Elegant Stag Poses at Lands End Lookout

 Posted by on July 23, 2013
Jul 232013
 

Lands End Lookout
GGNRA
680 Point Lobos

Stag at Lands End Lookout

This stag sits in a small seating area at the front entrance to the new Lands End Lookout building.

This is a copy of a statue that originally sat in the park across the street, Sutro Heights Park.  The two lions that grace the entry to the park, as well as the entry to the lookout,  and the history of that park can be found here.

Sutro collected statues after traveling to Europe, to recreate a European garden around his home. He did not buy and ship home works of art from other countries, like many other wealthy people such as William Randolph Hearst. When he saw something he liked, he would have a statue maker in Antwerp, Belgium make copies. The Lions are copies of those in London’s Trafalgar Square—making the two currently at the gate copies of copies.

This stag was copied in cast stone by an unknown artist in the 1980’s.

The new building designed by San Francisco’s EHDD was dedicated in December 0f 2012.  It is the latest in a series of upgrades that follow the 1993 master plan for the Sutro Historic District done by the National Park Service and implemented in partnership with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund,  donated $8.6 million to the Lands End efforts.

Joan of Arc at the Palace of the Legion of Honor

 Posted by on July 13, 2012
Jul 132012
 
Lands End
Legion of Honor
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Joan of Arc by Anna Huntington
Joan of Arc, nicknamed “The Maid of Orléans” is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years’ War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII. She was captured by the Burgundians, transferred to the English for money, put on trial by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, and burned at the stake when she was 19 years old.
Anna Huntington has been on this site before.  This piece was one of her earliest public works, exhibited at the Salon of 1910 in Paris. Several replicas were made, and the statue won Anna the Legion of Honor from the French government. In 1927.

Dogie Diner Sign

 Posted by on July 12, 2012
Jul 122012
 
Ocean View
45th Avenue and Sloat near The Great Highway
Restored Dogie Diner Sign
The Doggie Diner (1949-1986) restaurants could be seen throughout the Bay Area during their heyday.
Mr. Al Ross, the Doggie Diner Chain’s owner asked Harold Bachman an ad and billboard layout designer, to draw up designs for the sign, it is said that the bow tie was added by Mr. Ross.
Three of Doggie Diner’s heads took a road trip to New York in 2003, courtesy of Laughing Squid and SF Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, and that experience was immortalized in a documentary called Head Trip.
According to Mr. Ross’s obituary, his family came to Alameda when he was in his early 20s and started an ice cream business called White Castle. He and his mother, Rose Rosenbluth, ran the business together. He eventually began rolling a pushcart around San Francisco’s Embarcadero selling ice cream to ship workers.
Mr. Ross took note of all the hubbub on Oakland’s San Pablo Avenue during the war and decided a restaurant featuring “wiener dogs” would do well there. The Doggie Diner that opened on 19th and San Pablo Avenue in 1948 was an instant hit.
This is the last Doggie Diner head that’s permanently viewable to the public.  After a $25,000 restoration the sign was declared a San Francisco Landmark on August 11th 2006.
The Doggie Diner dogs even have their ownwebsite.

 

 

Land’s End – Lincoln Highway

 Posted by on April 25, 2012
Apr 252012
 
Land’s End
Legion of Honor

The Lincoln Highway was one of the earliest transcontinental auto trails in the United States of America.

Conceived and promoted by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, the Lincoln Highway spanned coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, originally through 13 states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. In 1915, the “Colorado Loop” was removed, and in 1928, a realignment relocated the Lincoln Highway through the northern tip of West Virginia. Thus, there are a total of 14 states, 128 counties, and over 700 cities, towns and villages through which the highway passed at some time in its history.

The first officially recorded length of the entire Lincoln Highway in 1913 was 3,389 miles. Over the years, the road was improved and numerous realignments were made, and by 1924 the highway had been shortened to 3,142 miles. Counting the original route and all of the subsequent realignments, there is a grand total of 5,869 miles.

Most significantly, the Lincoln Highway inspired the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which was championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, influenced by his experiences as a young soldier crossing the country in the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway. Today, Interstate 80 is the cross-country highway most closely aligned with the Lincoln Highway. In the West, particularly in Wyoming, Utah and California, sections of Interstate 80 are paved directly over alignments of the Lincoln Highway.

The Lincoln Highway Association, originally established in 1913 to plan, promote, and sign the highway, was re-formed in 1992 and is now dedicated to promoting and preserving the road.

If you are interested in learning more check out the book  Divided Highways by Tom Lewis.  Also, Modern Marvels  (a series on the History Channel) produced a very interesting show on the highway system, titled America’s Highways.  I am sure you can catch it in reruns fairly easily.

 

Lincoln Park – Pax Jerusalem

 Posted by on April 15, 2012
Apr 152012
 
Lincoln Park
Legion of Honor
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Pax Jerusalem by Mark di Suvero

This piece sits on the sculpture pad in front of the Legion of Honor, one of our finer museums in San Francisco.  It is by Mark di Suvero, who has been in this blog before.  It was controversial the day it was installed.  Many felt is was not representative of the quality people had come to expect from di Suvero, it also was a runner up, when the city lost out on a sculpture by di Suvero’s boyhood friend Richard Serra. Di Suvero and Richard Serra grew up on the same block in San Francisco. Both their fathers worked on the docks. Being by the water and the docks and the wharfs and the piers plays a powerful role in their work.

The piece is owned by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and was purchased in 1999.

The Legion of Honor was the gift of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, wife of the sugar magnate and thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder Adolph B. Spreckels. The building is a three-quarter-scale version of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur also known as the Hôtel de Salm in Paris.  This version is by architects George Applegarth and H. Guillaume. It was completed in 1924.

 

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