The Swedish pavilion was designed by the etcher and architect Ferdinand Boberg of Stockholm. It was really several buildings joined by loggias, with gambrel hip roofs and a tall bell tower whose upper works stood on leaning columns. Chimes played from it twice a day, and its observatory gave a magnificent view of the Exposition and the bay. The Official Guide singled out its 'great square tower and its parti-colored roof.' The Swedish Diet voted 600,000 kroner, its largest exposition appropriation ever.
Unlike most nations, Sweden kept all its exhibits except fine art under this one roof. The steel display was the showpiece: car axles tied into love-knots and thick bars bent into hairpins without a visible crack, iron from a furnace lit in 1642, and a ball bearing carrying 2,000 pounds. There were also the Dalén lighthouse light, a model of the Trollhättan falls, slöjd home crafts and a Hall of Fame with busts of Ericsson, Nobel, Jenny Lind and Linnaeus. A lecture hall seated 500.
There were car axles tied into true-love knots as though they had been green rattan, and six-inch-section round and square bars bent into hairpins; all without a visible crack.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 301
At a glance
- Floor area about 30,000 sq ft per the Official Guide (Todd's figure is damaged in the OCR: '-5,895').
- Appropriation 600,000 kroner, the largest the Swedish Diet ever voted for an exposition.
- Dedication: March 2, 1915 (Todd ch. XXXV) or March 6 (Todd ch. LVII) · Todd gives both.
- Lecture hall seated 500; the tower had four floors.
Afterward
Not recorded; presumably auctioned and wrecked. The site is Presidio land near Crissy Field.
Where it stood
Swedish Pavilion stood at about 37.80261 N, 122.45567 W on today's map. The whole fairground over the city →
Sources
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XXXV, p. 197
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. LVII, pp. 300-308
- Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), pp. 50-51
- Museum of the City of San Francisco, Panama-Pacific International Exposition Map (1915), Sweden south of the Avenue of Nations