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THE ENDURING IMPACT of world’s fairs on gardening — private, public and municipal — prompted Cathy Jean Maloney to pen her latest book, “World’s Fair Gardens: Shaping American Landscapes” (256 pages, University of Virginia Press, $40), which covers the nine major U.S. world’s fairs from 1850 to 1940, what she considers their heyday.
On June 20, she will share her insights from researching her book in a talk, slide show and book signing focusing on San Francisco’s three expos — the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, sited in what is now Golden Gate Park; 1915’s Panama Pacific International Exposition, now the Marina district; and the Golden Gate International Exposition from 1939 to 1940 on Treasure Island.
The author, who lives in a cottage on the grounds of a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed estate with a Jens Jensen landscape in Chicago, was intrigued with world’s fairs gardens after researching the World’s Columbian Exposition, which took place in 1893 in Chicago.
“It was a game changer for world’s fairs, not just in America but in the world,” she explains. “It was the first time that a landscape architect, (in this case) the noted Frederick Law Olmstead, who was hired to do the landscape, was at the same table as the architect, art sculptors and engineers.”
And, she points out, it was also the first time that landscape architecture was considered an important
art form, “where landscape was considered as an integral part of the plan along with the building designs and outdoor art, not an afterthought.”
The Chicago Expo, she explains, sparked the nationwide City Beautiful movement, “with the idea that when you plan a city, you want to incorporate nature and parks.” Out of the City Beautiful movement came Edward Bennett, who created the ground plan for the 1915 Pan-Pacific Expo.
Through their exotic flora and artful landscaping, “world’s fairs have shaped American gardens and green spaces,” Maloney says. “Nurserymen, growers and florists who exhibited at a world’s fair would win medals and ribbons for certain plants or flowers, such as a winning gladiola for example, and then they’d publicize that in all their catalogs so that everyone back home would buy a lot of the award winners.”
She admires John McLaren, the designer of Golden Gate Park, whom she deems “the coolest guy.”
“In the world’s fairs that I studied, only San Francisco picked a native son to work on all three of their expositions. He was the go-to guy,” says Maloney.
From him, fairgoers were exposed to plantings of staggered heights and using native plants, or at least what grew well in that area.
“That was happening in other fairs,” says Maloney.
With the Pan-Pacific Expo, McLaren had a problem, she says.
“Bennett had created a compact fairground with huge buildings that could feel overpowering when you walked by, just like being in downtown Manhattan,” she says.
To solve his problem, he cleverly planted trees in a graduated manner from the building down to the walkway.
And, in what is a foreshadowing of the now-popular trend of vertical gardening, McLaren built huge frames to screen the fairgrounds from the bay for blocks, installed irrigation and planted them with ice plant.
“It looked like an ivy-covered arch and it was all that people were talking about,” she says.
It went well with the idea that the Palace of Fine Arts was designed to look like a Grecian ruin, which McLaren enhanced with creeping vines.
The lagoon, which predated the expo, exuded a sense of informality and naturalism that began to change American’s taste from the formal, Victorian mosaic, or geometric, garden style that they were used to seeing.
In 2001, the U.S.’s membership in the Bureau of International Expositions became inactive apparently because of a lack of funding. Still, Maloney says, “San Francisco lobbies hardest to bring the World’s Fair back to the United States.”
Just what new inspirations would be on the landscape if the city succeeded?
PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday and also on her blog at DesignSwirl.net. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield, CA 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.
if you go
What: “World’s Fair Gardens: Shaping American Landscapes”
Where: Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio, 104 Montgomery St., San Francisco
When: 6 to 8 p.m. June 20
Admission: $40
Information: 441-4300; www.gardenconservancy.org
