The Jewel City | Page 6

(p. 59 and 63.)
The Court opens northward between the Palaces of Transportation and
Agriculture in a splendid colonnaded avenue to the Column of Progress,
near the bay. (p. 57.)
Through the arch on the east the Court of the Universe opens into an
avenue which leads to the Court of the Ages, cut out of the intersection
of the four Palaces of Manufactures, Varied Industries, Mines and
Transportation. (p. 70.) A similar avenue on the west passes to the
Court of Seasons, carved from the common junction of Liberal Arts,
Education, Food Products and Agriculture. (p. 79 and 80.) Avenues
pass east and west and to the north from each of these two courts, and
on the south each connects through an arch with a court set back into
the south front of the palace group, the Courts of Flowers and Palms. (p.
85, 87, 88, 93, 100.) On east and west of this central group of eight
palaces are the Palace of Machinery and the Palace of Fine Arts (p. 105,
112), serving architecturally to balance the scheme. East of the exhibit
palaces is the Joy Zone, a mile-long street solidly built with bizarre
places of amusement. Balancing the Zone on the west is the State and
Foreign section, with the live-stock exhibits, the polo field, race track
and stadium beyond, at the western extremity of the grounds. The state
buildings stand along two avenues on the north side of the section; the

foreign pavilions occupy its southern half.
The Tower of Jewels and the central palace group face south on the
Avenue of Palms (p. 18), which, at its west end, turns as it passes the
Fine Arts lagoon, and becomes the Avenue of Nations. This latter
highway, bordered by the foreign buildings, joins at its western
extremity the Esplanade, a broad avenue passing the north face of the
palace group and continuing westward between the state and the
foreign sections.
On the east, the Avenue of Progress divides the central group from the
Palace of Machinery. Administration Avenue on the west separates the
central group from the Palace of Fine Arts. Along the bay shore is the
Marina, and between it and the Esplanade are the Yacht Harbor and the
lawns of the North Gardens.
Surrounding all these buildings, filling the courts and bordering the
avenues, are John McLaren's lovely gardens. For multitudes of visitors
this landscape gardening is the most wonderful thing about the
Exposition. The trees and flowers have been placed with perfect art;
they look as though they had been there always. It is hard for a stranger
to believe that three years ago the Exposition site was a marsh, and that
these trees were transplanted last year.
The Avenue of Palms is bordered on each side for half a mile with a
double row of California fan palms and Canary date palms, trees from
eighteen to twenty-five feet high and festooned higher than a man's
head with ivy and blooming nasturtium. (See p. 18.) These massive
plants, soil, roots, vines and all, were brought bodily from Golden Gate
Park. Against the south walls of the buildings facing this avenue are
banked hundreds of eucalyptus globulus, forty to fifty feet high, with
smaller varieties of eucalyptus, and yellow flowering acacias.
The Avenue of Progress is bordered with groups of Draceona indivisa,
averaging twenty feet in height. The walls of the palaces on either hand
are clothed with tall Monterey and Lawson cypresses and arbor vitae.
Between these and the Draceonas of the avenue are planted specimens
of Abies pinsapo, the Spanish fir. Banks of flowers and vines cover the
ground around the bases of the trees. Administration Avenue has on
one side the thickets of the Fine Arts lagoon, on the other, masses of
eucalyptus globulus against the palace walls, finished off with other
hardy trees and shrubs. Against the north front of the palaces are set

Monterey cypresses and eucalyptus, banked with acacias.
The entire city side of the South Gardens is bordered by a wondrous
wall of living green,--not a hedge, but truly a wall,--the most surprising
of all McLaren's inventions. For this wall, though living, is not rooted
in the ground, but is really a skeleton of timbers, three times the height
of a man, paneled solidly on both sides with shallow boxes of earth
thickly set with a tiny green plant, which, as though crushed down by
the weight of its name, Mesembryantliemum spectabilis, hugs the soil
closely. Each box, really nothing more than a tray, is barely deep
enough to contain a couple of inches of earth, and is screened over with
wire mesh to prevent the slice of soil from falling out when it is set on
edge. Some thousands of these boxes are required to cover the entire