Helen Bruton’s Tile Murals at the Golden West Hotel

114 Powell Street
Union Square

In the very narrow entry way to the Hotel Union Square are these two exquisite tile murals.  While the hotel was originally built in 1908 for the 1915 Pan Pacific International Exposition, the murals were not added until 1935.

The murals were done by Helen Bruton Bell (1898-1985)  Ms. Bell was a fascinating woman.  One of three artistic sisters, she was born in Alameda.  She attended the University of California for one year.

During World War I, she worked with her sisters Esther and Margaret in occupational therapy at the Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. In 1920 she moved to New York to take classes at the Art Students League for one year under sculptors Stirling Calder and Leo Lentelli.  (She returned several years later to study drawing with Boardman Robinson.)

After those two years, she joined her sisters in Europe to study art, mainly in Paris.

Returning home, she became interested in California-Spanish architecture. She was commissioned by tile producer Gladding-McBean and Company to create mosaic panels for the Mudd Memorial Library at the University of Southern California. In 1929 Helen, her mother and her sisters traveled to New Mexico where all three girls painted and sketched. When they returned they gave a joint exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco. Helen also exhibited at the California Society of Etchers and the Progressive California Painters in 1934.

 

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Murals by the Bruton Sisters – The Fleishacker Building.

 

Helen later worked with her sister Margaret on a W.P.A. project for the Fleishacker Park in San Francisco. The sisters designed and implemented the two mosaic panels that were the first tile mosaics to be done in San Francisco by local artists. Helen later received a commission from the University of California Berkeley to create mosaic panels to adorn the University Art Gallery (1936).

She continued to live in the San Francisco Bay Area eventually settling in Monterey, California with her sister Margaret until her death in 1985.

There is a marvelous interview done by the Smithsonian of the two sisters in their later years that you can read here.

 

The hotel was known at the Golden State Hotel in the 1950’s and became the Hotel Union Square in 1982.