Tilting the mirror : packaging "Spanish" architecture in late nineteenth century California

Abstract

In 1893 at Chicago's World Columbian Exposition, California devoted a great deal of resources to its promotion through a pavilion that spelled out a construct about California's "Spanish" past. This supposed history got incorporated into California's self-representation and affected the identity of both the Anglo and California populations. This presentation of California shows that exotic figures need not function through the logic of an opposite "other," as is usually theorized. By analyzing the role of architecture in California's Spanish "identity," the thesis locates the representational power of architecture closer to its function in discursive practices rather than to mere formal aspects.