The City of Domes | Page 8

eight or nine hours a day. During the progress of the work there were few labor troubles.
One wise feature of the planning lay in the economy of space. It succeeded in reaching a compactness that made for convenience without leading to overcrowding. Great as this Exposition was to be, in its range worthy to be included among the expositions of the first class, it should not weary the visitors by making them walk long distances from point to point. In spite of its magnitude, it should have a kind of intimacy.

Choice of Material

There were certain dangers that the builders of the Exposition had to face. One of the most serious was that buildings erected for temporary use only might look tawdry. It was, of course, impracticable to use stone. The cost would have been prohibitive, and plaster might have made the gorgeous palaces hardly more than cheap mockeries.
Under the circumstances it was felt that some new material must be devised to meet the requirements. Already Paul E. Denneville had been successful in working with material made in imitation of Travertine marble, used in many of the ancient buildings of Rome, very beautiful in texture and peculiarly suited to the kind of building that needed color. He it was who had used the material in the Pennsylvania Station, New York, in the upper part of the walls. After a good deal of experimenting Denneville had found that for his purpose gypsum rock was most serviceable. On being ground and colored it could be used as a plaster and made to seem in texture so close to Travertine marble as to be almost indistinguishable. The results perfectly justified his faith. As the palaces rose from the ground, making a magnificent walled city, they looked solid and they looked old and they had distinct character. Moreover, through having the color in the texture, they would not show broken and ragged surfaces.

The Color Scheme

For the color-effects it was felt that just the right man must be found or the result would be disastrous. The choice fell on Jules Guerin, long accepted as one of the finest colorists among the painters of his time. He followed the guidance of the natural conditions surrounding the Exposition, the hues of the sky and the bay, of the mountains, varying from deep green to tawny yellow, and of the morning and evening light. And he worked, too, with an eye on those effects of illumination that should make the scene fairyland by night, utilizing even the tones of the fog.

The Planting

There was no difficulty in finding a man best suited to plan the garden that was to serve as the Exposition's setting. For many years John McLaren had been known as one of the most distinguished horticulturists in this part of the world. As superintendent of Golden Gate Park he had given fine service. Moreover, he was familiar with the conditions and understood the resources and the possibilities. Of course a California exposition had to maintain California's reputation for natural beauty. It must be placed in on ideal garden, representing the marvelous endowment of the State in trees and shrubs and plants and flowers and showing what the climate could do even with alien growths.
The first step that McLaren took was to consult the architects. They explained to him the court plan that they had agreed on and they gave him the dimensions of their buildings. Against walls sixty feet high he planned to place trees that should reach nearly to the top. For his purpose he found four kinds of trees most serviceable: the eucalyptus, the cypress, the acacia and the spruce. In his search for what he wanted he did not confine himself to California. A good many trees he brought down from Oregon. Some of his best specimens of Italian cypress he secured in Santa Barbara, in Monterey and in San Jose. He also drew largely on Golden Gate Park and on the Presidio. In all he used about thirty thousand trees, more than two-thirds eucalyptus and acacia.

Preparing the Landscape

Two years before the Exposition was to open McLaren built six greenhouses in the Presidia and a huge lath house. There he assembled his shrubs, his plants, and his bulbs. In all he must have used nearly a million bulbs. From Holland he imported seventy thousand rhododendrons. From Japan he brought two thousand azaleas. In Brazil he secured some wonderful specimens of the cineraria. He even sent to Africa for the agrapanthus, that grew close to the Nile. Among native flowers he collected six thousand pansies, ten thousand veronicas and five thousand junipers, to mention only, a few among the multitude a flowers that he intended to use for decoration. The grounds he had carefully mapped and he studied the landscape and the shape and color