Fountain – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Treasure Island Artwork Spread Far and Wide

Posted by Cindy on September 12, 2017

Sep 122017

Sometimes you are given an opportunity to peek behind the scenes and today I had just one of those magical moments. Anne Schnoebelen, the passionate author of the website TreasureIsland1939.com asked me to come see the Pacific Fountain and bring along my friend Deborah Blake of Sullivan Masonry, to see about the restoration of the fountain.

The fountain has quite a fabulous history. It was part of The Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) a World’s Fair held on Treasure Island. The fair, celebrated, among other things, the city’s two newly built bridges. The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge which opened in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge which had opened in 1937. The exposition was open from February 18, 1939, through October 29, 1939, and from May 25, 1940, through September 29, 1940.

The fountain, which was situated in the Pacific House during the GGIE, was a massive coordination between artist Antonio Sotomayor, architect Philip Newell Youtz and the Gladding McBean Company of Lincoln, California.

I highly suggest you head to Anne’s site to read all about the history of the fountain and its construction.

This is what the fountain looks like today.

The restoration would be a major undertaking, including finding an appropriate place to house it, but the Treasure Island Museum hopes to do just that.

The fountain was accompanied in the Pacific House by six murals by Jose Miquel Covarrubias titled Pageant of the Pacific.

Jose Miguel Covarrubias, “Flora and Fauna”

Five of the murals still exist and are on loan from the San Francisco Treasure Island Development Authority to the DeYoung Museum.

It would be a wonderful San Francisco moment if these items could be brought together into one location and enjoyed together as a tribute to the Pacific.

The statues at the back of the room are some of the twenty sculptures created for the Court of the Pacific. Some are available for viewing in front of Building One.

If you are interested in donating to the Treasure Island Museum you can do so here. You are welcome to earmark your dollars for the restoration of the fountain. If you are a history buff and a financial angel, the museum would love to hear from you, you can reach out to Anne Schnoebelen through the museum.

The artists:

Antonio Sotomayor (1902-1985) was born in Chulumani, Bolivia on May 13, 1902, Sotomayor began his art studies in La Paz under Belgian master Adolf Lambert and by age 15 was contributing illustrations to Bolivian periodicals. After settling in San Francisco in 1923, he continued his art training at the CSFA. He taught art at Mills College in Oakland (1942-43) and at the CSFA (1946-50) Sotomayor contributed greatly to California art for over 60 years.

Antonio Sotomayor

Philip Newell Youtz (1895-1972) was born April 27, 1895, in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was educated at Amherst College (1918) and Oberlin College (1919). During the period 1920-1922, he built schools and a non-sectarian Chinese Christian College in Canton, China. Upon his return, he taught at Teachers College, Columbia University. After receiving his architectural degree from Columbia University in 1929, he became curator of the Sixty-Ninth St. branch of the Pennsylvania Museum of Art in Philadelphia. In 1933 he became assistant director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and served as director from 1934 to 1938. From 1938 to 1940, he was director of Pacific House at the Golden Gate International Exposition and the Pacific Area in San Francisco. Following the war where he served with the War Production Board, Youtz was a practicing architect in the New York City area. Here he invented the “lift slab” method of construction in which concrete slabs are raised on supporting columns to form different stories of a building. He eventually landed at the University of Michigan in 1957, where he was soon named dean of the College of Architecture and Design, a post he held until his retirement in 1964. Philip Newell Youtz

Jose Miguel Covarrubias (1904 — 1957) was born November 22, 1904, in Mexico City. After graduating from the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria at the age of 14, he started producing caricatures and illustrations for texts and training materials published by the Mexican Ministry of Public Education. At the age of 19, he moved to New York City armed with a grant from the Mexican government. Mexican poet José Juan Tablada and New York Times critic/photographer Carl Van Vechten introduced him to New York’s literary/cultural elite. Soon Covarrubias was drawing for several top magazines, eventually becoming one of Vanity Fair magazine’s premier caricaturists.

Gladding, McBean is a ceramics company located in Lincoln, California. It is one of the oldest companies in California, a pioneer in ceramics technology, and a company which has “contributed immeasurably” to the state’s industrialization. During the heyday of architectural terra cotta, the company “dominated the industry in California and the Far West.

Eli Bates Fountain

Posted by Cindy on July 15, 2016

Jul 152016

This whimsical fountain is known as both the Eli Bates Fountain and “Storks at Play”.

Eli Bates was a Chicago lumberman who died in 1881. He bequeathed a fund for the commission of Standing Lincoln, also by Saint-Gaudens, and this fountain, both to be placed in Lincoln Park.

Installed in 1887 it was a joint collaboration between Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his student Frederick W. MacMonnies

The figures for the fountain were cast by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company of New York.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens has been in this site before, you can read about him here.

In 1880 MacMonnies began an apprenticeship under Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and was soon promoted to studio assistant, beginning his lifelong friendship with the acclaimed sculptor. MacMonnies studied at night with the National Academy of Design and The Art Students League of New York.

In Saint-Gaudens’ studio, he met Stanford White, who was using Saint-Gaudens for the prominent sculptures required for his architecture.
In 1888, Stanford White helped MacMonnies win two major commissions for garden sculpture, a decorative Pan fountain sculpture for Rohallion, the New Jersey mansion of banker Edward Adams, and a work for ambassador Joseph H. Choate, at Naumkeag, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

In 1891 he was awarded the commission for the Columbian Fountain, the centerpiece of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago: the sculpture of Columbia in her Grand Barge of State, in the central fountain of the Court of Honor became the focal point at the Exposition and established MacMonnies as one of the important sculptors of the time.

In 1894, Stanford White brought MacMonnies a commission for three bronze groups for the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.

Three of MacMonnies’ best-known sculptures are Nathan Hale, Bacchante and Infant Faun, and Diana.

Fountain of the Great Lakes

Posted by Cindy on July 9, 2016

Jul 092016

Nichols Bridgeway
Off E. Jackson and South Michigan Avenue
Chicago

Fountain of the Great Lakes or Spirit of the Great Lakes Fountain is an allegorical sculpture by Lorado Taft at the Art Institute of Chicago. The fountain was moved to this spot in the 1960s.

Lake Superior

Created between 1907-1913, the bronze fountain depicts five women arranged so that the water flows through them in the same way water passes through the Great Lakes.

The fountain is Taft’s response to Daniel Burnham’s complaint at the Columbian Exposition in 1893 that the sculptors charged with ornamenting the fairgrounds failed to produce anything that represented the great natural resources of the west, especially the Great Lakes.

It is said that Taft used the Greek myth of the Danaides, forty-nine sisters who were sent to Hades for killing their husbands on their wedding nights as inspiration. As punishment for this crime, the sisters were eternally condemned to hopelessly carry water in sieves.

Taft envisioned a fountain with five female figures each representing one of the Great Lakes. In 1902 Taft assigned Nellie Walker, Angelica McNulty, Clara Leonard, Lily Schoenbrun, and Edith Parker to bring his design to life.

“Five of my young sculptors made from a sketch of mine the first model of the “Great Lakes.” [The figures] were less than life size, they were not very good and being made separately they did not fit together well. But the people like the idea and I was encouraged to do them again. I did so, this time doing the work entirely myself.”

Lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie

The fountain consists of a series of female figures symbolizing the general flow of the Great Lakes. Lake Superior sits at the top, the water from her mingles with that of Lake Michigan and empties into a shell held by Lake Huron. The water then continues onto Lake Erie, and finally passes to Lake Ontario.

At the opening ceremony for the fountain Taft said of Lake Ontario waters “escape from her basin and hasten into the unknown, she reaches wistfully after them as though questioning whether she has been neglectful of her charge”.

Lake Ontario

Once erected, the fountain received largely positive reviews, but a few critics questioned the symbolism of the sculpture. Others were caught up in sociopolitical subtexts of the day, with regard to obscenity laws as it related to public art and this semi-nude work. The degree to which nudity in public art was more for the “sake of nudity than for the sake of art” was a contemporary issue involving confiscated Paul Chabas fully nude painting. This led to a 1913 amendment to the Chicago municipal obscenity laws which passed three months before the dedication of Taft’s partially nude fountain.

Ruth Asawa at Ghirardelli Square

Posted by Cindy on August 27, 2013

Aug 272013

Ghirardelli Square
Fisherman’s Wharf

This fountain is titled Andrea’s Fountain and is by Ruth Asawa. It sits in Ghirardelli Square.

There is a plaque next to the fountain that tells the story of the piece, it reads:

Then-owner William Roth selected Ruth Asawa, well known for her abstract, woven-wire sculptures, to design and create the centerpiece fountain for Ghirardelli Square. Although it was unveiled amid some controversy in 1968, Asawa’s objective was to make a sculpture that could be enjoyed by everyone. She spent one year thinking about the design and another year sculpting it from a live model and casting it in bronze. Although landscape architect Lawrence Halprin attacked Asawa’s design of a nursing mermaid seated on sea turtles for not being a “serious” work, Asawa’s intentions were clear: “For the old it would bring back the fantasy of their childhood, and for the young it would give them something to remember when they grow old! “I wanted to make something related to the sea…I thought of all the children, and maybe even some adults, who would stand by the seashore waiting for a turtle or a mermaid to appear. As you look at the sculpture you include the Bay view which was saved for all of us, and you wonder what lies below that surface.” The most photographed feature of Ghirardelli Square the fountain was named in honor of Andrea Jepson, the woman who served as the model for the mermaid.

***

I found the sign to be of interest as I had always heard of this conflict between my two heroes, and it was nice that they put a sign up to “clear the air”. Lawrence Halprin was responsible for Levi Plaza and was a man I admired both as a visionary and a legend in his field. Ruth Asawa, who has appeared many times in this website is also one of my favorite local artists.

As far as Ghirardelli Square: San Franciscan William M. Roth and his mother bought the land in 1962 to prevent the square from being replaced with an apartment building. The Roths hired landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and the firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons to convert the square and its historic brick structures to an integrated restaurant and retail complex. Ghirardelli Square was the first major adaptive re-use project in the United States.

Sadly, Ruth Asawa passed away earlier this month. The link to a lovely tribute in the San Francisco Chronicle can be read here.

San Francisco All Wrapped Up in a Fountain

Posted by Cindy on December 18, 2012

Dec 182012

Union Square
Hyatt Hotel
345 Stockton Street

This fountain by Ruth Asawa was commissioned by Hyatt in 1970 and completed in 1972, the fountain consists of 41 individual bronzed plaques each about 26X32 inches depicting San Francisco landmarks covering the entire circular wall of the fountain bowl and measuring over 14 feet in diameter. At the center of the high wall of the drum, you will notice HH which represents the Grand Hyatt on Union Square. Everything to the south of Union Square is to the left, everything north is to the right. The Ocean is the top boundary, the bay is at the bottom. You may recognize the Powell St Cable Car turnabout, the opera house, Nob Hill, the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Ferry Building, Ghiradelli Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Golden Gate Bridge, among many other familiar sights. In addition, you may notice fantasies such as Superman flying past the Montgomery St Skyscraper over Snoopy on his dog house or the Wizard of Oz character. Total effect is a real and unreal world where anyone can enter.

Because of Ruth’s desire to show what many many hands working together could do, help from visitors and over 100 children in the area was solicited. Rather than the traditional sculpture’s material, Asawa used a bread dough bakers clay to model the fountain. When finished the piece of sculptured dough was arranged on the panels surface and stuck down with white glue. The panel were then set aside the thoroughly dry before being taken to the fountain for casting.

Lombard Street

The French Laundry, one of the Bay Areas renowned restaurants, and at the time of this sculpture was owned by Don and Sally Schmitt, whose legacy lives on at The Apple Farm. The Schmitts sold the restaurant to it’s current chef, Thomas Keller.

Mission Dolores

The Conservatory in Golden Gate Park

Fleishacker Pool was a public saltwater swimming pool located in the southwest corner of San Francisco, next to the zoo for 47 years. Upon its completion in 1925, it was one of the largest heated outdoor swimming pools in the world.

Palace of Fine Arts

Fountain at One Bush Plaza

Posted by Cindy on March 27, 2001

Mar 272001

Financial District

One Bush Plaza

Crown Zellerbach Building

This beautiful and timeless fountain was made in 1959.

It was a creation of artist David Tolerton. Tolerton was born in 1907 and died of natural causes at 93. His father came to the Bay area in 1915 and owned an art gallery on Sutter Street in San Francisco.

Tolerton studied philosophy at Stanford University from 1926 until 1928, then attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he also taught. He also studied ironworking in France, Spain, Italy and Germany.

His work was almost exclusively in metal, but apparently he spent some time working in abstract sculpture while living in Big Sur.

In addition to two Bay Area fountains, Tolerton’s works are displayed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Denver Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum.

Market Street- Waterfall Walls

Posted by Cindy on March 25, 2001

Mar 252001

514 Market Street

This Fountain has now been replaced – see bottom of this post.

Waterfall Walls by Elyn Zimmerman

This Public Art was provided by the 1% for Public Art Program

This view is actually walking from Stevenson Street towards Market Street, which affords the nicest view.

When viewing Elyn Zimmermans web page you realize instantly this artists loves large pieces of stone.

This is the view from Market Street. The piece was Commissioned by the developer Tishman/Speyer and the San Francisco Arts Commission, in 1991.

Zimmerman was born in Philadelphia, PA, received both undergraduate and Master’s degree in Art at UCLA, and taught university level art classes from 1974 to 1986 in California and New York. She has lived in New York City since 1977 and since 2006 also partly in Ojai, CA. Zimmerman’s sculptural works range from studio pieces and private commissions to large scale, site specific projects.

This fountain was removed, and this was put in its place. No information is available regarding the new fountain.

UN Plaza Fountain

Posted by Cindy on March 7, 2001

Mar 072001

UN Plaza
Civic Center

There is more to the U.N. Plaza fountain than meets the eye, however, typical of the City of San Francisco it took three redesigns, one public vote and a lot of back and forth (much of it ridiculous), to finally get the thing built.

The fountain was designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. The Plaza was a joint effort between Halprin, Swiss architect Mario Ciampi and John Carl Warnecke.

The fountain is intended to represent the seven continents of the world. Each “landmass” is tied together by the water symbolizing the ocean.

According to an April 26, 1977 San Francisco Chronicle article: The fountain was to be highly computerized. “On each of the nine spurting slabs of the fountain will be a wind measuring device and if it is real windy, the spurts will slow down or stop altogether to keep passerby from getting sprayed. Second, the computer will cause the depth of the waters in the fountain’s 100 foot wide basin to vary from bone dry to eight feet.”

According to the designer, Lawrence Halprin, this change in water height was to simulate the tides of the bay. None of these items were maintained properly and no longer work.

On the top stone far left is written: “The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man or one party or one nation….It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.” This is a quote from Franklin Roosevelt. The entire plaza was designed and built to honor the 30th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter that took place in the San Francisco War Memorial.

Designed in 1975 the fountain is made of 673 blocks of granite weighing between 3 to 4 million tons, it is 165 feet long and cost $1.2 million.

The fountain has had mixed reviews over the years. When it was dedicated in 1975, then-U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young described it as “a tribute to the U.N.’s goals of seeking peaceful resolutions to international rivalries.”

But then-Chronicle architecture critic Allan Temko described it as “pretentious schmaltz . . . whose ‘tidal pools’ are supposed to simulate global oceanic action but rarely work and merely toss around empty muscatel bottles.”

The Plaza has the distinction of being in the Hall of Shame of the Project for Public Spaces, and it has been a source of controversy, anger and neglect for many years.

If you are interested in learning more about the problems of UN Plaza and how the fountain fits into these problems, there is a fabulous 30 minute radio show that you can listen to here.

The original design for the UN Fountain submitted to the SFAC

I want to thank Joel Pomerantz of Thinkwalks for going to the San Francisco library and sending me the entire file to “prove a point”. I am grateful for my friends that care about the minutia of San Francisco history as much as I do.