Ruins in San Francisco?
Does anyone know where the ruins are that Amy lives next too? Are there such in San Francisco?
shareIt's been many years since I've seen the movie (which I greatly admired, and which IMHO comes closer than any other I've seen--with the possible exceptions of a couple of Hitchcocks--to breaking the unwritten contract with the audience about who's going to survive the film), but I remember a couple of scenes set in the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts.
This building was designed by the renowned architect Bernard Maybeck (I used to live in Berkeley, and always loved to pass by his Christian Science Church and his UCB Faculty Club), for the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915, to house a collection of Impressionist paintings. As I remember the story, most buildings for Expositions are supposed to be temporary and are to be pulled down right after the show, but people so loved the Palace that it was kept, in a constantly deteriorating condition (all that lovely stonework is actually plaster, I believe, since the building was supposed to be a throwaway), until it was refurbished in the sixties.
For a long time (maybe still) it was the home of the Exploratorium, a sort of visitor-participation science museum, and I see that there is now a 1,000-seat theatre attached to it. It's apparently also a favourite place for weddings.
(I have the vague memory that the actual museum that housed the 20th-century Wells exhibit, with time machine, was in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, a lesser but bigger building in a grander park setting, but I'm not at all sure about it.)
Hope this helps. --Howard
I grew up in SF, was a kid there when this movie was first released, and cherns is indeed correct about the Palace of Fine Arts. Good info!
The Museum that the Machine ends up in, that Wells emerges from, is actually the old Academy of Sciences, in Golden Gate Park, near the Japanese Tea Garden and the DeYoung Museum. There is also a cutaway to him looking at the Band Shell. This building, not very old to begin with, has already been demolished to make way for a new project... presumably a new Science Museum, but I don't live there anymore, so I haven't kept up on what's going in its place. (The DeYoung Museum, incidentally, has also been rebuilt since.)
Hope this gives you some good trivial background!
During the chase scene, they are around the Embarcadero Center which is where I work
shareI may be wrong but when the Palace of Fine Arts was "refurbished" long before the movie was partly filmed there I believe it was rebuilt in concrete. The original plaster had indeed long exceeded its intended life. Part of the original Dirty Harry with Clint Eastwood was filmed at the Palace as well. Last I heard the Exploratorium was still there. Sad to hear that old band shell was torn down near the old DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park- I fondly recall walking past it and standing on the stage during the occasional visit to the museum/park as a child. The new DeYoung from pictures that I've seen is a radically different place from its predecessor. Supposedly quite the architectural work too. I wonder if it still has that giant pendulum and the crocodiles or alligators in a pit that the old one had for years! I think I read that they removed the creatures years ago though.
Those who posted above are right. It is the Palace of Fine Arts, built for the Pacific Exposition. However, I feel compelled to ad that they are not "ruins," but merely a very prominent structure left over from the event rather than torn down like most of the structures.
share