P.P.I.E.

The postcards on this page are related to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (P.P.I.E.) held 2/20/1915 to 12/04/1915 in San Francisco.

This lovely panorama is from the Pacific Novelty Co. folding postcard booklet Jewel City, addressed on 8/11/1915. A 1914 Sanborn map provides a detailed key to the layout of the Exposition. The 435' Tower of Jewels at right center was decorated with over 100,000 cut glass "jewels", sparkling in sunlight during the day and illuminated by spotlights at night. The Palace of Fine Arts and its rotunda and pond (far left) remain today (in 2025), but all the other Exposition buildings are long gone.

Campaigning and publicity for the Exposition long predated the event, starting in late 1910, more than four years before the opening. Local post offices provided additional publicity via P.P.I.E. cancellations starting in 1911.

Cardinell-Vincent, postmarked Sacramento 11/11/1910. The San Francisco Call of 10/10/1910 describes a statewide campaign based on this card ("Boosters will bombard all postoffices"), and a month later the Call of 11/13/1910 includes a wonderful description of it. The same image (credited to "Sierra Arts Eng. Co. SF") appears on cards from other publishers.
Mitchell, embossed, © 1911, postmarked SF 10/16/1911, P.P.I.E. cancellation.
Mitchell, © 1911, postmarked Oakland 9/30/1912, P.P.I.E. cancellation.
Exposition Publishing.

The official Exposition seal appears two of the cards above and on several other cards below. It also appears on many cards not directly related to the Exposition, such as Unknown publisher 390 (seal handstamped on front ex post facto), Souvenir 138, and Souvenir 483.

Unknown publisher (postmarked L.A. 12/24/14, P.P.I.E. cancellation) uses the upcoming Exposition to drum up business for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
American Art (postmarked S.F. 11/11/1915, P.P.I.E. cancellation) is a bird's-eye-view looking west across S.F. toward the distant Exposition site.
Bardell 10 (postmarked S.F. 9/23/1915, P.P.I.E. cancellation) is a closer bird's-eye-view looking northeast.
Pacific Novelty X160 shows the enormous opening day crowd on Saturday 2/20/1915. It looks south from the Tower of Jewels (today: Bay/Scott) roughly along Scott, with Chestnut running left-to-right just beyond the arches behind the fountain and Pacific Heights in the background.

Weidner is a b+w quad foldout from 1914. The panorama is an artist's sketch, not a photo, with the buildings numbered. The back contains a key to the numbers and a photo with opening and closing dates.

Weidner produced day and night panoramas as folding double cards.

Weidner: Panoramic View of the P.P.I.E.
Weidner: Night Illumination, P.P.I.E. 1915. The "Great Rainbow Scintillator" (see Mitchell 5001) is on the left.

Weidner produced beautiful hand-colored P.P.I.E. souvenir postcards, printed by Albertype. Different examples of the same card show substantial color variation, as seen on P.P.I.E.: Weidner Albertype Variants.

Weidner PPIE 7: Palm Avenue.
Weidner PPIE 12: In the South Gardens.
Weidner PPIE 4: Peristyles—Palace of Fine Arts.
Weidner PPIE 22: Court of the Universe.

These hand-colored Weidner cards show the dramatic nighttime illumination.

Weidner PPIE 41: Palace of Horticulture and Towers, Night Illumination.
Weidner PPIE 29: Festival Hall, Night Illumination.
Weidner PPIE 36: Peristyles—Palace of Fine Arts, Night Illumination.
Weidner PPIE 32: Court of Four Seasons, Night Illumination.

Behrendt A-33322 shows the Yacht Harbor, complete with Venetian goldolas.
Cardinell-Vincent (postmarked Oakland 8/01/1915, P.P.I.E. cancellation) looks southwest toward the Inside Inn, a hotel within the Exposition grounds (today: roughly Chestnut/Baker).
Unknown publisher advertises the Alt Nurnberg restaurant at the German Village, with special Exposition beers on draught.

Most Exposition visitors arrived in San Francisco via the Ferry Building. These cards show the tower with "1915" added for the occasion. The Exposition slogan "California Invites the World" is printed on the first two cards and shown on the third and fourth in large letters mounted on the roof on the east side of the building. Ferry Building: 1915 shows additional variants of these cards.

These RPPCs have generic backs with no indication of publisher or date, like almost all RPPCs.

Unknown publisher and
Unknown publisher are posed on the same "Frisco-Expo" train car set, presumably at the P.P.I.E. These cards are unmailed; the subject often kept a souvenir postcard rather than mailing it.
Unknown publisher, dated 10/20/1915, and
Unknown publisher, dated 11/21/1915: the handwritten 1915 dates on these sightseeing tour cards suggest that they were probably excursions to the P.P.I.E.