Site Unseen: Planning the Golden Gate International Exposition
Ernest Born’s mural map turned a stolid Beaux-Arts plan into a tour de force of graphic art.
Photograph illustrates the filling of the shoals to create the island.
The fair was a tale of architectural compromise, contingency, and symbolism gone awry. On the one hand, Treasure Island was an ambitious and visionary project, the largest artificial island in the world. On the other hand, the Beaux-Arts plan and palaces tilted backwards to the waning Beaux-Arts tradition.
New Deal funding came with a hitch: building had to begin by July 1936. A mad rush to settle on a scheme ensued. The Architectural Commission bickered. Timothy Pflueger privately scorned Commission chair George Kelham: “To leave a thought in Kelham’s hands is like throwing it into the bay.” Kelham marginalized Pflueger and settled on a basic plan, which Arthur Brown, Jr. tinkered with for several months in 1935. In early sketches, Brown looked to the modular, flexible plan of Savannah Georgia to elaborate the figure-ground relationship of the PPIE. He based the massive parking lot on the 17th-century plan of Philadelphia.