Various models and dioramas have been discussed, but I haven't see anything about the BIG relief map, California-Paradise in Panorama, which was displayed for 30 years at the ferry building in San Francisco, and is now in storage. From looking at the pictures, I'm relieved that it appears not to be a single 600-foot long model, but a series of still huge dioramas. One small section:
Worthpoint
The
Preview of the Images of America book, San Francisco's Ferry Building (p. 60-61), 2017, by Annie Evers Hitz, shows how it was displayed in the Ferry building, as well as some flappers and the Los Angeles section. The flappers and the revolutionary child soldier are scrutinizing Humboldt bay.
In this photograph from the 1920s, visitors look at "Paradise in Panorama," a 450-foot-long-by-18-foot-wide California Diorama a scale model of the entire state - that was on display along the bay side of the nave from 1924 until 1955. (National Register of Historic Places.)
The three-dimensional relief map, when it was unveiled to great fanfare in 1924, was the largest map in the world. Department store mogul Reuben Hale came up with the idea for the map. It was created in 14 months by 25 artists, geographers, and craftsmen in a rented movie studio in Glendale, California. (Neil Malloch.)
The map, which cost $147,000, was built in four-by-seven-foot sections, and then brought to San Francisco in six box cars. Built to a linear scale of six inches to one mile, it had almost 600,000 models of buildings, bridges, roads, dams, ships, railroads, rivers, mountains, and towns. Over 1,000 business and government leaders attended its unveiling in November 1924. (Neil Malloch.)
Millions of ferry commuters viewed the map in the 30 years it was on display. Damaged in the mid-1950s during a remodeling project at the Ferry Building, it was cut up into sections and put into storage in 1960. The Port of San Francisco now has it stored in 230 crates (which weigh about 70 tons total) at a warehouse. (Neil Malloch.)