Calendar

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Laura Ackley discusses her book, "San Francisco’s Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915". 2015 marks the centennial year of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, when host city San Francisco emerged from the ashes of earthquake and fire as a center of beauty and progress. On the Presidio’s waterfront and in what is now the Marina District, courtyards, formal gardens, and eleven Beaux-Arts palaces made up a miniature city resplendent in tones of golden-orange, copper green, cerulean, and “Pompeiian red.” Each palace hosted a thrilling array of exhibits and events that showed off the young century’s achievements and possibilities. Over it all, the forty-three-story Tower of Jewels cast the reflected light of one hundred thousand pieces of colored glass.