Heritage of an Exposition

How the architecture of the Panama-California Exposition, which influenced the appearance of all California, flowed from designs of famed buildings in historic Spain, Mexico and Italy

An inspiration for a building even came from Italy. In its early centuries Verona in northern Italy, which likes to point out to tourists the supposed balcony and tomb of Juliet, had an obsession for arches and vaults.

For the exposition Frank P. Allen Jr. created one of its most beautiful buildings by borrowing from Verona the high arches of its municipal buildings, the picturesqueness of the Venetian style as represented by a jewel of the Renaissance, the Loggia del Consiglio, shown in the photo below, and overlaid it all with Spanish-Colonial ornamentation.

The exposition building, shown above, stood on the north side of Plaza de Panama, and was replaced by the Fine Arts Gallery.