1. See Marvin Nathan, "San Francisco's Fin de Siècle Bohemian Renaissance," California History, Volume LXI,                              No. 3 (Fall, 1982), 196-209.

2. San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 1893, page 1.

3. These cards could well presage the New York vs. California debates that continue to rage today.

4. Official History of the California Midwinter International Exposition (H. S. Crocker Company: San Francisco, 1895), page 37.

5. San Francisco Call July 14, 1893, page 4.

6. See Raymond Clary, The Making of Golden Gate Park: The Early Years: I865-1906 (California Living Books: San Francisco, 1980), page 112. The newsboys were properly acknowledged for their modest contribution. On March 30, 1894, they had their own parade, which began in the downtown area and concluded at the fairgrounds. See the Riverside Daily Press, March 30, 1894, page 3.

7. Sometimes unlikely historical accidents become a mainstay of tradition. The outer buttressing of the Parisian Palace of Industry was a result of a failure of nerve on the part of the designers. Afraid that the slender iron supports would not sustain the heavy sheets of glass, they buttressed the exterior with stone casings. The San Francisco Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building was sheathed only with staff, a kind of plaster-of-Paris useful for temporary covering. Staff has little or no structural integrity. And by 1894, the structural capabilities of iron were well-known, and stone buttressing was unnecessary. But because that Parisian Palace of Industry had had a monumental wall, San Francisco's Palace would have its wall, too.

8. Official History, page 51.

9. We have been unable to find records of any public debate over the destruction of the Fine Arts Palace in 1928. The newspapers are silent. The Park Commissioners did not even take out a demolition permit from the city-a usual requirement in such matters. They must have felt the act was so self-evidently necessary and agreed-upon that city officials need not be notified. It is likely that by 1928 the Egyptian Revival style was not only out of favor, it was openly ridiculed, and stood as an embarrassing reminder of the quirky taste of city officials at the end of the nineteenth century. In addition, the structure leaked constantly, and some of the works therein (notably the stuffed animals) had suffered damage. Mulgardt's new de Young Museum, far larger and more in accordance with the taste of the 1920s, rendered the old building superfluous.

10. Bonet, the designer of the Tower, may have secretly incorporated his opinion of the Midwinter Fair into his structure. The Bonet Tower was 266 feet high. The Eiffel Tower, constructed in 1889 for the Exposition Universelle in Paris, rose 300 meters into the sky. "Thus are these American ventures to our French," Bonet may be saying. "As three hundred feet is to three hundred meters, so is America to France!"

11. Official History, page 155.

12. Official History, page 131.

13. Official Catalogue: A Reference Book of Exhibitors and Exhibits (San Francisco, 1894), page 20.

14. See Arthur Chandler, "The Towers of San Francisco," World's Fair, Summer, 1984.

15. The Wasp Midwinter Edition, Volume XXXII, No. 4 (January 27, 1894), page 10. After the close of the exposition, Dante's Inferno was purchased at a bargain rate by a local barowner. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on October 22, 1894: "Dame's Inferno was bought by Haggarry-the same Haggarry whose Shebeon just outside the gate at the State University grounds had made his name a common thing in the petty criminal records of Berkeley. His bill of sale read: `Hell and its present contents $12.50.' Temperance people will say that the purchase was appropriate. The dragon at the entrance has lost its fury. His teeth are dropping out. The iconoclastic carpenters are tearing away his bat-like wings."

16. Ibid.

17. "Hawaii Village: A Fair in Itself," The Wasp, op. cit., page 10.

18. "Old Maid's Diary," The Illustrated Wasp, May 26, 1894, page 12.

19. Mendocino Beacon, February 3, 1894, page 3.

20. Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1894, page 3.

21. Odd as these organic sculptures might seem to us today, they were a distinct improvement on the Venus de Milo sculpted from a one ton chunk of chocolate that the Americans exhibited in Paris at the 1889 exposition universelle. As the warm days progressed, the confectionery goddess warped and crumpled into a grotesque parody of Greek art. All one French critic could say of the chocolate Venus was that "she is inexpressibly American."

22. Sacramento Daily Record-Union, September 20, 1893, page 2.

23. San Francisco Daily Report, June 5, 1894.

24. San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 1894, page 5.

25. Ibid., page 5. The first "Negro Building" would be erected the next year, 1895, at the Cotton States and International Exhibition, held in Atlanta, Georgia.

26. Ibid.

27. Official History, page 159.

28. Ibid., page 256.

29. San Francisco Examiner, July 1894.

30. See illustrations in the Official History, pages 25 and 165.

31. "Report on the Department of Concessions," Official History, page 235.

32. Official History, page 214.

33. Ibid., page 76

34. Accounts vary as to the actual amount offered by de Young, but all agree that he drove a hard bargain with the Frenchmen.