Palace of Fine Arts

After our exciting and memorable walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, we boarded a Presidio shuttle bus to make our way to the other side of Crissy Field to the Palace of Fine Arts.

Because this iconic landmark is right outside the gate of Crissy Field and the large dome is seen from many points on The Presidio, I was constantly being drawn to it.  This was definitely a place I wanted to visit and to photograph.

This landmark, which is seen in many movies and television shows, was built after the great earthquake of 1906. As fires burned throughout San Francisco and spread across the eastern parts of the city, survivors moved west toward The Presidio.  The Presidio set up refugee camps which housed 16,000 or so residents as the city recovered and rebuilt.  Within four years, the people of San Francisco were eager to show the world that they "had risen from the ashes". 

In 1910, the city's leaders decided to host the twentieth century's first great world's fair to prove to the world that they had recovered from a devastating earthquake and hellish fires.  Within a couple of short hours, they raised $4,000,000.  This world's fair would be called the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition honoring the completion of the Panama Canal.

The world's fair in San Francisco featured 11 exhibit "palaces" showcasing art from all over the world including more than 1500 sculptures.  The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by architect Bernard Maybeck and was designed to reflect ancient Roman and Greek architecture in ruin.  Maybeck would explain that his "ruin" existed to artistically portray "the mortality of grandeur and the vanity of human wishes."  

The Palace was actually designed as a temporary showcase which would rapidly decay into ruin itself.  That was Maybeck's intention, anyway.  As designed and constructed, by the 1960s, the Palace of Fine Arts had fallen into a terrible state of decay, was subsequently slated for demolition, but was eventually rebuilt.  More work was also completed more recently in this new century too.  Today, more than a hundred years later, this artistic landmark is still stunningly beautiful, an oasis inside the city of San Francisco.

On opening day of the fair in 1915, more than a quarter of a million people walked through the gates.  At the end of the fair, nine months later, more than 18 million people had visited the exposition.  This was more than 20 times the population of San Francisco at the time.  This spectacular celebration and fair came to a close with fireworks and a lone bugler playing taps as the somber crowd wept.

It is hard to judge the scale of this structure by looking at the previous photographs but this next image definitely provides you with a sense of scale...  the people look tiny under this immense structure...

The Palace of Fine Arts is located in the Marina District of San Francisco right outside The Presidio between the Crissy Field gate and the main gate at Lombard Street.  This Marina District, if I remember correctly, was originally part of a large tidal basin which was home to a large number of animals.  Maybeck's intention was to allow this reflecting pool to again be home to the native animal population and, I must say that on the day we visited, it was thriving with wildlife.  There was so much wildlife to photograph here that I didn't know which direction to point my camera!  I could have spent another few hours here...

Adam and Joi spending a little quiet time alone overlooking the reflecting pool and The Palace of Fine Arts...

On top of each of these Corinthian columns is a woman.  All of these women are facing inward toward a large planter which is atop these massive columns.  The Palace of Fine Arts was meant to evoke quiet sadness and solemnity.  Consequently, these ladies known as "weeping ladies" are positioned with their backs to us as they weep into these planters, supposedly nourishing the planters with their tears symbolizing "the melancholy of life without art".

Writing a little bit about fine art wouldn't be complete without me adding some of my own art related to this work of art.  Here is my own panoramic sketch of the entire Palace of Fine Arts...

Before arriving at The Palace of Fine Arts, I was already aware of the history of this beautiful part of San Francisco and I mistakenly thought that everyone else in my group also was aware of this history.  I honestly thought we had discussed this whenever we would talk about places we hoped to visit while in San Francisco.  I would later learn that almost everyone thought we were going to be visiting a fine art museum.  However, everyone was pleasantly surprised by this beautiful, immense, complex and grand work of art.