Site information:

3601 Lyon St, San Francisco

37.802979, -122.447906

Plaque information:

State plaque

37.802, -122.448

Plaque text:

The Palace of Fine Arts was hailed as the finest structure built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE). It was designed by Bernard Maybeck, one of America's most important and influential architects. The palace established a new standard for civic design by showing what critics have proclaimed as "the perfect marriage between architecture and landscape" and demonstrating how nature could serve as a vital design element.

California Registered Historical Landmark No. 1064
 
Plaque placed by California State Parks, the Maybeck Foundation, and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. 

 

OHP information:

The Palace of Fine Arts consists of a building and four structures in a park in the Marina District in San Francisco. Originally conceived in 1913 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and completed in 1913, designed by architect Bernard Maybeck as a forgotten and overgrown Roman ruin. Intended as a temporary installation, the citizens of San Francisco engaged in heroic efforts to retain the Palace, the only surviving building of the 1915 exhibition. The Palace quickly became recognized as one of California's most beautiful buildings, despite its lack of function and temporary nature. A long-term project, planned in the 1950s and begun in the 1960s, reconstructed the Palace in its current permanent form, a project completed in 1974.