Laura Ackley, author of San Francisco’s Jewel City, leads a whirlwind visual tour of the amazing innovations in lighting, color, and design created for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. From its brilliantly coordinated use of color and its spectacular designs (such as the shimmering Tower of Jewels) to the battery of colored spotlights painting pictures in the city’s famous fog, the fair dazzled visitors and set the standard for decades to come. The talk includes a discussion of Worlds’ Fairs prior to 1915, and is illustrated using photographs, stereoviews, postcards, maps, newspaper illustrations, architectural renderings, and lantern slides.

Ackley holds graduate degrees in architecture from Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley. Her book, “San Francisco’s Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915,” co-published by Heyday and the California Historical Society, will be available for purchase and signing at the talk.

Presented by the Presidio Trust in association with PPIE 100, a citywide centennial celebration of the 1915 PPIE, which took place in part on the Presidio grounds.