Taken from the website, "Of buildings remaining from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, the exhibit buildings north of El Prado in the agriculture demonstration section survived for many years. They were eventually absorbed by the San Diego Zoo. Buildings south of El Prado were gone by 1933, except for the New Mexico and Kansas Buildings, which survive today as the Balboa Park Club and the House of Italy. This left intact the Spanish-Colonial complex along El Prado, the main east-west avenue that separated north from south sections. The Sacramento Valley Building at the head of the Plaza de Panama in the approximate center of El Prado was demolished in 1923 to make way for the Fine Arts Gallery. The Southern California Counties Building burned down in 1925. The San Joaquin Valley and the Kern-Tulare Counties Buildings on the promenade south of the Plaza de Panama were torn down in 1933. When the Science and Education and Home Economy Buildings were razed in 1962, the only 1915 Exposition buildings on El Prado were the California Building and its annexes, the House of Charm, the House of Hospitality, the Botanical Building, the Electric Building and the Food and Beverage Building. This paper will describe the ups and downs of the 1915 Varied Industries and Food Products Building (1935 Food and Beverage Building; today the Casa del Prado).
When first conceived the Varied Industries and Food Products Building was called the Agriculture and Horticulture Building. The name was changed to conform with exhibits inside the building. In 1916, the building became the Foreign and Domestic Industries Building to coincide with its new use. Names have changed many times since then. Until 1935, however, the name that persisted the longest was Varied Industries and Food Products Building. After 1936, people called the building the Food and Beverage Building except during a 12-year period when owing to its use in September and October for county fairs, it was called the County Fair Building.
This writer will refer to the building by its chronological names, changing the names as the chronology progresses. Built at a cost of $98,342.41, the Varied Industries and Food Products Building was the largest of the temporary Exposition buildings. Architect Carleton M. Winslow was responsible for the design with sculptural details executed by H. R. Schmohl, after Winslow’s sketches. It consisted of north and south wings joined by an extension of the north wing. The plan took the shape of a right angle. The north wing — the food products section during the 1915 Exposition — included an annex north of a sumptuously decorated entrance. The style was Spanish-Colonial baroque with lavishly garlanded columns, a centrifugal quatrefoil window and a climatic gable on the east facade. The facade was flanked on both sides by towers with open belfries and blue and yellow tiled domes. The facade looked like the entrance to a church, which resemblance was reinforced by the appearance of a bishop in a medallion above the central door and a cross in a starburst medallion above the quatrefoil window. The church-like character of the north wing was further stressed by a bas-relief of Father Serra and a cartouche presenting Father Serra’s accomplishments beneath tall narrow Romanesque-style windows at the apse or west end of the building. Writers called the north wing “the church.”
The south facade of the Food and Beverage Building consisted of two pavilions whose decoration was made from the same molds used to create the facade of “the church.” The bishop was removed but the cross remained. Seeds, fruits, vegetables, Neptune faces, cherubs, crowns, shields, olive leaves and bunches of grapes were added. In place of the flanking towers, windows with columns wider at the top than at the base at their sides, balconies below, and simplified curlicues above surmounted two arches to the right and left of the entrance pavilions. A loggia at the top level with fluted columns and Ionic capitals and plain, sturdy arcades and walls on the lower level joined the pavilions. The elaborate decoration on the east facade had the staggering effect of the finale of a grand fireworks display. Not being able to use San Simeon to backdrop his parable of the folly of acquiring riches in “Citizen Kane,” director Orson Welles used the east facade of the Varied Industries and Food Products Building to demonstrate Kane’s passion for acquiring exotic objects.
Original drawings show that the east side of the south wing was to consist of a blank wall. To relieve the monotony Winslow installed a campanile with four belfries, the lower two of which contain bells, and two upper story windows with balconies. The campanile echoed a campanile at the south end of the apse of the Food Products building. Both campaniles were not replicated during the 1970-71 reconstruction of the building. A sculptural group between the two upper story windows looks like the backdrop of an altar inside a church. A figure at the top rises above the roof line and resembles Virgin Mary. She forms the apex of a triangle with figures on the second level forming the base. These consist of a large buxom woman in a center niche looming over a Caucasian and an Indian boy. A smaller-sized woman with a crown on her head in a niche to her left wears a cuirass and holds a shield. Another woman in a niche to the right holds an orb. The tableau is supposed to represent agricultural fertility, with the large woman in the center representing California who is protecting the Indian race and welcoming the white. Women to the right and left represent Anglo-Saxon and Latin-American culture. (It is difficult to determine which woman represents what.) The woman at the top may represent the spiritual emanation of the women below, but this is a hunch. For unfathomable reasons, reporters in the 1960’s called her “Universal Religion.” The whole can be taken as an allegory of the benefits of American acquisition. Again, it may represent Winslow’s subconscious feelings about women, whom he visualized as stout, intimidating upholders of civilized morality.
The profile of the head of a man wearing a plumed hat in an arched enclosure at the base of the California statue appears at first to be incongruous as it interjects a masculine note in a female confabulation. His plume is not the symbol of a conquistador, but of a cavalier and a poet. Assuming that Winslow meant for the head to be more than ornamental, it could stand for the refinements of civilization that the Spanish conquest made possible. Accordingly, the head could be an emblem of the glories of the Age of Gold re-created in the Spanish-Colonial Revival complex on the grounds.
The east side of the Varied Industries and Food Products Building faced Calle Cristobal (today Village Place) that led to Alameda Drive (today Zoo Drive), in a section where the citrus orchard, model farm and tractor field were located. Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, facades on the building were not copied from facades on buildings in Mexico. The details were assembled by Winslow from copy books or from prior knowledge.
Unlike writers in 1915 who lumped the Exposition buildings together, professor Eugen Neuhaus commented on the buildings individually. He thought buildings on the east side of the Plaza de Panama represented a falling-off in artistic quality. But, because they were intended to be temporary, he was not upset by their flamboyant appearance. Supervising architect Bertram Goodhue, his assistant Carleton M. Winslow, and engineer Frank P. Allen, Jr. shared the same opinion regarding the meretricious quality of temporary Exposition structures.
Reporters gave exhibits inside the building scant notice; because their attention was drawn away by government exhibits in the Commerce and Industries Building (today the Casa de Balboa) that faced the Food and Beverage Building on the south side of El Prado. Among exhibits in the Food Products section in the north wing, reporters singled out the Towle Maple Products Company exhibit in a log cabin showing how maple sugar and syrup were made; the California Cactus Company exhibit showing how cactus is used as the basis for candy confections; the W. H. Kellogg exhibit showing how cereal products were made; the Genesee Pure Food Company exhibit showing how brand-name produce was packaged; and the M. K. Fisheries Company exhibit showing how fish was cooked and crated.
Exhibits in the Varied Industries section in the south wing included the Bell Brothers Manufacturing Company exhibit showing the process of molding and of finishing glass jars; the Globe Milling Company exhibit showing how bread and cake were baked in ovens; the R. B. Bailey Company exhibit showing how leather goods were made; the Pioneer Paper Company exhibit subjecting roofing material to heat and water to demonstrate its lasting qualities; and the Louis Rothe exhibit showing divers gathering abalone shells.
In 1916, the Exposition had to make room for exhibits that came to San Diego from the recently closed Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. These exhibits could not be sent back to Europe because of the outbreak of World War I in 1914, in which the exhibiting countries were involved.
Newspapers indicate that exhibits from the Netherlands occupied the Foreign and Domestic Industries Building (the 1916 name for the building). Since newspapers did not mention other exhibits, the inference is that the Netherlands exhibits took up all the floor space, which, considering the 5,000 square foot size of its exhibit as compared to 64,000 square feet of usable space in the entire building was unlikely. At any rate, exhibits, consisting of pottery, porcelain, tile paintings, carpets, old silverware and batik ware from Java, dazzled the curious and delighted the cognoscenti.
San Diegans were in a bind over what to do with the temporary Exposition buildings. Following the advice of professor Neuhaus, but not of architects Goodhue, Winslow and Allen, they wanted to keep as many of the buildings as they could for any use that might come along. Realizing that such widespread preservation was physically and economically difficult, an Executive Committee on the Preservation of the Exposition Buildings proposed, on September 18, 1916, that the Varied Industries and Food Products and the Commerce and Industries Buildings “be eliminated.”
Before the removal of these buildings could be accomplished, World War I intervened which meant that the life of Exposition buildings was prolonged to accommodate the military. The Varied Industries and Food Products Building, referred to in Park Department maps as Building no. 10, became a barracks and a post office for sailors who were being trained to man United States naval vessels. The use of large, drafty Exposition buildings was not ideal and complaints from disgruntled sailors were published in newspapers which led to vigorous denials by U. S. Naval officers and naval recruits eager to advance their careers. During outbreaks of measles and mumps, sailors moved out of the building and slept in the open air, presumably on cots. The outbreak of the influenza epidemic in late 1918 caused the most alarm. Sailors were quarantined and many suffered from the disease.
After the war, the U. S. Navy paid the city $5,085.24 for damages to the buildings. This money was not enough to go around so the Varied Industries and Food Products Building continued to deteriorate. A campaign to preserve Exposition buildings was conducted after the city building inspector and fire chief announced they were structurally unsound firetraps. The campaign raised $110,290.49, a sum sufficient to enable the City to patch up remaining Exposition buildings. The Varied Industries and Food Products Building got $21,077.68, or approximately 19 percent of the total raised.
The San Diego County Farm bureau helped to determine the fate of the Varied Industries and Food Products Building when it began holding its annual fall county fair in Balboa Park from 1919 to 1930. The County Fair covered much more of Balboa Park than the Varied Industries and Food Products Building as it spread north to include an area now occupied by the San Diego Zoological Society parking lot. Special buildings were put up in this area to exhibit cattle, horses, poultry and pigeons. But the Varied Industries and Food Products Building was the main exhibit space where farm societies and civic organizations exhibited a variety of products.
At various times during the 12- year run of the County Fair, the Varied Industries and Food Products Building was called the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Building, the Agricultural Building, the Industrial Building, and the County Fair Building.
Exhibits over the years ran the gamut from a United States Forest Service exhibit in 1919 showing how careless campers cause fires, a display of custom-built automobiles in 1920; a display of live beneficial insects put up by the Bureau of Pest Control of the California Department of Agriculture in 1922; county schools exhibits in 1923 and 1924; an exhibit of clusters of grapes spelling out the name “Escondido” against a background of colored fruits in 1925; an exhibit of bee culture in 1926 in which a bee expert carried bees from one hive to another without benefit of gloves or smoke; an exhibit by W. J. Bush Citrus Products Company of National City in 1927 showing how oils, extracts, flavoring and perfumes could be made from waste fruits; a “Home of Electric Happiness” mounted by the San Diego Gas and Electric Company in 1928; an exhibit of the latest in radio by the San Diego Radio Dealers Association in 1929; and a display by the San Diego Police Department in 1930 showing articles seized from criminals, fingerprinting equipment, and a model of an intersection with toy vehicles becoming involved in traffic tangles and problems.
In 1923, the entire fair was fenced with the main gate on the Alameda between the County Fair Building and the Civic Auditorium (today the site of the Natural History Museum). This move was necessary as too many people were slipping in without paying the 50 cents admission. Despite the fence, gatekeepers complained that enterprising youngsters were still getting in free." -- Source (
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