For an insiders look at the 1915 Panama-California Expo, visit the San Diego History Center

By Michael Good

We’re in the midst of 2015, and the centennial celebration in Balboa Park, such as it is, is now in full swing. The 1915 Panama-California Exposition was spearheaded by the movers and shakers of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, men of vision and ambition, driven by equal parts civic pride and self-interest. (OK, the parts were not equal.)

One hundred years later, the museums have taken the lead, each commemorating the occasion in its own fashion. This is not quite the party we’d been expecting, and it’s not quite the celebration that had been planned, but on a recent Thursday afternoon, the crowds that thronged the park hardly seemed to care.

As you’d expect, The History Center on the Prado is 1915 Expo Central. There is an exhibit that tells the story of the Exposition, a gallery of plein air paintings from the artists who were featured at the fair, and a short film telling the story of the park. The Historical Society also has a research library downstairs, which is chock-a-block with 1915 Expo stuff: books, brochures, photographs, post cards, newspaper articles, maps, scrapbooks and ephemera.

Of course the History Center isn’t the only repository of Expo info. There’s SOHO, the Committee of 100 and the San Diego Library, and many of these institutions have material available online. But for a quick, well-researched, accurate and enjoyable overview of the event itself, there’s nothing like the History Center’s current show “San Diego Invites the World: The 1915 Expo.” You’re likely to learn something. I certainly did.

It’s always been about the weather: Go anywhere in the world today, announce you’re from San Diego, and the response will be the same: Great weather! San Diego’s year-round outdoor climate made the Expo possible, and made converts of visitors then, as now. The headline on Jan. 1, 1915 read: “Weather Man Good to San Diego on Greatest Day in History.”

And he was good to San Diego for the rest of the year. (If you’re thinking — yeah, but what about the water; with a population of only 30,000, San Diego had enough water from local sources at the time.)

People in 1915 knew art when they saw it: On the front page of the Jan. 1, 1914 edition of the San Diego Union is an illustration of a young maiden opening the curtains of her boudoir and greeting the New Year. Her nightgown has fallen from her shoulders to reveal what is known in today’s vernacular as “side boob.” The view from her window is of San Diego harbor, with a huge passenger liner steaming into port. The copy on the page reads: “Panama California Exposition Celebrating the Opening of the Panama Canal. San Diego 1915. San Diego First Port of Call.” Today, this would be racy stuff (in the newspaper).

It was the first port of call for the Navy: The military was involved with the Expo from the beginning. Soldiers lived in tents on the grounds, marching, drilling, performing music, enacting battles and keeping an eye on the Indians, who also had taken up residence in the park. Sample headline, circa 1915: “2,000 of Atlantic and Pacific Fleet’s Men Coming to San Diego for Fair.” Once the U.S. entered the war, in 1917, the fair festivities (which had been extended) came to a definitive halt and the military commandeered the park. In a sense, they’ve never left. (The passenger liners, however, never showed.)

Those naked ladies have a name: Apparently, in 1915, people didn’t just look. They wanted to know. These are caryatids, as the San Diego Union explained, sculpted female figures that provide architectural support in place of columns that usually hold up a classical building’s entablature.

Short architectural history lesson: The Greeks developed a system of architecture. The Romans borrowed it, and then spread it around as they conquered the world. The Romans invaded Spain in 205 BCE, introducing Greek architecture. The Spaniards, in turn, conquered Mexico, and brought the caryatids with them. When Bertram Goodhue chose Spanish Colonial architecture for the Expo buildings, he was thereby compelled, by history, to bring on the naked ladies (made of plaster and coconut husks).

These figures had a higher purpose, the Union wrote on May 31, 1915: “Typifying the woman of toil, a patient powerful mother of men, a hewer of wood, and a drawer of water.”

By 1915, women had had enough with the wood hewing and water drawing: They were leaving the farm in droves, taking their coconuts with them, and the men were forced to follow. The fair (organized by men, many of whom, like Ed Fletcher, had rural land and water to sell), wanted to reverse this trend. Along with the exhibits of produce, livestock, fruits and nuts, the Expo included an actual working farm, and a modern farmhouse.

According to an Expo brochure, “And while the prospective farmer is discovering how modern machinery has cut down his work, so the wife of this prospective farmer will discover, by a visit to the model bungalow, at the center of the model intensive farm, that modern machinery has cut down the drudgery which her grandmother had to bear. She will discover that the comforts of the city apartment have simply been transferred to the farm and that it is perfectly feasible to have the vacuum cleaner and the automatic pump.”

In other words, no more drawing of water for the modern caryatid. (Hewing of wood, however, would have to continue until the invention of the chain saw in the mid-1920s.)

Women were doing some shaking and moving, too: The model bungalow’s Prairie Style interior didn’t draw near the raves of the Persimmon Room, a retreat and gathering place for women at the Exposition credited to Alice Klauber, daughter of one of San Diego’s richest merchants. The design was forward thinking: modern, simple, airy and light, with dove gray walls and black and persimmon accents, which Klauber said were inspired by a Navajo rug. Klauber was no pampered dilettante. When the Expo directors refused to let women take part in the planning, she threatened to inform every women’s group in the country. The Good Old Boys backed down, and Klauber formed a woman’s committee, which led to the Women’s Official Board, and its Persimmon Room.

Klauber had extensive art training. In 1907 she toured Europe, including Spain. She was also in charge of the art at the Expo. She organized a show of nationally known artists, and encouraged Southern California artists to participate in a juried show. Some of those paintings are on display at the History Center today. Included are works by Maurice Braun, Charles Fries, John Marshall Gamble, Robert Henri, Alfred Mitchell, William Wendt and Klauber herself.

Klauber continued making art and organizing art exhibits after the Expo, and helped found what is now the San Diego Museum of Art. She died in 1951.

The California Art Club is having its Balboa Park Centennial Paint-Out on July 18, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. This is art the old-fashioned way, with landscape artists painting in the open air, not working from photographs in their studios. The finished paintings will be shown in the History Center atrium between 3 and 4 p.m. on the same day.

—Contact Michael Good at [email protected].