1915 World’s Fair: Symbol of San Francisco’s Renaissance from the 1906 Earthquake

by Laurie Thompson

Tower of Jewels at Night, PPIE, 1915 © Anne T. Kent Calif. Rm

Marin Journal, 6 May 1915

San Francisco Celebrates Rebuilding City Built Anew Is Host to the Entire World at the Greatest of Celebrations

SAN FRANCISCO, April 30. — While the city of San Francisco lay in ruins, and the air still quivered with the heat of its un-extinguished embers, and hundreds of thousands of its people were homeless, its citizens began the planning of the great international exposition. In the fall of 1906, only a few months after the great fire that destroyed the entire business and manufacturing section of the city and much of the residential part, action was taken by the legislature looking toward the holding of an exposition in San Francisco. In December of the same year, an exposition company was incorporated.

Today, only nine years after the great fire, the greatest international exposition in the history of the world is being held in San Francisco.

View of the PPIE at the San Francisco Marina, 1915. Anne T. Kent California Room Collection

It was on April 18, 1906, that an earthquake that damaged the city water mains and shut off the water supply was followed by the fire that within seventy-two hours had laid the city in ruins, wiped out its businesses, rendered homeless a great population of its people and made money so scarce that for weeks millionaire and pauper stood side by side in the bread line….

Military patrolling Montgomery St., S.F., following the 1906 Earthquake. Anne T. Kent California Room Collection

On February 20, 1915, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition threw open its gates to the world -and the world responded.

The city that less than nine years before lay in ashes is today host to the nation and to all nations….

For San Francisco of 1915, the new San Francisco is a bigger, better, more beautiful San Francisco than the old city of ‘Before the Fire.’ It is a richer, more prosperous city, with a larger population, finer buildings, more imposing public improvements…..

Earthquake Refugee Camp in San Francisco following the 1906 Earthquake. Anne T. Kent California Room Collection.

San Francisco, backed by California and the nation, has built the great Exposition not in boastfulness but thankfulness. The lofty towers sparkling in the sunlight, the colossal buildings filled with the best that the world produces, the glittering lagoons, beautiful gardens, exquisite sculpture, but herald to the world that San Francisco has risen from her ashes….

Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.