This was evident in the Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), which celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal in 1915 and the rebirth of San Francisco. Arthur Brown Jr.'s City Hall and Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts are two examples that remain emblematic of the city to this day.

During the 1920s an Art Deco influence entered the work of Timothy Pflueger, and coincided with William Wurster's evolution of the Second Phase of the Bay Tradition, destined to exercise a profound influence on the residential architecture of the post-World War II suburbs.

Beaux Arts, Art Deco(1907-1929)

1907: The typical apartment buildings and flats built on Russian Hill after the 1906 fire and earthquake are represented by the fourteen-unit Classical Revival apartment building located at 1650 Jones Street, designed and built in 1907 by architect T. Patterson Ross (Christopher VerPlanck).

San Francisco Art Association and the California School of Design faculty member Frederick Meyer leaves to found the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley, now known as the California College of the Arts.

A new building is completed on the site of the old Hopkins mansion (where the Mark Hopkins Hotel now stands) and the California School of Design (CSD) is renamed the San Francisco Institute of Art (SFIA).

1908: Elkan Gunst Building at 301 Geary built by G.A. Lansburgh.

12.1908: City Supervisors asked the different organizations who had plots in Golden Gate Cemetery to remove them in order for a new City Park to be built.

1909: One of the most interesting examples of post-quake reconstruction on Russian Hill is a row of three Tudor Revival cottages perched high atop a concrete retaining wall at 1135-39 Green Street. Designed by architect Maxwell G. Bugbee and constructed in 1909, these cottages, which are all located on a single lot, are unusual in their perpendicular orientation to the street. They replaced a similar cluster of cottages that were destroyed in 1906 (Christopher VerPlanck).

Supervisors secured consent to use Golden Gate Cemetery as a park. Mausoleums and tombstones were removed and dumped down a convenient ravine at Land's End. Those bodies not removed were carpeted with the Lincoln Park Golf Course. Golden Gate Cemetery finally closed and it's conversion to Lincoln Park Golf Course begun by John McLaren. Remains were moved to different cemeteries in Colma, San Mateo County. The Golden Gate Cemetery grounds, approximately 150 acres "were turned over to the Park Commission, with 50 acres turned over to the U. S. Government and added to the Fort Miley reservation..."

By 1909 the three hole loop was no longer satisfactory and more holes were deemed necessary. At that time the City requested that Neville and Whitney return and construct three more golf holes, which were located at where the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth holes are presently. During 1909 the Board of Supervisors by legislative action approved the complete removal of the cemetery and further construction continued on the public golf course on the Potter's field site.

"In 1909 the ground occupied by the present course was the abiding place of the City's dead. By a resolution of the Board of Supervisors the ground was turned over to the Park Commission. The tract then embraced 150 acres. (At a later date) Fifty acres were turned over to the United States government and added to the Fort Miley reservation, while the balance was kept to be improved for the enjoyment of the public.

In the same year in which the cemetery was removed the Park Commissioners surveyed a course plan for (a full) eighteen holes, following a plan suggested by some of the foremost experts of the country. (Raymond Bartlett, December 19, 1915, Sunday SF Chronicle)" Among the experts consulted were Neville and Whitney, who went to work on designing the fourth, fifth, and sixth holes. These holes occupied what now makes up the fourteenth and fifteenth holes, the practice fairway and the eighteenth green. San Francisco now boasted a nine hole public layout with nine more holes on the drawing board. The name Lincoln Park was designated by the Board of Supervisors in 1909 as a dedication to President Lincoln, and there was no fee to play the course.

1910-13: Cass Gilbert designed the Woolworth Building in New York (at the time the country's tallest skyscraper) (Wiley 2000: 135).

1910s: John McLaren planted palms in the median strip of Dolores St. in preparation for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

1910: Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court on February 21 that the "...plaintiff [Laurel Hill Cemetery] must wait until there is a change of practice, or at least an established consensus of civilized opinion, before it can expect this court to overthrow the rules that the lawmakers and the court of his own state uphold." Lincoln Park Golf Club became aware of the Park plan and petitioned to have a golf course developed. The Park Commissioners agreed and surveyed a course for eighteen holes.

1912: In 1912, H.P. Livermore hired architect Charles F. Whittlesey to design and construct a row of five Pueblo/Mission Revival townhouses on Jones Street between Vallejo and Broadway Streets (1740-68 Jones) (Christopher VerPlanck).

Nine holes of the Lincoln Park Golf Course had been finished.

World War I: The period immediately before and after World War I in Europe--the very time when San Francisco architects were rebuilding the city along the lines of the 30-year-old Chicago Style--marked the formative years of modern architecture. The cultural turmoil before and after World War I inspired numerous architects to call for a complete break with the mimetic aspects of the Classical Revival. European architects, especially German architects associated with the Bauhaus (a German arts school that emphasized the integration of all crafts), produced startling new designs that were sleek, geometrically abstract, and devoid of ornamentation. They drew up plans, frequently not executed because of the struggling economy of the Weimar Republic, for massive skyscrapers sheathed in glass, and numerous experiments were carried out involving the prefabrication and mass production of low-income housing (Wiley 2000: 134).

1914: Supervisors ordered that all of the dead interred within the city limits be removed. Lincoln Park was subsequently expanded to ten holes, and in October frequenters of the Lincoln Park Golf Course organized a municipal club.

Polk was particularly interested in the tenets of the City Beautiful movement. Although his ultimate influence on the design of civic projects in San Francisco as a whole was probably not as extensive as he would have wished, Polk was able to realize several improvements on Russian Hill that helped to give the district its unique character. The most important of these are the Vallejo Street Improvements, a series of classically detailed retaining walls, balustrades and stairways designed to accommodate the steep grades of Vallejo Street between Jones and Taylor Streets. Made of unpainted concrete and erected in 1914, these improvements, albeit now graffiti-scarred, still exist close to their original condition. Horatio P. Livermore, sometimes called "the Father of Russian Hill." was a resident at 1023 Vallejo (now 40 Florence) and paid for these improvements, although they were built on public streets (Christopher VerPlanck).

1915: The Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and San Francisco's rebirth after the 1906 fire. The Exposition was the last of the great fairs planned and designed in the Beaux-Arts Classical style initiated by the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

The Architectural Commission for the PPIE included Willis Polk, chairman; Clarence Ward; W.B. Faville; George W. Kelham; Louis C. Mullgardt of San Francisco; McKim, Mead and White; Carrere and Hastings; and Henry Bacon of New York. John McLaren was in charge of landscaping, Karl Bitter and A. Stirling Calder of sculpture, Jules Guerin of color and decoration.

There was also a Department of Travertine Texture to supervise the composition of colored surface materials in order to unify the buildings and sculpture. Mullgardt's glittering "Tower of Jewels" was the centerpiece of the spectacular complex that celebrated the consumption of energy through fireworks and polychromatic night illumination achieved through the play of searchlights on the banks of fog and clouds driven by the Pacific winds over the Bay. The remarkable Palace of Fine Arts designed by Bernard Maybeck remains in situ.

The fair grounds were created between Black Point and the Presidio by means of a massive tidal land fill project carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers. This area to the west of Fort Mason and north of Chestnut St. is now referred to as The Marina. After closing, the PPIE structures were replaced by a small scale stuccoed Mediterranean village that was first populated by Italian families, in many cases moving out of the North Beach district.

At this time, single-family houses dominated the streetcar suburbs that had grown up along the street car lines that ran out Haight, Pine, and Bush Sts. Both Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill likewise were likewise populated with such homes.

H.P.Livermore's son Norman retained Willis Polk to design the row of Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival row houses on Jones, between Vallejo and Green Streets. These properties also back onto Russian Hill Place, and are variously known as 1-7 Russian Hill Place or 1600-30 Jones (Christopher VerPlanck).

The Panama Pacific International Exhibition opens in San Francisco. San Francisco Institute of Art (SFIA) faculty Arthur Matthews is the only San Francisco artist given a mural commission. After the fair, the Palace of Fine Arts is given to the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) for exhibitions.

1916: a 1916 New York zoning law passed to increase the amount of sunlight that reached the street (Wiley 2000: 135).

The San Francisco Institute of Art (SFIA) is renamed the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA).

1917, early: Lincoln Park became a full 18 holes, and it was at this point that the first City golf tournament was played at the Lincoln Park Golf Course. The first winner was Fitzgerald Marks, the second winner Eddie O'Brien, followed by the third winner, Sam Colon Jr., who went on to become one of the City's most well known players and also one of the finest amateur players in the country.

1918: The new skyscrapers tended to be stepped back vertically, a result of a 1916 New York zoning law passed to increase the amount of sunlight that reached the street (Wiley 2000: 135).

Streetcar service was extended through the Twin Peaks tunnel, making the downtown district accessible to residents living in the sparsely settled Sunset district, leading to further development that extended west over the sand dunes, mostly for families of modest means. More exclusive developments were taken up in the St. Francis Wood and Forest Hill districts.

08.1918: the Lincoln Park Golf Course was complete

10.1919: Recommendation was made to the City Supervisor's for funds to relocate the old Italian cemetery near Lincoln Park.

1920s-40s: "Here, during the cemetery's (Calvary) abandoned years -- the last burials were made in the early 1900's -- ghouls held vandalish orgies, on moonless, foggy nights, shadowy forms have slunk into vaults. Clanking sounds, the muffled crash of a sledge-hammer, have echoed forth as vandals looted the vaults of bronze flower urns, of silver coffin handles.
Tramps piled up their pots and pans, set up their cooking utensils for a macabre type of housekeeping. Some even say these dank vaults were hide-outs for bootleggers, during the prohibition years a police guard was posted several years ago, after ghouls, apparently with a knowledge of early San Francisco history, had desecrated the musty vaults of the Donahues. One was the same Peter Donahue who rose from blacksmith "-- he wore a leather apron and banged away on his anvil under a buckeye tree at Market and Montgomery Streets -- to be the founder of the Union Iron Works and the Northwestern Pacific Railway..."
Other ghouls have wreaked havoc. Bronze and iron grilled doors of other ornate marble and granite above-ground vaults have been pried open. Inslde all is shambles. Flower urns have been ripped from wall braces, coffins hacked open, bones strewn about . . . ."
The cemeteries were well known as lovers' lanes. In the Richmond District, high school groups sometimes held "bonfire rallies" in the old cemeteries prior to athletic contests, using fence-stakes from grave borders for fuel, and fraternity initiations sometimes were held in the cemeteries. Richmond residents were afraid of the cemeteries as places where possible rapists, child-molesters, and other unsavory characters could hide out.
The lack of care caused natural deterioration. "In the years that followed, time, weather and vandals assumed control, weeds choked the gravel paths, over-ran the graves. Tombstones fell. Ornaments, such as brooding angels became bedraggled -- wings, arms, and legs missing."

Masonic Cemetery purchased for the University of San Francisco. Odd Fellows Cemetery vacated. Calvary and Laurel Hill Cemeteries resisted, but with no income, both reverted to sand and scrub. The vaults were vandalized and the mausoleums occupied by tramps.

The cost to play at Lincoln Park was $ 2.00 p/month. Golf was fast becoming a popular game. The number of players desiring to play exceeded capacity during daylight hours and another city golf course to the south was on the drawing board. The numerous renovations have added an interesting element to a course, that was once a burial ground and is presently the surrounding home of a beautiful art museum. Lincoln Park Golf Course, at Lands End in San Francisco with its majestic views of the Golden Gate and the Pacific Ocean that rival any of the Monterrey golf courses, has always been an beautiful public asset to be treasured.

1920s: The 1920s were a period of prosperity in San Francisco, hardly a time of radical innovation. They also marked the second phase in the shaping of a taller skyline that began to overshadow the Chicago-style buildings downtown. San Francisco architects, such as George Kelham and Timothy Pflueger followed architects in New York and Chicago in designing skyscrapers inspired by Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building in New York (1910-13) (at the time the country's tallest skyscraper) and by Eliel Saarinen's entry in a 1922 design competition for a new office building for the Chicago Tribune (Wiley 2000: 134-35).

The one European trend that did reach San Francisco in the 1920s was Art Deco. More a decorative than an architectural style, Deco was influenced by cubist and abstract painting and an interest in ornamental motifs taken from "exotic" locales such as ancient Egyptian, pre-Columbian Mexico, and China. Deco brought an element of the modern to American building design, pushing architects in the direction of longer, cleaner lines and more abstract surfaces. Timothy Pflueger embellished the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Building, at 26 stories the city's first real skyscraper, with ornamentation drawn from Egypt and China and then topped the building with sleek American eagles (Wiley 2000: 135).

02.19.1921: The cornerstone of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor was placed.

12.1921: during the construction of the memorial at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, a reporter from The Daily News found crews scraping up bodies and coffins from the ground. The foreman estimated they had "taken up" about 1500.

1922: Eliel Saarienen created his entry in a 1922 design competition for the Chicago Tribune building (Wiley 2000: 135).

The original Lincoln Park clubhouse was completed and Mayor Rolph attended the dedication ceremony, praising both [John] McLaren and [Herbert] Fleishacker for their efforts on behalf of public recreation.

1923: Lincoln Park was chosen as the site for the Legion of Honor Museum, an art museum, philanthropically financed by the Spreckles family and built to honor the American solders who lost their lives in the Great War, World War I. The construction of the Legion of Honor did however result in further remodeling to the Lincoln Park Golf course.

1926: The 1920s witnessed the construction of a booming commercial district on Upper Polk Street. One of the monuments of this era is the Alhambra Theater at 2320-36 Polk Street, designed by architect Timothy Pflueger and completed in 1926 (Christopher VerPlanck).

The California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) moves to its current location at 800 Chestnut Street, in a new building designed by Bakewell and Brown, architects of City Hall, Coit Tower, and many landmark buildings in the city.

1927: California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) alumnus Gutzon Borglum begins work on his very large-scale public sculpture, Mt. Rushmore.

1928: The Gregory farmhouse (1928), an early design by William Wurster, a founder of the Second Bay Tradition whose work had a profound influence on the architecture of the new post-World War II suburbs. Documents collection, College of Environmental Design, University of California-Berkeley (Wiley 2000: 137).

1929: Pflueger also designed one of the city's unique masterpieces, the Medical and Dental Building (1929) at 450 Sutter Street. With its vertical front that eschewed setbacks, 450 Sutter foreshadowed the modernism of the early 1950s (Wiley 2000: 135).

The massive O'Shaughnessy Seawall is a conctete, combination curved-faced and stepped seawall built in 1929 backing Ocean Beach in San Francisco. The wall is founded on piles and interlocking sheetpile. The lower steps were buried below the original beach face to minimize the risk that the toe of the seawall would be exposed. To replace it today would cost $5,000 or more per linear foot.

The Great Highway in its new location closer to the beach now required better protection (Figure 5), and the 4,600-ft-long O'Shaughnessy seawall was constructed between 1919 and 1929, section by section as money permitted. This seawall, still existing, is a massive concrete structure that is 20 feet above and below sea level. It provides a walkway, the Esplanade, as well as parking and direct access to the beach.

The original plan for the O'Shaughnessy seawall was to extend it the entire length of Ocean Beach, but poor economic conditions in the 1930s halted the construction at Lincoln Avenue, a distance of almost a mile (Olmsted, R. and Olmsted, N. February 23, 1979. Ocean Beach Study: A survey of historic maps and photographs. A report for the San Francisco Wastewater Program, San Francisco).