“To-day is the triumph,” said Governor Johnson, speaking for the State. “It is the triumph of San Francisco that nine years ago was a city that lay in ruins.”
Secretary Lane was present as the personal representative of President Wilson. He brought greetings of the president to the people of California and to the exposition management.
Mr. Lane, after expressing the greetings of President Wilson, said that he expected that Mr. Wilson would be in San Francisco within a month. “I come as a token bearer to speak a feeble foreword to the rich volume of his admiration for your courage, your enterprise, and your genius,” he said.
The first day’s attendance at the exposition exceeded the records of all previous great American expositions on their opening day. Two hours after the gates had opened to admit the first person, there had been 180,000 admissions to the grounds, and there remained great crowds in the lines to pass through the turnstiles. On the first day of the Chicago World’s Fair there were 137,557 admissions, and at St. Louis, in 1904, there were 178,453 admissions on the opening day.
The telegraph key touched by President Wilson was studded with gold nuggets. It was the same key that President Taft used to open the Alaska-Yukon Exposition. The ceremony was held in the East Room of the White House.
As seen from the hills of San Francisco, the exposition presents a great parti-colored area, perhaps best described as resembling a giant Persian rug of soft, melting tones. The roofs of the palaces are a reddish pink, the color of Spanish tile; the domes are green, and gold and blue are set within the recesses of the towers. The general color plan is a faint ivory, the color of travertine stone.
It was a new field, this painting an entire city with the colors of the rainbow. Expositions of the past had been “White Cities,” with the exception of slight uses of color in the last two, but the directors of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition wanted a “Rainbow City,” whose colors would provide a splendid feature.
Cost of Panama-Pacific Exposition, $50,000,000.
Cost of World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893, $33,000,000.
Attendance on opening day of San Francisco Fair, nearly 400,000.