Dated 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition Plate

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This is a dated 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition glass plate with a view of the bridge on the underside and dated 1939 San Francisco. Scalloped edge with surrounding patriotic stars. Ice blue color with slightly frosted edge. Mint condition with no chips or cracks. Measures 3 1/2 inches across. The Golden Gate International Exposition was held in order to celebrate the city's two new bridges. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was dedicated on November 12, 1936; the Golden Gate Bridge was dedicated on May 27, 1937; and on August 26, 1937, dredging for Treasure Island, the site of the Fair, was complete. The Fair ran from February 18 through October 29 in 1939, and from May 25 through September 29 in 1940. Throughout the run of the Fair, multi-colored searchlights shot up for one mile in the nighttime sky, and were visible for 100 miles around. The official program described the lighting effects as "chromotherapy." The 80-foot statue of Pacifica personified the theme of the Fair, emphasizing unity between Pacific nations. But the dominating feature of the Island was the 400-foot Tower of the Sun, which competed in stature with the towers of the Bay Bridge nearby. The magnificent garden courts were designed to showcase California's balmy weather, in contrast to that of New York, which was hosting a world's fair at the same time. Twelve hundred gardeners were on the Fair's payroll, and they worked in the wee morning hours to design flowerbeds that corresponded with the seasons. The outdoor statuary was designed almost exclusively by California artists. The amusement zone, called the Gayway, had a delightful range of entertainment venues. The most popular was Sally Rand's Nude Ranch. Business exhibits emphasized the speed and conveniences available in the twentieth century, while foreign pavilions tempted patrons to travel to exotic lands. At midnight on the very last night of the Fair, each of multi-colored lights was dimmed slowly, one by one, so that nothing remained but the street lamps and the illumination for the Tower of the Sun - which stayed lit until dawn the following day, so that it could never be said that the Sun went out over San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening into the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. It connects the city of San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge was the largest suspension bridge in the world when it was completed in 1937 and has become an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco. It is currently the second longest suspension bridge in the United States after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. he crossing of the Golden Gate Strait was for many years accomplished by a ferry running between the Hyde Street Pier at the foot of Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County. The idea of a bridge to span the Golden Gate Strait was brought up in an article by the engineer James Wilkins. The bridge later earned its name, Golden Gate Bridge, after a mention of it in 1917, by San Francisco city engineer M. M. O'Shaughnessy. The bridge was the brainchild of Joseph Strauss, an engineer responsible for over 400 drawbridges, though they were far smaller than this project and mostly inland. Starting in 1921 with his first drawings that were far from approved, Strauss spent over a decade drumming up support in Northern California. Strauss's initial design comprised a massive cantilever on each side connected with a central suspension segment. Other key figures in the bridge's construction include architect Irving Morrow, responsible for the Art Deco touches and the choice of color, and engineer Charles Alton Ellis and bridge designer Leon Moisseiff, who collaborated on the complicated mathematics involved. In May 1924, a hearing, through a petition, was heard by Colonel Herbert Deakyne for the Secretary of War in a request to use land for the construction of the Golden Gate... read more

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