Transportation, the costliest of the eight walled-city palaces, stood in the north row between the Court of the Universe's forecourt and the Palace of Mines. It was built to take heavy equipment. Fifteen standard-gauge exhibit tracks, each 500 ft long, ran into it, served by a transfer table 75 ft long, strong enough to shift the largest locomotives, running 300 ft on seven tracks and resting on 600 piles.
The Guide counted twenty locomotives inside, from heavy-grade engines to a logging locomotive built for tight curves. Aircraft hung in the rotunda. The automobile makers pooled their space under a committee and built what the Guide called 'a little city' of streets named after the makes, against a huge relief map of the Lincoln Highway from ocean to ocean. Steamship lines, marine models and street-railway equipment filled the rest.
It was the last palace finished: the Division of Works declared it ready for exhibits on May 29, 1914, a week after most of its neighbors.
At a glance
- Cost: $481,610 (Official Guide); $481,677 (Condensed Facts).
- General contractor: Lange & Bergstrom (Todd vol. 2).
- The exposition railway was 'very valuable for moving the exhibits for the Machinery and the Transportation Palaces' but little else (Todd vol. 1, ch. LXIX).
- Between Transportation and Mines ran a forecourt carrying on the decoration of the Court of Abundance, with Sherry Fry's 'Aquatic Life' on a high pedestal (Todd vol. 2, ch. LIII).
- The Florentine Court separated it from Manufactures (Todd vol. 2).
Afterward
Wrecked in 1916 (Todd vol. 5); now Marina District.
Where it stood
Palace of Transportation stood at about 37.80472 N, 122.44029 W on today's map. The whole fairground over the city →
Sources
- Official Guide of the PPIE (1915), The Palace of Transportation
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 1, ch. LXIX (tracks, transfer table)
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 4, chs. XLI–XLVI (Transportation)
- Condensed Facts concerning the PPIE (1915), Palace of Transportation; area table