A 1915 program for the Panama Pacific International Exposition, showing the Tower of Jewels, set with 102,000 'novagems' of Czech crystal, lit by 50 arc lamps. Behind is the Rainbow Scintillator, the first use of searchlights for entertainment, as a cadre of Marines swung multi-colored lights in coordinated patterns at night. Spectacle!
100 years ago, San Francisco was a new city. As with most cities, it was built atop older cities, and the terrific shaking and subsequent fire of 1906 was, while dramatic, merely the latest in a string of disastrous fires destroying the city, ever since the the former
Spanish Mission outpost became a burgeoning port servicing the
Gold Rush of 1849 (which is when my own family arrived). The city was built not only over the ashes of its former self, but also the very ships which delivered thousands to the maw of Gold Fever. Entire crews jumped ship to try their luck at mining, and the harbor grew a forest of masts from abandoned ships, an ironic contrast to the recently deforested hills and islands around the Bay. Today, every new hi-rise downtown schedules a few months for archeologists to clear out the Clipper ship carcasses used as landfill for what was to become our downtown.
The PPIE almost finished - note no Golden Gate Bridge - that didn't go up for another 20 years. The bottom left of the photo shows The Zone, and clearly shows the scale of the open-topped Race for Life motordrome - huge! The Tower of Jewels is at the top left...
The '
06 Quake was different from previous disasters, as the city had an opportunity to establish building codes for earthquake safety, and reinvent itself as it saw fit. My great-grandfather was a developer on the Van Ness corridor, the new artery from the Bay to City Hall, and built a few of the impressive reinforced-concrete auto dealerships which still stand, although few still sell cars. Our family legacy included the first Ford dealership on the west coast, a lovely 4-storey concrete building with floor-to-ceiling industrial glazing, which I longed to inhabit in my post-college days. But that's another tale.
The PPIE from the other direction, showing the color-coordinated exteriors of the buildings, a pink faux travertine made of a new plaster/marble mix. Bernard Maybecks' Palace of Fine Arts is at right, and the only building still standing from the PPIE.
2015 is the Centennial year for the
1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), and lots of attention has been focused on the Expo in local museums and books. The enormous Exposition was built over the Harbor View neighborhood (now called the Marina), which was a squatter's tent camp on swampy marshland, just past the grazing pastures of Cow Hollow. City fathers - notably our incredibly corrupt
mayor 'Sunny Jim' Rolph - devised the genius plan to fortify the soil of Harbor View, and build an Expo on the site to celebrate the 1913 opening of the Panama Canal. Of course the Expo really celebrated San Francisco itself, and developers subsequently got rich on the land beneath the Expo, after it was torn down in 1916. Hence the Marina district today, which swells with a tech-yuppie influx and is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in town, regardless of its vulnerability to future earthquakes, due to its landfill foundation.
The start of it all - Excelsior racer Joe Hall circulating at the 90degree mark in the Race for Life at the 1915 PPIE
While researching an article for
The Automobile magazine on two auto races at the PPIE ('Race Around the Rainbow Scintillator', which I'll publish on
TheVintagent.com in December), I came across
Laura Ackley's excellent book 'Jewel City', which contains a postcard of Joe Hill circulating a Wall of Death on an Excelsior racer - which was news to me! Here was photographic evidence of a a very early Wall right in my home town, in the middle of the PPIE. Time to hit the library...
The exterior of the Race for Life concession in the middle of The Zone at the PPIE - quite a thrill for $0.10. Note the plaster racers at the top of the facade, and the mural showing the cars at vertical. One of the racers stands outside. (Courtesy SF History Center, SF Public Library)
Outside the central fantasy village of the PPIE - the 'Jewel City' of travertine and sparkling lights - was a funfair called The Zone, with dozens of concessions, rides, and attractions. Within The Zone was the Race for Life, which according to fairground plans was a 40' diameter wooden 'two stage' bowl track, over which both cars and motorcycles sped. Photographs show the wooden walls banking in 4 stages, the two widest sections at 78degrees an a fully vertical 90degrees, just below the spectator railing. While the Excelsior postcard is colorized and shows little detail, a never-before published photo shows an Indian racers near the top of the Wall...it had been mis-labeled as a 'bicycle going at 90 degrees', and hadn't yet been digitized in their archives. No wonder it hadn't been discovered by the 'Net hounds; it pays to do a little footwork, and there are enormous photo archives at libraries and universities worldwide, waiting to be scanned.
A lovely c.1914 Indian board track racer, its rider, and what looks like a 1913 Stutz 'white squadron' racer on a turntable outside the Race for Life concession.
archives also revealed the facade of the Race for Life, and a rough scale drawing of the layout. Two postcards gave examples of the motorcycles used - an Excelsior ridden by Joe Hall, and an Indian, both ca.1914 machines, and both full-on board track racers. The cars used appear to be c.1913/14 Stutz racers, and advertisements painted around the entry claimed the vehicles hit
'100mph! Time it!'...which was of course nearly impossible with a stopwatch. There's no doubt the vehicles used in the Race for Life were capable of such speeds, being 'last year's racers', even though ~30mph is enough to keep a vehicle perpendicular. Still, the thrill a genuine racing car or motorcycle speeding just beneath your feet feels like 'the ton' even today! And counts for the enduring appeal of Walls worldwide.
From the grand plan of the PPIE, giving the scale of the Race for Life within The Zone at the PPIE. The track looks to be 40' diameter, with a canvas roof in case of rain. (Courtesy SF History Center, SF Public Library)
The Wall of Death phenomenon is an outgrowth of board tracks used by bicycles, motorcycles, and cars, although it was cyclists who started canting their tracks to increasingly steep angles in the 1890s, as tracks went indoors to smaller venues, and banking was required. Truly vertical bicycle tracks appeared by around 1900 - these were no longer for competition, and were strictly fairground attractions. Fairground motordromes with cars and motorcycles appeared around 1910, and their tracks grew increasingly steep, with vehicles circulating at 60-70degree banking as a kind of miniature board track race, with coordinated tricks and choreographed 'races'.
1915 is generally cited as the origin date for a truly vertical, motorized Wall of Death, as such an attraction opened on Coney Island that year.
Likely the very same Indian racer as seen above, in circulation. A lovely shot from 1915...
But not much happens on Coney Island in February, in fact the boardwalk and funfair are seasonal, opening in Spring, while over in California we enjoy mild weather and year-round attractions...like the Race for Life, which opened on February 20th. It seems likely the Race for Life predates the Coney Island attraction, and the documentation I've found from PPIE archives is more extensive than any other Wall of Death evidence from the era. The Race for Life could well predate the Wall of Death, and be the true origin of today's legacy of excellent, traveling Walls, which still thrill spectators at shows around the world.
By The Vintagent
