Celebrating The 2015 Panama-Pacific International Exposition Centennial

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, with great pride I join my constituents and all San Francisco Bay Area residents in celebration of the 2015 Panama-Pacific International Exposition Centennial--our yearlong civic celebration to commemorate the Exposition's historic significance and reflect on its legacy.

One hundred years ago San Francisco welcomed nearly 20 million visitors from across the nation and around the world to witness its rebirth after the devastating 1906 Earthquake and fire and its emergence as a global city.

Six hundred acres along the western waterfront of the Marina District became the site for the ``Jewel City''. Eleven Beaux-Arts Palaces were built that contained 21 international pavilions. Beyond the impressive architecture were exhibitions of the new technologies of the day--cars, airplanes, telephones, motion pictures.

Most beloved of the surviving structures is the Palace of Fine Arts--an exquisite and sublime Greco-Romanesque rotunda designed by celebrated architect Bernard Maybeck. Other surviving landmarks include a Municipal Auditorium, known today as the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium that instilled great civic pride and optimism in a dispirited population.

The Panama-Pacific International Exhibition established our City as an economic and cultural powerhouse, illustrating our leadership in science, industry and innovation. It was a grand showcase of human achievement in the sciences, engineering, architecture and the arts. It was a monumental display of, not only San Francisco's vision, imagination and innovation, but its confidence and faith in the future.

San Francisco today is still regarded as an optimistic and audacious city, a city of dreamers and innovators, much like the pioneers and visionaries of 1915. And as we celebrate the centennial of this great moment in our city's history, we are overjoyed that more than thirty-five Bay Area cultural, civic and business organizations will participate in the centennial's events, exhibitions and activities.

Congratulations and our deepest gratitude to The California Historical Society, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, the Maybeck Foundation, Innovation Hangar, and all the other contributing partners and sponsors for this historic commemoration and extravaganza.

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