Images of the Palace of Fine Arts in 1964 Before It Was Rebuilt
50 years later: The Palace of Fine Arts, and the rebuilding that near didn't happen
Sept. thirty marks the ceremony of the rebuilt SF landmark's opening
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When the Palace of Fine Arts was built in San Francisco in 1915, information technology wasn't going to stand for generations.
The structure, similar all built for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, was made of plaster and burlap fiber, mostly, which isn't exactly what 1 would use to brand sure a building could withstand the elements for years to come.
After the exposition, most the buildings were either torn down or moved elsewhere, just the Palace, designed by architect Bernard Maybeck, was too dear to bring down.
"If everything else in the cute architecture of the exposition were to be forgotten, the retention of the Palace of Fine Arts would remain," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle's Ben Macomber in 1915. "It should be a source of pride to every Californian that this incomparable building is the work of a Californian."
In 1925, as Chronicle historian Bill Van Niekerken wrote recently, the metropolis's mayor, James Rolph, and a coterie of metropolis officials decided to preserve the edifice permanently.
But will doesn't sustain former buildings, and by the late 1940s and early on 1950s, the Palace was beginning to crumble. Newspaper headlines called for a solution; i article dated March nine, 1948, for example, considered if the country or the metropolis should pick up the tap for a renovation, or if it should be razed for lawn tennis courts or a "museum for railroad and locomotive equipment."
"Editor — Information technology's a shame to allow the Palace of Fine Arts crumble from the decomposed wooden pedestal, and to gradually vanish from sight such beautiful classical Roman architecture," wrote a Chronicle reader named Joseph Piantanida to the editor of the newspaper on October. 3, 1951. "If no wealthy individuals come up forward to restore the Palace of Fine Arts in marble, and then let the citizens of San Francisco make the donations for this worthy cause."
Indeed, the citizens were somewhen nudged to help San Francisco fund the cause. By this time, the Palace wasn't deemed suitable for public assemblage, but a hefty $4 meg bail (which works out to simply over $36 million today) for the restoration was also expensive for the city. The mayor, Elmer Robinson, hoped to tear it downwards rather than restore it, just the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission wanted to put it to a vote for the city'southward residents.
"It's my personal opinion that that $4 one thousand thousand is too much," said Louis Sutter, President of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Committee in February 1953. "But if the people desire it, that'due south up to them."
A philanthropist named Walter Johnson stepped frontwards with a substantial $2 meg donation, only that still left millions to be raised in funding.
"San Francisco tin certainly become the most important cultural center in the Nation in the next 10 years," Johnson told the Chronicle in January 1960. "Nosotros have the people hither who support art, music, and other cultural forms...Merely if we are to attain first place, nosotros will all have to contribute and the chore cannot exist achieved overnight."
The citizens did end up voting in favor of a bail in the corporeality of $1.8 million, and the state of California gave another $2 million, bringing the total funding to $5.8 million. Afterward more ups and downs and public conversations, the city was finally able to cobble together enough coin — $seven.7 million — and enough support to rebuild the storied and distressed Palace.
On July 17, 1964, The Chronicle published an article nigh the Palace'due south teardown, chosen "Arts Palace, We Love You." One hundred people attended what was essentially a sabotage, including Johnson, President of the Palace of Fine Arts League Lee Ettleson, and the mayor, John F. Shelley, who brought the spade used in 1913 to "plough the beginning dirt for construction of Metropolis Hall."
The projection, which was office rebuilding, part renovating, began in October 1964 and took three years — i more than initially expected — to open up on Sept. 30, 1967.
The Palace appearing in its celebrity equally it did when information technology first opened in 1915, co-ordinate a 1962 article in the newspaper about a KPIX television receiver series on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (which, interestingly, was narrated by Johnson).
"The only thing that remains of this truly great exposition is the Palace of Fine Arts, which is currently existence reassembled similar a broken toy," the article read. "1 look at the impressive and romantic compages and it becomes clear that San Francisco should have kept the Off-white buildings and torn down the rest of the urban center."
Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Electronic mail her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or discover her on Twitter at @alyspereira.
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Source: https://www.sfgate.com/local-donotuse/article/The-Palace-of-Fine-Arts-50-years-since-its-12192566.php
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