The Tragedy of Life Without Art – Palace of Fine Arts, Marina District, San Francisco, California

The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck. Maybeck chose the theme of a Roman ruin in the mood of a Piranese engraving along with Greek elements and a reflecting lagoon reminiscent of similar settings in Europe. He said that the Palace of Fine Arts was designed to show "the mortality of grandeur and the vanity of human wishes." Ornamentation includes Ulric Ellerhusen’s unusual inward-looking sculptures of weeping women atop the colonnade of the Palace. They symbolize the sadness and melancholy of life without art.


While most of the exposition was demolished when the exposition ended, the Palace was so beloved that a Palace Preservation League, founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was founded while the fair was still in progress.