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

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Art at the Merchant Exchange Building

Posted by Cindy on January 20, 2016

Jan 202016

465 California Street
Financial District

As you enter the lobby from the California Street side of the Merchant’s Exchange Building you will be greeted by many of San Francisco’s founders.

These ceramic/clay sculptures are each about 36″ x 24″ and were sculpted by Mark Jaeger of Marin County.

Mark was born in San Francisco and received a BA in Art Studio from UC Davis where he was influenced by Robert Arneson and Wayne Thiebaud.

Mark currently lives in Marin where he teaches full time and operates his own studio in San Anselmo.

William Heath Davis was born in 1822, in Honolulu in the Kingdom of Hawaii to Captain William Heath Davis, Sr., a Boston ship captain and pioneer of the Hawaii sandalwood trade. Davis first visited California as a boy in 1831, then again in 1833 and 1838. The last time he joined his uncle as a store clerk in Monterey and Yerba Buena (now San Francisco). He started a business in San Francisco and became a prominent merchant and ship owner.
Samuel Brannan (March 2, 1819 – May 5, 1889) was an American settler, businessman, journalist, and prominent Mormon who founded the California Star newspaper in San Francisco. He is considered the first publicist of the California Gold Rush and was its first millionaire.
Pioneer physician in California, Dr. John Townsend and his wife came overland from Missouri in 1844 as part of the first immigrant party to cross the Sierra by way of Truckee. A founding member of the school board in San Francisco in 1847, he was elected town Alcalde (traditional Spanish municipal magistrate) in 1848. He abandoned his office at the first news of the discovery of gold, but later returned to practice medicine at a time when the new city was being swept by epidemics of dysentery and cholera. Moving to a farm near San Jose, Townsend and his wife died of cholera there at the end of 1851.

Thomas Oliver Larkin (September 16, 1802 – October 27, 1858) was an early American businessman in Alta California, and was appointed to be the United States’ first and only consul to Mexican Alta California. After the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, Larkin moved to San Francisco, and was a signer of the original California Constitution.

Others include:

John Berrien Montgomery (1794 – 25 March 1872) an officer in the United States Navy who served during the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War. On July 9, 1846, Montgomery and his detachment from the Portsmouth raised the American flag over the plaza in the town of Yerba Buena (today’s San Francisco). The name of the plaza was later changed to Portsmouth Square, commemorating Montgomery’s ship.

Jasper O’Farrell (1817–1875) was the first surveyor for San Francisco. He designed the “grand promenade” that became today’s Market Street. O’Farrell Street in San Francisco is named after him.

William Davis Merry Howard (1818–1856) was a native of Boston, Massachusetts who came to California in 1839 as a cabin boy on a sailing ship. For several years he worked on ships trading hides and tallow along the Pacific coast. In 1845 he formed the San Francisco merchant business of Mellus & Howard. Howard was one of San Francisco’s most public spirited and prosperous men at the time of the California Gold Rush.

John White Geary (December 30, 1819 – February 8, 1873) Geary was appointed postmaster of San Francisco by President James K. Polk on January 22, 1849, and on January 8 1850, he was elected the city’s alcalde, before California became a state, and then the first mayor of the city. He holds the record as the youngest mayor in San Francisco history. He was also a judge at the same time he was alcalde.

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.

Hall of Justice

Posted by Cindy on August 24, 2013

Aug 242013

850 Bryant
South of Market

The Seal of San Francisco adopted in 1859 features a sailor and a miner flanking a shield that bears a steamer ship entering the Golden Gate. Above the shield a Phoenix foretold of the great fire to come in 1906 and below the shield, the city’s motto, ‘Gold in Peace, Iron in War.’

This particular seal graces the outside of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice on Bryant Street and was created by my dear friend Spero Anargyros (1915-2004). Spero has appeared in this site before here.

This monument began as a 42 ton block of White Sierra granite from the Raymond Granite Quarry, Raymond, California, in the Sierra foothills of Madera County. Starting in early 1960 and after several months, the monument was moved to and completed in San Francisco. It is 15 ft. in diameter, 2 ft. thick and weighs approximately 20 tons. At the time it was considered to be the largest single piece of granite statuary in California.

From a wonderful article in the San Francisco Chronicle following Spero’s death:

“It turns out I’m very radical,” Mr. Anargyros often said, “because I do things people recognize.”

His commissions took the sculptor around the world, and he designed official medallions to commemorate the Golden Gate Bridge, Hawaii’s statehood, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park and the Alaska Centennial.

Mr. Anargyros dismissed modern sculpture instructors who “teach the virtue of hoping for happy accidents.”

“There is enough beauty around us to copy,” he said in a 1964 interview. “Why try to improve on it by imagining things?”

Mr. Anargyros, the son of a Greek immigrant florist, was a native of New York City and a student at the Art Students League of New York. He worked on the enormous 70-figureMormon Church monument in Salt Lake City titled “This Is the Place” before coming to San Francisco in the 1950s.

From his light, lofty studio on Clay Street in North Beach, Mr. Anargyros crafted such pieces as the 21-ton granite seal for the Hall of Justice and restored the 23-foot-tall neoclassical figures for the Palace of Fine Arts. He later moved his studio to Brisbane.

In 1974, a bemused Mr. Anargyros found himself in the center of an art censorship flap when a photograph of his female nude sculptures was ordered ripped from 10,000 copies of the monthly magazine of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

“The one with the breasts … is less scandalous than the Venus de Milo, who had no arms to distract attention,” Mr. Anargyros said.

In 1981, he was commissioned to recreate two historic bronze sculptures for the front doors of the state Capitol, which was undergoing restoration. The sculptures depict a bear and a horse, and the other shows an Indian woman protecting her baby from a buffalo.

Mr. Anargyros also sculpted actor Kirk Douglas, restaurateur Vic Bergeron and airline executive Edward Daley. Last year, while confined to a wheelchair, he completed a 3-by-5-foot bas relief sculpture of Nelson Mandela.

“I was lucky,” he said. “Early in life I found something I loved to do, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Embarcadero – Hills Brothers Coffee Drinker

Posted by Cindy on January 23, 2000

Jan 232000

2 Harrison Street

The Embarcadero

This is the Hills Brothers Coffee Drinker. He is located at 2 Harrison Street in the plaza of the original Hills Brothers Coffee Building. This sculpture was created by a dear friend of mine Spero Anargyros. (1915- 2004) Spero finished this sculpture in 1992. It is a 9′ tall bronze beauty.

The “drinking man” or “Taster” was designed by a San Francisco artist named Briggs, in celebration of vacuum packing. It is said that the original was a tribute to the Ethiopian roots of the coffee itself. After gracing the first vacuum packed can, the Taster remained the company logo for many years. Folgers, an original San Francisco company is now part of the Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA brand of companies.

2 Harrison is on the National Register of Historic Places.