This paper was presented at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California. A different versions was published in 1915 in a booklet by Paul Elder and Co.

It contains some of Maybeck's thought about architecture, and his explanation of a question that has puzzled many- how did this advocate of the "simple home" this pioneer of the expression of structure, come to build anything as romantic and historical as the Palace of Fine Arts?

Maybeck seemed to think highly of the essay. He would later send copies to prospective clients, to explain his architecture.

 "In discussing a subject such as that of making plans for a World's Fair, it is necessary to assume that the hearers admit there are mental processes not to be expressed in language. The first example that comes to our mind is the process of understanding music. Stone and wood construction proper bears the same relation to architecture that the piano, for instance, does to the music played upon it. -Music and architecture are vehicles of expression for phases of our human experience.

Omitting construction, we will discuss only the architecture as a conveyor of ideas and sentiments. The combinations and arrangements of the buildings and gardens at the Fair were planned according to the principles discovered by the French architects. Besides other phases, the fundamental idea was that the picture presented by the ground plan of a group of buildings and their surroundings should be agreeable to the eye, and therefore in the development of the plan it is treated as though it were an ornament without regard to the fact that it represents buildings.

If the plan of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition group of main buildings were reduced in scale to the size of a golden brooch and the courts and buildings were made in Venetian cloisonne' jewelry, that brooch thus made would pass as the regular thing in jewelry without causing the suspicion that it represented a plan for a World's Fair.

To be an ornament the plan must have a sense of direction, and in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition it has a top and bottom, of which the Machinery Hall would be the bottom and the Fine Arts would be the top, with relation to the geometric center of
gravity.

Now, besides the physically ornamental, there is spiritual significance in the plan. There is a succession of impressions produced as one walks through the different parts of the grounds that play on the feelings and the mind, each part having its own peculiar influence. Along the main axis, for example, the Machinery Hall and neighborhood suggest a mixture of the classic and romantic as you understand the terms in literature.

The Court of Abundance, better called the Court of Ages, suggests the medieval with all its rising power of idealism in conflict with the physical. The Court of the Universe suggests Rome inhabited by some unknown placid people. The Court of the Four Seasons suggests grace, beauty and peace in the land where the souls of philosophers and poets dwell in continued satisfaction.

The Fine Arts Palace suggests the romantic, of the period after the classic Renaissance. Someone familiar with the philosophy of art will no doubt wish to challenge this classification of the various courts, but I believe he will admit that some such classification can be made for one class of minds other classifications for other minds.

These nomenclatures, "romantic," "classic," etc., are usually covered by the word "atmosphere-- The physical forms reflect a mental condition. For instance, when the director of the Fine Arts explained what he felt was necessary for a Fine Arts building, he said that he did not want the visitors to come directly from a noisy boulevard into galleries -of pictures, but, on the contrary, he wanted everybody to pass through a gradual transition from the exciting influences of the fair to the quiet serenity of the galleries.

Mr. Trask not only wanted the mind of the visitor to be in a tranquil mood, but he worried lest the high coloring on the outside of the building would dull the eye of the visitor to the delicate tones and shades of some of the light toned pictures-.. In the same way Mr. Trask wanted all the smaller details to be harmonious with the rest of the architecture, the pedestals, the water pools, the rubbish cans, the color of the walls, all to fit in. All of these details collectively make an atmosphere.

Let us analyze the Fine Arts building and lake, not from the physical but rather from a psychological point of view, with reference' to the effect of architectural forms on the mind and feelings, and discuss the various elements which influenced the composition of the architecture and landscape.

The first question to settle is, what character should an exhibition building of paintings have, and the second question is, by what process may we find the elements of architectural forms that will give the feeling that corresponds to that of the exhibition of paintings.

The first is fixed, the second must waver back forth until the architecture of the building reflects that of the exhibit. The first question depends upon the character of the paintings to be housed, and the second depends upon finding such forms as will portray the character of the paintings, and using it for your theme, weaving it into all the parts of your composition as though you were composing a musical symphony.

We can perhaps get a little clearer idea of the foregoing remarks through discussion of an art gallery composed of five-dollar Broadway hand-made paintings, of which the gold frames cost more than the labor of painting the picture. These pictures could be fitly housed in a building called "Palatial Picture Palace," which to be in harmony should remind you of an overdone ice cream parlor or candy store, with many steam orchestras playing various tunes, just far enough apart so that they audibly compete with each other. The magnificent gardens should be all hand-made artificial plants and artificial waterfalls., Such an art palace might be termed to have a Broadway atmosphere, and, of its kind, a harmony of discords. Each form which is used must be of the same feeling as the Broadway picture.

The Fine Arts exhibition is made up of units representing the best efforts of the artists, the beginning of which started years ago. The work did not begin, as some people imagine, when the artist made his first lines in charcoal on his canvas, and did not terminate in a few hours and then sell for fancy prices. Indeed, some of an artist's. dreams are put into execution man), years afterward. In every good painting you feel that years of experience have preceded. The artist began his work a long time ago in a nebulous haze of whys, and it is usually a long experience before his paintings are nearly as good as a photograph; and oftener a great deal of hard work and disappointment -before he suspects that it is not -the object nor the likeness to the object that he is working for, but he becomes conscious of a desire to portray the life that is behind the visible.

Here he comes face to face with the real things of this life; no assistance can be given him; he cannot hire a boy in gold buttons to fashionably open the door to the Muse, nor a clerk nor an accountant to do the drudgery. He is alone before his problem and drifts away from the superficial portrayal of things. After this he strives to find the spiritual meaning of things and to transmit that secret to the layman for a consideration.

Sometimes the artist has not received his message clearly enough, and the layman fails to understand. So each picture is a message which the artist has deciphered after many years of work, and artist John Doe always tells the same message whether it be the lady in pink or the wave crest, but it is a different message from the other pictures painted by Robert Roe. Whistler's pictures are always a Whistler; Mathews' paintings are always a Mathews.

From the paintings of any historic period one gets a reflection of that age. Therefore in a collection of ancients and modems such as the Mine Arts exhibit you will find many atmospheres,. which leave as a sum total of impressions a single one. just as of the instruments of an orchestra, the violins play one set of notes, the flutes another, the cellos another, altogether myriads of sounds, which may be recorded on a phonographic disc in one set of vibrations, producing the sum total of sounds.

The sum total of impressions of an art exhibit I got while visiting one of the art galleries in Munich. With others we dragged ourselves from gallery to gallery seeing Madonnas and Christs crucified, also a picture which portrayed a Polish princess sitting on a throne in a court yard in midwinter, who in a mad fit ordered freezing water to be thrown over nude maidens, amid snow and icicles. Some of the maidens in the foreground were dying and others lay dead, ghastly and frozen, and farther on we saw Bocklin's "Island of Death," and on we wandered. We wandered on until we came to the broad marble leading out into sunshine once more, but we sat down for a moment's rest before leaving. All at once our eyes fell on the marble bust of a five-year-old boy cleverly portraying a little mischief, and underneath the bust were the words "Dear God, make me pious" -and we smiled. We watched the weary faces come out of the galleries, and one by one when their eyes saw the bust, the drawn expression of their faces relaxed; some smiled, some laughed, but all seemed to be brought back to a happy life, and we realized right. there that an art gallery was a sad and serious matter.

Some years ago there appeared a story by David Graham Phillips. and by some happy accident the atmosphere of each part or chapter of the story was portrayed in a frontispiece by an artist named Wenzel. In this frontispiece Mr. Wenzel portrayed the sum total of the general impression of what was to follow so successfully that I could anticipate the contents, although the frontispiece might have been only a Diana and her hunting dogs, and yet Diana had nothing to do with the story.

Now what Mr. Trask wanted was a frontispiece to his art collection which would anticipate the general impression as a whole. And if among the many pieces of sculpture I were to choose one piece that came nearest to being a frontispiece of the general impression of the exhibition of painting, I would choose the white marble Muse finding the head of Orpheus, which was made by Berge, and now stands under the acacia tree at the south entrance.

Summing up my general impression, I find that the keynote of a Fine Arts Palace should be that of sadness modified by the feeling that beauty has a soothing influence.

To make a Fine Arts building that will fit this modified sad impression, we must use those forms in architecture and gardening, that will affect the sentiments in such a way as to produce on the individual the same modified sadness as the galleries do. This process is similar to that of matching the color of ribbons. You pick up a blue ribbon, hold it alongside of the sample in your hand and at a glance you know it matches or it does not. You do the same with architecture; you examine a historic form and see whether the effect it produced on your mind matches the feeling you are trying to portray a modified sadness or a sentiment in a minor key.

An old Roman ruin, away from civilization which two thousand years before was the center of action and full of life, and now partly overgrown with bushes and trees,-- such ruins give the mind a sense of sadness. The French artists portrayed the same sensation in the fountains in the forests of Versailles, made up half of shrubbery, half of marble-imitation ruins, Dianas, gods and goddesses, waterfalls. These today have a spirit of sadness because the trees and bushes are old; as nature outgrew the gardener's stiffening care. Examples of sadness in architecture and gardening may he seen in the works of Pyranesi, an engraver who made many engravings showing old Roman ruins covered with bushes and trees.

Overdone in sadness for an art gallery frontispiece would be the "Island of Death" by Boecklin; a dark picture of an island of tall black trees enclosing a white marble columbarium, in the foreground a boat carrying the dead across.

"The Islands of Clear Lakes, California'' where the trees and bushes seem to rise out of the water makes the same impression of sadness but in a lesser degree. But the feeling given by the Clear Lake Island is similar to the sentiment expressed in the statue of the Muse finding the head of Orpheus, its beauty tempers the sadness of it.

As an example of what is meant by matching impressions: Suppose you were to put a Greek temple in the middle of a small mountain lake surrounded by deep rocky cliffs, with the white foam dashing over the marble temple floor,-- you would have a sense of mysterious fear and even terror, as of something uncanny. If the same temple pure and beautiful in lines and color were placed on the face of a placid lake, surrounded -by high trees and lit up by a glorious full moon, you would. recall the days when your mother pressed you to her bosom and your final sob was hushed by a protecting spirit hovering over you, warm, and large. You have there the point of transition from sadness to content, which comes pretty near to the total impression of the Fine Arts and lake.

By the process of finding forms of architecture and gardening that will -best convey the -same impression. on the heart and mind as those impressions made by the works of art inside, for the genera! composition of the Fine Arts building and lake, the mind of the visitor to the gallery is prepared for what he is to see, and as he comes away his senses gradually are led back to the commonplaces of human activity, and the horns of automobiles, the cries of the popcorn venders, will not grate upon his ears as they would if he was plumped out of the Fine Arts into the hustle and bustle.

From the standpoint of composition of the whole scheme or symphony of the main group of buildings of the fair, this lower key of the Fine Arts helps to give a finish, and beyond the Sunday-like appearance of the state buildings also helps to let the visitor down gently from the highbrow strain of the galleries.

This paper was written to point out one of the phases of the fair, hoping that people will realize that such a group is not a conglomeration of soulless buildings dolled up in holiday attire like the palatial palace of. Broadway pictures, but that in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition is expressed the life of the people of California. It has its geographic stamp just like the architecture of Thibet has its geographic reason for being. This same group could not have happened in Boston or in India.

When the people of California visit the grounds they should think of the fact that the fair is an expression of future California towns, and although the columns of the courts will not appear in the office buildings on Market street, nor the triumphal arches appear in the residence part of their towns, the future town of California will have the same general feeling.

They say that maple sugar is the same thing as sugar, and that it is the impurities in the maple sugar that gives it its pleasant flavor. It is the impurities of the fair that are now the geographic flavors of the fair, and it is those same impurities that will live on in our California cities. For many reasons that I cannot take time here to give it is safe to say of the fair,--"Made in California." (Applause.)

Remarks by President Hodgehead

THE PRESIDENT: If Mr. Maybeck had been here we might have missed this paper, because he might have followed precedent and not read it. I have a little surprise here, but I will not spring it just now.

Mr. Bakewell and Mr. Brown, who are related somewhat in a collateral way to the Horticultural building, are present. Mr. Bakewell declines to speak on the ground that it is getting late, but I am going to ask him if he thinks it would be practical to save a portion of the grounds or these buildings:

Remarks by John Bakewell, Jr.

MR. BAKEWELL: The question that your Chairman has asked has been answered very well by three of . the former speakers-Mr. Polk, Mr. Mullgardt and Mr. Kelham.

Whether it is practical. to save a portion of the grounds or of the, buildings is a very easy question to answer. It is practical to do what...

Letter

From Maybecks office files Document Collection C.E.D UCB

Through the elaborate telling a real story seems visible, as does Maybeck's thought.

San Francisco California

May 14th, 1925

Mr. Bernard Maybeck

Lick Building

Dear Mr. Maybeck:

Anent the subject of my recent conversation with you, the subjoined is a reproduction of that which I have taken the liberty of including in the Ms. of my book, having reference to yourself. As it fits in specially with that which I have had in mind regarding the characteristics of personages in the tale, I am hopeful that you may see fit to let it stand as it is, particularly as you remarked, "so long as it is a good story, what difference can it make?"

This has to do with a young engineer of note recently returned from duties in the Canal Zone:

"He seemed never to tire of the Palace of Fine Arts, as presented from the eastern border of its lagoon and however his time might be taken up elsewhere through the day, it was a certainty that sometime before his final departure for the day he would walk along the colonnade and at last get around to his favorite point of vantage where he would sit and drink in the scene which to him, as he whispered often to his soul, was possessed of a deathless beauty. One evening he was conscious of a figure beside him, a man who has stood without moving for several minutes, and he looked up into the face of one who met his glance with a kindly smiling. "I have frequently seen you here," his visitor said; "it is my favorite spot, as quite evidently it is yours. You appear to be a lover of beauty." Kent made response, "This is a kind of beauty of which I feel sure I could never tire. I cannot help feeling that the man who designed it and then witnessed his ideal being developed in a tangible beauty must himself possess a soul pulsing with high ideals. Sometime, I hope to make his aquaintance."

"You haven't long to wait, my friend; he stands before you."

"You? You!" exclaimed Kent, "Bernard Maybeck! I am Kent Waterman, late of the __ Corps of Engineers from the Canal Zone."

"So, so?" smiled Maybeck, "then you are indeed one us and my pleasure must be greater than your own. Your name has reached as far as that of the canal itself; listen, I will prove it to you- 'Judge' Waterman."

At this employment of his Zone nickname, Kent laughed heartily as the celebrated architect took a seat beside him. Maybeck expressed his pleasure over Kent's fine fine appreciation of his work and went on, "It seemed so great a pity to me that the unobtrusive little pond here near the end of the exposition area was destined to be filled in and lose its identity. I felt toward it much as I do toward the small struggling nations which from time to time are absorbed by stronger powers, their individuality obscured, and the more I gave it thought the more perversely my mind clung to an awakened intent that it should not be dried up by filling sands, but that, given an opportunity to express itself, it should become instead a thing of beauty. It seemed somewhat like the boy in school who is set at a line of study to which he is in no wise adapted and, failing in it, becomes an object of illy-concealed contempt, never given an opportunity to demonstrate the pronounced ability to accomplish things along other lines. The water, appearing to discover in me an understanding friend, seemed to be making an effort to talk to me and it gradually developed a voice so clear and convincing that I began to wonder if I weren't becoming nutty in my imaginary communing with it. But it wasn't at all imaginary. It said to me 'If you will rid yourself of doubts. I will show you what I might become if only given a chance, I and even as it so expressed itself, what should I see spread clearly before me but this rarely beautiful lagoon, girdled by trees bending lovingly to protect its face from the noonday, heat, the tall grasses bowing obsequiously to-'the wavelets breaking at its brink, the pond lilies lifting their shining faces from its placid surface to meet the glad buzzing of the small winged things that fluttered about then to find a secure footing on the leaves, whence they looked forth on what must have seemed to them a boundless expanse of sea; all, just as you see it now, and as I mused over it, yonder palace rose beside it with its rich background of the Presidio hills, with that far climax of coloring in the western sky, with its storied columns rising in stately splendor to adorn an open cloister and to support their carven crests; all of that, and then, duplicated, because the waters of the pond grown generous to meet my mood brought its reflection to me on the clear surface, and I rose and bared my head and held my face to high heaven and registered the resolve that, GOD-willing, this dream should-be carven in its fair reality. I'm glad you like it; most people do, but not all of them come to truly understand its lure which is not more in what it is than that which it suggests of a beauty no art can really more than remotely aproach. I feel that. I can thus dispassionately discuss this with you, because you will understand that it is with no consciousness of individual merit that I find my name ineffacealbly linked with this fair structure. Art, brought forth either in music, in painting, or in architecture, should ever be accorded recognition. not as a distinctive meritorious accomplishment of the artist, but instead as an echo of something of surpassing beauty from unguessed realms, for which his soul acts as a mirror or an acoustic glen to throw that beauty forth upon the screen of consciousness. It is this conviction that lends a happiness to contemplation of our future state upon the plane of the unseen, where penetrating sight shall rend obscuring veils and, to the eye of the soul, shall be revealed the inner-beauties of Divine design."

"I wonder if I wander too far from sanity in my own impressions regarding it," interjected Kent. "I have been thinking that on the crest of one of the surrounding heights it might in great measure have seemed obscure, but here, contented in its low estate, it has lifted the lowly setting far above the hills to heights sublime by the wonder of its beauty."

"You are a poet, Judge Waterman, and one could not have more clearly given voice to my own feeling regarding it than you have done. We shall meet again, many times, I hope." he said, in parting. As he walked away, his strong figure lending itself to his easy stride, Kent pictured the fine large face, the clean complexion and the smiling eyes, and there came to him that strange philosophy of Col. Scott - "These contacts will be made without volition of your own."

Should it be that you conclude to let it stand, it would be fine if you would write to me a nice note regarding it, suitable to forward with my Ms. to the publisher. Of course, it is quite possible I may find no publisher willing to risk putting me before the public, but in any event no harm can result.
With kind regards,

H. R. HURLBUT

Yours truly

[H.R Hurlbut]

111 City Hall

We haven't been able to find any publication by H. R. Hurlbut in the UC catalogs.

Our other Maybeck Pages

School for Brookings
Rendering and Elevation
Brookings Community Hall
Section and Plan
Brookings Town Plan: the design's development
Various drawings.
Maybeck on Civic Design: Canberra
A Simple Home
by Charles Keeler
Bernard Maybeck: a Gothic man in the 20th Century
Unpublished biography by Charles Keeler

Brookings, General Information

Brookings Property:
The Harbor Hills
Cape Ferrelo Ranch
Oregon Coast Net Home
(frames)

Coast Land Mailing List
(to receive occasional updates)
Site Map
(frames)
Site Map (for navigation without frames or javascript, and for small monitors)

The Swedenborgian Church of San Francisco. Perhaps the first Maybeck building and an important seed of west-coast architecture, mission furniture and more. To understand Maybeck we suggest starting with understanding the intellectual space between and connecting this rustic church and the Palace. Physically, that space is just Lyon Stree

 original reproductions copyright 1998 Bill Buchanan. Courtesy of the Documents CED, Berkeley.