Home -> Paul Elder - > The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition -> California Building - Bell Tower and Forbidden Garden

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California Building
Bell Tower and Forbidden Garden

California Building - Bell Tower and Forbidden Garden

The California Building is the result of perhaps the most interesting combination of requirements that could be imagined - to provide a host building for the home State of a great Exposition where welcome could warmly and generously be extended to the millions of visitors, where the officials could have suitable quarters and where the fifty-two counties of the State could have their exhibits. The location set aside for the concrete development of these requirements was most stimulating. An edifice to terminate the vista looking north over a laguna of silent water flanked by the wonderful Palace of Fine Arts, and just beyond, the beautiful Bay of San Francisco with a background formed by distant Tamalpais.

No style of architecture could be more appropriate to these needs than that which exists in California - an architecture romantic, peaceful, subtle and charming in its proportions. The task of adapting the Mission architecture to the requirements was given Thomas H. F. Burditt. He entered into the spirit of the old Padre builders with rare intuition, and he designed a building of impressive dignity and hospitality.

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