288 DAYSSan Francisco · 1915
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California Building (California Host Building)

The Exposition's official host building, a vast Mission-style complex of towers, patios and county exhibit halls on the bay shore, covering about five acres.

Color postcard of the California Building
Color postcard of the California BuildingUnknown publisher, 1915, public domain

California was the host, and its building was the largest ever raised by a state at any exposition. The Exposition's chief of architecture, George W. Kelham, gave the design to T. H. F. Burditt, who drew on the California missions. There were solid belfry towers with bells hung in thick walls, sloping buttresses like those of Mission Carmel, and curtain walls with engaged columns like Mission Santa Barbara's. The Official Guide gives it five acres; one fact book puts it at about 350 by 675 feet, and seven acres counting its walled court and park.

It held three things. The western wing housed the Exposition's own government: President Charles C. Moore's offices, the directors' rooms, the chamber of the Superior Jury of Awards and the official dining room. The Woman's Board ran the Exposition's social life from here, and Todd called the building 'the pivot and focal point' of that side of the fair. Its ballroom, 120 feet long, 55 wide and nearly 43 high, with Alhambra-style plasterwork, was open to the public for free afternoon dancing. The rest of the building, more than 152,000 square feet plus a 39,000-square-foot gallery, was filled with the exhibits of California's counties.

At its heart was the Forbidden Garden, a patio made from the cypress hedges of the old Harbor View baths, with a copy of a mission well-head. A statue of Father Junípero Serra looked down into it from a canopied niche. The building was dedicated on May 11, 1915, under the Bear Flag.

Junipero Serra, father of the California Missions, stood in a canopied niche, looking down into the Forbidden Garden.

Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. II (1921), p. 322

At a glance

  • Covered about five acres (Official Guide); about 350 by 675 feet (Condensed Facts).
  • Building, gardens and grounds cost $458,525, of which counties paid $346,317 by buying space at $2.50 a square foot (Todd); counties spent over $1,250,000 on exhibits inside.
  • Ballroom 120 x 55 ft, nearly 43 ft high, with a 12-ft gallery.
  • County exhibit space 152,368 sq ft plus a 39,000 sq ft gallery.
  • Dedicated May 11, 1915.
Postcard of the California Building
Postcard of the California BuildingUnknown publisher, 1915, public domain

Afterward

A 1916 plan to turn it into a State Normal School failed; the building was handed to the State Commission and wrecked for $30,000 in salvage, and a 1917 act funded a new Normal School on the site (Todd V, pp. 251-252). The site today is Marina District land near the Marina Green.

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