Light show marks century since Pan Pacific Expo ended

To mark the occasion, the lights that have outlined the Ferry Building tower for nearly a year will be switched on one last time Friday afternoon, and then, just after sunset, turned off again.

The ceremony, which includes a couple of speeches by historians and public figures like former Mayor Willie Brown, starts at 4:15 p.m. on the Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building.

The centennial commemoration of the fair was also a hit, with programs, historic talks, concerts and a massive exhibition of the art of the 1915 fair at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.

There were more than 250 events around the Bay Area to celebrate the centennial, said Kevin Herglotz, spokesman for PPIE 100, the group that coordinated the year-long programs.

More than 600,000 people came to a venue called the Innovation Hangar, which showcased new ideas in the exhibit area of the old Palace of Fine Arts, the last big structure left from the fair.

The centennial, she said, provided people with a chance to hear not only the good things that people remembered so fondly — the music, the fabulous temporary city that existed for 10 months in what is now the Marina district, the airplanes and the inventions —but also the other side of the fair.

The fair, she said, reflected the social prejudices of the time — “the racism, the sexism and the proponents of eugenics.”

The fair’s eugenics exhibit featured “race betterment” and it was clear that the group had the white race in mind.

Another troubling event in 1915 was a sideshow called “Underground Chinatown,” which featured supposed opium dens and a trade in slave girls.

According to Ackley, after the lights went out at the stroke of midnight that last December night, bands continued to play and some of the huge crowd refused to leave — “and they danced until dawn,” she said.