May 032019
 

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue

"Advancement of Learning through the Printing Press" Lucien Labaudt

 

This mural, by Lucien Labaudt resides on the east wall of the library at George Washington High School it was completed in 1936 as part of the WPA.

In this mural you will find such notables as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Junipero Serra, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Alva Edison, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Labaudt mural George Washington H.S.

Labaut’s intent was to give an expression of mankind’s knowledge through the printed word by showing portraits of literary men, scientists, statesmen, and religious teachers, all grouped, with symbolic attributes surrounding the central figure of Gutenberg, patron saint of printed books.
Labaudt mural George Washington H.S.

*Labaudt mural George Washington H.S.

 

Lucien Labaudt was a painter and a muralist. Born in Paris, France on May 14, 1880, he was educated in France but was essentially a self-taught artist.  As a young painter, he was influenced by Cezanne and Seurat. After coming to the U.S. in 1906, he worked in Nashville, Tennesee as a costume designer while painting in his spare time.

Labaudt settled in San Francisco in 1910 into a studio at 526 Powell Street and is credited with introducing modern art to California.  In 1919 he began teaching at the CSFA and later, with his wife Marcelle, founded his own school of costume design.  A pioneer in modern art in America, he experimented with various idioms including Surrealism and Cubism.  Labaudt died on December 12, 1943, in an airplane crash in Assam, India on his way to paint the war in Burma.

Labaudt is best known in San Francisco for his murals at the Beach Chalet.

May 012019
 

George Washington High Schoool
600 32nd Street
Library

Stackpole Mural George Washington High School

Contemporary Education by Ralph Stackpole resides on the west wall of the library at George Washington High School.  It was painted in 1936 as part of the WPA and the New Deal.

Newspaper accounts at the time state that Stackpole was  “interpreting contemporary education in the American high schools.”

Stackpole Mural Washington High School
Ralph Stackpole(1885-1973)

Stackpole grew up in Oregon and came to San Francisco after the turn of the century. He was a sculptor, muralist, etcher, and teacher and was one of the cities leady artists during the 1920s and 30s.  He was already quite prominent as an artist before he was given a commission to create a mural at the Coit Tower Project.  He had become well known based on his sculpture at the Pan Pacific International Exposition, his work at the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange and his teaching at the California School of Fine Arts.

 Stackpole was primarily responsible for bringing Diego Rivera to San Francisco in1930.

Stackpole mural George Washington High*
Stackpole Mural George Washington High School

 

 

WPA Map of San Francisco

 Posted by on February 25, 2019
Feb 252019
 

January to May 2019
At San Francisco’s Public Libraries

This exhibit is something after my own heart.  A WPA map of San Francisco combines my love of the projects that stemmed from the WPA and the history of San Francisco.  This exhibit is called Take Part and more information about the locations of the parts of the map can be found here.

WPA Mural of San Francisco

Coit Tower and its surroundings. This section is in the North Beach or Chinatown Branch Library depending on the date you visit.

The model is a detailed wooden replica of the city of San Francisco at a scale of one inch to one hundred feet.  It was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the late 1930s, under the New Deal. It shows San Francisco from San Bruno Mountain to Yerba Buena Island to the Presidio.

The original project was the brainchild of San Francisco architect Timothy Pflueger with City Planning Commission sponsoring it. Plans were drawn using aerial photographs and surveys. It was constructed in an unidentified church and took 300 craftspeople two years to build at a cost of $102,750.

Parts of the South of Market area at the Main Branch of the SF Public Library

Parts of the South of Market area at the Main Branch of the SF Public Library

There is little known about the historical timeline of the map.  The completed model was displayed just once, intact, in the Light Court at City Hall.  Then World War II broke out and the Light Court became a war room, so the map was taken apart and put in crates.

It eventually found its way to the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. The model was used as an urban planning tool by the students, and when one examines their neighborhood closely one can see that at times, the map was updated by students and professors at UC.  I found several buildings that were from the 1960s.

The area showing City Hall and its environs in the Main Library of the SF Public Library

The area showing City Hall and its environs in the Main Library of the SF Public Library

Eventually, it again saw the light of day when a curator of SFMOMA, who knew of its existence decided to do an educational outreach program called Public Knowledge.  That program involved both SFMOMA and the San Francisco public library.

The map fits together like building blocks.

The map fits together like building blocks. There are 6000 of these city blocks.

There are some pieces missing, and the group sponsoring this event are hoping people that may know of their whereabouts will come forward with them. Even without the missing pieces, the map is considered to be the largest and most intact of any of a number of city models built across America by the WPA.

The North Beach area found at the North Beach Branch or the Chinatown Branch, depending on the month.

The North Beach area found at the North Beach Branch or the Chinatown Branch, depending on the month.

Take Part is a collaboration between Dutch, Rotterdam based artists Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol, and SFMOMA.  Working globally in a variety of forms including performance, publications, videos and public projects, the artists explore how “publics” are formed and come together. Several of their projects deal with archives and collections, while others are about particular places and local histories.

Not all the pieces are on display but the ones that are, can be found in branch libraries across the city.  However, I recommend you start on the 6th floor of the Main Library as there is an explanation of the map, with historic photos, then venture out to explore the neighborhoods. The project runs through March, after that, it is hoped a home can be found for the entire model.

North Beach Area found in either the North Beach Branch Library or Chinatown Branch Library

North Beach Area found in either the North Beach Branch Library or Chinatown Branch Library

I will be visiting all the libraries over the next two months and adding photos as I do, so please come back and take a look.

The Mission Bay Library is so small there was only room for the piers that surround the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street

The Mission Bay Library is so small there was only room for the piers that surround the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street

A small piece that is on display at the Mission Bay Branch Library

A small piece that is on display at the Mission Bay Branch Library

A composite image of the entire map can be found at David Rumsey’s website here.

Here is a link to the aerial photos used for the project, again at the incredible David Rumsey Map Collection.

Continue reading about map sections in other libraries.

Feb 252019
 

Visitation Valley Branch Library
Bayview Branch Library

 

This is installment ten about the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first nine installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs. Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the window.

Bayview Branch Library

WPA map of San Francisco

As I mentioned, often the light made it difficult to take pictures of the model. Sadly, at Bayview itwas actually impossible due to both overhead and window lighting.

During this time this area was home to many war dormitories which showed up on this section of the map. “The World War II era was arguably the most important period in the history of what is now the Bayview-Hunters Point district. Although the district had been steadily urbanizing during the 1920s and 1930s, the Navy’s takeover of the Hunters Point Dry Dock in 1939 set the state for a sustained industrial and residential building boom that would transform the outlying semi-rural district into a center of the worldwide Allied shipbuilding and repair arsenal. After Pearl Harbor, the Navy converted the dry dock into the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, expanded it to encompass 979 acres of filled and unfilled land, six dry docks, 200 buildings, and 17 miles of railroad track. Meanwhile, the War Manpower Commission recruited thousands of predominantly African American workers from the Southwest and Deep South to work in important war industries. These migrants (both black and white) took up residence in the hundreds of hastily built dormitories erected on Hunters Point ridge, Double Rock, Islais Creek Channel, Candlestick, and several others. The period of significance for this theme is 1940 to 1945.” – From the Historic Context Statement for the SF Redevelopment Agency

The building in the top photograph was the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum.

The Catholic Sisters of Charity purchased the top of Mount St. Joseph in 1861 and opened an orphanage in 1869. The first building was a wooden structure with the grounds filled with horses. When the wooden structure burned in 1910, they replaced it with this brick one that had the capcity to hold 162 girls ages 5 to 18.

“Three or four girls share a bedroom and dine with other girls from their apartments,” The Chronicle reported. “Among the teen-agers radios blare, phonograph records spin, and the talk is just like the talk of other girls the same age.” – From the San Francisco Chronicle 1958

By the 1970s, the facility had begun offering residential treatment to young women. The orphanage building closed in 1977 and was sold to a developer.  Homes began appearing on this vast piece of land in the early 1980s.

Visitation Valley Branch Library

This particular map was without a doubt the best to visit.  It is very large in scale giving you a wonderful sense of how fabulous the map in its entirety must be.  It is also not covered in plexiglass making taking photos a real joy.  It is in a locked room and open to the public between 5 and 6 pm.  I would like to personally thank the librarian for letting me see the map during mid day.

WPA map of San Francisco

This photo does not do the map justice as it is difficult to see the topography, but it is worth a visit to the Visitation Library to see

The Cow Palace is the center of the map at Visitation Valley

The Cow Palace is the center of the map at Visitation Valley

The idea for what was to become the Cow Palace was born at the 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. When the fair’s huge livestock exposition proved to be one of its most popular attractions. In 1925, the San Francisco Exposition Company was formed to finance the project. Nineteen firms and individuals each contributed $20,000, and the land was purchased in the Marina District, the site of the 1915 fair… and then the depression hit.

In 1941, through the W.P.A. Program, the construction of the Cow Palace was completed in its present location.

Two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor the building was rented by the Federal Government for $1.00 a year and for the next five years the huge structure was filled with troops embarking for combat zones in the Pacific Theatre. As World War II progressed, the pavilion was turned over to the Ordinance Department and converted into a repair garage.  The building returned to its original use after the war.
Model of San Francisco by the WPAThe Bayshore Roundhouse and steel turntable were built in 1910, after E.H. Harriman bought the property to create a more economical route into the yards of San Francisco by allowing trains to avoid San Bruno Mountain. The roundhouse served as a home and maintenance yard for steam-powered freight engines. At one point, there was the freight yard, shop and store buildings, 25 outbound tracks, 39 inbound tracks, and even a hospital for the 3,000 employees.  The roundhouse was abandoned in 1982 well after diesel had taken over as a power source for trains.  You can read more about the roundhouse here.

 

The Southern Pacific Railroad tracks going under the hill at Tunnel

The Southern Pacific Railroad tracks going under the hill at Tunnel

WPA model of San Francisco

Farms and Greenhouse in the area

This is the last installation of the WPA map that is in each branch of the San Franciscso Public Library and SFMOMA.  The event runs until March 13th, and it is absolutely worth your time to at least visit your local branch and see if you can find your own home, or just view the history of your own neighborhood.

 

Feb 222019
 

Bernal Branch Library
Excelsior Branch Library
Ingleside Branch Library
Portola Branch Library

This is installment nine of the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first eight installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs. Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the window.

Bernal Branch Library

WPA map of San Francisco

*WPA model of San Francisco

On the corner of Precita and Folsom is St. Anthony of Padua, which burned in the 1970s.  When driving down, what was then Army Street, but is now Caesar Chavez you can still see the entry arch.

The long stretch of green is Precita Park. Established in 1894, it was then called Bernal Park, in 1973, the park was renamed after Precita Creek. It is where Carlos Santana would come to play his guitar on weekends, and the home to the first Carnaval in San Francisco.

Excelsior Branch Library
WPA model of San Francisco

The San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living can be seen on the bottom left of the map. Originally built in 1891, the campus has, and continues to, grow and evolve. At the top right a portion of Monroe Elementary School can be seen, the school dates to the early 1900s, although the buildings have been upgraded since.

Ingleside Branch Library

WPA map of San Francisco

In 1885, Cornelius Stagg opened a roadhouse at the southeast corner of the Ocean Road and named it the Ingleside Inn. Ingle is a Celtic term for a domestic fireplace, and the source of the words inglenook—an alcove built into a fireplace, and Ingleside, an area beside a fire.  When Adolph Sutro developed the area he named it Lakeview, a name that obviously did not stick.

WPA model of San Francisco

According to Sanborn Map 1116, the cluster of buildings in the large green expanse on Ocean Avenue is the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum. The buildings consisted of several cottages, a gymnasium, and a chapel.

The Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home Society was incorporated in San Francisco in 1871 to assist in the care, relief, and protection of orphans and aged Jews. The mission of the Society was supported by B’nai B’rith’s District Grand Lodge, Number 4, also located in San Francisco.

This series of buildings, designed by Alfred Henry Jacobs in 1921, were the first “cottage” model care facility in the United States. During and after WWII the now titled Homewood Terrace also housed children who had survived the Holocaust.
Although closed in 1960, it took many more years for the buildings to be torn down and new residential structures to be built.

Portola Branch Library
WPA map of San Francisco

The greenhouses seen in the center upper portion of the map were part of the Ferrari Brothers Nursery. The building to the south of Silver Street that sits in the large expanse of green was the Christian Church of the Golden Ru

WPA map of San Francisco

San Francisco’s water system includes 10 reservoirs and 8 water tanks that store the water delivered by the Hetch Hetchy Project and the local Bay Area water system. The 17 pump station and approximately 1,250 miles of pipelines move water throughout the system.Water to the eastside of the City distribution system is fed by two pipelines that terminate at University Mound, which can be seen in the upper center of the map.

San Francisco map by the WPA

The gymnasium of the Portola Playground, now the Palega Rec Center.

This is the penultimate entry about the WPA map, please stay around for the last entry. That will conclude the visit to every branch library in the City of San Francisco to view this wonderful project.

Feb 212019
 

Ocean View Branch Library
Glen Park Branch Library

This is installment eight about the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first seven installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs. Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the window.

Ocean View Branch Library

WPA model of San Francisco

Niantic Street is now the Southern Freeway.  On Niantic is a route of the Southern Pacific mainline into San Francisco.  There will be much more about that at the Visitation Valley Branch Library.

The large white corrugated area is now a parking lot, they are listed as greenhouses on sheet 948 of the Sanborn maps.

WPA model of San Francisco

In the center of the circle that is reached by Entrada and Court Streets is the famous Ingleside Sundial which you can read all about here.  Urbano Drive was once the Ingleside Race Track.

Opened on November 28, 1895, by the Pacific Coast Jockey Club the Ingleside Race track consisted of an elegant clubhouse and a viewing stand. It is said that the horse stables were top notch. Somewhere between eight-to-twelve thousand people came on opening day and the Southern Pacific Railroad built a special line directly to the track.

The last horse race was on December 30, 1905. The track served as a refugee camp for many San Franciscans after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire.

In 1910 Urban Realty Development Company bought the old track and turned it into the residential area we see today.

Glen Park Branch Library

WPA map of San Francisco

The map at the Glen Park Library is atop a bookcase so takes a small step stool to view, and it is hard to see the entire thing at one time, however, it does give you a fun view from the side.

Glen Canyon Park

Glen Canyon Park

Notice the small building in Glen Canyon Park. It was the first dynamite factory in the US, the Giant Powder Company.  The Giant Powder Company was incorporated in August 1867 by Julius Bandmann of San Francisco for the express purpose of manufacturing Nobel’s newly-patented explosive. The facility was constructed by early 1868, and production began in March.

On November 26, 1869, an explosion destroyed the factory, killing two and injuring nine people. A new facility was subsequently built in a remote location that is now the Sunset District (in the vicinity of today’s Kirkham, Ortega, 20th, and 32nd Avenues). Public outcry after an explosion at that plant forced the company to move to the East Bay.

As I mentioned in the last post, a few of the librarians are also putting up photographs of portions of the model that abut the portion that is on display. Here are three of the photos in the Glen Park Branch Library.

These photos were courtesy of the Glenn Park Neighborhood History Project, a wonderful resource for all that is Glenn Park.

Photo WPA Map San Francisco

*WPA model of San FranciscoThe large red block is the Stanford Heights Reservoir.

Built in 1926 the Stanford Heights Reservoir was part of the development of a new water system for San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. It sat on what at that time was the undeveloped northeast slope of Mount Davidson.

The undeveloped residential area in the above photo is Miraloma Park. It was developed from 1926 through the 1950s.
WPA map of San Francisco

The large cluster of buildings on the bottom left of the above photograph is  City College of San Francisco.

Please come back to this site as I will be writing about all of the maps that are in each of the San Francisco branch libraries.

Feb 192019
 
West Portal Branch Library
Merced Branch Library

This is installment seven about the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first six installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs. Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the window.

West Portal Branch Library

Laguna Honda Hospital as seen on the WPA map at West Portal Branch Library

Laguna Honda Hospital as seen on the WPA map at West Portal Branch Library

A close up of Laguna Honda Hospital on the WPA map

A close up of Laguna Honda Hospital on the WPA map

The tree-covered hill behind Laguna Honda Hospital is the Twin Peaks area of San Francisco. Today (2019) Twin Peaks has 1361 homes and a population of 2,726.

WPA map of San Francisco

Many times the roads are not as true to the situation as they should be.  This intersection is actually a roundabout, and as you can see in the aerial photo that was used to make the map, it was then as well.

1930s Aerial photo of San Francisco

The West Portal Library location is marked with the red flag.  The piece representing the building must be missing as the library was also a WPA project built in 1938-1939 and it did appear on the aerial maps used for this project.

The large brown building to the left of the library is the West Portal Elementary School.

WPA map of San Francisco

Merced Branch Library

The map shows how Stonestown Mall and the Park Merced project had yet to be built

The map at the Merced Branch Library shows how San Francisco State College, the Stonestown Mall and the Park Merced project had yet to be built

WPA map of San FranciscoThe orange line is the San Mateo County line.  The red building, still within the San Francisco City limits is the San Francisco Golf Club.

The San Francisco Golf Club was one of seven golf clubs West of the Allegheny Mountains when it was founded in 1885. It moved to its present location in 1915.  Part of the course is actually in Daly City in San Mateo County.

The course was designed by noted American golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast and its signature 7th hole overlooks the site of the last legal duel in California.

WPA Map

This was the first library I visited that had photos of the portion of the map that would have been adjacent to the one being displayed in their branch.  I am very grateful to the librarians who actually displayed these maps.

This map shows another golf course in the area. The Olympic Club is on the bottom left. The San Francisco Zoo is between the wish bone formed by Sloat and Skyline Blvd. The long red building on the left of the zoo is the Fleishacker Pool.

Please come back to this site, I intend to write about every map at all of the branches of the San Francisco Public Library.

Feb 172019
 

Sunset Branch Library
Ortega Branch Library
Parkside Branch Library

This is installment six of the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first Five installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs. Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the window.

Sunset Branch Library

The WPA map at the Sunset Branch Library

The WPA map at the Sunset Branch Library

San Francisco was home to what was once the largest sand dune ecosystem in the western hemisphere. These dunes spanned seven miles, essentially the entire width of modern-day San Francisco.

Carl Larsen emigrated from Denmark in 1869 and began buying large amounts of land in these dunes. He donated this land now known as Golden Gate Heights to the city in 1924. Golden Gate Heights was laid out in 1927, the neighborhood’s windy streets hug the hills and break the strict grid overlaying most of the city.

Some homes were built in the 1930s, but as you can see when viewing the WPA map there were vast amounts of empty green space since most of the homes in this area were built in the 1950s.

St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic Church as seen on the WPA map

St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic Church as seen on the WPA map

St Anne of the Sunset Catholic Church was one of the large buildings in the area during that time.

WPA map of San FranciscoThe stairway at 16th avenue in Golden Gate Heights is covered in tiles and are now a wonderful piece of art.

WPA Map of San FranciscoAs are the stairs at 16th and Moraga

Ortega Branch Library

This area was fascinating for how sparse it also was in the 1930s.WPA map of San Francisco

There was once a Shriners Hospital at Taraval and the Great Highway.

Notice the tunnel at the end of Taraval Street it can be seen at the far left in the green area just below the Taraval sign.  This was constructed in 1920 to give people access to the beach.  It was dismantled in the 1960s when sewer outfall pipes were installed.  When walking the beach during very rigorous storms one can still see the remnants of the tunnel and its cobblestone floor.

A 1929 photo from the SFPL taken at Taraval and The Great Highway. The Hospital can be seen on the left in the background

A 1929 photo from the SFPL taken at Taraval and The Great Highway. The Hospital can be seen on the left in the background.

WPA Map of San Francisco

The above appears to be a grand home at Ulloa and The Great Highway, it is not listed on any Sanborn map and this is how it looks on the aerial photo that was used by the WPA for the project.

WPA map of San Francisco Aerial Photo

*WPA map of San Francisco

It is interesting to visit all parts of the map.  If you do you can see how each artist left an individual style.  This was the first map that showed what appear to be driveways and walkways into the homes rather than just small painted buildings.

Parkside Branch Library

WPA map of San Francisco

The map at the Parkside Branch Library is divided into two pieces, one on each side of the entry foyer.

WPA map of San Francisco

The two things that really stand out on this map is Abraham Lincoln High School and the Sunset Reservoir.

WPA map of San Francisco

Sunset Reservoir is the city’s largest and is owned and maintained by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Completed in 1960, the subterranean reservoir was constructed as an 11-acre concrete basin, which contains 720 floor-to-ceiling columns. The reservoir has a capacity of 270 acre-feet or 87,979,886 gallons.

Abraham Lincoln school was opened in 1940 after the map was built.  This leaves one to ask if it was far enough along to be included or if it was part of the pieces added at a later date by UC.

There have been several prominent San Franciscan’s who graduated from Lincoln, including :

John L. Burton, Class of 1957 who was President of the California State Senate and former Congressman, Actress Barbara Eden, Class of 1949, Sculptor Richard Serra, Class of 1954 and BD Wong, Class of 1978 a television, film, and Tony Award-winning theater actor.

Please come back and visit, I plan to write about all of the 29 maps spread throughout the city.

Feb 112019
 

Richmond Branch Library
Park Branch Library

This is installment five of the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first four installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs. Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the window.

Richmond Branch Library

The WPA map at the Richmond Library is rich in history

The WPA map at the Richmond Library is rich in history

The map at the Richmond Library is a fun walk down memory lane.  In the photo above you not only can see the well-marked Sutro Baths but the Cliff House and the remains of Sutro’s home on the hill.

Then to top it off Playland is still on the map.

Playland

Playland’s Shoot the Chutes Water ride can be seen on the far left.

Playland

Playland’s Big Dipper

For those not familiar with San Francisco history Playland was a 10-acre amusement park located next to Ocean Beach, in the Richmond District along the Great Highway. It began as a collection of amusement rides and concessions in the late 19th century and was known as Chutes At The Beach as early as 1913. It closed Labor Day weekend in 1972.

This portion of the map shows the Veteran's Hospital and the Legion of Honor at the left

This portion of the map shows the Veteran’s Hospital and the Legion of Honor at the left

Park Branch Library

Kezar Stadium as shown on the map at the Park Branch Library

Kezar Stadium as shown on the map at the Park Branch Library

The Park Emergency Hospital, designed by Newton Tharp, can be seen sitting in the parking lot at the far right.

The Park Emergency Hospital, designed by Newton Tharp, can be seen sitting in the parking lot at the far right.

WPA Map of San Francisco

The Carmelite Monastery of St Christo on the map in the Park Library with the USF stadium in the upper left.

Notice how the street entry into the park has changed.

Notice how the street entry into the park has changed.

Today Fell and Oak feed into the park at Stanyan.  Here the map shows how the roads once were.

Please come back often, I will be adding pieces of the map as I visit the libraries through the months of February and March.

Feb 092019
 

Western Addition Branch Library
Anza Branch Library

This is installment four of the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first three installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs.  Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the window

Western Addition Branch Library

The pieces at the Western Addition Branch Library not only does not show what was there, but it shows what is not there.  Bear with me and remember the model was used as an urban planning tool at UC Berkeley and at times was updated by students and professors. This update clearly shows what they thought was going to happen, and not what actually did.

The Western Additions great experiment gone awry

The Western Additions horrific redevelopment plan

After World War II, American cities were transfixed by a social experiment called urban renewal, and the Western Addition was part of this experiment. The exact area can be seen redlined on the WPA map.

The “purpose” was to raze slums and revive city centers. This was encouraged in the 1949 State of the Union address by then-President Harry Truman who touted slum clearance as a weapon to combat the housing shortage the nation was experiencing due to the end of the war.

In San Francisco, a 1945 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed stated, “nothing can be done to improve housing conditions here until a lot of people clear out.”

The Western Addition had become the home to the many African Americans who moved to San Francisco looking for work in war-related industries. From 1940 to 1950, the population of African Americans in the Western Addition increased from 2,144 to 14,888.  These statistics come from a  detailed study of this subject by Jordan Klein, a Master of City Planning Candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.

In June of 1948, the San Francisco Board of  Supervisors designated the Western Addition as a “blighted” area, using the area’s crime statistics as evidence.  They then greenlighted the redevelopment process and its resulting removal of the African American and Asian population living in the Western Addition.

Not much progress was made for the first ten years and then Justin Herman took the helm of the Redevelopment Agency. He single-handedly led the steam roller called urban renewal

In 1960, Geary Boulevard was demolished and work began on a portion of the Geary Expressway. This was just one of five new freeways that were planned to run throughout San Francisco as the transportation mode of the future.   The large dip that Geary Boulevard takes at Webster Street is a remaining scar of this failed freeway concept.

In 1967 a group of concerned citizens began petitioning the city to stop the destruction of the Western Addition. Sadly by the time construction was halted 883 businesses had been closed, 20,000 to 30,000 residents were displaced, and 2,500 Victorian houses were demolished.

For a full understanding of what happened during this period of time, I suggest the chapter “The Haunted House”  from the book “Cool Gray City of Love” by Gary Kamiya.

The Jack Tarr Hotel as shown on the WPA map at the Western Addition Branch Library

The Jack Tarr Hotel as shown on the WPA map at the Western Addition Branch Library

The Jack Tarr Hotel on opening day

The Jack Tarr Hotel on opening day

The Jack Tar Hotel stood on a square block of Van Ness Avenue between Geary and Post streets for 53 years. It was called the Cathedral Hill Hotel from 1982 until it closed in 2009.  When it opened in 1960 it was called “the most modern hotel” and “the world’s most completely electronic hotel offering … dazzling innovations in that field.” It had closed-circuit television a swimming pool and an ice rink on the roof. There were 403 rooms and a 450-car garage, it also included a 12-story office building. It was the first new hotel built in San Francisco in 30 years and the first to have air conditioning.

However, its modern architecture did not sit well with San Franciscans and it was called “the box Disneyland came in,” “the Wurlitzer Hilton” and “Texas’ idea of what Los Angeles looks like.”

Demolished in 2013, the newly constructed California Pacific Medical Center now stands on that block

 Anza Branch Library

The portion of the map at the Anza Branch Library

The portion of the map at the Anza Branch Library

The area represented by this section of the map has not changed much.

Due to the residential nature of much of the area represented by this section of the map the landscape has not changed much.

This project will continue until March, please come back and keep up with the project. I hope to get to each piece of the map in every one of the branch libraries.

Feb 082019
 

Golden Gate Valley Branch Library
Marina Branch Library
Presidio Branch Library

This is installment three of the pieces of the WPA map that are being displayed as part of the joint program, Take Part, between SFMOMA and the San Francisco Library. You can read the first two installments here.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs.  Most every model is under plexiglass and reflects not only the lighting from above but the light streaming in through the windows.

Golden Gate Valley Branch Library

Lafayette Park as seen in the Golden Gate Valley Branch

Lafayette Park as seen in the Golden Gate Valley Branch

The question in viewing this image of Lafayette Park is how the apartment building, that is shown near the Gough sign ever got built in a public park.

I went to the website Hoodline to find out.  According to them:

“The building is a remnant of a pitched 19th-century legal dispute between the City of San Francisco and a former city attorney, Samuel W. Holladay.

Through an act of Congress, the property that eventually became Lafayette Park was conveyed to the city in 1864 by the U.S. Government, but there was a question as to whether the land had been officially designated as a park by the city. Holliday claimed he owned what is now the eastern half of the park and the city claimed it was in public ownership under a city ordinance. Despite the conflict, Holladay constructed a mansion in 1866 at the top of the hill and called it “Holladay Heights.” “The article goes on and you can read it here, and please do, it will tell you about the first astronomical observatory on the West Coast that was once in Lafayette Park.

The Golden Gate Library Branch existed when the map was built and is shown with the red flag.

The Golden Gate Library Branch existed when the map was built and is shown with the red flag.

The Golden Gate Valley Branch Library property was purchased by the City for $7,500. The brick and terra cotta Beaux-Arts structure was designed in the shape of a basilica by local architect Ernest Coxhead. Though Carnegie grant funds paid for the building, City funds were used for the furnishings. The total cost of the building and furnishings came to $43,000.  The library branch opened on  May 5, 1918.

Marina Branch Library

Fort Mason and the Aquatic Park Pier as seen in the Marina Branch Library

Fort Mason and the Aquatic Park Pier as seen in the Marina Branch Library

WPA Map of San Francisco

The buildings in the center at the foot of Columbus are The Cannery.

The two long brown buildings in the square that is two over from the left and two up from the bottom are The Southern Pacific Automobile Station.

Presidio Branch Library

The portion of the WPA map that is in the Presidio Library showing the Presidio and its environs

The portion of the WPA map that is in the Presidio Library showing the Presidio and its environs

The Presidio Library is marked with the red flag on the WPA map at the Presidio Library Branch

The Presidio Library is marked with the red flag on the WPA map at the Presidio Library Branch

The Presidio Branch Library was established in 1898 and was the sixth branch of the SFPL system. The current building, designed by G. Albert Lansburg was completed in 1921. The building is Italian-Renaissance in style and was built with $83,228 in Carnegie funds.

The Presidio Branch Library - date unknown. Courtesy of the SFPL Photographic collection

The Presidio Branch Library – date unknown. Courtesy of the SFPL Photographic collection

I hope you will continue to check back with us as I intend to visit every one of the branch libraries before the exhibit closes on March 25th.

 

Feb 052019
 

SFMOMA
Mission Branch Library
Noe Valley Library
Eureka Valley Library

This is the second post in a series covering the joint SF Library system and SFMOMA project Take Part showing the map of San Francisco built by the WPA.  Click here for Part 1

SFMOMA

The old Transbay terminal as shown on the map at SFMOMA

The old Transbay terminal as shown on the map at SFMOMA

The hub of the San Francisco commuter bus and Greyhound system was the old Transbay Terminal.  It is shown on the WPA map of San Francisco.

San Francisco’s former Transbay Terminal was built in 1939 at First and Mission Streets as the terminal for East Bay trains using the newly opened Bay Bridge. The Terminal was financed and operated as part of the Bay Bridge and was paid for by Bay Bridge tolls (which were then 50 cents per automobile, or about $7.75 today). At the time, trucks and trains (primarily the Key System) used the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, and automobiles operated in both directions on the upper deck.

Ten car trains arrived every 63.5 seconds. In its heyday at the end of World War II, the terminal’s rail system served 26 million passengers annually. After the war ended and gas rationing was eliminated, the Terminal’s use began to steadily decline to a rate of four to five million people traveling by rail per year. In 1958, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was converted to automobile traffic only, the Key System was dismantled and by 1959 the  Transbay Terminal was converted into a bus-only facility.

A new bus terminal, complete with Public Art has been built. However, due to complications, it was closed soon after its grand opening, and as of this writing (February 5, 2019), it has not yet reopened.

Potrero Hill Branch Library

San Francisco General Hospital as portrayed on the map in the Potrero Hill Library

San Francisco General Hospital as portrayed on the map in the Potrero Hill Library

While a hospital sat on this property for years, in 1915 the “New San Francisco General Hospital”, which was a landscaped, red brick, Italian Renaissance style complex, was dedicated during the City’s celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal, at that time motorized ambulances replaced the horse-drawn vans.

One of the map sections at the Potrero Hill Branch Library

One of the map sections at the Potrero Hill Branch Library

The history buff, and someone who has an entire map of San Francisco in his head, my friend Ted, pointed out that the section in the upper right was moved way too far to the right, none-the-less the map of this area shows how the shipyards and PG&E electrical plant were the main items in the area at the time the map was built.

The produce market as shown on the Potrero Hill Branch Library

The San Francisco Produce Market as shown at the Potrero Hill Branch Library

I could only find a reference to the stadium on a 1950 Sanborn Map calling it “Formerly San Francisco Stadium – removed”. (volume 11 – page 786)

Mission District Public Library

The old San Francisco and San Jose Railroad with its raised beds and bridges as shown on the Mission Branch library section

The old San Francisco and San Jose Railroad with its raised beds and bridges as shown on the Mission Branch library section

One of the more interesting things on the Mission Branch library map is the section that shows how the San Francisco/San Jose Railroad (1860s) line actually came through this part of town on raised beds and large bridges where it crossed street intersections.  Here is a fun documentary made by CalTrain about the history of the line.

Notice the light wells that abound on the homes that sit wall to wall in the Mission District

Notice the light wells that abound on the homes that sit wall to wall in the Mission District

Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Branch Library

Mission Dolores, angled off the grid in the center at the bottom, can be found at the Eureka Valley Branch Library

Mission Dolores,  the light brown building center bottom, can be found at the Eureka Valley Branch Library

The Eureka Valley section shows primarily the residential neighborhoods, but one interesting building was the German Hospital that sits in the block made up of Noe/Duboce/ Castro and 14th.

The German Hospital

The German Hospital

In 1854, the German General Benevolent Society formed the German Hospital to provide healthcare, food, and shelter for San Francisco’s German immigrants, who flooded the City during the Gold Rush. Founder Joseph N. Rausch, M.D., also proposed one of the country’s first pre-paid health plans: for a dollar a month, German-speaking immigrants qualified for a private hospital bed if they ever needed it, at a rate of one dollar per day. In 1895, the Society expanded its membership and was treating all citizens of San Francisco by century’s end.

If you have the chance, please try to visit this project, it is up until March.  It is a wonderful view of San Francisco long ago.

If you do, the Librarians have stamps to prove you have been there, so grab a “Take Part” map at your local branch, collect all the stamps when visiting SFPL branches, and return your completed stamped map to win a SFMOMA prize.

WPA Murals at Laguna Honda Hospital

 Posted by on August 21, 2018
Aug 212018
 

Laguna Honda Hospital
375 Laguna Honda Boulevard
Foresthill

Professions by Glen Wessel

Professions by Glen Wessels is one of five murals in the entry to the older wing of Laguna Honda Hospital. These five 8′ x 6′ murals were painted in 1934 with funding from the PWAP (Public Works Art Projects).

Glenn Anthony Wessels was born in Cape Town, South Africa on December 15, 1895, the son of a wealthy Dutch diamond merchant. The Wessels family moved to California about 1902, having lost everything in the Boer War. Wessels earned his B.F.A.  at the California School of Arts and Crafts and his M.A. degree at UC Berkeley. He began his art career as an illustrator for the San Francisco Call. He furthered his art training at AcadeŽmie Colarossi in Paris, and with Karl Hofer in Berlin and Hans Hofmann in Munich. While in Munich, he became Hofmann’s assistant and in 1930 returned to the U.S. as his interpreter and guide.

Earth by Glen Wessel

Earth by Glen Wessels

Wessels teaching career began at the California School of Arts and Crafts but he also taught at Mills College in Oakland, Washington State College, and the University of California Berkeley. He painted these five murals as part of the Federal Art Project and later became technical adviser and superviser in the Oakland area. In the early 1930s Wessels was the art critic for the San Francisco Fortnightly, and between 1934 and 1940, he was art editor for the San Francisco Argonaut. Wessels retired from teaching in 1963 and was invited by Governor Edmund (Pat) Brown to become a California State Commissioner of Fine Arts. He was a member of  the San Francisco Art Association, Friends of Photography, the San Francisco Art Institute and the Oakland Art Museum.

Wessels final years were spent in Placerville, California where he died on July 23, 1982.

Air by Glen Wessel

Air by Glen Wessels

These murals were lost for a time until they were “rediscovered” in 1981 when the hospital was being refurbished. Mayor Dianne Feinstein issued a proclamation in Wessels honor.

Water by Glen Wessel

Water by Glen Wessels

Fire by Glen Wessel

Fire by Glen Wessels

 

Frederick Olmsted at CCSF

 Posted by on August 9, 2018
Aug 092018
 

CCSF
Phelan Campus
Hall of Science

Frederick Olmstead Murals at CCSF

The Theory of Science is the title of two murals at the west entrance stairs of the Science Hall.  The murals show students engaged in various branches of scientific research such as viewing bacteria through a microscope, conducting field research, and excavating dinosaur remains.

These were painted in 1941 as part of the New Deals’ Federal Art Project.

Olmsted Theory of Science CCSF

A restoration was completed in 2002 by CCSF faculty, staff, students, and an independent conservator, bringing these images close to their original state.

Frederick E. Olmsted Jr. was born in San Francisco in 1911. He died in Falmouth, Massachusetts in 1990.

Olmsted Jr. studied science at Stanford University and was a student of Ralph Stackpole’s at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) (now called the San Francisco Art Institute or SFAI).
Olmsted Jr. also worked in the WPA, assisting John Langley Howard and George Albert Harris in their Coit Tower murals in San Francisco, and creating his own mural on a three-foot panel called “Power” above the main entrance.

Olmsted Murals CCSF

*Olmsted Murals CCSF

*Olmsted Murals CCSF

*Olmsted Murals CCSF

Olmsted is also responsible for two statues that sit outside of the Hall of Science that he carved during the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition as part of the Arts in Action Exhibit.

 

Building the Iron Horse

 Posted by on June 19, 2018
Jun 192018
 

Laguna Honda Hospital
Lobby of the Pavillion
375 Laguna Honda Boulevard
Forest Hill

Building the Iron Horse by Owen Smith

Owen Smith’s WPA-style mosaic murals depicting the building of the Golden Gate Bridge pay homage to Glen Wessel’s Professions mural series in the historic Laguna Honda lobby and provide a visual continuity between the old and the new buildings. The artist chose to illustrate the building of the Golden Gate Bridge because of the subject matter’s connection to the Wessel murals, which include themes related to labor and the four classic elements. To Smith, the building of the Golden Gate Bridge represents human audacity, bravery, skill and artistic and engineering achievement.

Mosaics by Owen Smith

Owen Smith has been on this site before.  According to his own website: Smith’s  illustrations have appeared in Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Time, Esquire, and the New York Times. He has created 19 covers for The New Yorker and recently illustrated a third book for children. His illustrations for the recording artist Aimee Mann helped win a Grammy for Best Recording Package. Smith has received recognition from The Society of Illustrators New York, Illustration West, American Illustration, Communication Arts, Print Magazine, Creative Quarterly, and Lürzer’sArchive.

Owen Smith’s painting and sculpture has been exhibited in New York, Milan, San Francisco and Los Angeles.  He has participated in group shows at Schwartz Gallery Met at Lincoln Center NYC, and the Moderna e Contemporane Museum Rome. In 2012 Owen’s had a solo show in Caffé Museo at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

 Smith designed mosaic murals for a New York City Subway Station. In 2011 Smith’s mosaic murals and relief sculpture panels for Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco were named one of America’s Best Public Artworks at the 2011 Americans for the Arts Convention in San Diego.

Owen lives with his wife and two sons in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently the Chair of the Illustration Program at California College of the Arts.

Building the Iron Horse by Owen Smith

 These three mosaics were commissioned by the SFAC at a cost of $287,515.

John Park WPA Murals

 Posted by on April 20, 2016
Apr 202016
 

John Muir Elementary
380 Webster
Hayes Valley

David Park at John Muir Elementary School

As you enter John Muir Elementary school you are greeted with three lunettes.  In the lunettes are WPA murals by artist David Park.  These murals were done in 1934, the same year that park joined the WPA.  These three are painted in the Socialist Realism style.

John Muir Elementary

The three murals are titled Man in Art, Man in Nature and Man in Industry.  There are very few David Park murals left, making these in the school a San Francisco treasure.

David Park at John Muir Elementary

David Park (1911-1960) was a painter and a pioneer of the Bay Area Figurative School of painting during the 1950s.

Park was part of the post-World War II alumni of the San Francisco Art Institute, called the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) at the time.

Park moved to Los Angeles in 1928 to attend the Otis Art Institute, his only formal education, but dropped out after less than a year. In 1944 he began teaching at the California School of Fine Arts and adopted the then-dominant mode of abstract expressionist painting. He never felt fully comfortable with this style, however, and in 1949 hauled all his abstract canvases to the Berkeley dump. “Art ought to be a troublesome thing,” he would later declare.

Park became the first of several Bay Area artists, followed by Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, to reconcile thick paint and vigorous brushstrokes with figurative subjects such as people engaged in contemporary, everyday life.

Park was producing some of his best work by the 1950s and was at the height of his national success, when he was diagnosed with cancer.

He switched to watercolors when he could no longer work in oil and passed away a few months after his diagnosis.

John Muir Elementary School

 Posted by on April 20, 2016
Apr 202016
 

John Muir Elementary School
380 Webster
Hayes Valley

John Muir Elementary SF

In the ten years between 1920 and 1930 San Francisco erected 49 new school buildings, with a 50th approved in 1931.

This was all accomplished just 80 years after the birth of the San Francisco School System.

These 50 school buildings represented an investment, at that time, of $17,418,814.

The 1931 Report of the Superintendent showed that the forty-seven schools had an enrollment of 42,976 students, and an additional 4000 to be enrolled when the remaining three, still under construction at the time of the report, were to open.

At that time the school system of San Francisco had an enrollment of 82,438 children. Today that number is only 57,000.

This staggering growth rate most likely explains why there is so little information about John Muir Elementary School. It was the 32nd on the list, likely just another, of so many, schools on the drawing table of City Architect John Reid.

Tiles adorn the interior doors of the auditorium

Tiles adorn the interior doors of the auditorium

John Muir Elementary was begun in 1926 and completed in 1927. Its stucco covered, reinforced concrete construction is minimal.

While there is lovely tile details in the entry and auditorium, the building is fairly unadorned.

Small little alcoves for teachers are by each classroom door.

Small little alcoves for teachers are by each classroom door.

There are delightful little details, such as kid high blackboards, and small little boxes to the side of each classroom where teachers can post notes, but few other adornments. Small wood peg closets and built in benches on the top floor hallway, are a sign of more personalized design and construction considerations, but the school is still minimal. This is all made up for in its warmth and stunning views from the East side windows.

Iron grates and decorative tiles, show an attention to craftsmanship.

Iron grates and decorative tiles, show an attention to craftsmanship.

Born in San Francisco in 1883, John Reid Jr. was born in San Francisco and attended Lowell High School. He then studied architecture at Berkeley under John Galen Howard, a significant mentor and important early Bay Area architect.

With Howard’s encouragement, Reid applied to the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris (the most important design school of the time). His studies in Paris placed him among a very elite class of California architects.

Reid returned to a post 1906 Earthquake and Fire San Francisco. Due to his connections he worked briefly for renowned architects Daniel Burnham and Willis Polk, then established his own practice around 1912.

That same year, Reid’s brother-in-law, Sunny Jim Rolph, was sworn in as mayor, and appointed Reid as a supervising architect to execute the design for San Francisco’s new City Hall, designed by John Bakewell and Arthur Brown Jr.

He became San Francisco City Architect in 1917 and remained in that position until 1927, with school design and construction a high priority, as the earthquake had totally destroyed or damaged most of the city’s schools.

There are three WPA murals in the school, done by David Park in 1934.  You can read about those here.

 

 

Hearst Grizzly Gulch

 Posted by on October 21, 2014
Oct 212014
 

San Francisco Zoo

Grizzly by Tom Shrey

 

This grizzly by Tom Schrey graces the Hearst Grizzly Gulch building at the SF Zoo.  Tom has a degree from California College of the Arts and presently works at Artworks Foundry.

Hearst Grizzly Gulch Tom Schrey Scultpure

 

The following was excerpted from a June 15, 2007 SF Gate article by Patricia Yollin:

Three summers ago, two grizzly bear orphans in Montana were trying to fend off starvation. Now they are coddled ursine superstars living in San Francisco.

On Thursday, the public got its first glimpse of the twins’ opulent new home as Hearst Grizzly Gulch, a $3.7 million habitat at the San Francisco Zoo, opened for business. Kachina and Kiona, whose species adorns the California state flag, quickly demonstrated that they knew how to work the Flag Day crowd.

Proximity is one of the exhibit’s highlights. A thick glass window is the only thing separating humans and carnivores in one section of Grizzly Gulch, which also includes a meadow, 20,000-gallon shallow pool, heated rocks, 2-ton tree stump, dig pit, herb garden and 20-foot-high rock structure.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Where are we going to put them?’ ” recalled Manuel Mollinedo, the zoo’s executive director.

SF Zoo Bears

The sisters, now 4 years old, moved into a concrete enclosure that’s part of an old-fashioned bear grotto built in the 1930s. It will serve as night quarters and adjoins the new habitat, the result of a fundraising campaign by Carroll — who said he envisioned an endless series of “$100,000 lunches” before Stephen Hearst, vice president and general manager of the Hearst Corp., set up a $1 million donation.

Hearst was mindful of his family’s connection to grizzlies. His great-grandfather, San Francisco Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst, arranged for the 1889 capture of a wild grizzly that he named Monarch — his paper’s slogan was “Monarch of the Dailies” — who inspired the creation of the city’s first zoo.

WPA habitat at SF Zoo

The Zoo’s first major exhibits were built in the 1930’s by the depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) at a cost of $3.5 million.  The animal exhibits were, in the words of the architect, Lewis Hobart, “ten structures designed to house the animals and birds in quarters as closely resembling native habitats as science can devise.” These new structures included Monkey Island, Lion House, Elephant House, a sea lion pool, an aviary, and bear grottos. These spacious, moated enclosures were among the first bar-less exhibits in the country.

Original Animal enclosures SF Zoo

 

 

Oct 042014
 

San Francisco Zoo
Mother’s Building

murals at sf zoo

These murals, on the Mother’s Building at the San Francisco Zoo were WPA projects.  They were done by three sisters: Esther Bruton, Helen Bruton and Margaret Bruton.

Helen Bruton has murals in downtown San Francisco that you can read about here.

Here is an excerpt explaining the sisters work on the Zoo murals in their own voices:

This Oral history interview with Helen and Margaret Bruton, 1964 Dec. 4, is from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview with Helen and Margaret Bruton
Conducted by Lewis Ferbrache
In Monterey, California
December 4, 1964

LF: All right, Margaret and Helen, about the Fleishhacker Mother’s House mosaics – you were mentioning Anthony Falcier and how you learned from him.

HB: Yes, he was actually, at the time, a tile-setter in Alameda, but he was a thoroughly-trained mosaicist from his early days in the old country. He used to tell us how he came over here. He came over here to work on the courthouse in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which evidently had a mosaic top. And then he came out to San Francisco, to join a group of Italian workmen who were doing the mosaics down at San Simeon for the Hearst Castle. Since then, we ran across another man who worked in that same crew, several in fact. In fact, I think there was one on the WPA whose name I can’t remember. But if it hadn’t been for Mr. Falcier, I don’t know what we would have done, because he gave us pointers that we would have been quite helpless without. About how to set up the drawing, how to reverse it, how to divide it in sections in such a way that when the actual mosaic was mounted on the wall – which was an operation that began from the bottom and worked up –the section that you were mounting was square enough in shape so that it didn’t sag or settle too badly at one side or another, and begin to throw the thing out of wack. Because everybody that saw us working always had the same expression. “”Oh, that’s just like working a jig-saw puzzle.’’ Well, it was a little like a jig-saw puzzle on a big scale.

Bruton Sisters Tile Murals

LF: What were the sizes of these tiles, did you say?

HB: Well, the material that we used – as I said we couldn’t get any – there was no such thing as getting “smalti,” which is hand-cut Venetian enamel material. We used for the material some commercial tile that was manufactured at that time in San Jose, California, by a small tile outfit called Solon & Schennell, or the S&S Tile Company. They made a beautiful commercial tile, too beautiful to be very successful as commercial tile, because they couldn’t really satisfy the jobbers, who insisted on a perfect match to every lot of tile, which they had catalogued by number. There was so much variation in their tile that there was a great deal of waste from a practical commercial standpoint. And the tile that we used was mostly that tile that was what they would call a second, because of the variation. We had names for these tile colors, one was called St. Francis, and St. Francis varied in color all the way from deep Mars violet to a fawn color almost, or a strong ochre color, warm ochre, but it was the same glaze, depending on where it was put in the kiln it would come – that would be the range of shades.

LF: Different shading?

HB: Yes. And it was very, very strong, very good body to the tile, except that it was so tough that before we could even cut it up in smaller pieces, use any kind of tools on it, we had to have the thickness reduced by about half. And the way we did that was, we took it to a marble works over in Berkeley, over in Emeryville, really, on the waterfront there in the industrial section, and they would mount the tile on slabs of marble set in plaster of Paris, glazed side protected of course, with the bottom side up, and rub about half of it off. Then it would come in a workable thickness. And poor Len sawed it, used to saw it in strips of about three-quarters to an inch in width. And from then on we could cut it into any size we wanted, with some good strong tile nippers. Except that there was a difficulty in setting it up, finally because of the very absorbent terra cotta back, which drew the water out. When the cement coat was put on the back of the tile, it sucked the water out unless the terra cotta was dampened beforehand. So we always had the problem, when it came to mounting it on the wall finally, of dampening the back without making it so damp that the surface, which was eventually to be the fact of the decoration, would be still kept dry enough to hold on to the paper. And we did. It just made it a little bit more complicated in the process. But it was in the mounting that Mr. Falcier was so valuable. He’d come over with us from Alameda every day. I think it took us about almost a week for each one – five days for each panel. And he’d actually mix the concrete, the mortar. Esther was helping me on that. I don’t know where Marge was, and Len, I don’t remember Len being there. It is funny, but he must not have been with us when we were actually working with Falcier. But anyway, Mr. Falcier would mount a certain amount face out – you see the paper would still be stuck on the face – and each day we’d move up so much. We might set eight or nine pieces, depending on the way the design built up, the sections built up.

LF: You would have your cartoons to go by, I would imagine?

HB: Yes.

LF: Did all three of your get together on the selection of the subject matter, the topics? Did you talk it over between the three of you?

HB: Oh, I suppose we did.

LF: Or what it suggested by the City or –?

HB: I think it was, not – as a matter of fact, I think that particular thing was pretty much my job of designing. Somebody else, probably Esther or Margaret might have suggested the subject matter actually, but I remember it was a matter of – I remember hardly doing more than one sketch of that, especially St. Francis. I think I put it down and that was it. Of course, there was more work put on it as you got to getting it full size, but I think that first sketch, which was rather unusual for me because the more work I did the more fooling around that I do in design, and maybe not really improving it.

Bruton Sisters Interview

LF: You had to submit the design or the sketches to Dr. Heil or someone in his office?

HB: Yes, and then of course, you’d bring in a sketch and a proposal of what material was to be used.

LF: Did you estimate your time and what you needed?

HB: Oh no, you couldn’t possibly, because we’d never done such a thing before. But I don’t remember that it took, I’m afraid that I couldn’t say exactly how many months it took, whether we were two months on it, or three months, or whether – considering both the panels, we might have been perhaps three months.

LF: This was the first work done in the building?

HB: I think Helen Forbes and Dorothy Puccinelli were working at the same time. In fact, I know they were. But we were not there anything like – that project continued for a long, long time, but of course we didn’t actually have to work out there at the building until it came to installing the panels.

LF: I see. Where did you do your work then?

HB: At home in Alameda.

LF: In Alameda, that’s interesting.

HB: That was the house that we’d always lived in, and we had a wonderful big studio in the top floor, the whole top floor with great big dormer windows on three sides.

WPA Tile Murals SF Zoo

LF: And you completed the mosaic murals in the house and had them moved?

HB: They were in sections, you see. We did it on the floor. We laid it out on the floor as we completed it section by section. One thing that made this particular material still more complicated was that the color was only on the fact. So we used to have to lay it out roughly on the face so we could see what we had done, what we had before us. But, of course, when it came to mounting it, the mounting paper, the heavy paper on which it was mounted and transported, had to be put over the face. So when it was laid out on the floor, then we mounted paper over the face so it all disappeared. In other words, it was completely covered up and dismantled. And we had to get the paper off the back and clean it up so that the mortar could go directly on the back.

LF: This is the Fleishhacker Zoo Mother House? In other words, it was a sort of resting place, and so on, for mothers and their children visiting the Zoo? Is that correct?

HB: Yes. It was a memorial given by Mr. Herbert Fleishhacker, as I understand it, given in memory of his mother, Delia, because it says across the face of it, “To the memory of Delia Fleishhacker.” And I remember Mr. and Mrs. Fleishhacker came over one day to see it. They wanted to see it while it was still on the floor to see that there was not going to be anything offensive slipped in, and they had to climb three flights of stairs to get up to it, but they did it.

LF: This was when it was being installed or — ?

HB: Just before, when it was completely laid out.

LF: In your house?

HB: At home in Alameda, yes, because they wouldn’t see it again until it was all on the wall, so that was something they had to do, if they wanted to see it.

LF: I’ve never seen this because naturally a man can’t go in to see –

HB: No, but this is on the outside.

LF: It’s on the outside? I thought it was on the inside.

HB: Oh no, it’s –

LF: It doesn’t say here in the thesis where it was located so –

MB: It’s right on the outside of the building.

HB: I have a number of other photographs that will give you a better idea. That doesn’t give you an idea of the outside. (Interruption to look at photographs).

Mother's Building San Francisco Zoo

LF: You were talking about the mosaics, Miss Helen Bruton, on the outside of the Fleishhacker Zoo Mother’s Rest House. I had thought they were inside, but they are outside. They have stood up against the weather, have they?

HB: They just seem to be exactly the same as they were. That was one of the things I was interested in. The other day I looked at them hard, to see what was going on and I can’t see that there’s been any deterioration at all. Of course, they’re not actually exposed to the weather. It’s a loggia, they’re at either end of a long loggia perhaps sixty feet long, and you can turn from one to the other which makes it –

LF: You believe this was finished then probably in the late spring of 1934?

HB: Yes, yes, I would say that very definitely because I think we have a little tile with the date on it. It’s there on the panels.

Signature Tile for Bruton Sisters

 

May 112014
 

Maritime Museum
Aquatic Park

Maritime Museum Sargent Johnson Tile Mural

This 14′ x 125′ glazed tile mural was created by Sargent Johnson in 1939 with the help of FAP (Federal Art Project) funds. The east end, however, is incomplete.

 When the project began, the building was to be a publicly-accessible bathhouse. However, shortly after it opened, the City leased a majority of the building to a group of private businessmen who operated it as the Aquatic Park Casino, limiting the public’s use of the building. Because of this, Johnson walked away from the project before he had completed this interior tile mosaic.

Johnson has been in this website before here for the slate art piece on the front of the building.

Sargent Claude Johnson*

Sargent Claude Johnson*

Tile Mural at Aquatic Park*

Sargent Johnson

This shows the unfinished section of the mural.

And yes, those two animals are by Beniamino Bufano.

Sargent Johnson and Aquatic Park

 Posted by on February 13, 2014
Feb 132014
 

Maritime Museum
Aquatic Park

Sargent Johnson and the Maritime Museum SF

This carved sandstone entry to the Maritime Museum was done as a Federal Arts Project (FAP) by Sargent Johnson.  Johnson was in this site before for the log.

This building was originally a New Deal WPA (Works Progress Administration) building called the Aquatic Park Bathhouse. Construction began in 1936 and the building was dedicated in 1939.  It is a stunning Streamline Moderne style building and a focal point of the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.

Both the interior and exterior of the building contain art funded through the FAP.

Johnson designed and carved this green Vermont slate that adorns the museum entrance. The two-inch thick pieces of slate were cut into three by four foot pieces and carved by Johnson offsite. They were then attached to the building using wires and plaster of Paris.

Sargent Johnson Maritime Museum

According to Gray Brechin, author of  Imperial San Francisco: allowing Johnson a prominent piece of art on a large scale, was a significant tribute to him and the African American community.  WPA projects should also be remembered for efforts in gender and racial equality. Almost half of the artists who worked for the WPA were women, and room was made for Chicanos, American Indians, Asians and African Americans.

Sargent Johnson at Maritime Museum*

Entry to Maritime Museum SF*

Carvings on front door of Maritime Museum*

Sargent Johnson

Log

 Posted by on February 3, 2014
Feb 032014
 

Corner of Webster and Golden Gate Avenue
Park behind the Rosa Parks Senior Center
Western Addition

Log by Sargent Johnson

I have driven past this park one thousand times and have always wondered about this tree stump.  Then one day my dear friend Netra Roston told me about an artist named Sargent Johnson. Sargent Johnson was not a stranger to this blog, his WPA work is at the Maritime Museum.

Sargent Claude Johnson

Born in Boston on October 7, 1887, Sargent Claude Johnson was the third of six children of Anderson and Lizzie Jackson Johnson. Anderson Johnson was of Swedish ancestry, and his wife was Cherokee and African American. All of the children were fair enough in complexion to be considered white, and several of Johnson’s sisters preferred to live in white society. Sargent, however, was insistent upon identifying with his African-American heritage throughout his life.

The Johnson children were orphaned by the deaths of their father in 1897 and their mother in 1902. The children spent their early years in Washington, D.C., with an uncle, Sherman William Jackson, a high school principal whose wife was May Howard Jackson, a noted sculptress who specialized in portrait busts of African Americans. It was probably while young Sargent was living with his aunt that he developed his earliest interest in sculpture.

Johnson arrived in the San Francisco area in 1915, during the time of the Panama Pacific International Exposition, which impressed him greatly.

The same year Johnson arrived in San Francisco, he met and married Pearl Lawson, an African American from Georgia who had moved to the Bay Area. The couple had one child, Pearl Adele, who was born in 1923. The couple separated in 1936 and shortly afterwards Mrs. Johnson was hospitalized at Stockton State Hospital, where she died in 1964.

Johnson worked at various jobs during his first years in San Francisco but also attended two art schools, the A. W. Best School of Art and the California School of Fine Arts. Johnson was enrolled at the latter school from 1919 to 1923 and from 1940 to 1942. He studied first under the well-known sculptor Ralph Stackpole for two years, and for a year with Beniamino Bufano. Johnson’s student work at the California School of Fine Arts was awarded first prizes in 1921 and 1922.

The 1930s were the most productive decade in Johnson’s career.  The W.P.A. Federal Art Project provided a number of opportunities for Johnson during the late 1930s in the Bay Area. Johnson’s first large W.P.A. project was an organ screen carved of redwood in low relief for the California School of the Blind in Berkeley. The eighteen-by-twenty-four-foot panel was completed in 1937 and installed in the school’s chapel. In 1939 he undertook another W.P.A. project, decorating the interior of the San Francisco Maritime Museum in Aquatic Park.

For the Golden Gate International Exposition Johnson completed his largest figures. He designed two eight-foot-high cast stone figures, which were displayed around the fountain in the Court of Pacifica. Johnson’s figures depicted two Incas seated on llamas and were distinctly East Indian in inspiration. They are known as the “happy Incas playing the Piper of Pan,”. He also designed three figures symbolizing industry, home life, and agriculture for the Alameda-Contra Costa Building at the Exposition.

Sargent Johnson Golden Gate Expositon

Johnson moved a number of times in the final fifteen years of his life. Following an illness in 1965, Johnson finally settled in a small hotel room in downtown San Francisco. In October 1967 Johnson died there of a heart attack.

DSC_2770

This was Johnson’s last large work.  It is not titled, and I could find out literally nothing about it and how it came to be sitting at this corner.  The brochure that Netra gave to me was regarding a fundraiser titled Reclaiming Our Treasures.  The intent was to raise funds to restore and resurrect the “log” along with the intent to place an historical marker near it.  The fundraiser took place in 1997, I have not been able to find out anything more.

The Smithsonian has a transcript of a delightful conversation between Johnson and fellow artist Mary McChesney about Johnson’s work that can be found around San Francisco.  You can read it here.

Sargent Johnson at Rosa Parks Senior Center

*carved log on Webster Street

 

update 2016:  The log has been removed and is now with the University of California for both authentication and potential restoration.  It most likely will not return to this location.

Fire Station #8 a WPA gem on Bluxome Street

 Posted by on October 21, 2013
Oct 212013
 

36 Bluxome Street
SOMA
South of the Slot

36 Bluxome Street

Fire Station Number 8 was built in 1939 as a result of the WPA

The San Francisco Fire Department was a big beneficiary of W.P.A. The Department’s 1974 Historical Review noted, “One of the few advances made by the Department in these lean years resulted from the formation of the Works Project Administration. As a result of this program several of the Department buildings were remodeled, new heating and plumbing facilities installed, and much necessary maintenance accomplished.”

Assistant City Engineer Clyde E. Healy’s December, 1939, report notes repairs to no less than forty-one Fire Department locations throughout the city, including the construction of a new fire house at 38 Bluxome Street.

Bluxome Street Fire Station

The October 20, 1938, Project Proposal informs, “The present fire house at this location was built in 1907, as a temporary structure. W.P.A. will start razing this building on October 10th and this proposal is for a new modern fire house on the same site.”

For those unfamiliar with Bluxome Street  it is a small alley south of Market between Fourth and Fifth streets. Should a fire-related emergency ever occur at Pac Bell Park, firefighters from the Bluxome station would be the first on the scene.

Bluxome Fire Department #8

 

The day I was there the firetruck was parked outside and I was able to get a few fun photos.  Sadly, I can tell you nothing about the logo.

When public transit was still dominated by cable cars, The Slot was the iron track that went through the center of Market Street where the cables operated.

According to a short story from Jack London at the time, “North of the Slot were the theaters, hotels, and shopping district, the banks and the staid, respectable business houses. South of the Slot were the factories, slums, laundries, machine-shops, boiler works, and the abodes of the working class.”

“South of The Slot” became a euphemism for the, shall we say, seedier parts of the area. It also became a class divider, as in “that guy’s from the south of the slot.” The 1906 Earthquake and Fire destroyed the area, burning through the wooden hotels, boarding houses, and flats. Over time, as the area was redeveloped, the nickname slowly disappeared, and now we all call it SOMA.

Bluxome 8 South of the Slot

 

Bluxome Street was named for Isaac G. Bluxome.  He was a successful business man of his time, and sat on the California State Board of Mineralogists.  He died at the age of 60 (or 61) in 1890.

Washington High School and the WPA

 Posted by on June 18, 2013
Jun 182013
 

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue
Richmond District

George Washington High School, San Francisco

George Washington High School opened on August 4, 1936, to serve as a secondary school for the people of San Francisco’s Richmond District. The school was built on a budget of $8,000,000 on a site overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

The architect was Timothy Pflueger, here he begins moving away from the highly decorative elements of his earlier Telephone Company Building and begins using symmetrical central elements, minimally embellished with fluted speed lines and simple plaques.

The lobby is decorated with WPA murals by Victor Arnautoff in the “buon fresco” styles. They depict scenes from the life and times of George Washington. In the second floor library, there is a WPA mural produced by Lucien Labaudt, entitled “Advancement of Learning through the Printing Press”, another by Ralph Stackpole titled “Contemporary Education” and “Modern and Ancient Science” by Gordon Langdon.

The stadium, auditorium, and gymnasium were added in 1940. The school was formally dedicated on Armistice Day of 1940.

George Washington High School Sculpture

The three figures over the door were sculpted by Victor Arnautoff.

Victor Arnautoff, painter, muralist, lithographer, sculptor and teacher, was born in Mariupol, Ukraine, in 1896. He served as a Cavalry officer in Czar Nicholas II’s army, receiving the Cross of the Order of St. George before escaping to Manchuria to avoid the Bolshevik Revolution. Arnautoff traveled to China and Mexico before emigrating to the U.S. and San Francisco in 1925.

He enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts where he studied sculpture with Ralph Stackpole and painting with Edgar Walters. Arnautoff returned to Mexico and studied mural painting with Diego Rivera.

By 1931 he had returned to San Francisco and shortly thereafter taught sculpture and fresco painting at the California School of Fine Arts. He also taught at Stanford University where he was Professor of Art from 1939 – 1960. His art affiliations included memberships in the San Francisco Art Association and the California Society of mural painters. Arnautoff was technical director and art chief of the Coit Tower murals project and is represented by a mural depicting city life.

He exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition, New York World’s Fair, Art Institute of Chicago, Palace of the Legion of Honor, Toledo Museum of Art, Foundation of Western Art, California Pacific Exposition, as well as annual shows of the San Francisco Art Association.

After the death of his wife in the 1960s, he returned to the USSR and died in Leningrad in 1979.

Shakspeare by ArnautoffShakespeare

Washington by ArnautoffGeorge Washington

Edison by Arnautoff

Thomas Edison

On the science building are two Arnautoff sculptures titled Power and Industry.

Power by Victor Mikhail Arnautoff*

Industry by Victor Arnautoff

Jaques Schnier on Treasure Island

 Posted by on June 11, 2013
Jun 112013
 

Treasure Island
Building #1

Jacques Schneir on Treasure Island

These two cast stone sculpture represents India and were done by Jacques Schnier for the Golden Gate International Exposition.  They have been known by several names, including “The Tree of Life,” but the preferred name is “Spirit of India.”  These are just two of  twenty that were part of the Unity sculptures placed in the Court of the Pacifica.  Jacques Schnier designed at least seven pieces of sculpture displayed at the fair.

Jacques Schnier at Treasure Island

*DSC_0877

Jacques Schnier was born in Romania and came to the United States with his family in 1903.  He grew up in San Francisco.  He received an AB degree in engineering from Stanford n 1920 and an MA decree in Sociology from Berkeley in 1939.

An interest in city planning led to his abandoning a successful career in engineering and enrolling in the Department of Architecture at Berkeley.  This in turn gave him his first experience in art, since architecture students were required to take art courses. He eventually dropped out of architecture school to devote full time to his sculpture.

Schnier spent 30 years teaching at Berkeley, first as a lecturer in the Department of Architecture, he retired as Professor of Art, Emeritus, in 1966.

Following his retirement he expanded into many mediums, having previously favored such materials as stone, wood, bronze, marble and coper, he later focused on the medium of carved and polished clear acrylic resin (Plexiglas). His excitement with the material led him to exclaim in 1975 that “at last I’ve found my medium”  It’s as though I am sculpting pure light. At 76, I’m hitting my stride”.

Jacques Schnier died March 24, 1988 a the age of 89.

Adaline Kent sculptures on Treasure Island

 Posted by on June 10, 2013
Jun 102013
 

Treasure Island
Building #1

Adeline Kent on Treasure Island

These cast stone statues are part of Adaline Kent’s group of three Pacific Islander statues that were among the twenty Pacific Unity sculptures produced for the Court of the Pacifica at the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition.  The two  shown here are listening to a stringed instrument (most likely a ukelele) played by a young boy, the third statue, that is unfortunately lost.

Pacific Islander Statue part of the Unity Group for the GGIE

Adaline Kent was born in Kentfield, California in 1900. She attended Vassar College and upon graduation she returned to the Bay Area, where she studied for a year (1923-24) with Ralph Stackpole at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Stackpole was a leading proponent of the “direct-cut” sculpting method. She then traveled to Paris in 1924 to study at the Academy de la Grand Chaurniere with Emile Antoine Bourdelle, a disciple of and former assistant to Rodin.

Kent returned to San Francisco in 1929 and set up a studio in North Beach. She soon established a reputation as an innovative and original sculptor of great originality, developing an abstract style rooted in surrealism and becoming a prominent member of the San Francisco Art Association. Kent exhibited or juried in the prestigious Annual show nearly every year from 1930 until her death in 1957. She served on the Board of Directors from 1947-57, and taught at the California School of Fine Arts in 1955.

Following a trip in 1953 with her husband, sculptor Robert Howard to Egypt and Greece, her work evolved toward simplified columnar forms.

In 1957 Adaline Kent died in an automobile accident on the Pacific Coast Highway south of Stinson Beach.

Jun 082013
 

Treasure Island
Building #1

Flutist by Helen Phillips Treasure Island

This cast stone sculpture is by Helen Phillips.  Titled Flutist, it is from the Chinese Musicians Group produced for the Golden Gate International Exposition.  This was one of a group of 20 sculptures titled Unity that were produced for the Court of the Pacific.

This is from Helen Phillips obituary:

Phillips was born in 1913 in Fresno, California, and studied at the School of Fine Art in San Francisco. Ralph Stackpole taught her direct carving there, and introduced her to Diego Rivera, who was pointing [sic] murals in the city. She remembered with affection how the Mexican always kept a revolver on the scaffold, more out of showmanship than fear of Stalin’s henchmen. But she found social realism stifling, and was never willing to sacrifice the integrity of form for political content. She was more excited by San Francisco’s collections of American Indian, Chinese, Pre- Columbian and Oceanic art than its struggling factory workers.

In 1936 Phillips received a Phelan Travelling Fellowship to study in Paris, where she assimilated all the new styles, especially Surrealism. She entered Atelier 17, the intaglio print workshop of her future husband Stanley William Hayter, which was a hub of avant-garde experiment. She made some beautiful engravings, but her experience with gravure was even more crucial for her sculptural development, as it forced her to become conscious of negative space. She lost all her carvings of the pre-war years when she fled to New York in 1939.

Such mythic qualities identify Helen Phillips as a sculptural pioneer within the emerging New York School, and indeed she showed in Nicolas Calas’s landmark exhibition “Bloodflumes 1947”, alongside such peers as Arshile Gorky, Wilfredo Lam, Roberto Matta, David Hare and Isamu Noguchi. She published in the avant-garde journal Tiger’s Eye, and it is probable that had she not returned to Paris in 1950 she would have developed a considerable American reputation. Meanwhile, the primitive influence culminated in the 18-foot “Totem” (1955), made up of interrelated limbs and ambiguous suggestions of growth, carved from a discarded 17th-century walnut beam she found in the Ardche.

Phillips was by first inclination a carver: she only started using bronze by chance, when one of her wood carvings split and she wanted to save the image. She soon found herself absorbed by a more linear range of expression suggested by metals, however, and her figures in copper tubing are delightful Calder-like drawings in space. Her compositions in polished bronze exploit light with almost baroque intensity to give the maximum sensation of movement and gesture. “Amants Novices” (1954) is a masterpiece within this genre, its convoluted limbs and its voluptuous edges, corners and bends longingly caressed by light which gives the impression of sweaty exertion. The conflicting sense of precarious balance and vigorous abandon captures the magical clumsiness of sex. The seemingly inevitable ease of a sculpture like this belies the painstaking effort needed to achieve such effects. When a cast returned from the foundry, the work was only half done as far as Phillips was concerned, as she proceeded to file away for months, even years, to capture the “true” forms.

In a completely different vein, Phillips produced an extensive series of geometric constructions in wire which explored ideas of modular growth proposed by the American architectural theorist Buckminster Fuller, and also by Sir Wentworth D’Arcy Thompson, whose Growth and Form (1917, revised 1942) has been a bible for many modern artists. Phillips recalled how she worked out of one volume, her husband Bill Hayter from the other, so they would have interesting things to talk about. Hayter’s wave imagery of the 1960s partly derived from Thompson, while Phillips pursued a complicated set of cubic abstractions to express movement in space. ln these cerebral, aloof creations, as in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, the intriguing poetry has less to do with cold, abstract theory than intuitive, aesthetic decisions.

Until the mid-1960s Helen Phillips enjoyed a growing international reputation, starting with a prize she won in the French heat of the international “Unknown Political Prisoner” competition, in 1952. She collaborated with the architect Erno Goldfinger, who owned her “Suspended Figure” (1956), which was included in the Whitechapel Gallery’s “This is Tomorrow” exhibition of that year. She was cited in Herbert Read’s definitive survey Modern Sculpture (1964), and her works began to enter important collections, including those of Peggy Guggenheim, Roland Penrose, and various American museums.

But disaster struck in 1967, when she severely injured her back moving a heavy sculpture which had just been bought by the Albright Knox Museum in Bufallo (“Alabaster Column”, 1966). She was incapacitated for eight years at a crucial stage of her career, which never recovered. When she finally got back to work, the talent and determination were still there, but somehow the creative impetus could not be regained. She concentrated on seeing earlier ideas through the foundry, and become a familiar figure in Pietra Santa, the town of foundries and carving workshops in Tuscany, during the summer months. She did manage to produce some late intimate pieces in wire, plaster or wax.

Some years ago she sent her friends an eccentric Christmas card, which consisted of a DIY model in balsa wood which, when constructed, showed a couple embracing. Man Ray was so delighted he sent her a photo of the assembled sculpture by return of post. Another endearing tale she used to tell was of a party attended by Calder and Giacometti. Giacometti made a sketch of Calder on a piece of old newsprint. The American demanded to see it, and proceeded to sketch Giacometti next to his own features. They were about to throw it away when Phillips protested, and got to keep these mutual portraits of her friends and idols.

Helen Phillips, artist: born Fresno, California 12 March 1913; married 1940 S.W. Hayter (died 1988; two sons; marriage dissolved 1971); died New York City 23 January 1995.

Horn by Helen Philips

 

Blowing a Horn, also from the Chinese Musicians Group

 

These pieces are part of the Treasure Island Development Organization and the Treasure Island Museum.

Florence Nightingale

 Posted by on June 4, 2013
Jun 042013
 

Laguna Honda Hospital
Forest Hill / Twin Peaks

Florence Nightingale at Laguna Honda Hospital

This graceful painted cast stone statue of Florence Nightingale titled Lady of the Lamp is by David Edstrom and was done in 1937.  The project was part of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Artists Program.

The statue sat in the Court of the Seven Seas during the Golden Gate International Exhibition.  The Lady of the Lamp refers to a Longfellow poem.

(Peter) David Edstrom (1873-1938) was an immigrant from Vetlanda, Jönköping County, Sweden. In 1880, he immigrated to the United States with his parents, John Peter Edstrom and Charlotte Gustavson Edstrom. Edstrom lived in Ottumwa, Iowa from 1882 to 1894, which he embraced as his hometown and where he became aware of his artistic skills. (Des Moines Register; May 20, 2007). He returned to Sweden after a hobo’s journey started in a freight train car on July 29, 1894 and ended (after a wage earner’s trip across the Atlantic) in Stockholm where he supported himself during his studies at the Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology and Royal Swedish Academy of Arts.

In 1900, Edstrom moved to Florence where he attended the Academia of Fine Arts. He returned to the United States in 1915.  Around 1920, he relocated in Los Angeles, where he was one of the organizers of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Laguna Honda Hospital has a very long history in San Francisco that can be read here.  The building that Florence Nightingale sits in front of  began construction in the 1920’s when Mayor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph turned over the first spade of earth for the Spanish Revival-style buildings that would become Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center

Those buildings were opened in 1926 and continued to grow in the decades that followed with the addition of new “finger wings,” the long, Florence Nightingale-style open wards that were customary at the time.

Florence Nightingale by Edstrom

There is a plaque on the side of the sculpture pedestal that reads:

In memory of Florence Nightingale, “The Founder of Professional Nursing”
Designed and created by the late David Edstrom. Dedicated National Hospital Day, May 12, 1939. Golden Gate International Exposition under the auspices of Northern California Federal Artist Project, Works Progress Administartion. City and County of San Francisco. Association of Western Hospitals, Association of California Hospitals, Western Conference, Catholic Hospital Association, California State Nurses Association.

The Longfellow Poem:

SANTA FILOMENA
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
November 1857

Whene’er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow
Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp,—

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be
Opened, and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,
The light shone was spent.

On England’s annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.

A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily, and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Filomena bore.

 

Horseshoe Courts of Golden Gate Park

 Posted by on May 21, 2013
May 212013
 

Horseshoe Pits
Golden Gate Park

Horseshoe Courts Golden Gate Park

There are sixteen courts in a very out of the way spot of the park, not far from McClaren Lodge.  The site was developed out of a rock quarry during 1934 as a WPA project.

There are two concrete bas-reliefs created on the face of the rocks.  The artist was Jesse S. “Vet” Anderson (born 1875) who was a cartoonist and caricaturist for the Detroit Free Press and later for the New York Herald Tribune.  Anderson was a member of the horseshoe club, he died in 1966.

The sculptures, overgrown and forgotten were revealed in 1968 by a Youth Corps volunteer.

Horse Sculpture at Horseshoe Pits in GGP

The Horse has seen better days.  This was shot in May of 2013.

Horse at GGP Horseshoe Pit 2009

This was shot in 2009 during its restoration.

Horse Shoe Pitcher in GGPThe Horseshoe Pitcher remains in fairly decent shape.

May 182013
 

Golden Gate Park
Near the Sharon Art Center

Young Girl by Jack Moxom

This memorial to Sarah B. Cooper was placed in the park by the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association in 1923. This area sits on the other side of the carousel from the Koret Childrens Playground.

Sarah Cooper was instrumental in the Kindergarten Movement of San Francisco.  Here, from John Sweet in Public Education In California, Its Origin and Development, With Personal Reminiscences of Half a Century. American Book Company: 1911. Excerpts, Chapter XIII, pages 224-226.

Mrs. Cooper entered on the free kindergarten work with her whole soul. She was a woman of marked literary ability. For many years she earned enough with her pen to aid in the support of her family and in the education of her sister’s children in Memphis, Tennessee. She had no money to contribute to the kindergarten cause, but she gave what was needed more than money, —the wealth of her clear intellect, her winning manner, and her devoted Christian philanthropy. It was through her influence that  Mrs. Leland Stanford became interested in the work and finally endowed three kindergarten schools with one hundred thousand dollars for their support. Mrs. Phoebe Hearst was induced by Mrs. Cooper’s persuasive power to endow another kindergarten school. A large number of citizens subscribed five dollars a month, each, for the support of other classes. The Golden Gate Kindergarten Association was organized, and in ten years there were forty-six kindergarten classes supported entirely by endowments and subscriptions. Mrs. Cooper’s annual reports were distributed and read wherever the English language is spoken.

After the death of Mrs. Cooper’s husband, she still continued her management of the kindergarten schools, her daughter Hattie meanwhile supporting the family by giving music lessons. Mrs. Cooper steadily refused to receive a dollar for services, though persistently urged by the officers of the association to accept a salary. Once when I urged her to yield to the wishes of the association, she replied, “This is the Lord’s work, and I feel it would not be blessed if I received pay for it.” She held frequent consultations with me about any new undertakings, and is no person living who knows more fully than myself the extent of her labors, and the wealth of philanthropic devotion and Christian self-sacrifice that she brought to the work of training, reforming, and educating the children of the poor in San Francisco. Her sad and sudden death cast a gloom over the city in which her great work was accomplished.

This sculpture is of a small child with a squirrel and cat at her feet.  It was carved by Jack Moxom.  According to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park by Christopher Pollock:

“A rainy spring day in 1923 witnessed the dedication of a cast-concrete pool with inlaid bronze lettering dedicated to Sarah B. Cooper, creator of the first kindergarten of the West and one of the most influential women of her time.  Retailer Raphael Weill, owner of the White House department store, had spearheaded a memorial effort in 1912 when he met Cooper’s cousin by chance on a steamer trip, but the project lay dormant for several years until the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association accomplished the good deed.

THE CHILD By MoxomThe subject of the original statue, by native San Franciscan Enid Foster, was a child standing by a pool.  A newer figure (shown here) was carved of red sandstone. Proposed in 1934, the replacement figure was sculpted in 1939 by WPA sponsored artist Jack Moxom,  a Canadian by birth who was an architect and a painter.

“Moxom’s life-size sculpture of a naked girl with a cat and a squirrel at her ankles was modeled after Moxom’s younger sister. Moxom had no sculpting experience and in an interview for the Archives of American Art New Deal and the Arts project Moxom recalls the challenge of creating his first sculpture. “But one of the errors, beside the kindness of hiring me, was that I bought a type of sandstone that darkened to a bloody red when the water hit it and while it was beautifully flesh colored in the studio or in the shed, it wasn’t the moment the water hit it. I kind of pretend it wasn’t that bad, you know, but this little girl of six looked kind of pregnant too. And it had the typical square noses, remember in those days every nose was square. I thought there was a law about noses. Noses just came down with a good flat bridge on them. Now who did we get that from or was it my own … ?” (SF Uncovered)

Now neglected, the pool is filled in with dirt.  One can still read around the rim, In Memory of Sarah B. Cooper.

This badly neglected sculpture is administered by the San Francisco Art Commission.

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