2014

Around the entablature of the Palace’s octagonal rotunda are three allegorical panels in low relief made by the sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm. Together they represent the "The Struggle for the Beautiful" and each of them is once repeated along the entire circumference of the rotunda’s dome. Two of these panels appear in this photograph. The panel on the left-hand side depicts "The Triumph of Apollo." It shows the fiery god of Inspiration, Music and the Sun in a procession of his devotees bearing garlands. Apollo’s flaming wings are the rays of the sun. The panel on the right-hand side of the photograph depicts the unending struggle with the gross and stupid, both objective and subjective, that confronts the champion of the beautiful. Art, depicted as a beautiful woman, stands tands serene, aloof, unassailable in the center of the fray. To either side of her the idealists struggle to hold back the materialists, here conceived as centaurs, who would trample upon art. Between the panels are repeated alternately male and female figures, symbolizing those who battle for the arts.

Built around a small artificial lagoon, the Palace of Fine Arts is composed of a wide, 1,100 ft (340 m) colonnade around a central domed rotunda situated by the water. The rotunda is 135 feet high. The lagoon was intended to echo those found in classical settings in Europe, where the expanse of water provides a mirror surface to reflect the grand buildings and an undisturbed vista to appreciate them from a distance.

The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck. Maybeck chose the theme of a Roman ruin in the mood of a Piranese engraving along with Greek elements and a reflecting lagoon reminiscent of similar settings in Europe. He said that the Palace of Fine Arts was designed to show "the mortality of grandeur and the vanity of human wishes." Ornamentation includes Ulric Ellerhusen’s unusual inward-looking sculptures of weeping women atop the colonnade of the Palace. They symbolize the sadness and melancholy of life without art. While most of the exposition was demolished when the exposition ended, the Palace was so beloved that a Palace Preservation League, founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was founded while the fair was still in progress.

The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art presented there. One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the only one still situated on its original site.

The Royal Theatre opened on September 6, 1916. It was built at a cost of $200,000 by Oppenheimer, Karski and Levi. It was designed by two of San Francisco’s most prominent architects, James William Reid and his brother Merritt J. Reid, who created a number of San Francisco landmarks during the "City Beautiful" period. The Royal could accommodate 1,515 patrons when it opened. The opening program featured Ella Hall in the film "Little Eve Edgarton." The story of the film was adapted from a novel by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, a nationally recognized author of the time. It tells of an improbable romance that blossoms between two characters who under most circumstances would never give one another the time of day. Eve is a shy girl who is remarkably talented and intellectually gifted, while her eventual beau Jim Barton is a social climber and dandy who tends to focus on the superficial. But I digress. The theatre was completely remodeled in the art deco style by Timothy Plfueger during the mid-1930’s for the Nasser Brothers chain which operated it at the time. The remodeling eliminated every trace of its original appearance. Unfortunately, no pictures of its first look seem to have survived. Since the theatre’s narrow stage was incapable of properly accommodating wide screen CinemaScope projection of the 1950’s and 60’s, the screen was situated in front of the proscenium, While this provided audiences with a most satisfactory wide screen presentation, it also masked many of the architectural elements of the theatre’s interior. In its heydey, The Royal welcomed sellout audiences for such films as The Great Escape or Deliverance, and Blum’s Soda Fountain across the street (on the SW corner of Polk and California) was a great place to have an ice cream treat before or after the movie. But the stretch of Polk Street on which the theatre was located became run-down as time passed. The Royal Theatre’s last day of operation was February 22, 1998. The building was demolished in June of 2003 except for its art deco facade which was incorporated into the furniture store and six-story housing unit that were constructed on the site.