Panama–California Exposition
The Panama–California Exposition was a world exposition held in San Diego, California, between January 1, 1915, and January 1, 1917. The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, and was meant to tout San Diego as the first United States port of call for ships traveling north after passing westward through the canal. The fair was held in San Diego's large urban Balboa Park. The park held a second Panama-California exposition in 1935.
Proposal and formation
In 1909, San Diego's Chamber of Commerce president and local businessman Gilbert Aubrey Davidson proposed an exposition to commemorate the completion of the Panama Canal. San Diego's population in 1910 was 37,578, and it would be the least populated city to ever host an international exposition. In contrast, San Francisco had a population nearly 10 times larger and would ultimately be supported by politicians in California and Washington, D.C. for the official Panama Canal exposition, the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. Although representatives from San Francisco urged San Diego to end its planning, San Diego pressed forward for a simultaneous exposition. Several San Franciscans persuaded both members of Congress and President William Howard Taft to deny support for San Diego's exposition in exchange for pledged political support for Taft's campaign against Republicans. With no federal and little state government funding, San Diego's exposition would be on a smaller scale with fewer states and countries participating.The Panama–California Exposition Company was formed in September 1909 and its board of directors was soon led by Ulysses S. Grant Jr. as president of the company and with John D. Spreckels as vice president. After Grant resigned in November 1911, real estate developer "Colonel" D. C. Collier, was made president of the exposition. He was responsible for selecting both the location in the city park and the Pueblo Revival and Mission Revival architectural styles. Collier was tasked with steering the exposition in "the proper direction," ensuring that every decision made reflected his vision of what the exposition could accomplish. Collier once stated "The purpose of the Panama–California Exposition is to illustrate the progress and possibility of the human race, not for the exposition only, but for a permanent contribution to the world's progress." The exposition's leadership changed again in early March 1914, when Collier encountered personal financial issues and resigned. He was replaced by Davidson, who was also joined by several new vice presidents.
By March 1910, $1 million was raised for the expo by the Panama–California Exposition Company through selling subscriptions. A bond measure later that year provided an additional $1 million solely for improving permanent fixtures in the park. Funding for the California State Building was provided through appropriation bills totaling $450,000 signed by Governor Hiram Johnson in 1911 and 1913.
Design
Fair officials first sought architect John Galen Howard as their supervisory architect. With Howard unavailable, on January 27, 1911, they chose New York architect Bertram Goodhue and appointed Irving Gill to assist him. By September 1911 Gill had resigned and was replaced by Carleton Winslow of Goodhue's office. The original landscape architects, the Olmsted Brothers, likewise left the project, and were replaced by fair official Frank P. Allen Jr.Exposition site
The exposition was held in Balboa Park, which spanned. For the first few decades of its existence, "City Park" remained mostly open space; lacking trees and covered in native wildflowers, the park was home to bobcats, rattlesnakes, coyotes, and other wildlife. Numerous proposals, some altruistic, some profit-driven, were brought forward for the development and use of the land during this time. During construction of the exposition facilities in 1910, a contest was held that renamed the park after Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to cross Central America and see the Pacific Ocean.Spanish Colonial Revival architecture
Goodhue and Winslow advocated a design that turned away from the more modest, indigenous, horizontally oriented Pueblo Revival and Mission Revival, towards a more ornate and urban Spanish Baroque. Contrasting with bare walls, rich Mexican and Spanish Churrigueresque decoration would be used, with influences from the Islamic and Persian styles in Moorish Revival architecture. For American world's fairs, this was a novelty. The design was an intentional contrast to most previous Eastern U.S. and European expositions, which had been done in neoclassical and Beaux-Arts styles, with large formal buildings around large symmetric spaces; San Francisco's Panama–Pacific International Exposition was largely Beaux-Arts style. Goodhue had already experimented with Spanish Baroque in Havana, at the 1905 La Santisima Trinidad pro-cathedral, and the Hotel Colon in Panama. Some of his specific stylistic sources for San Diego are the Giralda Tower at the Seville Cathedral, the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, Oaxaca.Goodhue personally designed the largest and most ornate building on the site, the California Building, with its historical iconography; he sketched two other buildings, provided Winslow and Allen with his photographs and drawings from examples in Spain and Mexico, and reviewed their developed designs. The original ensemble of buildings featured various stylistic and period references. Taken together, they constituted something like a recapitulated history of Spanish colonial in North America, from Renaissance Europe sources, to Spanish colonial, to Mexican Baroque, to the vernacular styles adopted by the Franciscan missions up the California coast. The Botanical Building was designed by Winslow with help from Allen and Thomas B. Hunter in the style of a Spanish Renaissance greenhouse. This mix of influences is representative of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, which the Exposition popularized in the United States. Prior to the exposition, San Diego had predominately featured Victorian architecture with some elements of classical styles. The popularity of the expo led to more emphasis on mission architecture within the city.
After the Exposition, Goodhue moved on to other national projects, while Winslow stayed on in southern California, continuing to produce his own variations of the style at the Bishop's School in La Jolla and the 1926 Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Winslow was also instrumental in persuading the city of Santa Barbara to adopt Spanish Colonial Revival as the officially mandated civic style after its 1925 earthquake.
The temporary installations, decoration, and landscapes of Balboa Park were created with some large spaces and numerous paths, small spaces, and courtyard Spanish gardens. The location was also moved from a small hillock to a larger and more open area, most of which was intended to be reclaimed by the park as gardens.
Construction
The groundbreaking ceremony for the site of the expo was held on July 19, 1911. To make room for the exposition planned layout, several city buildings, machine shops, and a gunpowder magazine were moved offsite. The first building to begin construction was the Administration Building, which started in November 1911 and completed in March 1912. Visitors interested in watching the ongoing construction before the exposition's official opening were charged admission of $0.25.Layout
The layout of the expo was contained by three entrances on the west, north, and east.The East Gateway was approached by drive and San Diego Electric Railway trolley cars winding up from the city through the southern portion of the park.
From the west, the Cabrillo Bridge's entrance was marked with blooming giant century plants and led straight to the dramatic West Gate, with the city's coat-of-arms at its crown. The archway was flanked by engaged Doric orders supporting an entablature, with figures symbolizing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans joining waters together, in commemoration of the opening of the Panama Canal. These figures were the work of Furio Piccirilli.
While the west gateway was part of the Fine Arts Building, the east gateway was designed to be the formal entrance for the California State Building. The East or State Gateway carried the California state coat-of-arms over the arch. The spandrels over the arch were filled with glazed colored tile commemorating the 1769 arrival of Spain and the 1846 State Constitutional Convention at Monterey.
Near a large parking lot, the North gate led to the 'Painted Desert' and long Isthmus street. The Santa Fe Railway-sponsored 'Painted Desert', a, 300-person exhibit populated by seven Native American tribes including the Apache, Navajo, and Tewa. The 'Painted Desert', which design and construction was supervised by the Southwestern archeologist Jesse L. Nusbaum, had the appearance of a rock structure but was actually wire frames covered in cement.
The Isthmus was surrounded by concessions, amusement rides and games, a replica gem mine, an ostrich farm, and a replica of the Panama Canal. One of the concessions along the isthmus was a "China Town".
Permanent structures
From the start, the Cabrillo Bridge, the domed-and-towered California State Building and the low-lying Fine Arts Building were intended to be permanent additions to the park; the latter two are now part of the National Register of Historic Places–listed California Quadrangle. The Botanical Building would protect heat-loving plants, while the Spreckels Organ Pavilion would assist open-air concerts in its auditorium. The Botanical Building was completed for $53,400.The Cabrillo Bridge was built to span the canyon, and its long horizontal stretch ending in a great upright pile of fantasy buildings would be the crux of the whole composition.
The focus of the fair was the Plaza de California, an arcaded enclosure often containing Spanish dancers and singers, where both the approach bridge and El Prado terminate. The California State Building and the Fine Arts Building framed the plaza, which was surrounded on three sides by exhibition halls set behind an arcade on the lower story. Those three sides, following the heavy massiveness and crude simplicity of the California mission adobe style, were without ornamentation. This contrasted with the front facade of the California State Building, 'wild' with Churrigueresque complex lines of mouldings and dense ornamentation. Next to the frontispiece, at one corner of the dome, rose the tower of the California Building, which was echoed in the less prominent turrets of the Southern California counties and the Science and Education buildings. The style of the frontispiece was repeated around the fair.