Panama-California Exposition (1915) Totally Explained

Everything about The Panama-california Exposition totally explained

The Panama-California Exposition was an exposition held in San Diego, California between March 9, 1915 and January 1, 1917. The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, and was meant to tout San Diego as the first US port of call for ships traveling north after passing through the canal. The fair was held in San Diego's large urban Balboa Park.

Design

Colonel D.C. Collier, at the time often referred to as San Diego's greatest asset, was most responsible for the exposition's success. It was he who selected both the location of the city park and Spanish Mission and Pueblo style. Collier was tasked with steering the exposition in the proper direction, ensuring that every decision made reflected his vision of what the exposition will 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" (Christman 43).
New York architect Bertram Goodhue was chosen as supervisory architect. Goodhue advised use of the more varied Spanish Colonial architecture, and saw the exposition as an opportunity to create a fantasy city. The style employed at the Exposition was never common in San Diego before. Contrasting with bare walls, rich decoration would be used with influences from Mexican and Spanish architecture, including its Muslim and Persian nuances. The design was intentionally in contrast to most previous expositions, which had been done in Neoclassical style with large buildings around large symmetric spaces. This temporary decoration of the park was created with some large spaces and numerous paths, small spaces, and 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.

Site

Between the site of the exposition and the most readily reached edge of the park is Cabrillo Canyon. Cabrillo Bridge was built to span it, and its appearance of ending on the eastern end in a great pile of buildings would be the crux of the whole composition. This design and the bridge were intended to remain as a permanent focal point of the city.
The focus of the fair was the Plaza de California (California Quadrangle), an arcaded enclosure often containing Spanish dancers and singers, where both the approach bridge and El Prado terminate. The permanent California State and Fine Arts Buildings 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 Mission style, were without ornamentation. This contrasted with the frontispiece of the California State Building, wild with broken lines of mouldings and crowded ornamentation. Next to the frontispiece, at one corner of the dome, rises the tower of the California Building which was echoed in the less permanent turrents of the Southern California counties, and the Science and Education Buildings. The style of the frontispiece is repeated around the fair. The frontispiece's sculptures by Furio and Attilio Piccirilli include many local historical characters. At the top is Father Junipero Serra, with busts of Charles V and Philip II of Spain below. Beside the window are the Spanish navigator Sebastián Vizcaíno and Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo, in 1542 the first white man to step on the western coast of the United States. The lowest niches are occupied by the Franciscan Father Luís Jayme, first martyr of the Mission period, and Fray Antonio de la Ascensión, the Carmelite histriographer who accompanied Vizcaíno. Just above them are busts of George Vancouver, the first English navigator to enter the harbor of San Diego, and Gaspar de Portolà, the first Spanish Governor of California. A coat-of-arms of the United States seal is at top above Serra, while seals for Mexico, Spain, and Portugal are also on the frontispiece. The large, mullioned transept windows are ornamented on the exterior with rich Churrigueresque frames. The heraldicized state seal and motto "Eureka" are above and below the windows. The ornament of the building was modeled by Horation and Thomas Piccirilli, the stonework being executed in San Diego. The great central dome is encircled with the motto "Terram Frumenti Hordei, ac Vinarum, in qua Ficus et Malogranata et Oliveta Nascuntur, Terram Olei ac Mellis", (A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey) from the Vulgate of St. Jerome.

Exposition name	Original or alternate name	Notes
Administration Building		(completed March 1912) now holds offices of the San Diego Museum of Man
Canadian Building	Commerce & Living Industries	renamed Palace of Better Housing for 1935 expo, later Electrical Building, now Casa de Balboa
Foreign Arts Building		for 1935 expo, altered and renamed House Of Hospitality
Montana Building
New Mexico Building		now used by Balboa Park Club
Pan-Pacific Building	Home Economics	Timken Museum of Art built on site in 1965
Russia & Brazil Building	Indian Arts	rebuilt to exacting specification in 1996 as the House of Charm
San Joaquin Valley Building		demolished
Science & Education Building	Science of Man exhibit	demolished (exhibit inspired creation of Museum of Man)
Southern California Counties Building		burned down in 1925, replaced in 1933 with San Diego Natural History Museum
Theosophical Building	Kansas	was the only building completely in the Mission style and forms
United States Building	Sacramento Valley Building	replaced by San Diego Museum of Art
Washington Building

Alterations

While originally opened as Panama-California Exposition, the fair was rechristened the Panama-California International Exposition on March 18, 1916. This was actually valid renaming, for while the fair originally had no international exhibitors, by 1916 it had exhibits from Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. Most came from the recently closed Panama-Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco some of whom were unable to return to Europe due to the outbreak of World War I.

Later exposition and rebuilding

The California Pacific International Exposition at the same site in 1935 was so popular that some buildings were rebuilt to be made more permanent. Many buildings or reconstructed versions remain in use today, and are used by several museums and theatres in Balboa Park.
In the early 1960s destruction of a few of the buildings and replacement by modern, clashing buildings created an uproar in San Diego. A Committee of One Hundred was formed by citizens to protect the park buildings. They convinced the City Council to require new buildings to be built in Spanish Colonial Revival Style and worked with various government agencies to have the remaining buildings declared as a National Historic Landmark in 1978. In the late 1990s, the most deteriorated buildings and burned buildings were rebuilt.

Exhibition schematic map

			Day nursery				Jardins de Eucalyptus	Japanese & Formosa Exhibit			North Gate
	gardens					United States		Botanical Building			Indian Village
Administration Building	California State Building			Science & Education		Plaza the Panama	Pan-Pacific	La Laguna de Las Flores	Foreign & Domestic	Calle Cristobal	Southern California Counties
Cabrillo Bridge	West Gate	Plaza de California	East Gate	El Prado, the central avenue
	Fine Arts Building			Montezuma gardens	Russia & Brazil	Plaza de Panama	Foreign Arts	Canadian Building		Canyon Espanol	Service buildings
	Chapel of St. Francis		thick bosque	Palm Canyon		Esplanade	San Joaquin Valley				Hospital
					Via de los Estados	Plaza de Los Estados					Pepper Grove park
						Great Organ
						Theosophical Building
				Washington		Montana
				New Mexico

Additional reading

The Official Guide Book of the Panama California Exposition San Diego 1915

Phoebe S. Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Past. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. ISBN: 0-520-24364-1Further Information

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