from the newspapers of 1915. Four short films showed on video monitors throughout the exhibit.
I was looking at some ephemera from the Fair when two women walked into the room. One was commenting on how “Grandfather” had commented that the interior of the fair’s buildings were as exciting as their grand exteriors.
In the main hall there was a shaky white rattan couch and chairs. There were some interesting looking books about the fair on a table. A longer film on the PPIE was playing. One of the women from the other room walked up. She was tall. “My grandfather was in charge of lighting for the fair,” she told me.
“D’Arcy Ryan?” I asked. she wasn’t very impressed that I knew his name. Ryan’s granddaughter certainly wasn’t shy. She told the story that I had read in Ackley’s book. Ryan had approached Willis Polk and offered to manage the lighting for the fair. Polk agreed that Ryan would get a half hour to explain his plan to a meeting of the fair’s architects. Polk figured the architects would tear Ryan’s ambitious plan apart. At the meeting Ryan spoke for four and a half hours, and he was chosen to be in charge of lighting. The granddaughter also mentioned that there was an alternative plan in case “things didn’t work out.”
We watched the film. The granddaughter told the stories about each building’s lighting as they came onscreen. “These pictures are clearer than any I’ve seen,” she said. I should have at least gotten her first name. “What’s your interest?” she asked me. She was trying to figure out what had brought me to the exhibit.
They had brought in “some things” about the fair that she knew the historical society would be interested in. After the film she wandered the exhibit and I could hear her tell stories of her grandfather and the Fair. D’Arcy Ryan was a real showman and entrepreneur. His granddaughter sure seemed to have inherited it.
There will be more events over the centennial year. More information can be found on the web site: www.PPIE.org.
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