Racing Down the Avenue of the Palms at PPIE in 1915

For those of you who like fast cars or slow palm trees, here is a video of the Vanderbilt cup race in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Read about this race here and scan down to the bottom to see the route on the map. Part of the race was down the Avenue of the Palms. At 0:14, they are probably at the southeast corner of the Palace of Varied Industries! Those little buildings are refreshment kiosks. Here's a night-time photo of that corner.




And if you watched that Vanderbilt movie, this Charlie Chaplin / Mabel Normand movie might have come up as a suggested next movie. Mabel at the Wheel was made the year before Chaplin came to Niles. So if you need more racing cars, it's for you. There is a blog on the 1914 Vanderbilt Cup race in Santa Monica as well.

"Grown Folks at School" - Hugo de Vries in California 1904

"Group of Distinguished Professors
in the Botanitcal Gardens of the University of California"
There was Professor Arrhenius, Professor de Vries,
Professor Hilgard, Dr. Loeb, Professor Wickson,
Dr. Loughridge, Miss Palmer, Dr. MacCallum,
Henri T.A. Hus, Dr. Osterhout, Arnold Stubenrauch 

From "Grown Folks at School; Interesting and Significant Results of the Recent Summer Session, University of California " in Sunset Magazine, November 1904.

Landscape Plan for PPIE

Now that I know what it takes to create a landscape plan, it's a hoot to see the plan for PPIE. At the California Historical Society exhibit "City Rising" the landscape plan for PPIE is hung on a wall in the main room. The tiny signature on right? Looks like it was approved by J. McLaren. Or maybe it's signed by his son, Donald McLaren, with a skipping pen. Fred Hammerstrom was Donald McLaren's draftsman.

Visit the gardens behind the Palace of Horticulture

From UCSC

This is one of the places I would have visited frequently at PPIE to see what was growing. I will start parking photos of the gardens as I find them.

• The George Eastman house has an outstanding Autochrome photo of the south-east portion of the gardens, next to the Sugar Pine House.

My Favorite by-the-fireside PPIE books

...that is if the weather weren't so nice.

Alameda County Day at PPIE

If I had been around in 1915, I would have gone to the opening day of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. On February 20th, I would have been there, along with 255,000 of my closest friends.

Later I would have gone as often as I could, maybe every weekend, because there was so much to see in the Palaces and in the Zone. I would have stayed to see the lights and the airplane stunts at night.

And especially I would have gone on June 10th. That was Alameda County Day. I certainly would not have missed it. The Oakland Tribune ran advertisements for weeks telling me that Alameda County Day was coming.

Star Wars on the Harbor 1915 style

My hand-tinted photo of 1915 crane

I was looking through an Alameda County glossy brochure (1915) that might have been printed for PPIE (reference below). I was surprised to see this picture of an enormous lumber handling crane.

For years, there has been a rumor that the gigantic container cranes at the Port of Oakland were the inspiration for the Star Wars All-Terrain Armored-Transports (AT-ATs).