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American Simulacrum. San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts & Golden Gate Bridge.

American Simulacrum. San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts & Golden Gate Bridge.

Shot 2019. Music - 'Return to Now' by Joanne Stack. The Palace of Fine Arts was one of ten palaces at the heart of the Panama-Pacific Exhibition. For a time the Palace housed a continuous art exhibit, and during the Great Depression, artists were commissioned to replace the decayed Robert Reid murals on the ceiling of the rotunda. During World War II, it was requisitioned by the military for storage of trucks and jeeps. At the end of the war, when the United Nations was created in San Francisco, limousines used by the world's statesmen came from a motor pool there. From 1947 on the hall was put to various uses: as a city Park Department warehouse; as a telephone book distribution center; as a flag and tent storage depot; and even as temporary Fire Department headquarters. While the Palace had been saved from demolition, its structure was not stable. As a result of the construction and vandalism, by the 1950s the simulated ruin was in fact a crumbling ruin. In 1964, the original Palace was completely demolished, with only the steel structure of the exhibit hall left standing. The buildings were then reconstructed until 1974 in permanent, light-weight, poured-in-place concrete, and steel I-beams were hoisted into place for the dome of the rotunda. All the decorations and sculpture were constructed anew. The only changes were the absence of the murals in the dome, two end pylons of the colonnade, and the original ornamentation of the exhibit hall. In 1969, the former Exhibit Hall became home to the Exploratorium interactive museum, and, in 1970, also became the home of the 966-seat Palace of Fine Arts Theater. In 2003, the City of San Francisco along with the Maybeck Foundation created a public-private partnership to restore the Palace and by 2010 work was done to restore and seismically retrofit the dome, rotunda, colonnades and lagoon. In January 2013, the Exploratorium closed in preparation for its permanent move to the Embarcadero. In April 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, plans were announced to convert the Palace of Fine Arts into a temporary shelter for 162 homeless people. The decision was reversed shortly afterwards, following protests by residents of the neighboring wealthy Marina neighborhood and concerns that the lodging conditions would be inadequate. - Wikipedia
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