The Sundial at Ingleside Terrace

 Posted by on June 17, 2014
Jun 172014
 

Entrada Court
Ingleside Terrace

 Ingleside Terrace Sundial

What is now Ingleside Terraces was the southwestern most portion of San Miguel Rancho, bordered on the west by Rancho Laguna de la Merced. Rancho Laguna de la Merced and San Miguel Rancho were apparently the last of the Mexican “ranchos” to be incorporated in what we now know as San Francisco.

The Sundial at Ingleside Terrace

The sundial was dedicated on October 10, 1913, with a rather spectacular event attended by 1500 people.  According to the dedication brochure:  “The ceremony attending the dedication of the sundial at Ingleside Terraces was one of rare delight.  It took place at the close of a warm, vivid day in the fall of the year.  The sun had gone down into the ocean, leaving the sky all crimson and gold.  The air was soft and still and heavily scented with the fragrant breath of flowers.  Far away beyond the grassy stretches of the Terraces the sea reflected the glory of the sunset, and one might easily imagine himself in an old garden on the shore of the Mediterranean. ”

Sundial in San Francisco

“The sundial and the four columns surrounding it were veiled and loomed shapeless against a rippling background of flowerbeds…”

Corinthian Column on Entrada CourtThere were originally four columns upon which sat the four classic orders of column capitals and then an urn.  The Corinthian column urn represented manhood, autumn, and afternoon

Sundial on Entrada CourtThe urn atop the Ionic Column represented youth, summer and noon. The Tuscan Column urn represented old age, winter and night and

Doric Column at Urbano Sundialthe Doric  urn shows, childhood, springtime and morning. (Photo courtesy of www.SFog.us, as I failed to recognize it in its absolute simplicity while there)

Sundial on Entrada Court

The sundial was installed by the Urban Realty Improvement Company to lure buyers to its Ingleside Terraces development. The 148-acre residence park offered a lawn tennis court, a clubhouse for social gatherings and about 750 houses priced from $6,000 to $20,000.

The sundial stands 26 feet high and 28 feet across.  The sundial was first promoted as “the largest and most magnificent sundial in the world,” but that is no longer true, not even in San Francisco . A sundial in Hunters Point that has been written up in this website and you can read about here, has a gnomon (the triangular piece that casts the shadow) that is 78 feet long, nearly triple the length of Ingleside’s.

The residential area was originally the Ingleside Race Track.  The race track was dedicated in 1895, but when the 1906 earthquake struck the owner offered the site as a refugee camp for survivors and the track never saw a race again.

Ingleside Terrace Sundial on Entrada Court

In the original brochure this was called Sundial Park and it was designed by Joseph A. Leonard.  The brochure described the park like this: “The gigantic granite gnomon of the sundial at Ingleside Terraces…bridges a limpid pool wherein two bronze seals sport at the base of a fountain…four great heart-shaped plots of grass surrounded by walks point one each to the true south, north, east and west.  At intermediate points four beautiful columns… surmounted by a bronze vase upon which, in bas-relief, is told by allegorical figures the story of the four stages of man, the four seasons of the year, and the four periods of the day.”

Ingleside Terraces Original Map

I have also found reference to this Sundial as the Urbano Sundial, I assume because Urbano Road essentially was paved over the course of the race track.

 

The Bohemian Clubs Allegorical Figures

 Posted by on August 9, 2013
Aug 092013
 

624 Taylor Street
Nob Hill

Bohemian Club bas relief about architecture

These four bas-relief, terra cotta panels are between the second and third floors of the Bohemian Club on the Post Street side. The first panel depicts Art and Architecture represented by a semi-nude turbanned male figure kneeling. In his proper left hand is a mallet which rests on the ground by his proper left leg. In his raised proper right hand he holds a fluted Greek column with an Ionic capital. Behind the figure is a painter’s palette and brushes.

Carlos Taliabue bas reliefs at Bohemian Club

The second panel depicts Playwriting and Acting represented by a nude male figure kneeling on his proper right knee. The figure wears a helmet with wings, and he holds a partially unrolled scroll at ground level in his proper right hand and a draped mask of tragedy in his raised proper left hand. Draped owl masks (the symbol of the Bohemian Club) hang over the figure’s proper right shoulder.

Bas Relief of Literature at the Bohemian Club by Carlos Taliabue

The third panel depicts Literature represented by a bearded nude male figure. He wears a scribe’s hat and kneels with a large open book resting in his lap, the edge of the book held with his proper left hand. Behind the figure is a skull, a bookshelf with books, and an owl.

Music by Carlos Taliabue

The fourth panel depicts Music represented by a partially nude male figure, whose thighs are covered with cloth. His head is covered with a helmet of an owl design. His proper right arm encircles a lyre or harp with a base designed to look like a turtle shell. The figure reaches across to pluck the instrument’s strings. Behind the figure’s proper left shoulder is a disc symbolizing the moon.

These figures were done by Carlo Taliabue. Born in Cremona, Italy on March 26, 1894, Taliabue studied on a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Art in Milan. He immigrated to California in 1924 and lived in the Lincoln-Sacramento area until the late 1930s. At that time he settled in San Francisco where he produced statuary on Treasure Island for the Golden Gate International Exhibition. During the 1940s his work won awards in the annuals of the Society for Sanity in Art at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. His last years were spent in Walnut Creek, CA until his death there on July 21, 1972.

Pennsylvania Comes to San Francisco

 Posted by on June 27, 2013
Jun 272013
 

600 California Street
Chinatown

Art Deco Elevator Doors

These two bronze plaques were originally the doors to a hand operated elevator.  The doors, designed by Lee O. Lawrie in 1930-1931 were in the Education Building of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Capitol Park in Harrisburg.

The sculpture was one of six sets of elevator doors that the artist originally fabricated. This set of door panels remained there until 1972, when the building’s hand-operated elevators were replaced with automatic ones. From about 1980 to 1989, the doors were in a private collection in Virginia. They were installed at the new Federal Home Bank in 1990.

Lee Oskar Lawrie (1877-1963) was born in Rixdorf, Germany, and came to the United States in 1882 as a young child, settling in Chicago. It was there, at the age of 14, that he began working for the sculptor Richard Henry Park.

In 1892 he assisted many of the sculptors in Chicago, constructing the “White City” for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Following the completion of the work at the Exposition, Lawrie returned East and became an assistant to William Ordway Partridge. The next decade found him working with other established sculptors:Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Philip Martiny, Alexander Phimister Proctor, John William Kitson and others. His work at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis, 1904, under Karl Bitter, the foremost architectural sculptor of the time, allowed Lawrie to further develop both his skills and his reputation as an architectural sculptor.

Lawrie received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Yale University in 1910. He was an instructor in Yale’s School of Fine Arts from 1908 to 1919 and taught in the architecture program at Harvard University from 1910 to 1912.

His most prominent work is the free-standing bronze Atlas (installed 1937) at New York City’s Rockefeller Center.

Lee Oskar Lawrie Art Deco Panels

 

This panel on the left has allegorical figures representing Exploration, Literature, Architecture and Drama.

Lee  Lawrie Sculpture

The allegorical figures on the right represent Religion, Physical Labor, Sculpture and Music.

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