Book Design - San Francisco's Jewel City

2015 marks the centennial year of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, when host city San Francisco emerged from the ashes of earthquake and fire as a center of beauty and progress. On the Presidio’s waterfront and in what is now the Marina District, courtyards, formal gardens, and eight Beaux-Arts palaces made up a miniature city resplendent in tones of golden-orange, copper green, cerulean, and “Pompeiian red.” Each palace hosted a thrilling array of exhibits and events that showed off the young century’s achievements and possibilities. Over it all, the forty-three-story Tower of Jewels cast the reflected light of one hundred thousand pieces of colored glass. San Francisco’s Jewel City takes readers on an in-depth tour of the PPIE, revealing the dramas of constructing the fair and the wonders that awaited within the palace walls: electrical home appliances, specimens of luminous radium, living dioramas of then little-known cultures and, of course, a model of the world-changing Panama Canal. Architectural historian Laura Ackley’s compelling text is unparalleled in its breadth of scope and richness of detail, providing social and political context for the fair and offering insight into its legacy today.