| The site selected, just inside the Golden Gate, on the curving shore of the bay, 625 acres in extent, is one of the most beautiful to he found in North America. Surrounded by magnificent mountain and marine views, with picturesque heights of the city for a hackground, the setting is attractive and appropriate to an architectural scheme at once dignified, imposing and alluring. Eleven great palaces-Fine Arts, Horticulture, Machinery, Varied Industries, Manufactures, Liberal Arts, Education and Social Economy, Foodstuffs, Agriculture, Transportation, Mines and Metallurgy, with Festival Hall - compacted into a central group, joined together by connecting avenues and courts, adorned with towers, domes, statuary and mural paintings, washed with a color scheme by one of the world's master-artiste, and finished in imitation of the famous Travertine marble, house the multiform exhibits which embrace all human activities. Three splendid courts are placed along the lateral axis of the group. In the center is the Court of the Sun and Stars, entirety surrounded with lofty colonnades above which are ranged star-crowned figures. The court contains a sunken garden, seating seven thousand persons, and where enthralled visitors may rest and dream of the vast significance of their surroundings, impressed by the symbolism which suggests the "Meeting-place of the East and West" and the New Bay dawning on the world when commerce shall sow the earth with progress and the nations he at peace. |
