Palace of Fine Arts

Set beside a lagoon at the west end of San Francisco's Marina District, this 16.99-acre park contains a domed rotunda, two curving colonnades and a long exhibition building. The complex was rebuilt between 1964 and 1974 from Bernard Maybeck's design for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, after the original plaster-and-wood structures deteriorated and were demolished in 1963-64. The rotunda and colonnades are poured and cast concrete, while the exhibition building keeps its 1915 steel frame under stucco textured to suggest travertine. Details were cast from the originals, though much of the exhibition building's ornament was omitted for cost reasons. The reconstruction was funded before any use was decided, largely through gifts from Walter Johnson, and the building later housed a science museum and a theater. The nomination treats the rebuilt Palace as an example of Beaux-Arts classicism with a high degree of integrity for 1964-1967 and 1973-1974, and as a widely recognized San Francisco landmark.