The beauty of this plan is matched by its practical advantages. The
compact grouping of the Exposition palaces not only meant a saving of
ground and labor, but it makes it easier to handle the crowds, and
lessens the walking required of the visitor. There is no monotony. In
developing the general idea, each architect and artist was left free to
express his own personality and imagination. The result is that varied
forms and colors in the different courts and buildings blend truly into
the whole picture of an Oriental city, set in the midst of a vast
amphitheater of hills and bay, arched by the fathomless blue of the
California sky.

The ground plan is as simple as it is compact. Entering through the main
gate at Scott Street, the visitor has the Exposition before him,
practically an equal section on either hand. (See map, p. 30, 31.) On
right and left in the South Garden are Festival Hall and the Palace of
Horticulture. (p. 23, 24, 29.) In front is the Tower of Jewels, before
it the Fountain of Energy. (p. 47.) The tower centers the south front of
a solid block of eight palaces, so closely joined in structure, and so
harmonized in architecture, as to make really a single palace. On the
right and left of the tower are the Palaces of Manufactures and Liberal
Arts; beyond them, on east and west, are Varied Industries and
Education. Behind these four, and fronting on the bay from east to west,
are Mines, Transportation, Agriculture and Food Products. In the center
of the group, cut out of the corners of the Manufactures, Liberal Arts,
Agriculture and Transportation Palaces, and entered from the south
through the Tower of Jewels, is the great Court of the Universe, opened
on east and west by the triumphal Arches of the Nations. (p. 59 and
63.) The Court opens northward between the Palaces of Transportation and
Agriculture in a splendid colonnaded avenue to the Column of Progress,
near the bay. (p. 57.)