What they said at the time
74 quotations from 1904 to 1921: Hale's letter, Todd's history, the architects and painters, the commissioners of the nations at war, and the people who walked the courts at night. Each one links to where it is read in the film or to the place it describes.
The court plan was a new thing in building expositions, and it made possible that singular unity of design which caused the Panama-Pacific to look like a picture in three dimensions.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, 1921
In coloring a vast city of this kind, I treated it as I would a canvas for a picture. The first tonal value was the travertine, and on this travertine the other colors were applied; always having in mind the strong light of California, and keeping colors well toned down and mellow.
Jules Guérin, letter quoted in Todd, 1921
Is the time not ripe for us to consider a World's Exposition in San Francisco in 1915? This is looking far ahead, but it is better for us to build for the future than to repent the past.
R. B. Hale to the Merchants' Association, January 12, 1904
A visit to the airy vastness of the sculpture shop was like a translation into a world of stony giants growing by inches on these iron and timber skeletons, from these little toy models, under the ministrations of a lot of pigmies in nurses' aprons, who climbed on ladders about the knees of monstrous camels.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, 1921
One feels too much the stacking up of story after story … very much as a boy sets up blocks of diminishing size, one on top of the other, until he can go no further because there are no smaller blocks.
Eugen Neuhaus, The Art of the Exposition, 1915, on the Tower of Jewels
Summing up my general impression, I find that the keynote of a Fine Arts Palace should be that of sadness modified by the feeling that beauty has a soothing influence.
Bernard R. Maybeck, Palace of Fine Arts and Lagoon, 1915
Previous exposition buildings have, in the main, been used as a background on which to display lamps.… Its particular disadvantage is that it suppresses the architecture which becomes secondary.
W. D'Arcy Ryan, General Electric Review, June 1915
When the 54 searchlights were turned on the Tower and the flickering 'novagems' caught the beams, splintered them into millions of colored lances and dartled them all over the grounds and the nearby heights of the city, the effect was at once dazzling and delicate beyond all power to describe.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, 1921
I have to-night seen the greatest revelation of beauty that was ever seen on the earth.… the courts and buildings of the Panama-Pacific Exposition illuminated at night.
Edwin Markham, February 15, 1915, quoted in Todd
Of all the nations at war, it is France that comes to us, with this palace as a symbol that the world is not permanently split apart.
Chester H. Rowell, at the French Pavilion, April 9, 1915
We of Denmark are surrounded to south, east, and west by warring nations. Our state is precarious, our days anxious. But we realize... that on this other side of the world there is a place where peace reigns...
Otto Wadsted, Danish commissioner, March 16, 1915
As it approached the gates its advance was heard as a low, steady roar of voices, growing into the shouting of a multitude. Once inside it became strangely silent.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, 1921
It took a diver from the 'Oregon' nearly half an hour to find the wreck and fasten to it, and when it was hauled from the water its nervy pilot was still strapped in his place. The great crowd that had rushed to the scene stood silent, and men bared their heads.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, 1921
By day he left long festoons and loops and figures-of-eight high in air from smoke pots at the tips of his vans, and at night the places of these smoke pots were taken by magnesium flares with which he went trailing double lines of fire in the most erratic paths through the velvet sky.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, 1921
...the long, gangling, white-haired man with the Lincolnian smile, accepted with a silent bow and promptly gave to his wife, who was sitting near.
Frank Morton Todd, on Edison receiving his medal, 1921
The Fillmore Street entrance, with the Zone shrieking at you at one side, hardly puts you in the mood for the beauty in the courts.
John D. Barry, The City of Domes, 1915
How hard people studied those blue and purple fields of slashed wall-paper, and how earnestly they strove to decipher cabalistic portents from such sculptural abstractions as 'Muscles in Motion'! They read books about the matter, and discussed it in paper-clubs, and were mentally aroused, excited, and rejuvenated.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, 1921
Friends, the Exposition is finished. The lights are going out.
Charles C. Moore, December 4, 1915
A cloister enclosing nothing, a colonnade without a roof, stairs that ended nowhere, a fane with a lonely votary kneeling at a dying flame.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LVIII
The Palace and Lagoon he thought of and treated throughout as parts of one composition; neither one wholly effective without the other.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LVIII
Its dominant glass dome that seemed always floating like a bubble about to burst, and a lot of little domes and half-domes gathered about it.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LVI
A large and properly festive sort of structure in the French theatrical style, giving the impression of being all portals and foyers and audience hall, as in the main it was.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LI
Its main entrance is from the west, through the great Half Dome of Philosophy, which is 113 feet in height.
Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915)
It was such art as we rarely see in this country, and alone would have made the Exposition worth a long journey to enjoy.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LI, on the south portal
It looked immensely solid and enduring, and successfully inhibited any disquieting thought of the ephemeral nature of the Exposition architecture.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LIII
Then it loomed through the mist a legendary and incredible thing, brought back from the world of Titans; the work of spirits instead of men.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LV
The Roman Colosseum could have been set down inside it.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LIV
The gulls wheel and scream about the Column of Progress.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. L, written about 1920 when it still stood
It was extravagant and restive, as Exposition architecture ought to be.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LII
It was the sort of place in which it seemed always to be a fine day.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LVII
Beyond this palace, westward, one reached the Court of Flowers, a fairy place, like some incredible dream.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LI
The South Garden, the most pretentious of all the gardens, is laid out in the pattern of a formal French garden, surrounded by a low balustrade, with pools, fountains and vases of various designs to lend accent.
Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915)
Suffused with silver beams the "Lord of the Isthmian Way" loomed above his darkened sphere like a ghost of frost and ice.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LXIII
It told the final chapter in the tragedy of a supplanted race.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LVII
Before the entrance, high on a pedestal, stood Solon Borglum's equestrian statue of the "Pioneer," the old bearded figure with axe and rifle, on his lean horse.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LI
To an assemblage of men busied with the perishable rewards of to-day, she brought the three-fold leaven of enduring society, faith, gentleness, hope, with the nurture of children.
Benjamin Ide Wheeler, pedestal inscription, quoted in Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LX
The central note here was the nude figure of a little girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, adolescent, with youth's quaint stiffness of form.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LV
A mad rush of mortals to pass these guardians, in pursuit of the Gilded King, before the magic doors of Opportunity should close.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LV
The Indian Prince, the Mongolian Warrior, the Arab Sheik on his camel, and their attendants and supporters ... bowed to their fate but held to their positions until nearly on the ground.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5 (1921), ch. XXXVII, on the demolition of May 1916
The Marina. Impossible to describe or to photograph, and not for anybody to paint except Turner, who is dead.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. L
The Yacht Harbor, with the Scintillator pier as a breakwater, is a permanent addition to the water-front facilities at this point.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5 (1921), ch. XXXVIII
Had anyone been looking this way from Mars he must have thought somebody had at least struck a match.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LXIII
It is a precious thought that out of the Exposition there should come so precious a heritage.
Charles C. Moore, December 30, 1915, quoted in Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 5 (1921), ch. XXXV
It was the best hotel ever built in the grounds of an exposition.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921)
These 49 foreign pavilions and State buildings, facing one another across the broad thoroughfare, made a little city of grand and beautiful edifices...
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 191
The State buildings were disposed in two ranks, one facing the Esplanade, the other the Marina. Across the Esplanade, southward, were the Pavilions of the Nations. Between these two ranks ran the Avenue of States.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), pp. 309-310
Here you heard the murmur of little streams and the gurgling of cascades. At a certain spot you felt the illusion that this fairy region extended to the Presidio hills.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 210
In every line and angle and opening the structure was eloquent of the north, that Scandinavian environment where nature gives man fair battle always, and where, age after age, only the strong survive.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 217
...the most courageous thing morally in the annals of expositions was the participation of France, at a time when her soil was invaded and she seemed in danger of being overwhelmed.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 219
For long after its completion it had stood alone, the only visual and public evidence of the growth of the Exposition's foreign relations.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 233
...there stood amid young Norwegian spruce trees a rugged-looking timber structure in the style of a Norwegian chieftain's castle of the Middle Ages.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 236
It was the 'shop window of the Commonwealth,' crowded with proofs of vast and virgin resources.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 249
It did more than represent Italy. It was Italy.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 263
...you felt that some passing breeze might lift it and float it away through the air with all its Buddhist angels and sacred serpents and give it back to the warm Malay sea whence it had come.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 270
The crenelated wall was good psychology. It fenced out the world.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 289
Probably it was the only thing ever seen in California that would give a real Californian the most fleeting unfaithful desire to live somewhere else.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 294
...two pylons before the entrance, square-sectioned monoliths, covered with a picture-writing as undecipherable as an Etruscan love letter.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 297
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
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
...painter's palette had fallen into the sea and come to life.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 323
A clock in the vestibule reminded Eastern visitors how broad our country is, by giving New York time.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 327
It was a Parthenon with the bark on; for it is architectural tradition that long before the age of Pericles, the original Parthenon was a wooden structure...
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 331
The flag of the Union waved from a staff in the hollow square, and looked as though it thoroughly belonged there.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 334
A human tide poured all day through a loggia of tall double columns between two gabled structures of red brick just westward of the New York Building. This was the shrine of the Liberty Bell...
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 338
It was without windows, except in the roof, and its solid, unpierced walls had something of the aspect of an ancient temple.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 341
The very quaintness of its colonial architecture took you out of the atmosphere of the year 1915, and translated you into the time and place of the Revolution.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 354
It showed civilization eating up a mountain for the copper in it...
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 373
...you felt in some fairy palace of abundance, where no one could ever be hungry again, or cold for lack of fuel.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 396
Nevertheless it was a great amusement street, and with its Golden Buddha, its tall suffragette and twin soldiers before Toyland, its Chinese pagoda, the giant holding back the waters of the Dayton flood (while he lasted)...
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. II (1921), p. 155
There was a wooden effigy of a suffragette, 90 feet high, and two tin soldiers of about that altitude whose feet were large enough to shelter small merchandise booths.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. II (1921), p. 147
As the spectators sat in comfortable chairs and passed the various points of interest, they held telephone receivers to their ears, and heard lectures from phonograph records which were switched on and off to correspond with the various sections of the journey.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. II (1921), p. 150
Paris had its Eiffel Tower and Chicago had its Ferris Wheel, but the Zone at San Francisco had something that combined a little of both, and in some ways was more interesting than either.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. II (1921), p. 151
"Have you seen Stella?" was a popular formula, and she was the only feature of the Zone, as far as the writer remembers, that became the subject of a stage gag.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. II (1921), p. 375
If a hundred Exposition visitors were asked to name the best and prettiest show on the Zone, probably eighty-five of them would say at once the Tehuantepec Village.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. II (1921), p. 355