The Panama Canal

by Frederic J. Haskin

The fight which led to the choosing of San Francisco as the city for holding the Panama celebration is, for the most part, familiar history. The law under which this choice was made was signed by President Taft on February 15, 1911. The presidential signature was the signal for the beginning of operations looking to the completion of all of the exposition buildings a full six months ahead of the opening date. The details of the site were worked out promptly. The site selected includes the western half of Golden Gate Park; Lincoln Park, which is situated on a high bluff overlooking the approach from the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate; and Harbor View, which is an extensive tract of level land, stretching along the shore of San Francisco Bay and back to the hills and the principal residential portion of the city.

Each element in this extensive site possesses its own peculiar charm; Golden Gate Park with its great variety of flowers and semitropical plants and trees; Lincoln Park with its outlook on the broad Pacific and along the rugged coastline to the north; and Harbor View with the Golden Gate to the left, a chain of climbing hills across the harbor in front, and the long sweep of bay and islands to the right. What nature has not done for the site of the exposition will be done by the art of the landscape gardener.

An ocean boulevard, to be made one of the most beautiful drives in the world, will become one of the permanent memorials of the exposition. A great esplanade, planted with cypress and eucalypti and liberally provided with seats, will extend along the water's edge for about half the entire length of the exposition grounds, affording ample opportunity for the thousands of visitors to watch the great water events which will constitute one of the features of the exposition. On the south side of this esplanade the principal exposition buildings, consisting of eight great palaces, will be located. A great wall, 60 feet high, will be built along the northern and western waterfronts for the purpose of breaking the winds which sweep down the harbor, and will be continued around the other two sides of the exposition grounds proper so as to constitute a walled inclosure which, in appearance, will remind one of the old walled towns of southern France and Spain.

The two principal gateways to the exposition grounds will open into great interior courts, around which the buildings will be ranged. It will be possible for the visitor to go from one building to another and complete the entire circuit of eight main exhibition palaces without once stepping from under cover. The three largest courts are named: The Court of the Sun and Stars, the Court of Abundance, and the Court of the Four Seasons. The Court of Abundance represents the Orient, and the Court of the Four Seasons, the Occident; the Court of the Sun and Stars, uniting the other two, will typify the linking of the Orient and the Occident through the completion of the Panama Canal. There will also be two lesser courts, known as the Court of Flowers and the Court of Palms. Outside of the walled city there will be five other important exhibition palaces.

The Panama-Pacific Exposition will be different from any that has gone before. Where others have been built on broad, level plains, this one will be located in one of nature's most beautiful natural amphitheaters, with the residential portions of San Francisco and the towns of the surrounding country looking down upon it. The architecture will be of such a nature that will make the "Fair City" indeed a fair city to behold.

If Chicago had its "White City," the San Francisco fair will be all aglow with rich color. It will be made to harmonize with the "vibrant tints of the native wild flowers, the soft browns of the surrounding hills, the gold of the orangeries, the blue of the sea." The artist in charge of this phase of the work declares that, "as the musician builds his symphony around a motif or chord," so it became his duty to "strike a chord of color and build his symphony upon it." The one thing upon which he insisted was that there should be no white, and the pillars, statues, fountains, masts, walls, and flagpoles that are to contrast with the tinted decorations are to be of ivory yellow. Even the dyeing of the bunting for flags and draperies is under the personal supervision of the artist in charge of the color scheme of the exposition. The roofs of the buildings will be harmoniously colored and the city will be a great party-colored area of red tiles, golden domes, and copper-green minarets. "Imagine," said Jules Guerin, the artist, "a gigantic Persian rug of soft melting tones with brilliant splotches here and there, spread down for a mile or more, and you may get some idea of what the Panama-Pacific Exposition will look like when viewed from a distance."

The lighting of the exposition will be by indirect illumination, affording practically the same intensity of light by night as by day. Lights will be hidden behind the colonnades, above the cornices, and behind masts on the roofs. Sculpture will stand out without shadow at night as by day. Great searchlights, many of them concentrated upon jets of steam, and playing in varying color, will add to the beauty of the scene. Even the fogs of the harbor will be made to contribute to the night effect of the exposition, and auroras will spread like draped lilies in the sky over the exhibition.

The sculpture will be unique in the history of exposition-giving. That phase of the work is under the control of Karl Bitter. In front of the main entrance, at the tower gate, there will be an allegory of the Panama Canal called "Energy; the lord of the Isthmian way." It will be represented by an enormous horse standing on a heavy pedestal, the horse carrying a man with extended arms pushing the waters apart. In the Court of the Sun and Stars two great sculptural fountains, typical of the rising and setting of the sun, will carry out the idea of "the world united and the land divided." In every part of the exposition scheme the sculpture will tell the story of the unification of the nations of the East and the West through the construction of the Panama Canal.

Nothing seems to have been overlooked in the plans that have been made to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal at San Francisco. There will be a working model of the Panama Canal, with a capacity of handling 2,000 people every 20 minutes. A reproduction of the Grand Canyon of Arizona will be another feature. The liberality of the prizes offered is indicated by the fact that premiums in the live-stock exhibits alone aggregate $175,000.

One of the greatest events of the exposition will be the rendezvous of representative ships from the fleets of all the nations of the earth in Hampton Roads in January and February, 1915. Their commanders will visit Washington and be received by the President. He will return with them to Hampton Roads and there review what promises to be the greatest international naval display in history. After this a long procession of fighting craft, perhaps accompanied by an equally long procession of tourist steamers, private yachts, and ships of commerce, will steam out of the Virginia Capes and turn their prows down the Spanish Main to Colon. Here the canal authorities will formally welcome the shipping world and pass its representatives through to the Pacific, whence they will sail to San Francisco, there to participate in the great celebration during the months which will follow. It may be that this great procession will be headed by the U. S. S. Oregon, whose trip around South America in 1898 proclaimed in tones that were heard in every hamlet in the United States the necessity of building the great waterway.