Along
with other buildings in the Palisades (except the Ford Building) Requa considered
the Federal
Building to be pre‑Columbian in style because its horizontal mass clung to
the ground. Though this chance
resemblance may be questioned as it was not true of all pre‑Columbian buildings, the ornamental detailing on the main
entrance was unquestionably derived from the Palace of the Governor in
Uxmal, Yucatan.
Larrinaga, who was responsible for the design, was born in San Antonio, Baja
California, in 1885. He claimed to have studied at the
Academy of San
Carlos in Mexico
City. He was
a naturalized U.S. citizen who had worked as a set
designer on Cecil B. De Mille's King of Kings
and White Gold. The
Exposition publicity department said he knew how buildings in Yucatan and Oaxaca looked. It is more likely, however, that
he, along with American architects, who created Maya Revival style residences
and theaters, got his ideas from George Oakley Totten's compendium of Maya architecture, published by the
Maya Press, in 1926.
The
Palace of the Governor in Uxmal stands on a broad, high
platform. The frieze on its upper
zone is 11‑1/2 ft. high and about 320 ft. long. It is filled entirely with ornament made
of closely‑fitted and carved stones. The main facade had two recessed corbel
arches that reached to the roof and divided the composition into three distinct
masses. The Palace in 1926 was in
such poor condition that Totten included drawings,
some in color, of how it would look if it were restored to its pristine
condition. Larrinaga took one of
the corbel arches, frets, lattice‑like designs, and masks of Chac, the Maya rain god, from the Palace of the Governor. He
extended these as a frieze across a protruding section with an offset terrace in
the center of the main facade. He
used a tripartite string course along lateral walls which stretched to the left
and right of the rectangular mass of the building, giving the overall footprint
the shape of a squat T.
Details
on the frieze, were not copied directly from the Palace
of the Governor because the frieze on the Federal Building was smaller both in height and width than the
frieze in Uxmal. Key or fret designs on the Palace of the
Governor were turned on their sides. Details on cornices and borders came from
diagrams of unspecified buildings in Totten's
book. The masks of Chac were, however, as accurate as Larrinaga could make
them, considering that he used beaver board backed by 1/6" plywood as his medium
rather than stone. As with the
frieze in Uxmal he had used as his model,
Larrinaga created a mosaic of inserts.
He did not put up fabricated panels. The masks contained the indispensable
hooked nose of Chac. Functioning as quoins at the corners,
they created a stunning silhouette.
Full Chac masks, between the quoins, included
the wide‑open mouth of the god with teeth as prominent
features.
The
pseudo corbel arch of the Federal Building was filled by a window with
mullions on which had been painted a mural of a standing Maya priest in profile
holding a ceremonial staff and receiving the submission of a crouching
Indian. The standing priest was
copied from the bas relief of a Maya priest on the rear wall of an altar in the
Temple of the Sun, Palenque (Totten, plate 25).
He
and the crouching Indian were standard motifs that appeared on countless stelae, ceramics and paintings. Miscellaneous details on the
painting came from Totten's book or from Larrinaga's
imagination. The background of the
painting was yellow. The Indians
were painted in red hues with other colors being black and white. Green was used on feathered
headdresses.
The
colors were based on drawings and observations in Totten's book.
In
his Inside Lights on the Building of San Diego's Exposition: 1935 (San
Diego, 1937), Requa stated: "The design and treatment
of the glass panel over the main entrance was suggested by decorative figures
done in stucco on the interior walls of a building in Mayapan."
Mayapan was sacked and burned in the middle of
the fifteenth century with the result, according to curator Elizabeth P. Benson,
that "there are no Classic Maya or Toltec‑Maya buildings remaining there"
(Elizabeth P. Benson, The Maya World, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1967, p.
141).
Beneath
the painting a lintel above the door contained a carving whose central face was
derived from a detail on the western facade, east range of the Nunnery
Quadrangle in Uxmal (Totten, plate 80).
According to Totten, lintels in Maya temples
were made of chico sapote wood, though in this case the detail on the Nunnery
facade was made of stone.
While
not as conspicuous as the front elevation, the rear or south elevation contained
a recessed
porch whose proportions and shape resembled the lower entrances to
rooms in the north building of the Nunnery Quadrangle in Uxmal (Totten, plate 76).
Unlike columns on the Federal Building that were plain and square,
structural columns on the Nunnery Quadrangle were articulated by protuberant
masses at top and bottom.
.
The
Federal
Building was ready for the
May 29 Exposition opening at which time Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper
formally presented the building to the public. The
National
Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics, the U.S. Army and Navy, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Postal
Service, the U.S. Labor Department, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian
Institution mounted exhibits. A
relief map of Washington,
D.C. showed the location of
important government buildings. An animated exhibit from the Department of
Commerce clicked off changes in the United States population to coincide
with the one birth that took place every 15 seconds and the one death that
occurred every 22 seconds.
The
U.S. Government sent exhibits in the Federal Building to Dallas for the 1936 observance of the Texas
Centennial. After Congress
appropriated $75,000 to continue federal exhibits, the Government sent in others
so that the building was filled.
The San
Diego Unionclaimed
the Tennessee Valley Authority exhibit was the crowd pleaser. Interest in the exhibit had increased
after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the government's right to manufacture and
distribute power. Commissioner
Joseph W. Hiscox claimed more than two million people
saw the exhibits.
Following
the Exposition the U.S. Government sold the Federal Building to the City of San Diego for $100. H. Louis Bodmer, the building's original architect, had already drawn
up plans to convert the building into a civic auditorium to seat 3,000. The auditorium would be 150 by 140 ft.,
30 ft, shorter than the original, and would contain a sloping floor, an
orchestra pit, and a 76 by 35‑ft. stage.
Bodmer planned to shear off the Maya facade and
replace it with a streamlined moderne affair with
three colossal pylons on each side of the center
entrance.
He
justified this iconoclasm by claiming the existing "gingerbread" front was of
temporary construction. So much for
architect Requa's architectural history
lesson!
Between
1936 and the beginning of World War II, the Federal Building was occupied by
various civic organizations including the Works Projects Administration (WPA),
promoters of "one‑night stands" and sponsors of dog and hobby shows while City
officials and interested parties kept debating who would pay for the conversion
to a civic auditorium. Wayne Daillard, operator of the Mission Beach
amusement center, offered to lease the Federal Building for five years at $200 a month, to keep the
building from being used for "one‑night stands" that competed with the
Mission
Beach ball
room.
A
1941 Guide to Balboa Park described the appearance of the Federal Building, which retained all its features
from the 1935‑36 Exposition, including the main entrance window painting, but
did not indicate who was using the building, the implication being that the
building was empty.
The
U.S. Navy took over the Federal
Building (designated Building 41) and
eleven other buildings on El Prado and in the
Palisades in December 1941. The area where the Federal Building was located was called Camp Kidd
after Captain Isaac C. Kidd, U.S.N., who fell at Pearl
Harbor, December 7. It
was used as a Reception Center for the Naval Training Center whose main station was at Point
Loma. Nearly 1,400 men slept in the
building on double‑decked bunks.
After the Training
Center transferred its Balboa Park
operation to Camp Elliott in 1944, the U.S. Naval Hospital used the
Federal
Building as barracks for
hospital corpsmen, as a subsistence building, and as a ship service and
recreation facility. The Navy
relinquished the building to the City on May 10,1946. It
estimated its use value for 4‑1/2 years at $21,600 or 20 cents per sq. ft. per
year. The Navy gave the building's sq. ft. as 24,000, or 6,335 ft. less than the
City's figures.
Leo
Calland, City of San Diego Recreation Director,
announced in September 1945 that the Federal Building would be used as a badminton
headquarters after the war. So it
was. This remained the predominant use of the building until the building was
converted into a sports museum in 1998.
Not happy with Calland's proposal, members of
the Chamber of Commerce kept resurrecting plans to convert the building and
other buildings in the Palisades into a convention center until the construction
of a convention center and a 3,000‑seat civic theater in downtown San Diego in 1963‑64
rendered these schemes moot. The
chief arguments for locating the convention center in the Palisades were that
parking spaces lacking downtown were available in Balboa Park and that converting the building
would be cheaper than constructing a new building.
The
City Council approved plans for conversion to a municipal theater at a cost of
$300,000 in August 1946, following which H. Louis Bodmer drew up a new plan, money for which came from a
$15,200 loan from the Federal Works Agency in Washington, D.C. This time the entrance facade became an
arrangement of massive stepped unadorned blocks with a large round marquee in
front of the entrance. A slanting
theater floor and a 65 ft. high concrete stage were to be built for dramatic and
operatic productions. Costs for
conversion estimated at $402,000 in 1948 mounted to $1,300,000 in 1954. Calland, who
had seen this scenario many times, wisely said the Federal Building would be used for badminton and
volleyball courts until such time as it was replaced by a
theater.
A
photograph published in the San Diego Union, May 16, 1946, showed the
painting on the main entrance window as intact.
In
November 1949, a roller skate speedway was set up in the Federal Building for filming of skating scenes for
"Dark Challenge," a movie starring Mickey Rooney. This appears to have been a one‑time
use.
Architect
William Rosser prepared a model for a civic theater with a five‑bay, largely
glass central entrance that was published in the San Diego and Point
Magazine in December 1955.
While Rosser's plan was for a new theater opposite the San Diego
Zoological Society parking lot on Park Boulevard, it was surprisingly like
the low horizontal shape of the Federal Building.
In
1958, Robert Peterson, president of the San Diego Convention and Visitors
Bureau, advocated turning the Federal Building into a Hall of Science and
Industry with a planetarium. No one
paid any attention to the plan at the time, but it became the precursor of the
Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater established at the east end of El Prado in 1973.
In his inimitable style, critic James Britton referred to Peterson's
proposal as "a precious piece of petty opportunism that reflects credit on no
one concerned" (San Diego Magazine, February
1959).
In
September 1959, the Harland Bartholomew planners of St.
Louis ruled out the use of the Federal Building as a municipal theater, saying it would cost
too much, and suggested the building be used as the new quarters for the
Museum of
Man at an estimated
conversion cost of $335,000. In
their Master Plan, presented to the City in November 1960, the planners changed
their mind. This time they wanted
the Museum of Man relocated to a rebuilt Electric Building on El Prado and the
Federal Building in the Palisades converted into an activities center and banquet
hall to replace the Balboa Park Club, which they wanted
demolished.
A
Greater San Diego Science Fair was held in the Federal Building in April 1961. Parents and bused‑in groups of school
children filed along aisles where exhibits ranging from mathematical studies to
animal and insect studies had been set up.
This was the 7th year of the Science Fair. While most of them were located in the
Federal
Building, other venues were
also used. The Fair continued as an
annual feature until it, along with the badminton and volleyball players, was
compelled to leave the building.
Other seasonal uses included dog, hobby and electric shows and square
dance conventions, the latter also including the Balboa Park Club and the
Recital Hall (1935 Hollywood Hall of Fame
Building).
Reversing
his previous desire to use the Federal
Building for a civic theater, critic
James Britton wrote: "The Federal
Building seems to be beckoning the
Museum of
Man because it wears on its
front a set of sculptured decorations modeled after the Mayan." (San Diego Union, February 4,
1979).
The
City Council gave the San Diego Hall of Champions a 54‑year, 11‑month lease,
offering rent‑free space in the Federal Building, on September 24, 1991. The move would take place after the City
had erected a new municipal gymnasium for users of the Federal Building. A U.S. Olympic Volleyball Team
that had been allowed to use the building moved to a private gymnasium in Otay Mesa. The replacement gymnasium was to be at the Nobel
athletic area. This led to a game
of musical chairs with each gymnasium site being opposed by surrounding
neighborhoods and a site near the San Diego Community College being opposed by
Councilman Ron Roberts who declared it was too grand and too expensive (San
Diego Union, October 6, 1993).
San
Diego
newspapers in 1991 indicated that the new Hall of Champions would cost about $5
million with $3 million coming from the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation and
$2.3 million from a City of San Diego
Balboa Park Renovation Fund. Birch Foundation money would go toward a
sports education and resource center.
City money would be used for a new roof, handicapped access, and
earthquake building standard modifications. By excavating a basement and adding a
mezzanine the Federal Building would expand from 30,335 sq. ft.
to more than 58,000 sq. ft. From
20,000 sq. ft. in the Casa de Balboa, the Hall of Champions would undergo an
increase of 38,000 sq. ft.
San Diego
architect Walt Conwell planned the changes. He or the
reporter who interviewed him referred to the front Maya frieze as a "Roman‑style
frieze" and promised that its "ornate classical figures" would be "replicated
and replaced" (San Diego Union, December 1,
1991).
Tom
Emery of Emery Studios of Solana Beach, hired by the City of San Diego to access the
ornament, recommended in January 1992 that the noses of Chac, the Maya rain god, "not be reintroduced" as "they
would be most difficult to maintain." He claimed the noses were not Maya in
origin, but an embellishment added by Larrinaga. Unlike the soon‑to‑be amputated noses,
Emery regarded the glass mural painting, "removed sometime after 1946," as "a
vital contribution" that "should be replaced by all means," in stained glass,
rather than as a painting.
Meanwhile,
the Hall of Champions secured the services of Tanner Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects of
Los Angeles. Jim Tanner of this
firm stated that the Federal
Building's entry facade was modeled
after the Palace of the Governor in Uxmal, Yucatan.
David
Look, chief of the Preservation Assistance branch of the National Park Service
division of the U.S. Department of the Interior, based in San Francisco, offered
advice to the new architects. This
was necessary as the Federal Building was part of a Balboa Park
National Historic Landmark, so declared in February 1978. Look's knowledge of the Exposition
buildings in Balboa Park was based partially on information
supplied to him by the architects.
Since the National Park Service had established 1935‑36 as the cut‑off
years for historic preservation when the House of Hospitality was reconstructed
in 1997 and since the Federal Building was a product of the 1935
California‑Pacific International Exposition, it was logical that Look would
restate that the building be restored to its 1935‑36 appearance. So he did in a letter to Craig Edwards
of Tanner Leddy Maytum Stacy
Achitects, August 21,
1995:
NPS
(National Park Service) is informed that the intent of all restoration work is
to return the buildings and sites in the Park to their 1935‑36 condition and
appearance. If this is the case,
then the missing ornament and the painted glass mural over the main entry should
be replicated.
The
City of San Diego had the same opinion regarding
cut‑off dates for the historic preservation of the Federal Building. Its reimbursement agreement with the
architects called for:
refurbishment
of interior and exterior wall surfaces, replication and replacement of missing
and damaged ornamentation, replacement of the roof, ADA compliance, construction
of a new basement and new floor, installation of new restroom facilities, and
improvements to utilities and services including plumbing, electrical and
mechanical systems.
Seemingly
the new architectural team accepted the 1991 Emery Studio recommendation to
replace exactly "the Mayan Indian of Yucatan, Mexico design." . . . "on the two opposite
ends of the Federal Building."
In
a letter to Look, September 21, 1995, Edwards ruled out restoring the wooden
decorative details and the painted glass mural:
In
areas where decorative detail was removed in 1942 [sic] by the military, the
intent of the restoration work is to restore the concrete profile . . . but not
to restore the wooden decorative details which would have been missing for over
50 years. It is not our intent to
restore the painted glass mural, which was also removed in 1942 [sic], but the
shape of the wall opening will be retained and filled with clear
glass.
In
a letter to Michael Tudury of the City of San Diego,
October 7, 1997, Thomas Silva of Tanner Leddy Maytum Stacy stated the objective of a meeting with the San
Diego Historic Sites Board, December 13, 1995, was to gain support for the
concept of restoring ornamentation that currently exists on the building, but
not to replicate ornament that does not exist. The Sites Board gave the architects what
they wanted:
Motion
by Caryl Iseman, seconded by
Doug Austen: APPROVE the proposed Hall of Champion modifications to the historic
Federal
Building due to their
sympathetic and compatible design and the restoration of much of the primary
historic fabric. Additional study
should occur on the exit stairs from the below‑grade portion in front of the
facility and also on the skylights.
Also, if it is not Council Policy, a salvage plan is to be prepared and
implemented. The issue of the lawn
sculptures is to be reconsidered.
At
a meeting, October 22, 1997, the Historic Sites Board left the door open
slightly regarding the re‑creation of the 1935 mural
painting:
If
it cannot be proven that colors can be definitely identified from a black and
white photograph and no color photo exists, staff recommends that since the
mural could not be accurately reproduced, the applicant should not be required
to provide it and the original clear glass clerestory is
acceptable.
Look
concurred:
We
recommend that the triangular window over the main entrance remain in its
current configuration, using clear or opaque glass, until documentation of the
original colors used for the painted mural can be
found.
We
understand further that the missing ornamentation will be selectively
replaced. If the building was being
restored to its original 1935 appearance, replacement of all the missing
ornamentation would be necessary, however, as this
project is considered a rehabilitation, the partial replacement conforms with
the Secretary of the Interior's Standards
for Rehabilitation.
The
1991 $5 million relocation and renovation cost had increased to $12 million in
1997, with $3 million from the Birch Foundation, $2.3 million from the City, and
$250,000 from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. A campaign drive for $6.5 million,
chaired by Alex Spanos, owner of the Chargers football
team, was to pick up the slack.
Tanner Leddy Maytum
and Spacy Architects of Los Angeles are responsible
for the overall design of the building and Acona
Associates of San Francisco are to design the interior. Ninteman
Construction will do the construction at an estimated cost of $6 million. Gene Quintana of Dimensional Building
Concepts will replicate the ornament. The new building will have 68,000 sq. ft.,
as compared to the 58,000 sq. ft. contemplated in 1991 and the 30,335 sq. ft. in
the original structure. Construction began in 1997 simultaneously with the
construction of a Balboa Activities Center for dispossessed athletes on the
former grounds of the U.S. Naval Hospital, which had reverted to the City in
1988
The
Hall of Champions wanted to acquire an additional 12,500 sq. ft. by expanding
into an underground annex with 14 ft. high ceilings in front of the main
entrance. As money for this
addition was not forthcoming, officials asked the City to approve the plan "in
concept."
This
paper is not concerned with the operation of the Hall of Champions, which should
be left to a sports enthusiast. It
is concerned with the architectural, historical, and humane aspects of public
spaces in Balboa
Park. Since former Exposition structures in
the park are not going away and since they represent not only themselves, but
deeper themes that intrigue people, several points should be made about the
miscarriage of the historic preservation process in regards to the partial
renovation, partial reconstruction of the Federal Building.
The
1991 Central Mesa Precise Plan for Balboa Park has the following as its
guidelines:
3. All architecture in the 1935 Palisades areas should exhibit the styles established by
Richard Requa's original design
concept.
5. Missing historic elements should be
reconstructed whenever possible.
6. All exterior building modifications
should preserve or restore original Exposition site
relationships.
Recommendations
for the Federal
Building
were:
Restore
decorative friezes on the exterior
Restore
the original artwork and lighting to the front facade to resemble the original
design
These
guidelines and recommendations are clear enough. While a lawyer might find covert
inconsistencies, on an overt level, they advocate restoring the Federal Building to its 1935‑36 appearance as did National
Park Service historic preservation officials and the City of San Diego in its
contractual agreement with the architects in charge of renovation. For various reasons, officials in the
Hall of Champions and the architects in charge found it necessary to modify
preservation requirements. These
reasons were based on economic considerations (complete restoration would cost
too much and divert money away from the exhibit focus of the Hall of Champions)
and on difficulties anticipated by the architects in creating fiberglass plastic
panels that would look like the original frieze. Tom Emery of Emery Studio claimed
elongated noses did not exist in Puuc‑style buildings
in Yucatan
(where they are hallmarks of the style) and the priest on the mural was Kukulkan, "the Feathered Serpent" (because he wore a
headdress of feathers!)
Since
the original entrance doors of the Federal Building did not exist, the Secretary
of the Interior's standards for rehabilitation allowed their replacement with
"non historic" doors as long as they were "clearly new and in character with the
historic building." In other words,
a way could be found to put new doors on the building (what would it be without
them?), but a way could not be found to re‑create the mural because colored
copies of it did not exist, or, if they did, they were not 100 percent accurate.
The
Hall of Champions serves a public purpose in promoting the history and the
practice of local sports. The
purpose of the Historic Sites Board and the historic preservation branch of the
National Park Service is to protect public monuments from defilement and
demolition, whether they be landscapes or
buildings. By countenancing
proposals from clients and architects based on expediency and economics, these
agencies failed to give the rehabilitation of the Federal Building the in‑depth investigation that
the matter deserves.
Some
people may consider the aim of preserving Exposition settings and buildings in
Balboa
Park to be recondite and
impractical. Professional
architects and designers pay lip service to this purpose; then, they go about
adding to and changing the appearance of El Prado and
the Palisades without any idea of the damage
they are inflicting on the composite picture they claim to admire. Politicians do not know that a composite
picture exists; witness San Diego mayor Susan Golding's desire to demolish the Municipal Gymnasium (1935
Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries) in the Palisades (San Diego
Union, April 23, 1994).
The
1935‑36 Federal Building was not the finest example of Maya Revival
architecture in the United
States.
Its decorative details are the only reason why the building is considered
Maya Revival. At best, these are
sparse. They were cribbed from
source books or imagined by Larrinaga who had meager or no knowledge of Maya
temples in their native settings.
Temples
in 1935‑36 were in a sad state of decay.
Since that time many of these have been restored by archaeologists who
did not comply with the severe standards of the National Park
Service.
The
Federal Building would be better looking if Larrinaga had
extended his frieze around all sides of the building and given it the intricate
and interlacing rhythms that exist in Uxmal and if he had painted the details in the
iridescent colors that originally covered the limestone and stucco exteriors of
Maya buildings in Yucatan.
Fanciful versions of these colors exist in Maya Revival style theaters in
Los Angeles, Denver and San
Antonio. The
National Geographic Magazine has published many articles illustrated by
color reproductions of Maya murals inside and outside buildings. George Oakley Totten's book reproduced many colored drawings of Maya reliefs that became the source for Maya Revival style
architects, among whom were Kirk McDonald and Robert B. Stacy‑Judd. Unfortunately many of the colorful,
humorous and lively buildings designed by these architects have
disappeared. But the Federal Building in Balboa Park stands. Marjorie Ingle reproduced a photograph
of the Federal
Building in her study of
the Maya Revival style, published by Peregrine Smith Books in 1984. It is the sole surviving representative
of Maya Revival style buildings that were put up at large fairs and sideshows
during the Depression.
More
than other long, bare, rectangular buildings Requa put
up in the Palisades, the Federal Building gave to despairing Americans an
exhilarating taste of the exotic.
The Maya details excited the imagination as did movies of the time, some
opulently decorated by Juan Larrinaga.
Here was an opportunity to revel in the bizarre and the unknown. Beyond their garish surfaces, there was
a deep meaning in the buildings and movies, as there was a deep meaning in the
elephantine noses of Chac, the rain god, and in the
mysterious priest who was receiving the supplications of an enigmatic worshiper
or prisoner. What did it mean? There was, thus, a great curiosity
value. A curiosity which could
easily have been satisfied by a visit to the Museum of Man
in Balboa Park, where archaeologists could have explained the
symbolism of Maya details on the Federal Building.
Requa
may not have known it, but there was a tie between the 1915‑16 and the 1935‑36
Expositions which was more substantial than the congruence of Spanish‑Colonial
buildings on El Prado and buildings with Maya
garnishments in the Palisades. Dr. Edgar L. Hewett, who was in charge of the Museum of Man (also known
as the San Diego Museum) had written a book about Maya civilization and had
furnished the interior of the Museum with artifacts from Mexico and
Guatemala. He gave Henry Lovens free studio space in the museum. Lovens became
an outstanding decorator of interiors in the Maya Revival style, about which he
had learned under Dr. Hewett's
tutelage.
Aside
then from the charm of being in a re‑created Palisades with all the buildings
around the great Pan America Plaza resembling their animated and sprightly
1935‑36 appearance, the Maya veneer on the Federal Building is important because
it opens eyes, minds and hearts to the civilized achievements of the indigenous
people who inhabited the New World before Columbus and continue to inhabit the
New World today. Many of the
explorers who saw the Maya ruins thought it was impossible that American Indians
could have created them. These
interlopers made up weird stories of descendants from a vanished Atlantis and of
visitors from outer space. Even
George Oakley Totten thought the buildings showed the
influence of Buddhist monks. The
real story was more important than this.
People whom Anglo‑American newcomers regarded as savages created the
great artistic and intellectual Maya civilization. In doing so they gave the lie to white
people who think of themselves as a superior race and as the apex of an
evolutionary process.