Photos: San Diego’s, San Francisco’s rival 1915 Panama expositions both won

The Cabrillo Bridge spans California 163 and connects Balboa Park to the Banker’s Hill neighborhood.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Performer Will Duggan entertains pedestrians on the Prado in front of the Casa de Balboa.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

The Spreckels Organ Pavilion. Behind the arched roll up door at the right is the park’s huge organ, which has 4,350 pipes.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A stylized depiction of a sailing ship moving through the Panama Canal adorns the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in San Diego’s Balboa Park.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A group of friends practice parkour near the Spreckels Organ Pavilion.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

The 1915 California Tower rises above the entrance to the Museum of Man. The tower, long closed to visitors, is open as of Jan. 1, 2015, to those who pay for a tour.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Musician Annie Rettic plays a five-string viola in a walkway along the Prado near the Museum of Man.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

The Casa del Prado along the park’s El Prado pedestrian promenade features extensive cast concrete ornamentation in the Spanish Colonial Revival style.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Visitors have a hearty laugh while watching street performers in the Plaza de Panama.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Late afternoon sunshine casts a glow in a window in the Casa de Balboa.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Twilight falls on the Plaza de Panama in San Diego’s Balboa Park.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Julio Avila, 67, of San Diego plays alto saxophone to the delight of 4-year-old Zaijan Guba along the Prado pedestrian promenade. Recently added variable color floodlights light up the California Tower in the background.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

The vaulted interior of the Botanical Building, also appropriately known as the Lath Palace.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A family poses for a snapshot in front of the Botanical Building.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Theater patrons enjoy the open air plaza before a performance at the Old Globe.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Patrons of the Prado restaurant sit on the fountain in the patio of the Casa de Balboa building.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

The late afternoon sun colors the arches and columns of a sheltered walkway along the Prado.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A portion of the heavily ornamented facade of the San Diego Museum of Art with a hanging of an Andy Warhol graphic.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Grant Barrett, marketing manager at the Museum of Man, climbs the spiral stairway inside the California Tower. The tower will reopen to the public for tours on Jan. 1, 2015, for the first time since 1935.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

The redwood lath structure of the Botanical Building at the left and the twin towers of the Casa del Prado as seen from the California Tower.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

From the eighth floor of the California Tower, Grant Barrett looks down at the tiled dome of the Museum of Man.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Passengers ride Balboa Park’s miniature railroad.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A visitor to the Galapagos tortoise enclosure at the San Diego Zoo photographs two of its inhabitants.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Visitors watch an African elephant feed at the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Children watch a polar bear swim inside a glass walled tank at the San Diego Zoo. The zoo was preceded by a display of animals at the Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park in 1915.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

San Diego Zoo visitors ride a gondola over the zoo’s heavily landscaped grounds with a view of the California Tower, which dates from the 1915 exposition, at another end of Balboa Park.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

San Francisco’s Palace of the Legion of Honor is actually a three-quarter scale reconstruction of a 1915 expo building that was demolished after that city’s fair ended. It was built by George Applegarth at the request of Mrs. Alma Spreckels in 1924.

The Palace of Fine Arts is San Francisco’s only major 1915 expo structure still standing in its original location.  (Stuart Black / Getty Images)

Designed for the 1915 exposition by architect Bernard Maybeck, the Palace of Fine Arts underwent a multi-year, $21-million makeover that was completed in 2011. This photo is from 2009.

A closer look at the Palace of Fine Arts’ rotunda’s ceiling in 2009.  (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Crissy Field was the western edge of San Francisco’s expo, and included an 18,000-seat grandstand, an oval for car- and horse-racing and a running track and athletic field inside the oval. The field is now part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  (Roberto Soncin Gerometta / Getty Images)

A souvenir publication from San Francisco’s exposition shows the Court of the Four Seasons.  (Souvenir Pub. Co. S.F. / Los Angeles Times)

Another postcard showing an illustration of the exposition’s grounds.  (Bardell Art Ptg. Co. San Francisco / Los Angeles Times)

A June 1915 photo of the Court of the Universe and the Arch of Nations of the East.  (Cardinell-Vincent Co. / Los Angeles Times)