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The Hibernia Bank at the Heart of MidMarket

Posted by Cindy on March 9, 2001

Mar 092001

1 Jones Street
MidMarket

Imagine walking down the Champs-Élysées, or Fifth Avenue between 49th and 60th Streets, and when you hit the middle you hail a cab just to go two or three blocks, then get out and continue walking.

This is what has happened to Market Street in San Francisco. The street that best epitomizes the concept of the City Beautiful Movement has a large gaping hole in the middle. The area around 6th and Market has been taken over by the less fortunate, and they have made it their outdoor hotel.

The area between 5th and 10th on Market Street is often referred to as the Mid-Market area in San Francisco. Like many problematic areas it is worse at its center. This area has plagued the City of San Francisco since the 1960s. There have been many mayors, and many commissions putting forth ideas, but no action and no solutions.

The few stores that occupy Mid-Market sit amongst mainly boarded up buildings, they have found it easier to serve the less fortunate than try to entice other types of clientele. This leaves an overwhelming retail representation of strip clubs, pawn shops and check cashing stores. Tourists do not, and locals hesitate to, walk down this portion of Market Street, essentially ripping this grand boulevard in two.

Sitting in the heart of Mid-Market is the boarded up and abandoned Hibernia Bank Building, once proclaimed the “Most Artistic Building in Town” by the San Fransisco Call. This building is a perfect example of the fact that sometimes all the tax breaks and good intention laws cannot help.

The Hibernia Bank building is ripe for adaptive reuse, a movement that had its American beginnings in San Francisco. The city has eagerly supported the adaptation of buildings for new uses while retaining their historic features. Keeping city centers alive and conserving historic buildings is an important concept, but one that can and will fail when the right cards do not fall into place.

The Hibernia Bank, which stands as the gateway to the Tenderloin District, is still looking for that properly dealt hand. A baroque inspired Beaux-Arts building, the 38,000 square foot bank with its glass domed corner entrance and grand stairway begs to be appreciated for its beauty. Sadly it has become a boarded up symbol of how down and out the mid-market area is.

Designed by Albert Pissis, Hibernia Bank opened its doors in 1892, serving Irish miners who had struck it rich in the California Gold Rush. It also served their widows by paying out 3% on savings accounts. (Ironically Albert Pissis also designed the Emporium Building, now the Westfield San Francisco Center, a mall that attracts thousands of tourists every year.)

After the 1906 quake. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Library

The interior of the building was destroyed in the 1906 conflagration, but the exterior remained somewhat intact allowing the bank to reopen just 5 weeks later.

Hibernia Bank housed a bank up until 1987. Since then the banks columned sides and carved granite walls have been spit on, pissed on and lived on, and today they are fenced in and covered with plywood. The building has been sold twice since 1987, it even served as a temporary headquarters for the San Francisco Police Department’s Tenderloin Task Force from 1991 to 2000, but today it once again stands empty and neglected.

The Hibernia Bank Building is a San Francisco landmark and yet that does not help its situation. There are minimal maintenance requirements for privately held historical landmarks in San Francisco. While at both the state and federal levels there are many tax incentives, and laws that help with the restoration, maintenance is not truly covered in any codes.

The Mills Act is perhaps the best preservation incentive available to private property owners in San Francisco. Enacted by the State of California in 1976, the Mills Act authorizes local governments to enter into contracts with owners of privately owned historical property to insure its rehabilitation, restoration, preservation and long-term maintenance. In return, the property owner enjoys a reduction in property taxes for a given period. Mills Act contracts have the net effect of freezing the base value of the property, thereby keeping property taxes low. The City’s Mills Act enabling legislation was adopted in 1996.

When financial times are good many private owners of landmarks spruce up their historic buildings, like the Adam Grant Building and 111 Sutter Street. The Hibernia has not been so lucky.

Since being sold in 2005 for a mere $3.95 million to Seamus Naughton of the Dolman Property Group, the economic times have turned sour. The building needs approximately $18 million for improvements, including seismic retrofitting, asbestos and lead paint abatement as well as disability access.

Even if these improvements can be made, one must ask if it is worth the trouble. The building will still be sitting in the middle of the worst of Mid-Market. At the same time, the restoration of this stunning beauty might be just what the neighborhood needs.

Mid-Market would benefit greatly from an influx of quality housing. Local residents sustain neighborhoods that bring life to the streets and bring in visitors. Most of San Francisco’s vital and interesting neighborhoods for shopping, eating, and drinking are in the midst of dense residential neighborhoods. It would be difficult to imagine how the Hibernia Bank could be turned into housing that would bring in the amount of money needed to turn a profit, and not be so prohibitively expensive as to instantly eliminate the type of person that would buy in a promising, but still down trodden area, and yet that is what is needed.

While San Francisco prides itself on adaptive reuse and historical preservation so many times it falls short in actual action. Preservation and restoration of the neighborhood’s outstanding historic buildings should be a cornerstone of this neighborhood’s revitalization. The Hibernia Bank, at its core, is a good place to start.

The interior central dome. Interior photos are from the real estate brochure.

Ornamental plaster in one of the offices of the Hibernia bank

Two Old Banks Still Stand Proud

Posted by Cindy on March 16, 2001

Mar 162001

Grant Avenue and Market Street

Many critics of historical preservation projects complain that the process leaves the building frozen in time. Adaptive re-use proves that this does not need to be the case.

Adaptive re-use, which adapts buildings for new uses while retaining their historic features, can also a sustainable form of development that reduces waste, uses less energy and scales down on the consumption of building materials. San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square remodel in 1964 marked the first adaptive re-use project in the United States and San Francisco has never looked back.

A prime example of adaptive re-use in San Francisco can be found when comparing the two, classic Beaux Arts buildings that make up the stately entrance onto Grant Avenue from Market Street, the one street in San Francisco that comes closest to embodying the City Beautiful movement espoused by Daniel Burnham.

Coincidentally, both buildings were originally banks. Standing at 1 Grant Avenue is San Francisco Landmark #132: built in 1910 as the Savings Union Bank it was reconfigured for retail through adaptive re-use in the 1990s. The Savings Union Bank was designed by Walter Danforth Bliss and William Baker Faville. Both gentlemen were graduates of MIT and began their San Francisco practice in 1898.

This steel frame building is clad in gray granite. Six Ionic columns hold up its massive pediment 38 feet high. This modified domed temple is derived from the Roman Pantheon. The pediment, designed and sculpted by Haig Patigian, houses a Bas Relief of Liberty. Patigian, an Armenian by birth who spent most of his career in San Francisco, was one of the cities most prolific sculptors during his time.

At one time the front was graced with bronze doors. These doors consisted of four panels designed by Arthur Mathews and were said to be “descriptive of the historical succession of the races in California.” First the Indian, then the Spaniard who was typified by a Franciscan monk, next a miner representing the “American” and then an allegorical representation of a San Franciscan shown as the ideal figure of a youth beside a potter’s wheel modeling one of the new buildings in the city. Those doors have been replaced with glass.

Interior of Retail establishment at 1 Grant Avenue (photo courtesy of Goldstick Lighting Company).

Inside are eight Tavernelle (an old building stone term that means spotted or mottled) marble Corinthian pilasters and columns thirty feet high. These support the main cornice, which is surmounted by an attic and coffered ceiling. The walls are not of marble but of Caen stone. Caen stone is a limestone quarried in France near the city of Caen. It was first used in the Gallo-Roman period. (the period when Gaul was under Roman influence)

Across the street, also built in 1910, at a cost of $1.5 million, stands the Union Trust Company Building, San Francisco Landmark #131. Union Trust merged with Wells Fargo Bank in 1923. The building still houses a Wells Fargo Bank branch.

Photo Courtesy of San Francisco Public Library.

Clinton Day was the architect of this Neoclassical Beaux Arts building. According to the July 1, 1908 San Francisco Call “The structure at Market Street and Grant Avenue Will Be Handsome and Commodious.” Day came from a distinguished California family. His father was State Senator Sherman Day and co-founder of College of California, the precursor to the University of California Berkeley. Clinton Day was a graduate of College of California.

This modified temple design is without a pediment. Its beautiful layered façade consists of carved granite ornamentation, derived from classical antiquity that includes ten columns, a bracketed overhang and a roof crowned by a balustrade parapet. This is all accented by dark iron window framing. The curvature on the Market Street side grounds it nicely to its location.

This well-heeled area of Market Street makes these two banks stand proud, unlike the rundown Mid Market area that holds the Hibernia Bank.

Pediment at 1 Grant Avenue designed and sculpted by Haig Patigian.

Goddess of Progress

Posted by Cindy on January 29, 2014

Jan 292014

City Hall
South Light Court

Goddess of Progress by F. Marion Wells

The plaque that accompanies her reads: On April 17, 1906, the dome atop San Francisco’s City Hall that was completed in 1896 supported a twenty foot statue by F. Marion Wells. The Goddess of Progress, with lightbulbs in her hair, held a torch aloft in her right hand, causing some contemporary counts to refer to it as the Goddess of Liberty. The statue was so securely mounted that on April 18, 1906, when City Hall and the city around it lay in ruins from the great earthquake-fire, it continued to stand at the peak of the now exposed steel tower. After workmen brought it down from the precarious perch when the building was finally torn down in 1909 the statue fell from a wagon and the 700-pound head broke off.

***

It is my understanding that the whereabouts of the body is unknown.

Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library taken in 1906

Francis Marion Wells was born in Pennsylvania in 1848. Wells arrived in San Francisco about 1870 and was a cofounder of the Bohemian Club in 1872. He was Douglas Tilden’s first teacher in 1883 and the following year was commissioned to do a bust of Hawaii’s King David Kalakua who was visiting in Oakland. Wells was active in the local art scene as a teacher as well as a producer of portrait busts and bas reliefs.

Once a very wealthy man, he fell on hard times, as this article from the San Francisco Call of July 14, 1903 attests:

FRANCIS MARION WELLS FORCED TO ENTER THE COUNTY HOSPITAL

Well-Known Sculptor, Artist, Literateur and Former Club Man, Afflicted by Illness, Compelled to Ask Municipality for Help

FRANCIS MARION WELLS, sculptor, literateur, club member and well-known man about town, was forced by dire illness and strain of circumstances to apply for admission to the City and County Hospital yesterday. He is now lying there in a helpless and pitiable state. Not one single friend came to him in his distress, although when in affluent circumstances his beautiful home and grounds at Berkeley were filled with those who enjoyed the royal hospitality that they were always welcome to there.

Broken in spirit, sick nigh unto death, his arms paralyzed, his mind partially deranged from his sufferings, he was compelled to seek the only relief at hand and become a ward of the city. His faithful wife has struggled nobly during his four months illness. He has been during all that time entirely, helpless, the result of five apoplectic shocks.

Two months ago, to save the family from actual starvation, Mrs. Wells took a position as housekeeper at the Vienna Lodging-house, 533 Broadway, where, with their two young sons, she was just enabled to make enough to keep the wolf from the door. As she had to do the entire work of twenty rooms and also cooking for the family, she had no time to give her husband the constant nursing that his case required, but was by his side whenever she could steal a moment from her work.

Yesterday afternoon when the ambulance came to take Wells away he said: “I hope there won’t be a crowd to see me put into the ambulance, as I don’t want the people to see me in this poverty stricken condition.” This was too much for his wife to bear, and she borrowed $2 from some kind neighbors, a hack was procured and the sufferer was, carried down the rickety stairs and placed in it. His wife and sons accompanied him, to the hospital and made him as comfortable there as possible and then bade him farewell and returned to their humble lodgings.

Mrs. Wells, who is a highly educated and refined Parisian, is broken hearted over the thought of his position.” She said with tears streaming down her pale face: “I do not care for myself; I am young and can work for my two boys, but to think that my husband’s friends should allow him to become a burden to the city is almost more than I can bear. When we were in deep distress, surrounded, by poverty and sickness, I wrote to several of his former wealthy, old-time and intimate friends in the Bohemian Club to come to his relief with food and medical attendance, but not one of them replied. I did not ask for anything for myself, only for him, and that appeal they refused him. Today he fainted four times on the way to the hospital, and when I left him he was almost, unconscious. Oh! I do not want him to die there. Don’t you think some of his old friends will do something for him and put him into a private sanitarium where his last hours can be spent?

RUINED BY SPECULATION.

“We have been very unfortunate.. When I came from Paris, fourteen years ago, I brought $60,000 with me and used it in buying property here and then built a beautiful home in Berkeley. All went well until General Ezeta persuaded us to go into his San Salvador scheme, and he was so persuasive that we put in $40,000— and we lost every cent of it.

Bad luck followed, we mortgaged our home; and lost it. Then I commenced to sell my jewels. My $8000 diamond necklace, which my mother gave me, I pawned for $1200. I had hoped to redeem it, although Mr. Shreve had offered to buy it for $5000. Little by little everything went, and now we are worse than penniless. My husband was always goodness itself to me, and we all love him dearly. My oldest son is 13. He has just ha, the misfortune to cut off the end of his finger. My youngest boy, Emanuel, is 11, and helps me as much as he can. “My husband is a member of the Universal Order of Knight Commanders of the Sun, and here are the original parchments granted him. I think he was also one of the charter members of the Bohemian Club. It is a very sad ending to the life of a man with a brilliant brain, with accomplishments and with so generous and kind a heart for all his friends.

He was born in Louisiana, his father being General Francis Marion Wells, but he was educated in the eastern part of Pennsylvania.

SCULPTOR OF LIBERTY. Marion Wells, as he was called, has been well known here for many years and has been one of the most prominent sculptors in the city. His statue of Liberty on the dome of the City Hall is a fine piece of work and a monument to his abilities. The figure is modeled from his wife and the poise is extremely graceful. The bas relief of John Lick, which was executed at the request of the Lick trustees, and now hangs in the Pioneer Hall, is a splendid likeness of the great philanthropist. The John Marshall monument in Sonora County, erected to commemorate the first discovery of gold in California, also exhibits great talents.

Among other works are the bears over the entrance to the First National Bank, which have marked merit in conception and design. He also did some artistic modeling for the Hibernia Bank, which adds much to the beauty of that handsome structure. The great owl which stands at the top of the grand stairway of the Bohemian Club is also of his handiwork. Other work which has been highly commented upon adorns St. Ignatius Church, the quadrangle and the memorial chapel at Stanford University.
***
Wells Died, July 22, 1903

The head suffered a few indignities on its way to the San Francisco City Hall Museum area.

The head was apparently given to John C. Irvine by former mayor James D. Phelan after it was removed from the old City Hall. It was, later, owned by his son, William Irvine.

It then came into possession of the South of Market Boys who gave it back to the city April 18, 1950, the 44th anniversary of the Great Earthquake.

It was later displayed in Golden Gate Park, then placed in storage.

Seven years later, in 1957, the head was sold, along with several cable cars, at public auction to Knott’s Berry Farm, a Southern California amusement park. It was given back to the city by Knott’s Berry Farm in the mid-1970s.

The goddess was, for many years, displayed at the Fire Department Museum, but was moved in 1993 to the Museum of the City of San Francisco. The goddess was then moved to City Hall in 1998 to celebrate the reopening of the structure after it was repaired following the 1989 earthquake.

A San Francisco Jewel

Posted by Cindy on May 14, 2013

May 142013

2266 California
Pacific Heights
Sherith Israel Synagogue
“Loyal Remnant of Israel”

On a whim, a photographer friend of mine, Lisa, suggested we stop in and take a look at the Sherith Israel Synagogue. She has been documenting its amazing details for posterity, and I had never been inside. What an incredible adventure and I am truly grateful to have been introduced to this architectural and artistic gem that holds so much San Francisco history.

Sherith Israel was designed by Albert Pissis. Pissis (1842-1914) was the son of a French physician who immigrated first to Mexico and then to San Francisco in 1858. Pissis was born in Mexico. He graduated from secondary school in San Francisco and went to work for architect William Mooser. He then attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts between 1872 and 1876, being one of the first San Franciscans to do so. After his return to San Francisco, his success with the 1892 Hibernia Bank design led to another commission with a grand dome, the Emporium Department Store in 1896.

Completed in 1905, the synagogue is an eight-sided building with a beautiful dome rising 120 feet above the street, The interior is magnificently decorated with stenciled frescoes and opalescent stained glass windows.

Since the structure withstood the 1906 earthquake it housed San Francisco’s Superior Court for two years after the quake. It was the setting for the corruption trials of political boss Abraham Rueff (known as Abe Ruef). Ruef was an American lawyer and politician. He gained notoriety as the political boss behind the administration of Mayor Eugene Schmitz in the period of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. On December 6, 1906, Ruef was arraigned. “As the indictments were read out by the clerk, Ruef made clear his disdain for the proceedings by standing with his back to the judge.” During the period of his trial, Ruef occupied offices in The Columbus Tower (now the Sentinel Building). In February 1907 Ruef pleaded “not guilty”. On March 18, 1907, the Supervisors confessed before a grand jury to “receiving money from Ruef in connection with the Home Telephone, overhead trolley, prize fight monopoly, and gas rates deals. In exchange, “they were promised complete immunity and would not be forced to resign their offices. The grand jury then returned 65 indictments against Ruef for bribery of the supervisors.”

In 1945, Sherith Israel provided the setting for a meeting of national Jewish organizations to commemorate the founding of the United Nations.

The building survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake unscathed as well. Nevertheless, the city passed a law requiring all unreinforced masonry places of public assembly to meet stringent seismic safety standards, and despite its great track record, Sherith Israel had to comply.

The exterior walls are brick, standing on brick footings. These bricks are clad in Colusa sandstone, a popular material of the time that is highly porous and susceptible to the elements, it had experienced considerable spalling (delamination). At some point in the late 1950s, the building had been painted a salmon color, probably to cover patching work. What was not known in the 1950s was that paint would only accelerate the deterioration of the sandstone by trapping water beneath it. Over time, the paint began literally pulling off the top layer of stone. The paint has been removed from all but the dome at this time.

Berkeley architectural and planning firm ELS was brought in to help with the seismic retrofitting and repairs. You can read an in-depth article on all of the work that was done here. The synagogue was also the subject of an Architectural Preservation Technology Bulletin that can be read here in its entirety.

“In preparation for the building’s centennial in 2005, several art historians studied Sherith Israel’s stained glass windows. The identity of the artist/s was unknown until congregants Joan Libman and Ian Berke discovered an invoice for $1100 made out to Emile Pissis.”

The stained glass windows were designed by Emile M. Pissis, the architect’s brother. Emile was born in San Francisco on March 10, 1854. A lifelong resident of San Francisco he was a co-founder of the San Francisco Art Association in 1871. A man of wealth, he never sold a picture and seldom exhibited. He remained a bachelor and spent his leisure time roaming the Marin hills, fishing, hunting, and painting. Many of his landscapes and portraits were lost in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Emile maintained a luxurious Nob Hill studio-apartment at 18 Pleasant Street. Upon his death, he was cremated and his ashes thrown to the winds above Marin County by airplane. One of his award-winning paintings, “Discovery of the Bay by Gaspar de Portola,” was recently discovered hidden away in the museum of the Society of California Pioneers when Sherith Israel began to research its artistic history. Sadly, the only surviving work by Emile Pissis consists of the Sherith Israel windows, two paintings at the Society of California Pioneers and nine watercolors held by the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco.

The prolific paintings and frescoes that grace the synagogue were created by and under the tutelage of, Attilio Moretti. Moretti was born in Milan, Italy on April 16, 1851. Moretti moved to San Francisco with his family in 1865. By the late 1880s, he was sharing a studio with Bernardo Trezzini. Well known as a painter, Moretti also designed altars and memorial chapels. In an unpublished manuscript, Emile Pissis observed, “(Attilio) Moretti was busy painting saints and angels in the Catholic churches throughout the state.” Moretti’s obituary describes him as “… one of the best-known men in his line in California.” Among his last projects was a chapel in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma under the direction of the late Archbishop Patrick Riordan, a close friend, and admirer. Neither his Holy Cross decoration nor his painting in the chapel of Notre Dame des Victoires Church still exists. The Sherith Israel frescoes are believed to be the last examples of Moretti’s prolific career. He died in San Francisco on March 27, 1915

During the restoration of the 2000’s artist, Beate Bruhl was hired to restore stenciled decorative painting on the interior walls and ceilings in the areas that had been damaged by water intrusion over the years. In some areas, original stencils were discovered under layers of paint, knowledge that will help with future restorative work.

Other than the blue of the dome, most colors of the frescoes and stencils are rust reds, ochres, golds, and yellows, characteristic colors of the English Arts and Crafts Movement.

ELS is currently working with the congregation to replace the original 1905 carpet with custom woven carpet to match the original. Evidence that the sanctuary carpet is original to the building was found by reviewing congregational records from 1905, currently stored in the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. They found an original 1905 receipt for the carpet, carefully filed in the archives. The receipt gave them the name of the mill, which matched the weave mark on the back of the carpet. Lisa told me that many of the cushions that line the pews are also original. There is mattress ticking on the bottom, and yes, they are filled with horse hair.

There are so very many unifying design elements in the synagogue, it makes for a peaceful and delightful experience. There were tiny columns with capitals everywhere, as well as a unifying theme of knots in both the windows and the frescoes.

The steel frame of the sanctuary is enclosed in lath and plaster to create a composition familiar in Byzantine, Romanesque and Renaissance architecture of an ecclesiastical space. This particular space consists of piers (a column designed to support concentrated load), pendentives (One of a set of curved wall surfaces which form a transition between a dome (or its drum) and the supporting masonry), a drum (A circular or polygonal wall supporting a dome or cupola), and a dome. The side and rear arches that frame this central space are vaulted, framing large stained glass windows and covering galleries. The arch motif is repeated and each arch together with the ring of the drum and the front edges of the galleries, are outlined in incandescent light bulbs, totaling more than one thousand in all.

The synagogue has been given an historic designation. You can read the entire report regarding the building and its significance here.

The Great White Way

Posted by Cindy on November 9, 2012

Nov 092012

My interest in the revitalization of Market Street came about when I wrote this piece for Untapped Cities about the Hibernia Bank Building.

A friend who has a wonderful website about the architecture of Mid Market and other areas of San Francisco, titled Up From The Deep, introduced me to this project, and I feel so passionately about it and its success that I would like everyone to take the time to view the video, go to the website, and please, if you can, donate to the cause.

This is the purpose of the project

“In San Francisco, an unusual coalition of artists, city officials, property owners and residents is working together to reverse a 50 year decline of the once “Great White Way of San Francisco”. While many cities have attempted to revitalize neighborhoods through the convergence of arts and technology, few have been successful at doing so while preserving their unique cultures.

Will this revitalization unwittingly open the door to gentrification and displace the current low-income residents? Will the reality of pricing people out defeat the promise of lifting people up? Can political and ideological enemies put aside past differences and work together to make real change? Our film, 5 Blocks, is a journey through the trials and tribulations of a community struggling to transform itself from “skid row” to the promise and hope of a vibrant neighborhood.

As artists, we are keenly interested in the role that arts can make in transforming lives. This project follows a large-scale attempt to use the arts to transform an entire neighborhood, an ambitious and daunting task. This may be a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to revitalize this gritty neighborhood and, therefore, to document the process. The lessons learned, whether through success or failure, can serve as a model for other communities across the globe.

Through the process, we share the stories of the people who currently live and work in the neighborhood, people whose voices aren’t usually part of high-level conversations concerning their fate. It is vital to capture this story now, during the messy, difficult discussions about change, and while tentative first steps are taken.”

Artists that are participating in this project are:

Patricia Araujo. Araujo has been familiar with SoMa, since she’s been painting San Francisco’s central city architecture for over a decade, addressing the themes of urban growth and decay. Her work has been collected in two books “SOMA Rising” and her latest “The City from SOMA Grand” which is the feature of a current exhibit at SOMA Grand that is running through December 15th.

Ronnie Goodman. After a 10-year sentence for first-degree burglary at San Quentin State Prison, Goodman, 51, came back to San Francisco, where he’d grown up, and found his way to Central City Hospitality House, which offers art programs for the poor and afflicted. His block prints have been displayed in galleries around town.

Mark Ellinger. Is my friend and an amazing photographer of the slowly dying architecture that made this city great.

Wendy MacNaughton. Wendy’s home town is San Francisco. She’s written advertising copy, designed humanitarian campaigns in Kenya and Rwanda, produced a film in The Democratic Republic Congo, sold used books, counseled survivors of torture, served as a social worker and non-profit advertising campaign director. She created and illustrated the national campaign for the first democratic elections in Rwanda.Wendy received degrees in art and social work from Art Center College of Design and Columbia University, respectively.

Golden Gate Park – Windmills

Posted by Cindy on March 16, 2012

Mar 162012

Golden Gate Park

Windmills

The North Windmill

Queen Wilhelmina Park

The Murphy Windmill

The Murphy Windmill Today

There are two windmills in Golden Gate Park that served a valuable purpose when they were built. When the park was first being developed the focus was on planting trees to stabilize the ocean dunes that covered three-quarters of the park’s area. The two windmills together pumped over 1 1/2 million gallons of water a day to help with this stabilization.

In 1902, the park saw the completion of the Dutch windmill, or the North windmill. The design for the attraction came from Alpheus Bull, Jr. a well-known San Francisco resident, and cost $25,000 to build. The Fulton Engineering Company received the bid for the ironwork, and Pope and Talbot Lumber Company donated sails (“spars”) of Oregon pine. A cottage was built for the caretaker and his wife. In addition to his regular duties of maintaining the mill and positioning it into the wind, the caretaker planted a garden to raise vegetables for the animals in Golden Gate Park’s Menagerie.

The North Windmill was such a success that Mayor Eugene Schmitz encouraged the building of a second windmill, which was largely funded by the vice president of Hibernia Bank, Samuel Murphy. Eventually, the South Windmill or Murphy windmill, was constructed and it became the largest of its kind in the world. The dome was made from copper donated by Louis Sloss , while George Zavier Wendling of the local lumber company Wendling Cross Lumber, contributed the timber.

The windmills were eventually mechanized, and then not needed at all, so they fell into disrepair. In 1964, Eleanor Rossi Crabtree, daughter of Mayor Angelo Rossi initiated a campaign to restore the North windmill. Due to the success of the restoration Queen Wilhelmina Park, a tulip garden that was a gift of the Queen of the Netherlands, was created adjacent to it.

In 2000 the City of San Francisco committed $500,000 to ithe Murphy windmill restoration.

Ron Henggeler was charged with documenting the Murphy windmill restoration, you can see the progress at his website.

The Tenderloin – 191 Golden Gate – Mural

Posted by Cindy on February 6, 2012

Feb 062012

The Tenderloin

191 Golden Gate Avenue

The corner of the mural reads:

“The Gifts you take are equal to the gifts you make.” 2009 Precita Eyes Muralists

Funded by Community Challenge Grants Program and San Francisco Clean City Coaliton

Special Thanks to Tenderloin Community Benefit District, Tenderloin Health, San Franciso Arts Commission.

Precita Eyes Website had this to say about the mural –

“The Gift You Take is Equal to the Gift You Make” celebrates the gifts that the community brings and receives in the Tenderloin neighborhood including diversity, varied backgrounds, and rich cultural heritages and experiences. The “SS New Tenderloin” breaches the turbulent ocean and arrives from distant lands, bringing the various people who will make the neighborhood their home. As the children leave the ship, they join others, and grab the rope (a common Tenderloin practice) to traverse the streets. They head for “National Family Night Out”, a scene of fun, art and entertainment for all. As they cross the space, they approach neighborhood landmarks such as the Hibernia Bank, and the Cadillac Hotel with its portrait of community leaders, Kathy and Leroy Looper.

At National Family Night Out in the Tenderloin, children’s art is everywhere, and its spirit carries over to the classroom. In the school room our heroes, the teachers encourage and guide children of all ethnicities. In the background, the roses signify the color and added life that will come by adding more gardens and greenery to the neighborhood. The Black Hawk Jazz Club is a tribute to the past and the musicians are a nod to the current efforts to revitalize the music and art in the neighborhood.

The mural also honors the gifts that the community receives, and shows the residents, workers and activists breaking the chains of containment to demonstrate for the needs of the neighborhood. In this Tenderloin, there are health services, affordable housing (such as the Essex Hotel), work opportunities, a clean and safe environment, interactions among neighbors, services offered to all, and “Community not Containment”. All of these gifts become available as the sun shines in the Tenderloin.

The Tenderloin – Police Department

Posted by Cindy on February 3, 2012

Feb 032012

The Tenderloin

San Francisco Police Department

301 Eddy Street

First Person Plural by Anders Barth Fired Clay Glaze

(Lenda) Anders Barth has another piece of ceramic work on the Richmond District fire department.

First Person Plural is an 8 x 24 foot, hand-carved and glazed tile mural on the Jones Street wall of the Tenderloin Police Station. The entire mural is comprised of 188 large tiles and numerous, smaller brick forms. Silhouettes of thirty-five people of different ages and races are depicted at work and play. Interspersed between them are animals typically found in the Tenderloin neighborhood—cats, dogs, pigeons and seagulls. The whole is framed by a formal border of gray tile in a repeated pattern of the ‘eternal wave’. Bisecting the rectangle is a column of unglazed red bricks. Some of the bricks have a smooth surfaces, while others are imprinted with different personal pronouns representing the range of ways in which people define themselves—I, we, me, you, us, them, etc…. At the base and top of the column are deep blue tiles filled with white stars. The four corners of the mural are highlighted with tiles containing the familiar 7-pointed star of the Police badge set against a field of blue.

According to artist Anders Barth, “First Person Plural” refers to the interconnectedness of the people and animals that live, work, walk and travel through the Tenderloin every day. Each component of the mural seeks to directly or symbolically celebrate the individuals and community that define the Tenderloin. The details of the carved relief figures capture personal gestures and specific activities like playing ball, walking arm-in arm, shopping, dancing, etc. Each figure is recognizable as an individual while simultaneously serving as a universal type in which we can see ourselves. Only one figure is based on a real person, a neighborhood and Task Force icon, the late Police Sergeant Kenny Sugrue. He is depicted in uniform riding his bike in the lower left-hand corner of the mural.

Anders Barth spent considerable time in the Tenderloin, observing and talking to people. As an outsider, she sought to identify a defining characteristic for this culturally eclectic and rapidly changing neighborhood. She decided that the people themselves, in their great variety, were its most recognizable asset. Each person has a relationship to the others that can be described by a pairing of pronouns: I-Them, She-He, We-You. Each person is part of the whole, and is needed to make the whole, just as many bricks are needed to make a wall, and stars make up the sky.

The motifs found in the mural are drawn from the surrounding architecture of the Tenderloin. The red brick creates an aesthetic link to nearby Father Boeddeker Park. The geometric pattern of the ‘eternal wave’, symbolizing the ebb and flow of life, can be found on several buildings in the area, most notably at the first home of the Tenderloin Police Task Force, the Hibernia Bank building on Jones Street. (Now an abandoned building)

The art at Tenderloin Police Station was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for the San Francisco Police Department. The commission is a result of the city’s percent for art ordinance, which provides for an art allocation of 2% of the cost of construction of new or renovated city structures.

350 Bush Street

Posted by Cindy on May 10, 2013

May 102013

San Francisco Mining Exchange
350 Bush Street
Financial District

The San Francisco Mining Exchange, the second oldest exchange in the United States after the New York Stock Exchange, was formed in 1862 to trade mining stocks. It is San Francisco Landmark #113.

When trading in mining stocks surged in the early 1920s, the Mining Exchange hired the firm Miller & Pflueger, whose work can be found all over San Francisco, to design this Beaux Arts building. 350 Bush is an adaptation of the classical temple form much favored by financial institutions in the period, the building’s pediment and four pairs of fluted columns recall the New York Stock Exchange, constructed twenty years earlier.

The building was a trading hall for mining commodities for only five years; the Mining Exchange relocated in 1928.

Subsequently the building was occupied by the San Francisco Curb Exchange (1928-1938). When the Curb Exchange was absorbed into the San Francisco Stock Exchange the building was occupied by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce (1938-1967), and then Western Title Insurance (1967-1979).

The following is adapted from the San Francisco City Planning Commission Resolution No. 8578 dated 1 May 1980:

“This building is the last visible remnant of the San Francisco Mining Exchange which dissolved in 1967. The exchange was instrumental in making San Francisco the financial center of the West, and its capital was used to develop the mines and other industries of the entire western United States. Names associated with the Exchange include Coit, Sharon, Ralston, Mills, Hearst, Flood, Sutro, Hopkins and many more whose fortunes were founded or greatly augmented on the Exchange.With the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, the need for a central market for trading in mining stocks became apparent. In 1862, the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board was organized, housed first in the Montgomery Block, then in the Merchant’s Exchange.

By the middle of the 1870’s, the Exchange dominated the Western financial world, with capital from the East Coast and Europe pushing its volume of sales over that of the New York Stock Exchange, helping to establish the California-Montgomery Street area as “Wall Street West”.

By the early 1880’s, the Comstock began its permanent decline, and the Exchange’s specialization in mining stocks proved disastrous. In 1882, the rival San Francisco Stock and Bond Exchange, dealing in a wide range of commodities, was formed and prospered.

The silver discoveries in Tonopah, Nevada, in 1903 gave the Exchange new life, and in the 1920’s it commissioned Miller and Pflueger to design a grand Beaux Arts trading hall at 350 Bush Street.

In 1929, the Exchange, hard hit by the Crash, entered its final decline, with a brief revival during the uranium boom of the 1950’s. An investigation of irregularities in its operation by the Securities and Exchange Commission resulted in an order to close, and on August 15, 1967, after almost 105 years of existence, the Mining Exchange came to an end.”

The building has been vacant since 1979. The Swig Company and partners Shorenstein Properties LLC and Weiler-Arnow Investment Company purchased the Mining Exchange building in the 1960s. In 1979, The Swig Company and its partners began assembling the six land parcels around the Mining Exchange for the 350 Bush development. The partners obtained entitlements in the early 2000s. In 2007 Lincoln Property Company acquired the property from the Swig/Shorenstein and Weiler-Arnow group for $60 million. The intention was to break ground that spring, at this writing, that has not happened.

According to Heller Manus, the architects for the project, the historic exchange hall will be used as a grand lobby for a modern office building. The building will provide 360,000 sf of office space with a dramatic galleria at the street level as well as a mid-block pedestrian link between Bush and Pine Streets

The pediment was sculpted by Jo Mora. Joseph Jacinto “Jo” Mora (1876–1947) was an Uruguayan-born American cartoonist, illustrator and cowboy, who lived with the Hopi and wrote extensively about his experiences in California. He was an artist-historian, sculptor, painter, photographer, illustrator, muralist and author. He has been called the “Renaissance Man of the West”.

Mora was born on October 22, 1876 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father was the Catalonian sculptor, Domingo Mora, and his mother was Laura Gaillard Mora, an intellectual French woman. His elder brother was F. Luis Mora, who would become an acclaimed artist and the first Hispanic member of the National Academy of Design. The family entered the United States in 1880 and first settled in New York, and then Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Jo Mora studied art in the New York and Boston, at the Art Student’s League in New York and the Cowles School in Boston. In 1903 he moved to Solvang, California. After wandering the Southwest he returned to San Jose, California.

By 1919, he was sculpting for the Bohemian Club, including a memorial plaque dedicated to Bret Harte, completed in August 1919 and mounted on the outside of the private men’s club building in San Francisco. In 1925, he designed the commemorative half dollar for the California Diamond Jubilee. Mora died October 10, 1947, in Monterey, California.

The building was reopened in 2018, you can read about the “restoration” here.