Existing comment:
World's Columbian Exposition
Comes to Golden Gate Park:
The idea for the California Midwinter Exposition was born during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago of 1892. Town booster Michael de Young, founder and publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, thought to celebrate the warm weather of California and have the first World's Fair west of the Mississippi river. De Young realized that the supplies and exhibits were already in place and would be relatively inexpensive to recycle the World's Columbian Exposition in San Francisco. Also, by using unimproved land in Golden Gate Park he could house the event for free and could heavily promote the Exposition through his newspaper. San Francisco would greatly benefit from a World's Exposition by boosting the depressed economy that was occurring throughout the United States at the time.
The Midwinter Exposition covered 160 acres and opened officially on January 27, 1894. 180 structures representing all California Counties, 4 other states, the Arizona Territory, and 18 foreign nations and villages, including a Japanese Village, were all represented on the grounds. The fair left an enduring legacy on Golden Gate Park. Several exposition displayed continued as some of the parks more popular attractions, including the Japanese Tea Garden, and two sphinxes which once guarded the Egyptian-style Fine Arts Building, predecessor to the de Young Museum.
Michael O'Shaughnessy, the chief engineer for the fairgrounds, designed the layout for the Midwinter Exposition to be centered around a grand court (modeled on the Grand Basin of the World's Fair in Chicago); O'Shaughnessy would later become City Engineer and oversee construction of the Hetch-Hetchy water system.
The fairgrounds at night took on the look of an entirely different place. Most homes were still lit with kerosene or gas. Electric lighting wasn't a novelty San Franciscans, even though the city still used 4,300 gas street lamps as late as 1927. But it was still an amazement to many visitors from small towns and rural communities; some had never before seen a working incandescent light bulb.
The bulk of the fair site returned to parkland under the diligence of part superintendant [sic] John McLaren, but the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse continues to retain much of the character of the California Midwinter Exposition and here it is still fairly easy for park visitors to recall the festive atmosphere of 1894. |