A Valentine To a City: Bringing Worship From Plaster to Concrete

It was 1915. The first decade of the new century had come and gone, but not without leaving it's mark on the city of San Francisco. In 1906 an earthquake had stricken the city, and soon after, fire burned it down. The city was being rebuilt, much like New Orleans today. Hope was alive, and $16 million had been made available through donations, state bonds, and taxes to put on a ten month World's Fair called The Panama Pacific International Exposition. It was to be a joint celebration of the discovery of the Pacific by Balboa, the completion of the Panama Canal, and to signify the formal resurrection of San Francisco. The city waged an advertising and campaigning effort to win the exposition against their primary competitor, New Orleans, and in 1911 it was awarded the opportunity to host the event by President Taft.

Now they needed a place to put it. They decided to fill in the mud flats to the north of the city, by the bay. It was a 635 acre area located between the Presidio on the west, Van Ness on the east, from the bay on the northern border to Chestnut Street on the South. They filled the new fairgrounds with amazing courtyards, foreign buildings, an amusement park, halls for everything from science and industry to food and farming. There were nightly fireworks, biplane rides, dare devils, parades of every kind, celebrities and heads of state; even the Liberty Bell was carted in for display. People had to spend at least a couple of days just to take it all in.

They built structures, like the centerpiece, "Tower of Jewels", which was a 43-story building covered by more than a hundred thousand hanging "jewels" (Bohemian glass backed by mirrors) which all moved individually when the wind blew giving an amazing spectacle along with the liberal use of the incandescent bulbs and search lights.

(If you want to see what it all looked like, it has been preserved on film and a 25-minute assembly of newsreel is viewable from this website: http://www.exploratorium.edu/history/palace/index.html )

The crazy thing is that you can drive around this part of town today, called the Marina, and none of these structures exist today except for one. They were all primarily wooden structures covered with plaster mixed with type of burlap fiber. These amazing structures that held such gravity and heart rending beauty were actually burned to ashes when they tore the place down. It was opened on February 20, 1915 and it closed December 4, 1915. The structures were only designed to last for one year.

The one building that remains was a remarkable structure called "The Palace of Fine Arts". It was designed as a Valentine to the city by Bernard R. Maybeck, a French educated architect from New York who had settled, nicely into California because of his brilliant but non-conformist bent. For the fair he designed this structure to look like overgrown, Roman ruins, partially to show "the mortality of grandeur and the vanity of human wishes...", and partially to give the visitor a wonderful experience. It was large rotunda with a colonnade on either side, with a beautiful lagoon to reflect the amazing beauty of the design. The scale of the palace is immense and the design is a freely interpreted, Romantic expression of Roman architecture, with Greek decorations. Started December 8, 1913, it was the last major structure to be constructed.

The people who came to see it were so impressed with it that before great the exposition was even over, a campaign was already underway to preserve this incredible landmark. Through the years many efforts were taken to preserve the site, but because the original materials were simply not going to withstand nature for very long, at various times the palace fell into disrepair. Federal funds were used to repair some of the decorations and from 1934 to 1942 there were eighteen lighted tennis courts placed at the site by the Recreation and Park Department. During World War II the site was used as a military motor pool.

From 1947, when the military gave the site back to the city, until the late 50's, the area sat in disrepair. At that time it was decided that it would be fenced off and scheduled for demolition as a pubic hazard. Then, some concerned citizens, led by philanthropist Walter S. Johnson decided to start a drive to bring the site back to it's former glory, and preserve it for future generations. In July of 1964 the funding was in place and the contract was awarded. The original design elements were carefully removed and molds were made of them. It was taken down to the steel framework and concrete castings were made. A stripped down version of the original was ready by 1967. As a gift to the city and the people by Walter S. Johnson, the final colonnades were put in place, and finally finished in January 1975.

I picture going to the World's Fair and seeing these amazing sights. No doubt, my untrained eye and the sheer immensity would have faked me into believing that these structures were timeless wonders that would remain permanent in this newly reborn city. It was a hoax. Not a hoax designed to harm anyone but a hoax nonetheless. I would even argue that it was a necessary hoax, meant to inspire faith among the people of the city and among the wealthy companies that would bring future business to San Francisco. Possibly a dream that might inspire the continued re-growth and healing of the economy and society after the great tragedy that threatened to destroy the whole place.

Like an anthem of great ideals sung by mere slobs. They cannot possibly live up to the high ideals they are singing about, so in a way, the song is a hoax. But, if the song is sung without irony, and the ideals upheld and fought for, the song can affect the outcome of thousands of lives. The lives that are lived, daily to aspire to these ideals, to great bravery, to fight for justice, to have faith in the face of doubting; those lives are the thing that transforms the artifice into the actual.

The burlap and plaster becomes concrete.

The tearfully sung songs of faith in God become effectual in generosity and mercy.

Without love's response, the most sublime moments of worship become nothing more than the grand "Tower of Jewels", great for a moment, even dazzling to the ear, until the whole wobbly structure is ripped to the ground and burned.

Instead, listen to the only substance in the songs that really matters, the Word of God. It's the steel structure at the center. It doesn't go away. Allow genuine materials like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control to replace the artificial man-made materials. Be careful, because a proud heart, jealousy, greed, and lust can easily masquerade in church clothes. See for yourself how beautiful and lasting a life of faith, genuinely lived and freely given will stand the test of time and become a monument to God. He is the master architect and he designed you to be breathtaking in beauty and scope.

You are a masterpiece!