Wonders of world, 1 death part of 1894 exposition

July 4, 2014

Millions of people have visited the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park and wandered through the nearby Music Concourse, with its elegant fountain. But few people realize that these familiar places are remnants of the first, and least known, of the city's three great fairs - the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894.

The fair was the brainchild of Chronicle Publisher M.H. de Young. De Young had organized the California exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition that opened in Chicago in May 1893, and was so impressed with its success that he lobbied hard for San Francisco to host its own fair.

As Arthur Chandler and Martin Nathan note in "The Fantastic Fair: The Story of the California Midwinter International Exposition, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, 1894," de Young wanted to burnish the city's image.

In the 45 years since the Gold Rush, San Francisco had become a city of 300,000. But the economy was stagnant, and there were other problems. The nabobs in their ludicrously ornate mansions atop Nob Hill were symbols of Gilded Age excess, while at the bottom of the hill murderous tongs ran riot in Chinatown and the Barbary Coast was a synonym for depravity.

De Young wanted to show that San Francisco was a world-class city - and one with a much better winter climate than New York or Chicago.

160 acres in the park

The site chosen for the fair was a 160-acre stretch of land in Golden Gate Park called Concert Valley. Legendary park superintendent John McLaren was bitterly opposed to the fair, warning that it would do irreparable damage to the trees. But he was overruled, and landscaping began.

The privately financed fair opened Jan. 27, 1894. At its heart was "Sunset City," laid out as two concentric circles of buildings, with the main exhibit halls being in the inner circle. The major buildings, ornate piles built in a hodge-podge of architectural styles, included the Fine Arts Building - later to become the de Young Museum - the Mechanical Arts Building and the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, at the time the largest building in the West, a blend of California Mission and Moorish styles.

Read by searchlight

In the center of a Court of Honor rose a 272-foot Electric Tower, with a restaurant on the first landing and topped by what was billed as the most powerful searchlight in the world. Promoters claimed you could read a newspaper by its light at a distance of 8 miles.

The Midway, outside the inner ring of buildings, featured such eclectic attractions as a giant Firth wheel - similar to a Ferris wheel - a German Village complete with a Heidelberg Castle that stood in what is now the Arboretum, a Scenic Railway that functioned as a kind of roller coaster, the Mystic Mirror Maze that ended up at Playland-at-the-Beach, the California Ostrich Farm and Dante's Inferno, a fright ride entered through a giant demonic head.

Baby on display

Like other fairs of the day, the Midwinter International Exposition boasted numerous ethnic and national exhibitions, featuring real and faux natives in diorama-like re-creations of their "natural habitats."

There was the Esquimax Village, whose igloos were made of papier-mâché. After an Aleut woman who was part of the exhibition gave birth, audience members gawked at both mother and child.

The Dahomey Village featured inhabitants of the West Africa kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin), who performed war dances and other traditional rites. The fact that the women were bare-breasted did not harm the exhibit's popularity.

There was an Oriental Village featuring Cairo Street, a re-creation of a bustling Middle Eastern promenade where fairgoers could observe sword fights, ride a camel, smoke a water pipe and watch the sultry "Little Egypt" perform risqué belly dances.

Controversy swirled around the Japanese exhibition. The Japanese Tea Garden, run by an Australian named George Marsh, was enormously successful. The trouble resulted from the fact that Marsh had also been awarded the transportation concession at the fair.

When he announced plans for 75 rickshaws, called "jinrikishas," San Francisco's outraged Japanese community formed an Anti-Jinrikisha Society. It pronounced that it was acceptable for Japanese to pull people around in Japan, but in America such a job was suitable only for horses and was an insult to the emperor.

The society said that any Japanese who pulled a rickshaw would be killed. Marsh got around the problem by hiring Germans, darkening their faces and dressing them up in Oriental garb.

Murderous lion

But the Anti-Jinrikisha Society was not done. When the somewhat bloodthirsty society learned that Marsh planned to hire Japanese acrobats and jugglers to perform, it threatened to kill them, too. This time Marsh stood his ground and got the police to escort the performers from the ship to the Japanese Tea Garden, and the acrobats survived the fair unscathed.

The fair's only tragedy involved Colonel Boone's Wild Animal Show, which featured trained pigs and birds and a famous lion named Parnell that had already killed two men.

One day at feeding time, Parnell attacked one of his trainers and killed him. The funeral was held in the arena. As Raymond H. Clary notes in "The Making of Golden Gate Park: The Early Years 1865-1906," it was "the most unusual funeral ever held in San Francisco."

Members of all of the "exotic" ethnic and national groups on display at the fair turned out: "Indians in war paint, miners from the Forty-Niner Camp, hula girls in native dress from the Sandwich Islands, native dancers from Cairo Street, Eskimos from the Far North, swarthy Mexicans, and a big Cossack with his shaggy hat protruding high above the entire crowd."

When the lions and tigers sounded off during the service, "strong men shuddered and women had to be helped from the arena as the roars reminded them of the reason the services were being held."

Aside from that, the fair was a great success. When it closed July 4, 1894, more than 1.3 million people had attended.

It even made a profit. The stage was set for the two more famous world fairs: the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and the 1939 World's Fair on Treasure Island.

Editor's note


Trivia time

Last week's trivia question: What clipper ship set the speed record from New York to San Francisco?

Answer: The Flying Cloud (89 days).



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