A Closer Look: The Architecture Of The Legion Of Honor

Welcome to the Legion of Honor. This beautiful building is the sister museum to the de Young and Golden Gate Park. And I think you all know that these two museums and their collections comprise the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. My name is Sheila Presley. I oversee interpretation, education, and public programs here at the museums. I am really delighted to see all of you in the audience for our Closer Look lecture series. As I bet you know as well, on the second Saturday of each month, one of our Legion curators takes a deep dive into one aspect of our collection and share stories around the collections. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce David Oakey, our curator in charge of European decorative arts and sculpture. David joined the museums about a year and a half ago, bringing with him a very distinguished background in scholarship and curatorial practice. He began his career at the British Royal Collection before serving as director of research for a leading New York art and antiquaries dealership. Later, he was a curator for a very major private collection. He holds degrees from University College and Buckingham University, and is currently completing a PhD at the University of Cambridge. David is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a trustee of the Furniture History Society. He has lectured internationally and published widely on decorative arts and historic interiors. In his relatively short time here, David has already made significant contributions to the scholarship of the collections he oversees. These span the late medieval period through modern times and include furniture, porcelain, period rooms, and sculpture. Today, however, David is turning our attention to this magnificent building, the Legion of Honor, its architecture, its history, and the fascinating story of the Parisian palace that inspired it. Please welcome me in joining David Oki. Thank you, Sheila, for that kind introduction. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to begin by extending my gratitude to Orozio Garcia and Rosario Sotelo in the programming team for organizing this event and our AV specialists today, Michael and Sean. And thank you all for being here today. I know the weather outside is very warm and sunny, and I really appreciate you coming here to sit in the dark for an hour to talk about architecture with me. And I'm very grateful to present one of these Closer Look lectures, which is such a brilliant opportunity for us as curators to focus on one aspect of our work here that especially interests us. And today, rather than focus on the art inside the museum, I thought it would be fun to take a closer look at the museum itself. Much loved since its inauguration in 1924, this building has become one of the architectural icons of San Francisco. But familiarity can sometimes make architecture strangely invisible. We know the facade, the courtyard, and the colonnade so well that we stop looking at them closely. Why does this building have such presence? It is monumental, certainly, but somehow remains approachable and enticing. Why have generations of San Franciscans responded to it so warmly? And what else can the architecture tell us that is not immediately obvious? So let's begin with a recap of the history of this building, which many of you will already be familiar with. In 1915, our museum's founder, Alma de Bretville-Spreckels, visited San Francisco's Panama Pacific International Exposition and was enamored of its French pavilion. That building was itself, apparently, a three-quarter scale replica of the Palais de la Légion d'honneur in Paris on the left bank of the Seine. Alma was so captivated that she persuaded her husband, the sugar magnate, Adolphe Bretville-Spreckels, to recreate the pavilion on a permanent basis as a new art museum for San Francisco. The First World War delayed construction, however, and ground was not broken until 1921. Three years later, on Armistice Day, now known as Veterans Day, the 11th of November, 1924, the California Palace of the Légion d'honneur finally opened its doors. It commemorated the 3,600 Californians who had lost their lives in France during the First World War, but it also celebrated French art and culture, and particularly the sculpture of Auguste Rodin, which Alma had purchased with the assistance of the American dancer, Loie Fuller, whose work will become a defining feature of the new museum. And for more on that aspect of the story, I highly recommend my colleague Jeffrey Freeman's excellent recent talk on Rodin at the Légion of Honor, now available on YouTube. The Spreckels' commissioned architect, George Appelgarth, to design their new museum, about whom I will speak more later. You may have seen the Palais de la Légion d'honneur in Paris because, I expect, as keen art fans, you might have visited its rather larger neighbor, the Musée d'Orsay, built in 1900. Known as the Palais de la Légion d'honneur since 1804, when it was acquired by Napoleon Bonaparte to be used as the headquarters for the new order of honor that he founded two years prior, it was, in fact, originally constructed 20 or so years before that, in 1782 to 87, as a palatial private residence, the Hôtel de Sarm, a name by which it is often still referred to. And at this point, I should mention that the term hotel in the 18th century did not mean what it does today, but instead a grand urban private mansion. Although undeniably grand and impressive, the Palais de la Légion d'honneur in Paris is not huge. The power of this type of architecture to impart impact and grandeur, despite often of actually being quite modest size, has always fascinated me. And this might be why, when I came here for my interview for this job and stood in front of the museum with my future colleagues and was told the familiar story that the Légion of Honor was effectively a three-quarter replica of the Hôtel de Sarm, I said, are you sure? It looks bigger to me. And everyone looked at me as if I was crazy. And I remember thinking, well done, David, you've got things off to a great start here. In fact, I can confirm today that our museum is a bit bigger. The Hôtel de Sarm is around 170 feet wide, whilst the corresponding facade here is 195. Our Légion is deeper, too, about 300 feet, whilst the Paris building measures 260. There is even an extra column in our screen when compared to the original. Where did the three-quarter scale myth come from? Well, when I mentioned this discrepancy to a colleague here at the museum, he said to me with confidence, oh, that'll be because Americans can't use the metric system. I have no comment on that theory, of course. So although our founding story as it stands is, of course, largely true, it perhaps won't do any harm to have a closer look at it. Rather than starting with today's building and working backwards, I want to take you right back to the very beginning, to Paris in the 1780s, and then follow this architecture story forward until we arrive back here in the museum we see today. This is an astonishing journey. It's an architectural format that has wended its way through several different eras and manifestations propelled by its inherent and timeless beauty. The first part of the talk will be about how and why the building took on its distinctive form, and the second will be more about its symbolism and what it came to mean. So to fully understand why the museum looks the way it does, as I said, we need to go right back to a different world. Paris in the heady and fascinating decade or so before the French Revolution in 1789. And I'd like to introduce you to Frederick III, Prince of Sam Kierberg, who was born in 1744. As a reminder of just how close the creation of the Hôtel de Sarm was to the great political upheavals of the French Revolution, it's probably worth beginning with the end of his story. Frederick would die at the guillotine in 1794 at the age of 50. But in the years preceding the revolution, no one would have dreamt that this terrible turn of events was just around the corner. There's perhaps one obvious first question to ask. Prince of where? Frederick's German-speaking home principality of Sarm Kierberg was tiny. Its territories lay approximately 40 miles from the French border in the direction of Frankfurt. It was centered on the tiny town of Cairn and was one of the many small states that formed the political patchwork known as the Holy Roman Empire. Frederick was referred to as a prince étranger, one of several foreign princes in the orbits of the French courts. And although he was under the protection of the King of France, he was officially a prince and head of state in his own right. Frederick and his wife were well-established in the aristocratic social circles of the time. His sister, Marie-Maximilienne Louise, had, in 1763, married Jean-Bretagne Charles de la Tromoy, Duke of Tours, who were also busy renovating their family home in the early 1780s, the Hotel de Tromoy, including a room you will recognize, our very own Salon Doré upstairs. If the exterior design of our museum is a perfect example of late Ancien Régime architecture, our salon is the ideal interior complement. Frederick typifies so much about this fascinating era. He was socially ambitious. In 1779, on his father's death, he wrote to the Comte de Vergennes, France's foreign minister, requesting that the family's privileges continue and made sure to stress his links to other illustrious aristocratic and royal houses. Even at the age of 24, he told his mother, establishing status in the world has become a necessity for me. He was commercially ambitious too, like many aristocrats of the day, Frederick saw his social position as a route to profit and around this time threw himself into a canal project linking the town of Provence, east of Paris, to the Seine, one he clearly expected to pay handsomely. He cultivated an enlightened sensibility. He corresponded with Voltaire, visited Rousseau, and amassed a prodigious library, and in 1785, even sponsored a short-lived literary journal, the Journal du Kern. These sympathies ran deep enough that he would be one of the most senior aristocrats to side with the French Revolution when it broke out with eventual fatal consequences, as we've heard. And he was reckless with money. He was considered unreliable at gambling and lost immense sums, the later writer Edouard Fournier recalled. No one dared question his wit, but they denied that he possessed common sense. Even at 24, he was writing to reassure his mother, you will no longer say, my dear mama, that I throw everything out the window, reckless, evidently, from an early age. In 1779, he acceded to his princely throne, and in 1781, he married a German princess. By the start of the 1780s, crowned, newly married, in his early 40s, Frederick was finally poised to make his mark. And all of these traits we just discussed would shape how he chose to do it. What could he do to make this impact? There was no Instagram, and you couldn't commission a reality TV show, but one thing you could do was build a house that would astonish and amaze. And if you built it in the right place and made it sufficiently spectacular, thousands and thousands of people would see it. These years were, in fact, an undeniable high point in the history of French domestic architecture. A new generation of private houses became some of the most innovative and conspicuous architectural impressions of the age. And I particularly like this frontispiece from a major architectural compendium of the time, where the personification of genius, descending from above, carrying a platter laden with the latest fashionable houses, literally presenting them as if they were one of the greatest achievements of the age. And they were. Buildings like this, these became some of the new must-see attractions of Paris, discussed endlessly by foreign visitors and French critics alike. In the collectible architectural compendia of the time, such as the Vues Pittoresque des Princes Poets et des Filles de Paris, as seen here, alongside the usual sites, Notre-Dame and the great monuments of the monarchy, we increasingly see these new houses, too. They had obtained a legendary status immediately. And here we can see our Hôtel de Sarm. But alongside it, we can see the Hôtel Guimard by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, built about a decade before the Sarm. It belonged to the celebrated dancer, Mademoiselle Guimard, and was intended as a temple of Tepsicore, Tepsicore being the muse of dance and goddess of music and chorus. The decoration made the association unmistakable. It included a sculpture of Tepsicore crowned by Apollo, while a bas-relief showed the muse riding in a chariot drawn by Cupid, surrounding by the cunts and wild animals, with the graces of choreography following behind. In a sense, Guimard had turned her own identity into architecture. The house even featured its own 500-seat theater, bigger than this one. A contemporary critic wrote, and I quote, if love had borne the cost of the house, pleasure itself had drawn the plan, and that divinity never had, in Greece, a temple worthier of a cult. And I also like this image of the house, which shows it revealed behind the demolished structure of a much older-fashioned house, and you can tell it's much older-fashioned because of the high mansard roof. Another spectacular example, completed only a few years before work began in the Hôtel de Sarm, was the Hôtel Taluson, built for the enormously wealthy Swiss banking family of that name, also by Ledoux. What made this house remarkable was the way in which it was approached through an enormous arch, which framed the distant building almost like a picture. And this brings us to another crucial development of the period, the growing fashion for the picturesque garden, and how architecture should interact with the landscape. The process of seeing this house was deliberately choreographed, the experience of approaching and discovering its architecture carefully considered. The Hôtel Taluson is nearly always depicted from this viewpoint, framed by its monumental entrance arch. Architecture, garden, and viewpoint are combined to staggering effect. And it's even perched on its own little rockery arrangement. And it had this feature, little tunnels where the carriages would enter below the facade so as not to diminish its impact. And this reminds us of something else worth noticing about both these houses. Despite their grandeur, they are less like traditional urban palaces rather than large garden pavilions. They're relatively low, self-contained buildings surrounded by open space, and most importantly, designed to be seen from multiple viewpoints. All of these ideas of identity, visibility, and picturesque effect were clearly being taken into account as Frederick considered what he would build. Prince Frederick purchased the site for his new house on the 12th of July, 1782. Then, as it is now, this was prime Parisian real estate. Directly on the Quai d'Orsay, the new palace would face the Seine with uninterrupted views across the river towards the Tuileries Gardens beyond. And this is a plan from later that year, in December 1782, in the Archives Nationales in Paris. And you can see here, it relates to an agreement the prince arranged with the city to surrender a portion of the plot as space to be used as a new road along the quayside. But of course, in the process, sweeping away the existing small buildings and ensuring an open space in front of its river facade. Right from the get-go, the sight lines from the river were clearly of the utmost importance. As well as competing with the newer generation of houses built in Paris of the kind we just looked at, whatever Frederick built here would have to compete with some of the most prestigious existing legacy aristocratic houses of the era. Some already occupied the Quai d'Orsay itself, just along the river. The Palais Bourbon and the Hôtel de l'Orsay had long faced the Seine, together creating one of the most impressive aristocratic ensembles in Paris. This was a really high bar. Frederick employed the architect Pierre Rousseau, who was well-established among the highest tier of the French architectural community, and had enjoyed a lengthy period of study at the French Academy in Rome in the 1770s. The Hôtel de Seine would become his most famous project, although contemporaries suggested that the prince himself played a remarkably active role in the design. A fellow architect of the era, Jacques-Guillaume Legrand, tells us, and I quote, this is the architect Rousseau who directs the work, but if you consulted the prince's secretary or his servants, they would tell you in confidence that Rousseau had done nothing except according to the designs of his highness. The new palace immediately attracted attention as it rose in Paris during the 1780s. It cost a fortune. According to the memoirs of its architect, construction and interior decoration alone exceeded 600,000 livres, making it one of the most ambitious and expensive architectural projects undertaken in the city at the time. We've already heard how Frederick was known for his fondness for gambling, and indeed his huge gambling debts, and we can be assured that the Hôtel de Seine was his biggest gamble of all. So what did Frederick and his architect Rousseau come up with? Armed with this important context we've just been discussing, let's have a closer look at the key architectural features of this building, and in the process, also think about how these have been reused here in San Francisco. Firstly, this theme of visibility we've already discussed was central. If we approached many Parisian houses of the 17th or earlier 18th century, this is what we would encounter, a wall. To see the house, the visitor must pass through a gate, enter a courtyard, and be admitted into a carefully controlled private world. This architectural format does not care what the public thinks. The only opinions that matter are those of the important people invited inside. And there are still so many of these blank walls and large gatehouses on the streets of Paris today, and most notably the Hôtel de Sabise in the Marais district, illustrated here. But the Hôtel de Seine, in stark contrast to these earlier houses, possessed not one, but two highly expressive and visible public facades. And let's look first at its street facade. How different is this from the example just now? You might not be able to enter the house, but the colonnaded screen and gateway ensures you can see it. The screen still marks a boundary and controls access, but it also turns the house into a spectacle. Despite all the grandeur and ceremony, the building presents itself to the public rather than retreating behind walls, and something in this almost feels democratic. The screen entices, it creates curiosity, layering one set of columns over another, like a three-dimensional stage set. And beyond lies a Paris style, a continuous row of columns in an open courtyard, redolent of ancient Roman palaces, a liminal space, outside yet enveloped by the architecture. There's an intriguing openness, which is arguably even more effective here in its use at our museum in San Francisco, where it can be appreciated at a longer distance. This surely is one of the most defining architectural features of both buildings. At the center of the screen is a forceful essay in a severe neoclassical style popular at this moment, a triumphal arch, which leads into a colonnaded courtyard. The form, although much simplified, draws on classical precedents such as the Archetitus in Rome. There, such arches commemorated great events, above all military victories, and were closely tied to the achievements of a particular individual. Any visitor to this house would thus be reminded of Frederick's apparent achievements and importance from the moment they passed the threshold. The message is furthered by the arch's sculptural decoration, and I've chosen to use the versions here in San Francisco as my illustrations, as they're more accessible for me, and they're so beautifully rendered. Various sculptors were involved in the exterior decoration of the Hotel de Sarm, and indeed on this arch. Above the entranceway, we have two winged figures of victory that hold wreaths and blow-on trumpets, drawn from familiar ancient prototypes of the kind shown on the Archetitus and the Arch of Constantine in Rome. These were conceived of by Jean-Guillaume Moix, who had been confirmed a sculptor to the king in 1783. On the inside of the arch are beautifully carved branches of oak and laurel to signal civil and military honor, respectively, and provided by another sculptor, Nicolas Robert Leger. The symbolism of these branches and the figures of victory perfectly suited the building's future use as the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur, and have thus survived. Although if we consult this early watercolor of the façade, we can see the arch was subject to further embellishments by Moix, including two enormous trophies, 11 feet high, and heraldic arrangement atop. In contrast, these elements, which were, of course, too closely associated with Frederick, did not survive the revolution. Another distinguished artist involved in the decoration of the palace was Philippe-Laurent Roland, who in 1782 had become the architect Pierre Rousseau's brother-in-law. In 1783, Roland built for two enormous bas-reliefs, each 21 feet long and five feet high, representing sacrificial processions in the manner of the ancients, intended for the façade on the Rue de Bourbon. The agreed price was 2,000 livres. These were praised by contemporaries for their attempt to recreate the antique style faithfully. According to a contemporary critic, the reliefs revealed a perfect knowledge of antiquity and a thorough study of the sound principles of its art. And here these are compared to the superbly rendered copies on our museum. Moix also contributed one of the most elaborate sculptural details on the outside of the house, the design for a bas-relief to go under the main portico, again carefully reproduced here in San Francisco. Interestingly, it's of a more free-flowing style when compared to Roland's compositions. It depicts the festival of Palaise, otherwise known as the Pirellia, celebrated on the 21st of April in ancient Rome. The sculptor exhibited a terracotta version at the 1783 Salon, which survives today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was also well-received by critics who praised its facility and imagination. The Pirellia was a pastoral festival honoring shepherds and the renewal of nature, but it also marked Rome's birthday. Sacrifice in the service of the state is the primary theme of all three reliefs, and perhaps that gives us some hints of Frederick's perception of his own role. But if a house's street facade was defined by neoclassical severity in the service of aristocratic grandeur, the riverside of the house presented something entirely different, an exercise in a new urban picturesque approach that borrowed, I think, more from the modern generation of Paris townhouses we looked at earlier. The potential of the banks of the River Seine, with their light air and extraordinary long views to showcase new architectural statements, was becoming much better understood at this time, especially in a city still largely defined by constricted, winding medieval streets. This riverfront is defined by its domed bow, a form that during this period seems to borrow something from the garden pavilions then back in fashion, such as this example designed by Hubert Robert in 1784 for the gardens of Jean-Joseph de Laborde's Château de Merriville. It's almost as if one of these fashionable garden temples has been embedded in the facade. And there is also something of this spirit to be found in robust, painted imaginary landscapes of gardens and ruins, such as this example in the Hermitage Museum. Yet, the Corinthian columns and sculptured decoration still make clear this was no mere aristocrat's house, but a reigning prince's. And from the inside, the curved projection turned the principal room into a vantage point for the prince to, in turn, survey the river and the city. The figures around the dome and the busts of Roman emperors that define the sculptured decoration on this facade, however, reach back through the Baroque and Renaissance eras, seasoning the building's neoclassicism with a light touch of French tradition, undoubtedly another ingredient in its success. Leger executed the classical busts found throughout the Hotel de Sarm, the ones on this facade we can see here, and 30 more in the courtyard. The message here is clear. It inserts Frederick into a historical continuum, implying that the man who inhabits this modern house is also heir to the civilizations these figures represent. San Francisco only replicates these busts on the rear facade. There are none to be found in the Court of Honor here. It was Moate who was responsible for one of this facade's most striking elements, the Parnassus of gods that surround the dome. From left to right, as you look up at them, are Apollo, Minerva, Jupiter, Ceres, Mars, and Diana. He supplied six terracotta maquettes for these figures for 288 livres. The Musée de la Légion d'honneur in Paris has four of these. Three were acquired in 1783, and one more recently in 2014. In 1783, another craftsman, Bertolini, charged much more, 1,200 livres, for six six-foot tall terracotta versions based on the maquettes, installing them in position around the dome and applying two coats of stone-colored paint. These are rendered here in San Francisco in much the same way, although these are not the original versions from 1924 when the museum opened. Those succumbed to the harsh sea air by the late 20th century. These are, in fact, replacements made from fiberglass, resin, and pulverized limestone that date from when the museum was refitted in the 1990s. And as an aside, I was excited to find this montage of photographs in our own archives, with a plaque associating it with George Applegarth's office. And these are all photographs relating to this construction of our museum. Most interestingly of all, it includes two shots labeled Moulage, 1920, and if we zoom in, we can see that these faded photographs seem to show the process of taking casts from the Palais d'Islam in Paris, using a scaffold, and then the finishing of the resulting sculpture in a studio. And it's so fascinating to get this glimpse of the process that was used to recreate the sculpture for use here, because the copies on our building are indeed extremely well-executed. This river facade was, in many respects, the real hit at the time, and was already turning heads before it was completed, quite literally, in the case of Thomas Jefferson, who, serving in Paris as American minister, was among its most ardent admirers. In 1787, he wrote to his friend, the Comtesse de Tessay, while at Paris, I was violently smitten with the Hôtel d'Islam, and used to go to the Tuileries almost daily to look at it. The chairlady, inattentive to my passion, never had the complacence to place a chair there, so that sitting on the parapet and twisting my neck around to see the object of my admiration, I generally left it with a torticolli, which means a twisted neck, I think. The building is said to have been an important influence on Jefferson's own self-designed home, Monticello, and in a letter to Pierre-Charles L'Enfant of 10 April, 1791, he was busy planning the new American capital city of Washington, D.C., Jefferson wrote, for the president's house, I should prefer the celebrated fronts of modern buildings, which have already received approbation of all good judges. Such are the Galerie de Louvre, the Gare Noble, and the two fronts of the Hôtel d'Islam. The Hôtel d'Islam has thus often been cited as an influence on the eventual White House, and in fact, on many other buildings too, such as Buckingham Palace, especially John Nash's original garden frontage. Our version of this front gets much less attention these days in San Francisco, overlooking the sixth tee of the Lincoln Park golf course, but wouldn't it be nice if one day it could have more? In 1786, Frederick's palace was just about ready, and he hosted a ball to mark the occasion, inviting 1,000 guests. The Memoirs of the Comte de Tilly recounts, half of Paris flocked there to smother the other half. There were so many people the prince himself didn't know that he jokingly said to me, many of the people here might think I'm invited to the ball. The glory was short-lived. Frederick had massively overstretched himself. The Marquis de Crécy wrote in August 1786, Sam is here trying to sell everything and pouring the ground. Baron de Breteuil maintains that he doesn't have two years left and that the hospital will be his end. In 1791, the situation had gotten so bad that Frederick attempted to dispose of his house via a lottery. After the prince faced the guillotine in 1794, the Somme was rented to a long list of various tenants during the difficult following years. And as we've heard, it wasn't until 10 years later that it was acquired for the use of the Légion d'honneur by the new emperor Napoleon. The Hôtel de Somme built between 1782 and 1787 represents the final phase of architectural innovation under the Ancien Regime in France. And in fact, it's probably the most complete survival example, complete survival of the architecture of this era in Paris. And it's perhaps ironic that it survived because it was a princely house. Its confiscation by the government during the revolution meant that it was not torn down. Many of the other most interesting houses of this era of the kind we mentioned earlier were owned by celebrities and financiers. These stayed in private hands during the revolution and thus often ended up being demolished and their plots redeveloped. All the old orders of chivalry in France had been abolished during the revolution. And on being crowned emperor in 1804, Napoleon decided to create his own system, a new order of chivalry, the Légion d'honneur. In typically Napoleonic fashion, this was a new kind of order where only merit or bravery counted. Under traditional monarchies, orders of chivalry were often limited by religion and rank and came as expressions of favoritism. The Légion d'honneur, by contrast, was open to all. The Hôtel de Sarmes, with its splendid architecture and prominent location, was the ideal choice as a new home for this organization and was adapted for its use by the order by the architect Antoine-François Peyre. The order has persisted throughout all the regime changes that followed and remains of great importance in France today. As discussed above, what is so interesting about the palace's complex splendor and symbolism, or what's so interesting is how the palace's complex splendor and symbolism was redirected towards this new role. The Hôtel de Sarmes evolved into the Palais de la Légion d'honneur with ease, taking on a new powerful symbolism which it continues to hold to this day. Although the palace has suffered through tough times too, and Nadir came during the Paris Commune of 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, when, perceived by the Communards as a symbol of the establishment, it was entirely burnt out, the same moment when the famous Tuileries Palace, located just across the River Seine, was destroyed. But unlike the much larger Tuileries, thanks to support from a public subscription among all recipients of the Légion d'honneur, the Palais was carefully rebuilt to become a symbol of national pride, strength, and continuity during the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries. Although all of the building's original 18th century interiors and the organization's archival records up to that point were lost in this calamity. Buildings like the Palais de la Légion d'honneur saw renewed fame in the late 19th century owing to the rise of photography. These images you can see here were published in 1900 as part of a monograph entirely devoted to the palace with photos by Armand Guérinet, who seems to have made such photographic surveys of architecture a great specialism. And in the archives in the de Jonghe, among Armand de Breville-Spreckel's papers are a series of photographs taken from this publication. By 1900, the Hôtel de Sarmes had become an architectural specimen, a canonical example of the Louis XVI style. And thanks to the new technology of photography, architects and patrons no longer needed to travel to Paris to study the building closely. This is certainly a factor that made the reproduction of historic architecture more straightforward at the time. And another example of the Hôtel de Sarmes' architectural afterlife is the Château de Rochevers-sur-Yvelines built between 1899 and 1904 for Jules Pogez, an enormously successful diamond merchant who obtained French citizenship in 1898. The estate of Rochevers-sur-Yvelines had previously belonged to the Roan family. He commissioned Charles Muez, internationally renowned for his work on the grand hotels, including the Ritz Hotel in Paris and London, to design and build his château. And it might be difficult to appreciate from these photographs, but Rochevers was constructed at approximately twice the scale of the Parisian original, and it's especially apparent from the back. Why did Pogez select this model for his house? By the time, the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur was an architectural embodiment of French prestige and achievement. And for a recently naturalized French citizen, reproducing that building on a former aristocratic estate offered a powerful means of affirming cultural belonging. This architecture surely helped him transform his commercial wealth into social and cultural legitimacy. And just a few years later, this architecture and its symbolism would be deployed again, but on a much more prominent stage, here in San Francisco at the Panama Pacific International Exposition. This World's Fair, held from February 20th to December 4th, 1915, was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. But as the name suggests, it was in fact organized to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914. The fair was constructed on a 636-acre site along the northern shore between the Presidio and Fort Mason, now known as the Marina District. And the Palace of Fine Arts is famously the only surviving element that's still with us today. The design and construction of the French pavilion was overseen by Henri Guillaume, who would go on to assist George Apelgarth at the Légion d'Honneur Museum. Guillaume had significant experience designing pavilions for France at these international fairs, having been involved in the construction of previous structures at London in 1908, Brussels in 1910, and Turin in 1911. Perhaps unsurprisingly, by far the largest single expense of France's participation was this pavilion. The final cost appears to have reached around 742,000 francs, in the region of 4.5 million dollars in today's money. As would be the case with the later construction of our Légion, molds of the sculptural decoration and architectural detailing were taken from the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur in Paris and used to make replicas from staff, kind of temporary architectural plaster to be sent to San Francisco for use on the pavilion. As we heard at the beginning of the talk, much of the existing literature focuses on Alma de Bretville's freckles and how she was enamored of the architecture of the French pavilion. This makes this sound like her decision to build the museum in this format was primarily an aesthetic one, but was it also about what the building signified? Back in 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, France had also built a replica palace as its pavilion, this time a version of the Grand Trianon at Versailles. It's fair to say that this evoked the splendors of the Ancien Régime in France, of Versailles, Louis XIV, and the Bourbon monarchy. The use a decade later of the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur marks a shift. Sure, both buildings are architectural icons of France, but whilst the Grand Trianon represents the glories of the Sun King and the Grand Siècle, the Legion of Honor, in contrast, could represent a more meritocratic and modern idea of the achievements of France in both military and civil spheres. The switch from the Grand Trianon to the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur is, I think, indicative of the times. When you go back and examine the French archives relating to the preparations for the 1915 fair in San Francisco, two major issues become apparent, which were at loggerheads with each other. The first was whether to participate at all, given the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Europe, which, of course, was in the early stages of the dreadful First World War. The most graphic illustration of this are the demands issued by the Ministry of Fine Arts to summon specialists back from the fighting. For example, the architect Jean-Charles de Montanel, who had received the Légion d'Honneur for his work on the French pavilion at St. Louis, which we just saw, and had been involved in plans for San Francisco before the war intervened. The correspondence repeatedly shows the organizers attempting desperately to have him released from military service long enough to travel to San Francisco. Gaston Thompson, Minister of Commerce, wrote to Alexandre Milleron, the Minister of War, to say that the assistance of Monsieur de Montanel is, and I quote, urgently necessary to us to give this undertaking all the grandeur it deserves. His presence in Paris is absolutely indispensable. But his request was refused. Milleron responded, we should not retire those from the front lines who are indispensable for carrying out orders relating to national defense. And the question you might ask then, in light of all these difficulties, why did the French come to the fair at all? With the exception of Belgium, which has given a kind of small concession within the French pavilion, none of the other European belligerents involved in the First World War came to San Francisco. And the reason that comes up again and again in the discussions as justification for French involvement in the fair is the fact that the 1915 exhibition in San Francisco was devised to mark the opening of the Panama Canal. And this was a project which had originally begun life as a French initiative. The original French attempt to build a canal began in 1881 under the diplomat and speculator Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had successfully built the Suez Canal. Although French engineers made progress, eventually excavating over 75 million cubic yards of material they faced insurmountable obstacles, inadequate equipment, landslides, floods, searing heat, and the ravages of malaria and yellow fever. The project collapsed in 1889 due to rampant tropical diseases and severe engineering miscalculations and caused a massive financial bankruptcy. The French had spent about $287 million, which is a mind-boggling amount of money at the time. And the whole debacle was so fraught that it became known evermore as the Scandale de Panama. This isn't something that's often commented on, but it's clearly central. The draft law submitted in June 1914 in the name of President Raymond Poincaré is clear. And he said, the purpose of this exposition is to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, thereby commemorating one of the most significant achievements of our age. France could not remain indifferent to an event that marks the completion of a great undertaking begun by our engineers and brought to completion by the Americans. And perhaps even more relevant to us today is what the American ambassador to Paris, Mairon T. Herrick, said at a meeting of a French delegation that visited San Francisco in advance of the fair. He pronounced, when one constructs a vast building, it is the architect's genius that conceives the plan. And it is he who makes the enterprise possible and brings it to completion. We could say from this point of view that France was the architect of the Panama Canal and the United States merely carried it out its construction. Consequently, the San Francisco exposition must celebrate French genius no less than American for these are the two great nations that cooperated in the realization of the canal. And after the First World War began, there were also arguments that France was now defending the cause of civilization and that the country must use the San Francisco Fair to reclaim the permanence of its ideals and vitality of the nation and not appear to withdraw from the world. But the Panama Canal was of central importance, at least in the early stages of the decision. And what better representation of French military and civic achievement, ingenuity, resilience, and pride could there be than the Légion d'honneur? It was the ideal symbol to remind visitors to the 1915 exhibition, both of the central French involvement in the story of the Panama Canal and the crucial role France was playing in the terrible war ravaging Europe at the time. And I do wonder without all this context and whether this architecture would have still arrived in San Francisco. And there's some other quite interesting further dimensions to this. William Nelson Cromwell was a major American attorney. It was he who lobbied the American government to take over the push to build the Panama Canal from the French. And in the process, it's thought to have collected about $2.8 million, which is about 70 million today, which was the largest legal fee ever paid at the time. The circles he moved in are remarkably familiar. He was friends with Queen Maria of Romania and the American dancer, Loie Fuller, who were both very good friends with Alma Spreckels. And the focus of his impressive philanthropy is also closely comparable to that of Alma's. In 1922, he established the American Society of the French Legion of Honor. And just two years later, funded the founding of the museum at the Légion d'Honneur in Paris, which opened just a year later than Alma's Legion of Honor Museum here in San Francisco. This is not to downplay the importance of the First World War. Over 1,000 Americans were given various levels of the Légion d'Honneur during and in the aftermath of the war. But perhaps this just reminds us that the Légion d'Honneur, with its connotation to combine military and civil achievement, represented a major conduit of soft power for France in the early 20th century. And I think it remains a fascinating point that both Cromwell and Spreckels, albeit in different ways, found the Légion d'Honneur to be the most natural vehicle for their patronage at almost exactly the same moment. A 1915 review of the exhibition in San Francisco made the following prescient observation about the French pavilion at the fair. And it said, I quote, the reproduction is very exact even to the molding of the friezes. In some ways, it's a pity the materials were not permanent. At an additional cost of a few thousand dollars, San Francisco might have had a fine structure and a constant reminder of the ancient friendship between France and the United States. Adolphe and Alma Spreckels clearly had the same thoughts. On January 5th, 1920, Adolphe declared, it is the purpose of my wife and myself to contribute to the beautification of our native city, something not only beautiful in itself, but also something devoted to patriotic and useful ends, something which might be dedicated as a suitable memorial to our brave boys who gave their lives to their country in the Great War and also lend itself as a home of art and historical treasures to promoting the education and culture of our citizens and especially the rising and coming generations. The museum we see today is the chef d'oeuvre of local architect George Appelgarth. Born in Oakland in 1875 and living until 1972, he studied architecture at Berkeley and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, graduating in 1906. His legacy has been valiantly championed by his granddaughter, Mary Appelgarth. He left an indelible mark on San Francisco, designing many wonderful buildings that are still highlights of the city's architectural landscape, such as the Clift Hotel and several prominent downtown offices and private residences. He did much work for the Spreckles family, including their famous family home, the Spreckles Mansion over in Pacific Heights, also in a style very clearly inspired by French neoclassicism. The contemporaneous literature that accompanied the opening of the Legion of Honor Museum here in 1924 claimed that Appelgarth had visited every important museum in the world to inform his work at the Legion of Honor, and it doesn't say which ones, although it is true that several major U.S. museums opened in the 1920s, including Philadelphia, Detroit, and even MoMA in New York. Marked improvements, especially in ventilation and lighting, defined the era, and indeed are much in evidence here in Appelgarth's design. The museum was devised in collaboration with the French architect Henri Guillaume, who presided over the construction of the pavilion at the 1915 Panama Pacific exhibition, and their names appear together in today's great courts, although there Appelgarth is referred to as architect and Guillaume as associate. So we've already covered this curious anomaly over the scale of the building compared to the original Palais de la Légion d'Honor in Paris, and another issue is perhaps the word replica, which is often used to describe this building's relationship with its predecessor in Paris. The aim in reality was not to create a replica of the Palais de la Légion d'Honor. It's more of a quotation, an evocation. Naturally, it can't be a replica because the purposes of the two buildings are entirely different. And in fact, you could argue that our version of this type of architecture is enhanced. As we've discussed, it's slightly larger, but more important is its location here, which, let's be honest, is surely one of the most spectacular of any museum in the world. In Paris, the equivalent facade of the Somme is hemmed in by the streets, but here the architecture has been transposed to a context where it can be fully appreciated in a way that would probably have delighted the original architect and builder of the Somme in Paris. And it reminds me of a technique often deployed by architects and artists of the 18th century in the tradition we refer to as Capricci, whereby they would place recognizable architectural forms in imagining picturesque landscapes to enhance their impact. And here are some examples. William Marlowe's reimagining of St. Paul's Cathedral in a Venetian landscape, or Giovanni Panini's placement of the Pantheon and other monuments in Rome in a landscape of his imagination. Talking of the purpose of this building, let's consider the function of Apagas Museum, which is by any measure a triumph. To us today, it's perhaps first and foremost an art gallery with ample space dedicated to the display of art collections that have grown exponentially since the museum's founding, especially after the refit of the museum in the 1990s, following the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. There was originally a purpose-built hall for displaying tapestries, and as we've mentioned, for showing sculptures by Auguste Rodin. It was also a space for meeting people and socializing, and what is now the Porcelain Gallery was the original tea room, and here you can see Alma de Bretville-Spreckels socializing in there in the 1950s. And there was even a library here which specialized in material relating to French culture. But the museum was always intended to function in many other ways. We have this beautifully designed theater, not a lecture theater. It was, and still is, equipped with fully functioning stage apparatus that could accommodate plays and operas, and a spectacular ceiling by Julio Villa-Paredes, an associate of Joaquin Sorolla, showing the apotheosis of the California soldier. Music was indeed always intended to be at the heart of things here, and we still maintain one of the most spectacular pipe organs in America by the Ernest M. Skinner Organ Company. The rather demure console upstairs gives little impression of the scale of this instrument, which I was lucky enough to see firsthand recently. The design of the building has been carefully contrived to enhance the effect, with the sound from the organ loft permeating through the painted canvas ceilings and bouncing back through the apse, behind which there are further baffles and pipes. And, in what I think is a unique arrangement, the bass relief on the facade of the building opens, allowing the sound to escape. Originally, the side of the triumphal arch in the courtyard would open to reveal a full set of chimes and a fanfare trumpet, which we are told in contemporaneous documents may be heard from several miles over the city and out at sea, suggesting that this little museum on its hill was designed to make the entire Golden Gate resonate with music. And this is a lovely photograph of the museum before, of course, the Golden Gate Bridge was built. It's not often used today, but this institution, when it first opened, was actually called the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. And it's worthwhile to dwell for a moment on this word, palace. I guess we may assume it's used here because of the building's palatial architecture. And, sure, the design it was based on was a palace. But I wonder if, at the time, this would, in fact, be understood differently. This is still very firmly the nomenclature of the age of exhibitions, whereby the word palace does not just refer to a type of architecture or the more traditional idea of a royal residence, but is more a people's palace, a multifunctional space for the use and enjoyment of the public. Our museum is, in fact, I think, a very significant, lasting, permanent embodiment of this tradition, a wonderful survival of this high ideal whereby artistic and cultural wealth no longer belonged solely to a prince or a rich private individual, but to the public. This kind of palace was a universally accessible space, a new civic ritual where the public became the honored guests and where they still are today. And so, I hope it's now possible to see how the appearance of this museum that we all love is owing to very specific characteristics forged during a special moment in time that have been adapted and refracted through several different phases and eras. What's remarkable is how easily its symbolism has traveled through all of these changes. A hereditary prince's palace became the headquarters of an institution founded on merit, not by erasing its aristocratic grandeur, but by redirecting it. The same ceremony that once served Frederick's ambition now lends dignity to French honor, service, and national identity. And now, here in San Francisco, it does the same work again, lending its grandeur to the honor and fame of the art it houses in a spectacular setting that only adds to its impact and beauty. I hope you might now go and look anew at the arch, the dome, columns, sculptures, and beautiful galleries, and listen to the spectacular organ resonates through its spaces. It should be being played this afternoon at four, just like every Saturday. How lucky we are to have this legacy of splendor, a palace for San Francisco and every San Franciscan. And thank you very much for joining me today. I think we might have 10 minutes for some, yeah. Oh, have you got the microphone? Yeah. Thank you, thank you. What a wonderful talk. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. What strikes me, though, is that there is another piece of this museum, and that is the great enmity between the de Youngs and the Spreckles. And as a matter of fact, when these two newspapers, the Call, which became the Call Bulletin, has a beautiful building that was put up by the Spreckles to outshine the de Youngs. And the de Youngs, one of the de Youngs published an article about how the Spreckles used slave labor in their sugar refinery in Hawaii. And one of the de Youngs went over and shot, one of the Spreckles went over and shot, Charles, went over and shot the de Young. So this museum is really a counterpoint to the de Young. These two museums have finally wedded together, but actually, this was a statement of the Spreckles that they had finally outshone the de Youngs. Thank you for that, yeah. I mean, it's an interesting point, isn't it? I think it's very true. Armando Brecht for Spreckles, actually, it wasn't just the de Youngs. She struggled with the rest of San Francisco society a little bit. And I always think it's interesting, the symbolism of this museum, the kind of the honor that it represented, how that was a deliberate kind of strategy to deal with them, with the de Youngs, but also with San Francisco society at large, yeah. Actually, segue, I was wondering how much resistance, if any, was given by the descendants of the de Youngs and the Spreckles when the two museums finally merged, and also whether Alma was hands-on or hands-off as Applegard was building the building. I think we can be assured that Alma was always hands-on. She was very, very involved with everything. And yes, the issue between the two families was really prevented the two museums from merging sooner. The merge with the two institutions was only possible after Alma passed away, I think in 1968. And then as soon as that happened, the process was really quite rapid, and the two museums formally merged by 1972, so it happened over four years. But people felt like it wasn't possible while she was still around, so yeah. Hi, when was the photo of the facade opened to let the organ music out? I didn't know that still worked. Oh, so that was for the centenary of the founding of the museum. So when was that, like two, three years ago? Two years ago. Yeah, and it was because it was, I think, marking the head of the Légion d'honneur in Paris came to the museum, and there was a big ceremony marking the centenary, and they decided to do that for that. Yeah, so that's why. It doesn't open. Sorry? It doesn't open. Not regularly, no, but maybe we should do it more often, I think, yeah. Who paid for the building? So the question was, who paid for the building? Spreckels herself, or, I mean, the Spreckelses are meant to have paid for it, as far as I understand it. Yeah. I may have missed this information, but who were the busts of in the French version of the building, and who were the busts of in the American version of the building? I'm sorry, could you repeat that again? I'm asking about the busts on the back of the building, and you may have covered it, but I missed it, and I'm wondering who the busts are in the French version, and who are the busts of in the American version? So they're all, and both versions are of Roman emperors, and I'm afraid I haven't got around to identifying which Roman emperors each one is meant to be, but that would be great to do that at some point in the future, yeah. Can you speak up? Oh, I'm just saying that they're Roman emperors, unspecified as yet, but yeah, we'll find out which ones are which, hopefully. Are they the same? Yes, they are. I mean, that's the fascinating thing, is that the sculptural decoration here is very much a copy of what's in Paris. I mean, there's a lot more in the Paris building. They have busts all around the Court of Honor in Paris, whereas we just have the ones on the reverse of the building, yeah. Great, well, thank you so much for coming today. Thank you.