Fairs and Expositions Collection, 1893-1967
Processed by the Archives Staff; machine-readable finding aid created by Archives Staff and the Electronic Text Unit Staff
Environmental Design Archives
College of Environmental Design
230 Wurster Hall #1820
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-1820
Phone: (510) 642-5124
Fax: (510) 642-2824
Email: archives@socrates.berkeley.edu
http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/
© 2000
The Regents of California. All rights reserved.
Note
Arts and Humanities--Architecture
History--California History--Bay Area History
History--California History
Geographical (By Place)--California
Geographical (By Place)--California--Bay Area
Fairs and Expositions Collection, 1893-1967
Collection Number: 1999-2
Environmental Design Archives
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Contact Information:
- Environmental Design Archives
- College of Environmental Design
- 230 Wurster Hall #1820
- University of California, Berkeley
- Berkeley, California, 94720-1820
- Phone: (510) 642-5124
- Fax: (510) 642-2824
- Email: archives@socrates.berkeley.edu
- URL: http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/
- Processed by:
- Archives Staff
- Date Completed:
- March 1999
- Encoded by:
- Archives Staff
- Funding:
- Arrangement and description of this collection was funded by a grant from the Getty Foundation.
© 1999 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Collection Title: Fairs and Expositions Collection,
Date (inclusive): 1893-1967
Collection Number: 1999-2
Extent: 3 boxes, 4 card file boxes
Repository:
Environmental Design Archives.
College of Environmental Design.
University of California, Berkeley.
Berkeley, California
Language:
English.
Administrative Information
Access
Collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be discussed with the
Curator.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Philip Fein Collection, (1964-1), Environmental Design Archives. College of Environmental Design.
University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, California
Acquisition Information
This is an artificial collection assembled from smaller donations.
Access Points
Exhibitions.
Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940 : San Francisco, Calif.)
Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
Panama-California Exposition (1915-1916 : San Diego, Calif.)
Historical Note
Fairs and Expositions
The first world's fair was held in Hyde Park in London in 1851. The fair displayed foods, fine art and new technology from
nations around the world. It was housed in the Crystal Palace, itself a technological wonder, which was constructed specifically
for the event. Subsequent fairs and the nations and cities which held them sought to compete for acknowledgement and prestige.
As a result, subsequent fairs were almost always increasingly larger with more elaborate architecture and exhibits. The 1889
World's Fair in Paris boasted of its Eiffel Tower, the 1893 Columbian Exposition touted its White City and giant Ferris wheel,
the Louisiana Exposition could claim it occupied a greater area than any other world's fair, and the Panama-Pacific International
Exposition was famous for its Tower of Jewels.
Although fairs provided visitors with recreation, their principle purpose was the dispersal of ideas, technology and culture.
Through their grounds, buildings and exhibits, fairs disseminated ideas about city planning, the relations of nations, the
advancement of science, and beliefs about ethnic groups, races, and the sexes. One of the major themes was undoubtedly consumerism.
The exhibits and elaborate displays of goods catered to and influenced middle-class tastes and consumption on an international
scale.
The plan, architecture and grounds of the fairs were created as examples of ideal cities with extravagant and sometimes exotic
architecture. They usually included three types of buildings: large pavilions, national and state buildings, and company exhibits.
The groups who constructed the buildings competed with each other to create the most impressive displays. Nations attempted
to create buildings which dwarfed their neighbors, states created monumental displays of their natural resources and industries,
and merchants built elaborate exhibit booths to display goods such as mechanical equipment, furniture and other products.
The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition was the first world's fair to be held in California (San Francisco had been
the site of the smaller Midwinter Fair in 1894 and the Mechanics Fair in 1913). The Panama-Pacific International Exposition
(P.P.I.E.) celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, and showed off the rebirth of its host city, San Francisco, after the
devastating 1906 earthquake and fires. The P.P.I.E. was the last great American Neo-Classical exposition in the nineteenth
century tradition. The plan and buildings were conceived of and designed by numerous architects such as Willis Polk, Bernard
Maybeck, Henry Bacon and Louis Mullgardt. The focal point was the 450 foot high Tower of Jewels designed by Carrere and Hastings
which featured 100,000 polished faceted glass jewels backed by tiny mirrors. San Francisco had competed with several other
cities, including San Diego, for the honor of hosting the fair. Although San Diego eventually acquiesced to San Francisco,
it had its own smaller Panama-California Exposition 1915. In 1916, many of the exhibits from the P.P.I.E. were moved to the
Panama-California Exposition. Small fairs such as this were often patterned on the larger world's fairs.
San Francisco continued the world's fair tradition in 1939 with the Golden Gate International Exposition (G.G.I.E.), built
on the man-made Treasure Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Unlike the earlier world's fairs which usually employed
classical motifs, the G.G.I.E. buildings were an interesting mix of modernism and Aztec and Mayan motifs. The G.G.I.E. was
the last world's fair in California and one of the last in the United States, as other recreation options and new communication
mediums such as radio and eventually television eclipsed the fairs.
Sources:
Allwood, John. "The Great Exhibitions." London: Cassell & Collier Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1977.
Benedict, Burton. "The Anthropology of World's Fairs: San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915." Berkeley:
The Lowie Museum of Anthropology, 1983.
"The Books of the Fairs: Materials about World's Fairs, 1834-1916, in the Smithsonian Libraries." Chicago: American Library
Association, 1992.
Echternach, Thomas Nelson. "A World's Fair for San Francisco." Thesis. U.C. California.
"San Francisco Fair." Architectural Forum. Vol. 70 no. 6 p.463. June 1939.
Scope and Contents Note
The Fairs and Expositions collection consists of drawings, photographs, postcards and publications that document a variety
of fairs and expositions nationwide. The collection is organized into five series: I. Panama-Pacific International Exposition,
II. Panama-California Exposition, III. Golden Gate International Exposition, IV. California Fairs and V. Non-California Fairs.
The bulk of the material is from the two California World's fairs: the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 and
the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. The Fairs and Expositions Collection is an artificial collection assembled
from smaller donations.
Related Collections
Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, Seattle, (1909)
Title: John Galen Howard Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1955-4),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, (1939)
Title: Bernard Maybeck Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1956-1),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Title: William G. Merchant Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1962-2),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Title: Irving and Gertrude Morrow Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1992-1),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Panama-California International Exposition, Balboa Park, San Diego, (1915)
Title: Paul Thiene Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1962-1),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, (1914-1915)
Title: Bakewell and Brown Collection,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 91/99 c,
Contributing Institution:
The Bancroft Library
Title: Bakewell and Brown Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (19XX-11),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Title: Bernard Maybeck Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1956-1),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Title: Louis Christian Mullgardt Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1952-2),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Title: Photographs of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC PIC 1905.11405-.11543--PIC,
Contributing Institution:
The Bancroft Library
Title: Panama Pacific International Exposition Pictorial Miscellany,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC PIC 19xx.485--G,
Contributing Institution:
The Bancroft Library
Title: Willis Polk Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1934-1),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
Contributing Institution: Smithsonian Institution, Archives and Manuscripts
Identifier/Call Number: 154
San Francisco Midwinter Fair, (1894)
Title: Willis Polk Collection
Identifier/Call Number: (1934-1),
Contributing Institution: Environmental Design Archives
I. Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1914-1915 , (collection dates 1915-1967)
A. Exhibit Booths and Buildings
Scope and Content Note
Arrangement
Arranged alphabetically by architect.
Consists primarily of photographs of large fair buildings such as Henry Bacon's Court of Four Seasons, and drawings of smaller
company buildings such as Gillette Razor Company's exhibit booth.
B. General
Scope and Content Note
Contains maps, bird's-eye views, a Commonwealth Club Booklet on the architecture of the fair, postcards, photographs of the
fair, paintings of the proposed Palace of Fine Arts, and ground plans by the artist Hilliker.
C. 1967 Palace of Fine Arts Reconstruction
Scope and Content Note
Contains two drawings from the reconstruction of the Palace of Fine Arts.
II. Panama-California Exposition, Balboa Park, San Diego, 1915 , (collection date 1915)
Scope and Content Note
Includes photographs and postcards of the fair. A large number of photographs of this fair are also located in the Paul Thiene
Collection, (1962-1).
III. Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francsico, 1939 , (collection date 1939)
A. Exhibit Booths and Buildings
Scope and Content Note
Includes photographs of specific buildings.
B. General
Scope and Content Note
Contains plans and bird's-eye views of the fair.
IV. California Fairs , (collection dates 1894-1935)
A. California Midwinter Fair, San Francisco, 1894
Scope and Content Note
Contains seven portfolios of photographs of the fair and California scenes.
B. Mechanics Fair, San Francisco, 1913
Scope and Content Note
Consists of one photograph of the interior of an exhibit.
C. America's Exposition, San Diego, 1935
Scope and Content Note
Comprised of postcards.
V. Non-California Fairs , (collection dates 1893-1906)
A. Centennial International Exhibition, 1876
Scope and Content Note
Consists of one lithograph print of the Art Gallery.
B. World's Columbian Exposition
Scope and Content Note
Contains one lithograph print of the California Building.
C. Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904
Scope and Content Note
Comprised of watercolor renderings of the Russian Exhibit.
D. Jamestown Exposition
Scope and Content Note
Consists entirely of drawings for the United States Government Buildings.
