• "The Arts"
• Albert S. Samuels Clock
• Panels
• Ingleside Sundial
• Cast-stone sculpture
• Palace of Fine Arts: Defense of Beauty
• "Traders of the Adriatic"
• "Sonol Water Temple"
• Sculptural group
• "The Riches of California"
• Abbreviations

One of the state's first educational institutions [Mechanics' Institute] with a fine library on the arcaded floor. A mural by Arthur Mathews is in the marble elevator lobby (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 26).

[The oil on canvas mural was] installed ... to replace the painting--destroyed in the fire of 1906--presented to the Institute by Randolph J. Taussig (Legend by painting in lobby).

In front of 856 Market Street is the Albert S. Samuels Clock that Samuels and Joseph Mayer created in 1910 to stand across the street in front of the Samuels Jewelry shop (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 9).

Yet another Renaissance-Baroque commercial palace, this one is worth scrutinizing for its finely textured brick walls, graceful top floor loggia, and decorative detail, including panels by artist Jo Moro on the mezzanine (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 12).

The original building was made of wood and was destroyed in the 1906 fire. When the present steel and concrete structure was erected, the 36 124-foot girders were forged on the East coast and brought on the deck of a schooner (being too long for the hold of the ship) around Tierra del Fuego before the Panama Canal was completed (personal communication from the building manager.)

A few minutes' ride by trolley out of the deafening roar of the business center of San Francisco there is a garden spot---a green amphitheater overlooking the shining reaches of the blue Pacific. It spreads out under the sun like an old Italian villa. By a series of velvety terraces, the uppermost of which is crowned by a thick wood of pine and cedar, it drops down to a sunken garden wherein lies a great stone sundial, the largest and most magnificent sundial in the world.

Of all the attractive spots in or around San Francisco there is none more wholly delightful than this sundial park at Ingleside Terraces. It is a place full of color, fragrance and song, for the birds throughout the long, sunny hours fill the air with their melody.

That the location is favored by a mild climate may be inferred from the reproduced photograph on the opposite page, taken on the evening of the sundial dedication. (1)

There is a curious fascination about the spot and one may well spend here an instructive and inspiring hour following in the wake of the sun's slow shadow.

The gigantic granite gnomon of the sundial at Ingleside Terraces is triangular in shape, and superb in its simplicity of outline. It rises to a height of twenty-six feet. It bridges a limpid pool wherein two bronze seals sport and form the base of a fountain that plays day and night (2). Running around the stone curb of the pool is a rippling circlet of gorgeous purple and yellow pansies. Then comes the broad dial marked with Roman numerals like the face of a clock. On one side of the gnomon is set an exact table giving the minutes that must be added to or be deducted from sundial time in order to get true local time.

Notes: 1) The dedication ceremony was on October 13, 1913. 2) The fountain and reflecting pool disappeared before the 1920s (Urban Realty Improvement Co. 1913. Sundial at Ingleside Terraces, pp. 6-7. Brochure reproduced on Western Neighborhoods Project).

This [Pacific Coast Stock Exchange] mausoleum-like block is a 1930 remodeling of a temple-front structure that had housed the U.S. Treasury. The monumental pylons in front have cast-stone sculptures by Ralph Stackpole (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 31).

Until 1962, the crumbling stucco of the original building, built for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, gave eloquent if functionless expression to the mood of melancholy that Maybeck desired for his masterful stage set. Then, thanks largely to the generosity and persistence of Walter Johnson, who matched the funds raised by the city, the entire structure was rebuilt in concrete and has acquired uses within such as the Exploratorium, a theater, and an art gallery.

In 1915 Louis C. Mullgardt, who designed the other showpiece of the PPIE, the Tower of Jewels, described the Palace's design as a "free interpretation of Roman forms and a purely romantic conception, entirely free from obedience to scholastic precedent. Its greatest charm has been established through successful composition; the architectural elements have been arranged into a colossal theme...into which the interwoven planting and the mirror lake have been incorporated in a masterful way." Until 1962 the crumbling stucco original of this beloved relic of the Exposition survived in the melancholy state Maybeck said was the right mood for the fine arts. Then, thanks largely to the generosity and persistence of Walter Johnson, who matched the funds raised by the city, it was restored in concrete. The exhibition building behind the rotunda was given a new life as a home for the Exploratorium, an auditorium, and other cultural activities (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 94).

Maybeck summarized his friend's [Polk's] dilemma well. [In 1915] Polk had reserved the choicest project at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, the Palace of Fine Arts, for himself. Then, in a rare gesture of munificence, he gave it to Maybeck. Shortly before the fair opened, Maybeck wrote to Polk that "you have put up a monument to your Ideals [through me] and made a sacrifice for them--there is in you a yearning for the highest Ideal ... and I believe some morning you will wake up to cut out that other side which you seem to consider important."²¹ (Longstreth 1998:302-303)

Maybeck subscribed to the academic concern for making the plan express "any series of human movements." However, he felt that the plan should also be developed as if it were an elegant piece of jewelry, for the total conception to be beautiful. In Maybeck's mind, these two facets were intimately related. To accommodate the most mundane functions, "canning pineapples, for instance, [the plan] should look like an abstract painting, like the choreography for a ballet."²⁶

The University Hospital was the first of several grand complexes that Maybeck hoped to design. Among them only the Palace of Fine Arts would be executed, and it was literally a gift from his friend Polk.²⁷ Maybeck's earthy demeanor, his dreamlike visions, his lack of interest in business, politics, or even professional advancement made him an improbable candidate for the large commissions he coveted. The promise afforded by his inventive interpretations of the classical language on a grand scale went largely unfulfilled. It was a great loss for San Francisco (Longstreth 1998: 329-30).

The importance he [Maybeck] placed on architecture's emotional content is further revealed in the only lengthy essay he wrote about one of his own buildings, the Palace of Fine Arts. Most of the piece is devoted to explaining the design's "atmosphere" and the sensations it was calculated to generate: "sadness modified by the feeling that beauty has a soothing influence." Shortly before the Palace was constructed, he told William Gray Purcell: "You cannot produce a living architecture as a system of applied logic. Architecture is life-poetry; the logic is not something to be caught by intellectual machinery however clever its cogs and shifts. Architecture is the imprint of a greater logic of Man and Nature which no smart brain can take apart and make simpler."⁴⁹ (Longstreth 1998: 347).

21. Letter from Maybeck to Polk, March 6, 1915, Polk Papers. For background on Polk's securing of the Palace of Fine Arts design for Maybeck, see Kenneth Cardwell, Bernard Maybeck (Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City, 1977), p. 141 (Longstreth 1998:394).

49. Esther McCoy, Five California Architects (New York, 1960), p. 3; Maybeck, Palace of Fine Arts, p. 9; and William Gray Purcell, "Bernard Maybeck; Poet of Building," typescript, 1949, CED Docs, p. 3.(Longstreth 1998: 399).

Several excellent books describe the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915... Most easily available is San Francisco Invites the World, by Donna Ewald and Peter Clute, published in 1991. Certainly, though, mention should be made of the grand opening parade, which included virtually every able-bodies man, woman and child in San Francisco. with bands playing and huge banners flying, they marched up Van Ness Avenue to Fort Mason, then turned westward to the gates of the Exposition. The nominal purpose of the Exposition was to hail the opening of the Panama Canal, which would vastly improve trade with the East Coast and Europe. But the fair was also a celebration of San Francisco's almost total recovery from the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, and this in a span of only nine years.

Architects from all over the world designed exhibits for various countries. San Francisco, of course, drew mainly from its own talent pool: Willis Polk, Arthur Brown and John Bakewell, Louis Mullgardt, Walter Bliss and William Favile, Julia Morgan, the first woman to graduate from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and Bernard Maybeck, whose perishable Palace of Fine Arts was so beautiful no one could tear it down when the rest of the buildings were demolished. The crumbling structure stood until 1962, when it was carefully replicated, at a cost of $7 million, in reinforced concrete.

Eastern architects who were leaders of the Beaux Arts school also contributed important designs to the 1915 Fair: McKim, Mead and White, Thomas Hastings and Henry Bacon. Perhaps because all these architects had undergone the disciplines of the Beaux Arts movement, the Exposition evoked a spirit of inventiveness within the scope of the classical medium, and thus achieved a feeling of architectural unity throughout. Jules Guerin's color scheme of terra cotta and cerulean blue helped to create the dreamy mood of harmony and balance. The fountains, lighted at night, the sweeping lagoons, the flower-filled courts offering sweeping vistas of the sparkling bay, the glittering Tower of Jewels, remain among the most treasured memories of those who are still around to talk about the fair (Alexander and Heig 2002: 371).

The 1915 Panama Pacific International Exhibition was San Francisco's way to show the world the city had recovered from the worst urban disaster in the history of America. Indeed, the world had never seen such splendor. Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts ... was just one of dozens of astonishing buildings at the fair, and was the only survivor when the rest were demolished. The original lath and plaster structure, badly deteriorated, was duplicated in reinforced concrete in the 1960s, because San Franciscans simply refused to part with it; they approved a $5 million bond issue for its restoration (Alexander and Heig 2002: 372)

A row of striking Mediterranean houses sprang up along the little park and lagoon surrounding Bernard Maybeck's romantic Palace of Fine arts ... Created for the 1915 [Panama Pacific] Exposition, the palace was spared by the wreckers. It was just too beautiful to destroy. Built to resemble a romantic ruin, it actually became one as its lath-and-plaster decorations slowly soften and crumbled in the fog and salt air. For years the Army used its crumbling rear galleries as a storehouse for military equipment. Then in the 1950s Walter Johnson donated some $2 million and spearheaded a local campaign to reconstruct the Palace in concrete, as a city landmark. The voters of San Francisco, to their everlasting credit, passed a bond issue for $5 million to complete the reconstruction of a building whose sole purpose was as an object of beauty. Today the restored structure has found its uses: a theater fills the south portion of the gallery, while the world-famous Exploratorium, a science museum for children, occupies the north end. The rotunda, as always, is simply there to look at, and it amply repays the voters for their generosity (Alexander and Heig 2002: 391-92).

[The Embarcadero West (former Federal Reserve Bank) designed by George Kelham is] a design in transition from the academic Beaux-Arts tradition on the ground level to Le Style Moderne on the upper part, as you can see by comparing the Ionic capitals of the free-standing columns with those of the giant pilasters above. The lobby, with murals by Jules Guerin (who was responsible for the color scheme for the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exhibit), and the former banking hall are worth a visit (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 29).

Inside [the San Francisco Water Department building] on the north wall over the elevator is a mural by Maynard Dixon of the Sunol Water Temple built by the Spring Valley Water Company, the original clients for this building. The owner, William Bourn, was Willis Polk's patron. Polk designed his house at 2550 Webster Street and Filoli, his estate in Woodside (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 12).

An engaged colonnade with a giant order topped by free standing urns is the climax of this imposing facade. Clad in terra cotta cast to mimic granite, the decorative detail is exceptional. The sculptural group by Edgar Walter over the entrance is particularly fine (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 35).

The [Stock Exchange] tower next door [to the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange] has a restrained Moderne entranceway and a notable lobby. The City Club now occupies the upper floors that originally housed the Stock Exchange Club. Tours of this exceptionally fine interior with a mural by Diego Rivera and numerous art works by local artists can be arranged through the Mexican Museum at Fort Mason (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992:31).

Diego Rivera's world famous fresco, "The Riches of California," is the focal point of the City Club of San Francisco. Completed in 1931, the fresco stands 30 feet high and graces the Club's main entry (The City Club nd: postcard legend).

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