The
Palace of the Fine Arts
We
came upon The Palace of the Fine Arts following a long walk along
the Marina Blvd Promenade which eventually
takes you to Chrissy Fields, the Golden Gate Bridge and the wonderful
"Warming Hut", a coffee house for tourists but
a really nice one you will enjoy stopping at.
The "Palace" constructions and sculptures are all that remain
of the enormous 1915 Panama-Pacific
International Exposition. The expositions temporary buildings were
all torn down but the Palace of Fine Arts remained
due to its popularity with the public. Constructed of wood, chicken
wire and plaster stucco it began to seriously deteriorate
in
the 1960's and
was finally completely resurrected in concrete, restoration and cleaning
work still goes on as the concrete
takes
its turn to age
(see the arm of the cherry picker in the shot below) The Palace's
many sorrowful statuary
symbolically
lament
that
the people
of
San Francisco do not possess their
own
collection of
Fine Arts of Antiquity.
image
© lee-anne raymond
