Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco in Legos
Saving the Palace of Fine Arts, meant partially demolishing it so reconstruction with ameliorate materials. Photo ran 10/18/1964
Gordon Peters/The ChronicleWhatever thorough bout bus route around San Francisco is going to swing you lot by the Palace of Fine Arts, but the attraction's permanence on San Francisco maps was once very much up for contend.
The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition buildings were constructed from temporary materials, primarily a combination of plaster and burlap fiber. Almost all the fair's various buildings and attractions were razed in late 1915. The merely surviving building on the exposition grounds, Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts, remained in place, slowly falling into ruin. It was repurposed every bit a garage for Jeeps during World State of war 2.
The Palace, including the colonnade with its signature weeping women and rotunda dome, was completely reconstructed in the 1960s and a seismic retrofit was washed in 2009. You can come across some dramatic Chronicle archive photos of the demolition and reconstruction in the slideshow higher up.
The November. viii, 1964 San Francisco Chronicle reported "the concluding remnant of the grandeur that was the Palace of Fine Arts crumpled to the earth last week to make room for a $vii meg concrete reproduction of the architectural masterpiece." Among the toppled columns for the 1915 PPIE, wrecking foreman Dick Laws found a classic head that long had gazed impassively on a changing globe (photo in slideshow to a higher place).
The video beneath provides a glimpse at what the space looked like prior to reconstruction:
On Oct. 4, 1957 the San Francisco Chronicle ran an obituary for the famed architect, Bernard Maybeck. In the article it stated that Walter Johnson, a millionaire industrialist, made a contribution that would be used to salvage the Palace of Fine Arts, which was reconstructed in the 1960s. But it was Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of William Randolph Hearst, who saw the beauty of the structure, and worked to relieve it from sabotage in 1915, before the Panama Pacific Exposition concluded.
In a Herb Caen cavalcade, dated November. 8, 1964, he stated that "the demolition had begun." Herb then quoted Bernard Maybeck, who said to his dying mean solar day, "Permit the thing autumn down in peace," In response, Herb stated that he "was right all along, and we are almost to spend $7.vi meg to rebuild it - and prove it."
The reconstruction of the fine erstwhile structure was not without drama. A "furious fire" erupted during restoration in June of 1965, causing an estimated $lxxx,000 in damage, co-ordinate to a San Francisco Chronicle study.
Today it serves equally a tourist attraction and popular hymeneals photo spot, potentially offsetting some of that $7.6 million in cost.
Bob Bragman is a producer for SFGATE. His writing reflects his love of the Bay Area, in addition to his passion for vintage pop civilisation, ephemera and vernacular photographs. To come across more of his content, please click hither.
Source: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Dramatic-Palace-of-Fine-Arts-reconstruction-11009452.php
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