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Scenic Beauty and More Returns to an Expo Building
September/October 2018
By Dean Glass
 Hand-colored postcard showing the California State Building with its original murals, 1935. Courtesy the Committee of One Hundred |
Since its founding in 1967 after the demolition of two 1915 Panama-California Exposition Buildings on Balboa Park's Plaza de Panama, the Committee of One Hundred has been an effective advocate for the park's historic architecture. This group of concerned and well-informed citizens has undertaken many successful restoration projects. Now, the group is turning its attention to the Balboa Park Palisades, with plans to restore four long-missing murals and other ornamentation to the California State Building.
This building, which has housed the San Diego Automotive Museum since 1988, was designed by Richard Requa for the 1935-36 California Pacific International Exposition. Built and furnished with exhibits in just three short months, it was complete when the Expo opened on May 29, 1935. Four colorful fiberboard murals, painted to resemble tilework and representing California's commerce, agriculture, industry, and scenic beauty hung over the main entrance. Created by Hollywood set designer Juan Larrinaga (The Son of Kong, 1933) and his team, the 18-feet-tall by eight-feet-wide murals, were temporary, never expected to last beyond the close of the exposition.
The Committee of One Hundred is replicating the murals using permanent cuerda seca ceramic tiles. The group is working with artists who will recreate the murals in full color based on surviving black-and-white photos, unless color photographs surface in the meantime. Aside from a few frames of a badly faded color film, no color images of the murals are known to exist.
To kick off the restoration campaign, four banners replicating the images and size of the original murals with color added by the restoration artists were installed in November 2017. In billboard-like fashion, the facsimiles broadcast the restoration plans and publicize the project to potential donors. Fundraising also includes the Committee of One Hundred's Buy-A-Tile campaign.
Save Our Heritage Organisation supports the restoration of the California State Building and has contributed to the campaign with the purchase of a tile in the scenic beauty mural. If you too would like to help underwrite this project and perhaps buy a tile, visit www.c100.org for more information.
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