Culture

Classic San Francisco Competition Guidebooks Reveal A Metropolis on the Rise | by Jeff Miller

Chris Greene

March 22, 2025
2 Min Read

Classic San Francisco Competition Guidebooks Reveal A Metropolis on the Rise | by Jeff Miller

Cowl of the guidebook to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Worldwide Exposition on Treasure Island in 1939 depicts Pacifica, the goddess-like, thematic embodiment of the World’s Truthful and its celebration of San Francisco because the gateway to the Pacific. Photograph Credit score: Jeff Miller

Exposition guidebooks from 1894, 1915, and 1939 seize an unbridled exuberance that San Francisco would do effectively to revive.

The doom-spinning about 2024 San Francisco is previous and drained information. However there’s one other form of previous information about San Francisco that deserves a contemporary look.

Memento guides from town’s Midwinter Worldwide Exposition in 1894, the Panama-Pacific Worldwide Exposition in 1915, and the Golden Gate Worldwide Exposition in 1939 reveal a metropolis certain about its future and its place on the world stage. Maybe what this memorabilia represents— minus the cultural triumphalism — may assist set off a Twenty first-century revival of comparable, grand civic moments?

Within the meantime, listed here are some photos culled from the three guidebooks that showcase the younger metropolis’s exuberance and self-confidence.