The Jewel City | Page 5

complete. Some of the
exhibitors had not finished their installation; some of the foreign
nations were not ready, but the Exposition had kept a promise made
two years before to have its own work done on time. This achievement
was quite unprecedented. It is the more remarkable in that the record
was made by a city which had been almost annihilated by fire a few
years before.
The entire cost of the Exposition, exclusive of the value of exhibits, is
estimated by the Controller at $50,000,000. This total is made up of
$20,000,000 spent by San Francisco and California, $10,000,000 laid
out in state and foreign buildings and displays, $10,000,000 by private
exhibitors, and $10,000,000 by the one hundred concessionaires on the
Joy Zone. San Francisco contributed $12,500,000, the State of
California $5,000,000, and its fifty-eight counties, $2,500,000. The
amounts expended by foreign nations range from $1,700,000 by
Argentina to sums as low as $100,000. The State of New York spent
nearly $1,000,000.

II.
Ground Plan and Landscape Gardening

The Exposition a product of co-operation of the arts--The landscape
made part of the scheme--Block grouping of palaces and courts--Plan
of the buildings--McLaren's wonders in gardening--Succession of

flowers throughout the Exposition--Changes overnight--Unique wall of
living green.

The artistic quality which distinguishes this Exposition above all others
in America or Europe rests on two outstanding facts: the substantial
unity of its architectural scheme, and its harmony of color, keyed to
Nature's coloring of the landscape in which it is placed. The site
furnished the clue to the plan; co-operation made possible the great
success with which it has been worked out.
"Centuries ago," said George W. Kelham, chief of Exposition
architecture, "before the modern age of advanced specialization was
dreamed of, had an architect been asked to create an exposition, he
would have been not only an architect, but painter, sculptor and
landscape engineer as well. He would have thought, planned and
executed from this fourfold angle, and I doubt if it would have even
occurred to him to think of one of the arts as detached from another."
These words express the method of the Exposition builders. The
scheme adopted was a unit, in which all of the arts were needed, and in
which they all combined to a single end. Each building, each court,
every garden and large mass of foliage, was designed as part of a
balanced composition. To make the landscape an integral part of the
Exposition picture, by fitting the Exposition to the landscape, was the
common aim of architect, colorist, sculptor and landscape engineer.
The Mediterranean setting offered by a sloping bench on the shore of
the Golden Gate suggested, as most capable of high expression of
beauty, the scheme of a city of the Far East, its great buildings walled
in and sheltering its courts. The coloring of earth, sky and sea furnished
the palette from which tints were chosen alike for palaces and gardens.
The beauty of this plan is matched by its practical advantages. The
compact grouping of the Exposition palaces not only meant a saving of
ground and labor, but it makes it easier to handle the crowds, and
lessens the walking required of the visitor. There is no monotony. In
developing the general idea, each architect and artist was left free to
express his own personality and imagination. The result is that varied
forms and colors in the different courts and buildings blend truly into
the whole picture of an Oriental city, set in the midst of a vast
amphitheater of hills and bay, arched by the fathomless blue of the

California sky.
The ground plan is as simple as it is compact. Entering through the
main gate at Scott Street, the visitor has the Exposition before him,
practically an equal section on either hand. (See map, p. 30, 31.) On
right and left in the South Garden are Festival Hall and the Palace of
Horticulture. (p. 23, 24, 29.) In front is the Tower of Jewels, before it
the Fountain of Energy. (p. 47.) The tower centers the south front of a
solid block of eight palaces, so closely joined in structure, and so
harmonized in architecture, as to make really a single palace. On the
right and left of the tower are the Palaces of Manufactures and Liberal
Arts; beyond them, on east and west, are Varied Industries and
Education. Behind these four, and fronting on the bay from east to west,
are Mines, Transportation, Agriculture and Food Products. In the center
of the group, cut out of the corners of the Manufactures, Liberal Arts,
Agriculture and Transportation Palaces, and entered from the south
through the Tower of Jewels, is the great Court of the Universe, opened
on east and west by the triumphal Arches of the Nations.