Building the Fair

The fair was a smorgasbord of architectural manners, from the New Deal modernism of the Federal exhibit and the cosmopolitan International Modernism of the Argentina Pavilion, to the woodsy monumentality of Timothy Pflueger’s Federal Building where raw bolted redwood echoes the great bridges while commanding the lagoon. One critic called the building “almost perfect,” another “the happiest exhibition pavilion the United States Government has ever built.”

Thrusting itself up among these stood the greatly maligned Tower of the Sun. Arthur Brown, Jr. fussed and fretted over it. In dozens of drawings, arches, buttresses, obelisks, pilasters, and other ornaments rise and shrink, come and go. Finally, Timothy Pflueger wrote unsparingly: “get rid of that terrible tower.” But it remained a Latin interloper in a Pacific fantasy.

Within the California zone, the California Commission rejected the palace idea and chose to have individual buildings represent specific areas, cities and counties. For the Alameda-Contra Costa County Building Irving Morrow, architect for the Golden Gate Bridge, pared down the program to exhibition essentials letting them drive the form of the building and grounds.

Both the color scheme and the lighting smoothed over the differences between the courts and presented a “regional palette” amid an electrical splendor.