Search Results for “harvey milk” – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

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Harvey Milk

Posted by Cindy on January 30, 2014

Jan 302014

City Hall
Supervisors Legislative Chamber
Civic Center

This is the only bust of a supervisor in San Francisco’s City Hall.

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office. Milk won a seat as a San Francisco supervisor in 1977. He served almost 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor. Milk’s election and assassination were key components of a shift in San Francisco politics.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called “the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States”

This sculpture was designed by the team of Daub Firmin and Hendrickson of Berkeley at a cost of $84,000. Rob Firmin said artists tend to avoid busts that show toothy smiles, as Milk’s does. They went for it because, Firmin said, “Harvey Milk’s signature expression was a huge, amused and infectious grin.”

Part of the inspiration for the bust is from a photograph taken by Daniel Nicoletta, who worked in Milk’s Castro Street camera shop and is a co-chair of the memorial committee. His photograph caught Milk’s tie blowing in the San Francisco breeze and the bust includes that detail.

Engraved in the pedestal is a quotation from one of the audiotapes Milk recorded in the event of his assassination, which he openly predicted several times before his death. “I ask for the movement to continue because my election gave young people out there hope. You gotta give ’em hope.”

***

Eugene Daub is D & F’s principal sculptor. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and taught there. He has been an instructor at the Scottsdale Artists’ School. He has work in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institute, The British Museum, Ellis Island Museum, as well as many public-sculpture installations across the United States. He is accomplished in all sculpture modes and in a wide range of more general art.

Rob Firmin, in addition to hands-on art creation, works on concepts, composition, research, model building, and project management. Firmin holds a double major in history and art history from Denison University. His career and education have ranged across: realist-figurative sculpture, the formal study of history and art history, to the invention of project management techniques, financial risk reduction, dynamic process control, modeling techniques, and software concepts and design.

Jonah Hendrickson lives in Oakland where he splits his time between sculpture and his real estate business.

Harvey Milk Rec Center

Posted by Cindy on April 15, 2013

Apr 152013

50 Scott
Castro

This saying is over the back entry way to the Harvey Milk Recreation Center. It is in Architectural foam and is by Michael Davis and Susan Schwartzenberg.

This phrase comes from “A City of Neighborhoods,” speech Harvey Milk delivered during his inaugural dinner after his election to the Board of Supervisors in 1977. “Let’s make no mistake about this: the American dream starts with the neighborhoods, If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. and to do that we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living…”

The artists said that as daylight shifts across the buildings facade, Milk’s words are revealed, obscured, and then reappear, reminding us of his enduring influence throughout the passage of time.

Susan Schwartzenberg works as an independent artist and holds a senior artist position at the Exploratorium. She has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Art, and Stanford University, and is a Loeb Fellow for Advanced Environmental Studies in The School of Design at Harvard University. Recent endeavors include works for the Stanford School of Medicine, San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Office of Cultural Affairs in Los Angeles. At the Exploratorium, she has developed numerous projects exploring the intersections of art and science. She is currently principal curator for the Observatory—a social and environmental look at the contemporary San Francisco landscape scheduled to open at piers 15 and 17 in 2013.

Susan was also one of the artists on the Philosophers Walk at McClaren Park.

Michael Davis is a native of Los Angeles, and received a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Cal State Fullerton. He lives and works in San Pedro, CA. Davis’ sculptures and installations can be found in public, private, and institutional settings throughout the country. His public art collaborations can be found in North Hollywood, Dallas, Miami, and Anaheim, and he is working to complete projects for Santa Monica, San Antonio, New York, Santa Fe Springs, San Jose, and Long Beach.

This piece was commissioned for the SF Rec and Parks Department by the SFAC for $62,000.

Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy

Posted by Cindy on October 16, 2011

Oct 162011

Castro District
Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy

The “Books & Reading” Mural is located at the school’s facade. This mural is a part 1 of a triptych. Created by students with Artist in Residence Ellen Blakeley in 2000, each child drew a 4″ picture of their favorite book or a picture of themselves reading. Materials included paper, glass, metal, and paint. This section is approximately 18′ x 6′.

The “Math & Numbers” Mural is part 2 of the triptych. Each child worked out a math problem on paper.

The “Civil Rights, Human Rights” Mural is part 3 of the triptych.

About the school…The original campus housed Douglass Elementary School until the early 1950′s. On June 25, 1996, San Francisco Unified School District’s Board of Education voted to rename Douglass School to Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. Their mission is to empower student learning by teaching tolerance and non-violence, celebrating diversity, achieving academic excellence, and fostering strong family-school-community connections.

WPA Map of San Francisco – Part 2 – SFMOMA, Mission, Noe Valley and Eureka Valley Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 5, 2019

Feb 052019

SFMOMA
Mission Branch Library
Noe Valley Library
Eureka Valley Library

This is the second post in a series covering the joint SF Library system and SFMOMA project Take Part showing the map of San Francisco built by the WPA. Click here for Part 1

SFMOMA

The old Transbay terminal as shown on the map at SFMOMA

The hub of the San Francisco commuter bus and Greyhound system was the old Transbay Terminal. It is shown on the WPA map of San Francisco.

San Francisco’s former Transbay Terminal was built in 1939 at First and Mission Streets as the terminal for East Bay trains using the newly opened Bay Bridge. The Terminal was financed and operated as part of the Bay Bridge and was paid for by Bay Bridge tolls (which were then 50 cents per automobile, or about $7.75 today). At the time, trucks and trains (primarily the Key System) used the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, and automobiles operated in both directions on the upper deck.

Ten car trains arrived every 63.5 seconds. In its heyday at the end of World War II, the terminal’s rail system served 26 million passengers annually. After the war ended and gas rationing was eliminated, the Terminal’s use began to steadily decline to a rate of four to five million people traveling by rail per year. In 1958, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was converted to automobile traffic only, the Key System was dismantled and by 1959 the Transbay Terminal was converted into a bus-only facility.

A new bus terminal, complete with Public Art has been built. However, due to complications, it was closed soon after its grand opening, and as of this writing (February 5, 2019), it has not yet reopened.

Potrero Hill Branch Library

San Francisco General Hospital as portrayed on the map in the Potrero Hill Library

While a hospital sat on this property for years, in 1915 the “New San Francisco General Hospital”, which was a landscaped, red brick, Italian Renaissance style complex, was dedicated during the City’s celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal, at that time motorized ambulances replaced the horse-drawn vans.

One of the map sections at the Potrero Hill Branch Library

The history buff, and someone who has an entire map of San Francisco in his head, my friend Ted, pointed out that the section in the upper right was moved way too far to the right, none-the-less the map of this area shows how the shipyards and PG&E electrical plant were the main items in the area at the time the map was built.

The produce market as shown on the Potrero Hill Branch Library

The San Francisco Produce Market as shown at the Potrero Hill Branch Library

I could only find a reference to the stadium on a 1950 Sanborn Map calling it “Formerly San Francisco Stadium – removed”. (volume 11 – page 786)

Mission District Public Library

The old San Francisco and San Jose Railroad with its raised beds and bridges as shown on the Mission Branch library section

One of the more interesting things on the Mission Branch library map is the section that shows how the San Francisco/San Jose Railroad (1860s) line actually came through this part of town on raised beds and large bridges where it crossed street intersections. Here is a fun documentary made by CalTrain about the history of the line.

Notice the light wells that abound on the homes that sit wall to wall in the Mission District

Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Branch Library

Mission Dolores, angled off the grid in the center at the bottom, can be found at the Eureka Valley Branch Library

Mission Dolores, the light brown building center bottom, can be found at the Eureka Valley Branch Library

The Eureka Valley section shows primarily the residential neighborhoods, but one interesting building was the German Hospital that sits in the block made up of Noe/Duboce/ Castro and 14th.

The German Hospital

In 1854, the German General Benevolent Society formed the German Hospital to provide healthcare, food, and shelter for San Francisco’s German immigrants, who flooded the City during the Gold Rush. Founder Joseph N. Rausch, M.D., also proposed one of the country’s first pre-paid health plans: for a dollar a month, German-speaking immigrants qualified for a private hospital bed if they ever needed it, at a rate of one dollar per day. In 1895, the Society expanded its membership and was treating all citizens of San Francisco by century’s end.

If you have the chance, please try to visit this project, it is up until March. It is a wonderful view of San Francisco long ago.

If you do, the Librarians have stamps to prove you have been there, so grab a “Take Part” map at your local branch, collect all the stamps when visiting SFPL branches, and return your completed stamped map to win a SFMOMA prize.

Dianne Feinstein

Posted by Cindy on February 7, 2014

Feb 072014

City Hall
Mayors Balcony
Civic Center

Dianne Feinstein was the head of the Board of Supervisors on the day that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were tragically assassinated. She instantly became Mayor.

This sculpture (the second of Dianne Feinstein to sit in City Hall) was done in 1996 by Lisa Reinertson.

According to Lisa’s website:

Lisa Reinertson is known for both her life size figurative ceramic sculptures and her large-scale public sculptures cast in bronze.

Coming from a family of peace and social activists, Reinertson’s work has an underlying humanism that can be seen both in her poetic ceramic figures with animals, to her more historic public commissions that express ideals of peace and social justice. In her public sculptures of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez she blends bas-relief into her three-dimensional sculptural forms creating an historic and powerfully moving narrative. Her work combines a realism rooted in figurative art traditions, with a contemporary expression of social and psychological content.

Reinertson completed her MFA at UC Davis in 1984, studying with Robert Arneson, and Manuel Neri. She has taught at several universities and colleges in Northern California including CSU Chico, Santa Clara University and UC Berkeley. Her ceramic work has been in exhibitions and museums nationally and internationally, and is in several public and private collections including the Crocker Art Museum, the ASU Art Museum and the Mint Museum. Reinertson has completed over 20 public commissions in bronze.

George Moscone

Posted by Cindy on February 4, 2014

Feb 042014

City Hall
Mayor’s Balcony
Civic Center

This bronze bust is of the late Mayor George Moscone. Moscone was assassinated by Dan White along with Harvey Milk in November 1978, a tragedy for the City of San Francisco. Moscone was our 37th mayor.

The bust was done by my dear friend Spero Anargyros. Spero has a few works throughout San Francisco, and you can read about them here.

Many people are aware of the highly controversial, but in my opinion, excellent, sculpture of Moscone by Robert Arneson. The bust that Arneson created was not liked by the powers that be. The new mayor, Dianne Feinstein, had a letter hand delivered to each Arts Commissioner just before their vote on whether to accept the bust, asking them to reject it, and they did, by a seven-to-three vote. The bust, being shown at Moscone Center, was removed and Robert Arneson returned the thirty-seven thousand dollars he had been paid to do the work.

In December 1994, Spero Anargyros’s sculpture of George Moscone was unveiled.

The pedestal reads: San Francisco is an extraordinary city, because its people have learned to live together with one another, to respect each other, and to work with each other for the future of their community. That’s the strength and beauty of this city – it’s the reason why citizens who live here are the luckiest people in the world.”…a quote from George Moscone.

Historic Odd Fellows Columbarium

Posted by Cindy on September 19, 2013

Sep 192013

1 Loraine Court
Inner Richmond

I recently attended a service at this columbarium for Alice Carey. Alice was a friend and one of America’s most respected historic architects.

On the cover of her memorial brochure was this photograph:

I knew it was time for me to explore the history of the columbarium and bring it to you.

The Columbarium is the only non-denominational burial place within San Francisco’s city limits that is open to the public and has space available. The crematorium was designed by British Architect Bernard J.S. Cahill in 1897. As you can see by the above photograph this Neo-Classical building was originally part of the 167-acre Odd Fellows Cemetery. The columbarium and cemetery survived a 1901 law that banned further burials with in the city limits, but the cemetery didn’t survive the development of the next several decades. In the 1930’s the city mandated that all cemetery gravesites be moved to Colma (nicknamed the City of the Dead), just south of San Francisco down the peninsula. The entire cemetery was moved leaving behind only the columbarium.

From 1934 to 1979 the building lay untended, some say it was even home to bootleggers during prohibition. In 1979 it was purchased by the Neptune Society and underwent a $300,000 restoration.

The Columbarium is considered one of his Cahill’s finest works. The Odd Fellows regarded death as a dignified and ordinary affair, without fear or morbid feelings. The interior of the Columbarium was furnished like a Victorian parlor with potted palms and oriental rugs. The neo-classical style building blends Roman Baroque, English neoclassicism, and 19th century polychrome.

The exterior has a Roman-inspired dome similar to Michaelangelo’s original conception for St. Peters. The dome is copper-clad and ribbed with an inner steel framework. A squat lantern is clad in copper with round openings and decorated with garlands. The walls are stucco and grooved to simulate stone.

The interior has four levels topped by a stained glass ceiling within the lantern. The dome is supported by eight Roman Doric piers. Flower and urn decorations are cast plaster. The central rotunda has four square wings.

The diameter, from the entrance to the stained glass window opposite, is 64 feet. The width of the rotunda within the Inner circle is 29 feet and the rotunda reaches a height of about 45 feet.

Original Odd Fellows literature described the rotunda of the Columbarium: “a delicate and refined atmosphere prevails here, divesting the mind of unpleasant feeling that so often goes hand in hand with anything associated with the burial of the dead.”

Built into the building’s four stories of passageways, the decorated niches for San Francisco citizens of the past tell the city’s history dating back to the 1890s, including the 1906 earthquake (which the building handily survived), Harvey Milk’s assassination and the staggering number of deaths during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

The first floor has the Greek names of the winds: Aquilo, Solanus, Eurus, Auster, Notus, Zephyrus, Olympias and Arktas. The second floor has the Greek names of the constellations: Corona, Zubanan, Cheiron, Argo, Sothis, Orion, Perseus and Kepheus.

The window in the Aquilo room depicting three angels in flight, was restored by The Hyland Studio, according to their website:

The Designer was a fellow named Harry Ryle Hopps, the glazier was E. B. Wiley. Mr. Hopps was born in 1869. We know that he was an owner of “United Glass Art Co.” located at 115 Turk St in San Francisco.

The Three Angels window was built in 1909. Three years after the 1906 earthquake, 7 years after the 1902 cemetery re-location began and one year before cremation was banned in the city which led to the eventual abandonment of the building.

The ground floor contains approximately 2,400 niches, the first floor 2,500, and the second and third floors approximately 1,800 each, with an overall total of more than 8,500.

Bernard Joseph Stanislaus Cahill (1866–1944), was a cartographer as well as an architect. He was born in London, England in 1866 and is known for his cemetery architecture and for the design of the San Francisco Civic Center. He was also the architect for a number of other commercial buildings, including the Multnomah Hotel in Portland, Oregon and various buildings in Vancouver, B. C.

He was also the inventor of the Butterfly World Map, like Buckminster Fuller’s later Dymaxion map of 1943 and 1954, the butterfly map enabled all continents to be uninterrupted, and with reasonable fidelity to a globe. Cahill demonstrated this principle by also inventing a rubber-ball globe which could be flattened under a pane of glass in the “Butterfly” form, then return to its ball shape.

There is a marvelous group of stories about some of the inhabitants of the Columbarium at Bella Morte, be sure to click on the name Emmitt Watson to read about him. His story is so entwined with the Columbarium that not knowing about Emmitt is not finishing your history lesson.

The Beaded Quilt

Posted by Cindy on January 11, 2013

Jan 112013

214 Van Ness Avenue
Civic Center

This “Beaded Quilt” sits on the outside of the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired building on Van Ness Avenue. According to the Please Touch Garden Site this mural is part of a LightHouse community arts initiative created by dozens of blind San Franciscans.

The mural is created out of 150,000 colored beads. As part of the Please Touch Community Garden, artist Gk Callahan envisioned the “Beaded Quilt” mural as a social arts project and enlisted clients from his art classes plus blind staff and volunteers at the LightHouse to assemble the 576 beaded squares that make up the six-foot-tall mural.

It all began in 2010 when Callahan partnered with the LightHouse to obtain a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to create a major community arts project – the “Please Touch Community Garden” – on the once unkempt vacant lot at 165 Grove Street, in the shadow of the dome of the city hall.

The Please Touch Community Garden is currently under development by Callahan and his students in the Blind Leaders Program at the LightHouse. “A big part of our project has been cleaning up Lech Walesa alley which is where the entrance to the garden is located”, says Callahan. “With the installment of the Beaded Quilt mural we’ll highlight the garden’s entrance and the alley itself. Making the alley more visible to the surrounding community will help with the squatting and drug use that has been rampant for years in this part of the neighborhood.”

Callahan explains that another facet of the mural is working with blind seniors in a program that historically produced craft art. As a local artist, he wanted to illustrate how art made by people with disabilities does not necessarily have to be craft or outsider art. The Beaded Quilt is made by blind and visually impaired people as a public art piece and as a statement about what one with disabilities can accomplish.

The mural has been touched by many people. For example, over many months, Starrly Winchester, one of the LightHouse’s long time volunteers, spent hours at home separating the more than 100,000 beads into sixty color groups. Every week she brought in more color-separated beads for the artists to work with.

Linda Fonseca, a long-time client of the LightHouse, is one of about ten clients who worked on the beaded quilt for over a year. She says that it was motivating and gave her a sense of accomplishment. Her designs were influenced by the ever-present music the artists listened to as they affixed the 150,000 beads. “Classical music brought out the clear, white and pastel colors and more subdued designs. When we were rocking out, I made more geometric designs with purples and reds.” And what about jazz and the blues? “Oh,” she says without missing a beat, “many shades of blue came into play.”

“Each square is a small reflection of the person who made it, highlighting the colorfulness and diversity of our community,” says Callahan. “The mural is not only about accomplishing my own vision as an artist, but about bringing new challenges, learning, activity and artistic growth to our programs at the LightHouse. It’s about helping Linda find an outlet for her artistic expression. It’s about helping James, who found that the project improved his skillfulness and eased his arthritis.”

Gk Callahan is a multi media and socially engaged artist in San Francisco, CA. Trained in painting at San Francisco Art Institute, earning his BFA in 2006. During his BA studies he facilitated public work under Catasta Gallery©, an alternative arts group he co-founded in 2003. 2008-2012 he set as the artist in residence at both the LightHouse for the Blind and Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy severing on both the LightHouse’s Insight Art Show board and Harvey Milk’s Comity Art board. Gk most recently joined the MFA program at the California College of the Arts in Social practice.

Monadnock Building

Posted by Cindy on March 20, 2001

Mar 202001

Monadnock Building

685 Market Street

San Francisco

The Monadnock building has a fascinating history, and their website does a nice job of laying it out. They also describe the murals:

The twenty-four foot barrel-vaulted atrium lobby has outstanding Tiepolo-inspired trompe l’oeil murals, featuring famous people from the city’s past, by the Evans and Brown Co.

The theme of this mural is “San Francisco Renaissance.” It is painted in the Renaissance Baroque style trompe l’oeil (which means to fool the eye) and chosen because the facade of this building was inspired by that period. That is why all these San Francisco and California characters are dressed in such costumes.

East Wall

On the east wall, to the far left, the man holding the newspaper is Dr. Walter Lum. He founded the Chinese Times, managed it for thirty-five years, and became a leading civil rights advocate for the Chinese by the 1970s.

The next figure, in red, is Supervisor Harvey Milk, the camera shop owner who rose to become the nation’s most powerful advocate for gay rights. Supervisor Milk and Mayor George Moscone (not depicted) were both assassinated in their City Hall offices in 1978.

The blonde lady is Lotta Crabtree. A popular actress, singer and comedian during the Gold Rush years, it was Lotta who in 1875 donated the fountain you see across the street from the Monadnock Building. This was modeled after a prop from one of her plays. (The fountain has appeared in this site before)

In the green tunic is a very young-looking Bernard Maybeck. He was the architect responsible for designing the Palace of Fine Arts (1915) and numerous other landmark buildings in the Bay Area, including part of the UC Berkeley campus and the First Church of Christ Scientist, also in Berkeley.

The lady in pink is Isadora Duncan. Born in San Francisco in 1875, Miss Duncan achieved international fame in Europe as the founder of modern dance. She was a dazzling figure who danced in flowing robes and bare feet.

The last adult, in black, is Mary Ellen Pleasant, or Mammy Pleasant, as she was popularly known. She was, by legend, a mysterious and powerful figure behind the scenes during the Civil War years of San Francisco, as she championed the cause of blacks all across the nation.

The children, Max and Chloe, are the son and daughter of Don Baker, a former Eastdil Realty developer who engaged the services of artists Mark Evans and Charlie Brown during the building’s renovation.

On the opposite wall, we have just four figures with names. The boy on the far left and the lady on the far right playing the mandolin are nameless or generic.

Second from the left, the tall man in blue is the great public benefactor and San Francisco mayor (1895), Adolph Sutro. Initially gaining wealth and fame from his mining techniques and investments in his own Comstock Silver Mines of Nevada, Sutro at one time possessed 1/12th of the land in San Francisco.

The man in the yellow vest is John Muir. A prolific writer and explorer who successfully campaigned for the preservation of forests, Muir is often referred to as the inspirational father of the national park system.

The next figure, in glasses and what looks like a Robin Hood hat, is Herbert Law. A patent medicine king of the 1890s, and a former owner of the Fairmont Hotel, Law was the developer who placed this building here in 1906.

The last portrait with a name is opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini, one of Italy’s greatest coloratura sopranos. In 1910, on Christmas Eve, she sang “The Last Rose of Summer” to over a quarter-million people right across the street at Lotta’s Fountain.

This is the ceiling panel. The mural company Evans and Brown has an extensive body of work that can be found on their website.