 | | All of these photos were taken at the Palace of Fine Arts. The Exploratorium has an excellent history of the Palace. I've excerpted bits of it here, but if you're at all interested, go read the full article.
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 | | The Palace of Fine Arts was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and was designed by architect Bernard R. Maybeck. sfmuseum.org has a map of what the Exposition grounds looked like.
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 | | "But as time went by, a strange new life evolved for the exhibition hall. In 1934, eighteen lighted tennis courts were installed and remained there for eight years. During this period, the Palace, without proper maintenance and as a result of vandalism, was gradually crumbling into a genuine ruin."
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 | | "The work of demolition and reconstruction began in 1964. The rotunda and the columns were toppled to the ground. Nothing was left but the steel structure of the gallery itself. Preparation for rebuilding, at a cost ten times the original and on a permanent basis, was under way."
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 | | "The maidens and their garlands, in circular boxes by the rotunda, had been wantonly vandalized and most of the headless figures had to be made whole again. In the course of reconstruction, the rotunda was reproduced in its entirety…"
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 | | This seems very Gorey-esque to me, but perhaps it's just the urn.
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 | | None of the photos that we took at night came out very well, so I didn't bother uploading any of them. This one looks nice, if you ignore the ugly © that's watermarked into the middle of it. I also like this one.
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