Palace of Fine Arts

This guide to the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco follows architect Willis Polk, who called this swampy lot a mudhole, and his friend Bernard Maybeck, who saw it instead as a chance to sketch a crumbling Roman ruin reflected in still water. You'll hear how the gardener faked decades of creeping ivy with ice plants, and how etiquette writer Emily Post joked about the bare stone columns waiting for vines that never arrived. The whole structure was built from wood and plaster for a fair that closed in 1915, meant to vanish once it ended.