Cardinell-Vincent Company.

The Cardinell-Vincent Company was the official photographer of the Panama Pacific International Exposition under the direction of the president John D. Cardinell. The company employed over 150 employees at the P.P.I.E., had photographic galleries on the grounds and organized the enterprise into different departments.

Background

The Panama-Pacific International Exposition (P.P.I.E.), held in 1915 in San Francisco, commemorated the opening of the Panama Canal in July of that year and sought to display to the world the recovery of San Francisco from the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. Conceived as early as 1904, the extravagant P.P.I.E. covered circa 300 acres along the picturesque bayside Marina district of San Francisco. Temporary palaces, towers, gardens, fountains and miscellaneous attractions were constructed, creating a diverse yet harmonious "city of domes," which combined Spanish and Italian baroque designs with those of Byzantium and the Orient. In addition to inviting nations from all over the world to erect buildings and exhibits on the grounds, the P.P.I.E. also employed a distinguished array of architects, sculptors, painters and other artisans to develop the design of the larger palaces and courts. The Exposition was held from February 4 to December 4, and attracted circa 19 million visitors. The only original structure remaining on site from the Exposition is Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts, which was restored in the 1960s. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, built in 1924 at San Francisco's Land's End, is a replica of France's palace of the same name, which was originally replicated for the P.P.I.E. as the French Pavilion.