Mission Dolores – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Mission Dolores Mosaic

Posted by Cindy on August 17, 2013

Aug 172013

Mission Dolores
16th and Dolores
The Mission District

This mural is in the hallway between the Mission and the Basilica.

The brass plaque that accompanies it reads:

Guillermo Granizo

1923-1996

This ceramic mural is the work of Guillermo Granizo a native San Francisco Artist. Shortly after Guillermo’s birth in 1923 the Granizo Family moved to Nicaragua for a period of eleven years. The family then returned to San Francisco. Extensive travel and research in Mexico and Central America in 1958 has provided flavor of many of his works.

This mural depicts the arrival of the San Carlos in San Francisco Bay while presenting at the same time the arrival of the military representative of Spain, Juan Bautista de Anza, and Father Junipero Serra to symbolize the bringing of the Good News of the Christian Chapel to the natives of California. Father Serra holds in his hand a plan for the facade of Mission Dolores.

The sails of the ship tell the story of the coming of civilization to the area. REY signifies Spanish sponsorship of the colonization: DIOS the spiritual element brought by the Franciscan Fathers: PUEBLO the city of San Francisco that was to grow out of this expedition and MUERTE to in indicated the gradual disappearance of the Naive People of this area. The artist then asks himself, QUIEN SABE? What would have happened if the civilization had not come. If the people who inherited this land had been left to themselves. He leaves the answer tot the imagination of the viewer.

The green area surrounded by brown in the lower left hand corner of the mural represents the island of Alcatraz, and the pelicans symbolize the same island in the San Francisco Bay.

We are grateful to the artist for placing this mural on extended loan to Mission Dolores since 1984.

******

Granizo was born in San Francisco and became a noted ceramic-tile muralist, who worked in bright colors, geometric shapes, heavy lines and varying textures, which gave his work a festive feeling. In the eleven years he lived in Nicaragua he absorbed influences of pre-Columbian primitive art and also styles of the Mexican muralists.

He graduated from the San Francisco College of Art, and then served as Art Director of KRON TV in San Francisco where he produced educational films. He became the resident artist for Stonelight Tiles in San Jose in 1970, and devoted the rest of his career as a ceramic tile muralist. He died in 1997.

Tekakwitha Lily of the Mohawk

Posted by Cindy on August 16, 2013

Aug 162013

Mission Dolores Cemetery
16th and Mission
The Mission District

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha baptised as Catherine Tekakwitha and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680), is a Roman Catholic saint, who was an Algonquin–Mohawk virgin and religious laywoman. Born in Auriesville (now part of New York), she survived smallpox and was orphaned as a child, then baptized as a Roman Catholic and settled for the last years of her life at the Jesuit mission village ofKahnawake, south of Montreal in New France, now Canada.

Tekakwitha professed a vow of virginity until her death at the age of 24. Known for her virtue of chastity and corporal mortification of the flesh, as well as beingshunned by her tribe for her religious conversion to Catholicism, she is the fourth Native American to be venerated in the Roman Catholic Church (after Juan Diego, the Mexican Indian of the Virgin of Guadalupe apparitions, and two other Oaxacan Indians). She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980 and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter’s Basilica on October 21, 2012.

The relationship between the Spanish missionaries and the Native Indians is a controversial and difficult subject. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Mission Dolores had one of the highest death rates of Spain’s 21 missions in California. Thousands of Indians of bay tribes are buried in the vicinity. Nearly all of them died of European diseases, or overwork, or of the destruction of their culture.” Bret Harte’s California reports that the first interment in the mission graveyard took place as early as 1776. Most of these first Californians were buried beneath wooden markers that have not survived. My feeling is that the Mission decided to put this statue up to placate some of that animosity and serve as a marker for all those un-named.

Father Junipero Serra was nominated for Sainthood and Tekakwitha is a Saint . There is an interesting article about the controversy, and the apparent incongruity to the situation here.

The base reads: In Prayerful Memory of the Faithful Indians.

The artist on this sculpture is unknown, it appears to be cast stone.

Father Junipero Serra

Posted by Cindy on August 14, 2013

Aug 142013

Mission Dolores
16th and Dolores
The Mission District

This sculpture, found inside the cemetery is by Arthur Putnam. The cast stone sculpture is one of a series of allegorical figures originally commissioned to depict the history of California for the estate of E. W. Scripps. This cast was funded by D. J. McQuarry at the cost of $500. It was placed at Mission Dolores in 1918 when the Mission was remodeled.

Arthur Putnam (September 6, 1873–1930) was an American sculptor who was recognized for his bronze sculptures of wild animals. His bats grace the First National Bank and his other animals can be found on the street lights of Market Street. He was a well-known figure, both statewide and nationally, during the time he lived in California. Putnam was regarded as an artistic genius in San Francisco and his life was chronicled in the San Francisco and East Bay newspapers. He won a Gold Medal at the 1915 San Francisco world’s fair, officially known as the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and was responsible for large sculptural works that still stand in San Francisco and San Diego. Putnam exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913, and his works were also exhibited in New York, Chicago, Paris, and Rome.

The Tanforan Cottages

Posted by Cindy on March 21, 2013

Mar 212013

214-220 Dolores
Mission District

Not far from Mission Dolores are a pair of homes considered to be the oldest in the Mission District and among some of the oldest in San Francisco: 214 and 220 Dolores Street.

The Mission District, originally Mission San Francisco de Asis, was the sixteenth in a chain of twenty missions stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. Mission San Francisco de Asis is affectionately called Mission Dolores after the lagoon the mission was first built on in 1776. At that time California was a part of Spain.

In 1821 Mexico achieved independence from Spain and annexed California. One of the first acts of the newly independent Mexican congress was to give the California governor the right to distribute land grants to private citizens. All a gentleman had to do to receive this generous gift was show that 1) he was a loyal and reliable Catholic citizen, and 2) he would map out his claim, build fences and build a house on his property. These grants were very large and sometimes ambiguous. (Today modern historians have a difficult time determining actual borders of these land grants.)

Mission de Asis 1856 (Photo credit: San Francisco Public Library)

It is thought that 214 and 220 Dolores were part of the Francisco Guerrero land grant, parceled in the early 1830s to both native “Californios” and foreign-born Mexican citizens. The parcels at 214 and 220 came into the hands of Torbio Tanforan and his wife Maria de los Angeles Valencia in 1896.

Torbio, a Chilean by birth, and his wife Maria, a native Californian, lived with their large family on a farm down the peninsula in what is now San Bruno. Their name is also associated with the Tanforan Race Track, now a shopping mall bearing their name. Torbio was the grandson-in-law of Jose Antonio Sanchez, the grantee of the Buri Buri Land Grant, where the race track was located.

It is thought that the Tanforans built 214 and 220 Dolores as farm houses. 214 was built first, and 220 followed a year or so later. The homes are simple frame structures with classic revival facades (an architectural movement based on the use of pure Roman and Greek forms in the early 19th century). Their false fronts, full width porches with square posts, and four-over-four window sashes (four panes of glass on the top frame and four panes of glass on the bottom frame of a double hung window) are common features of the 1890s. The deep-set backyard, another feature of that era, holds a carriage house that contained a Tanforan-owned carriage until 1940.

The houses were originally inhabited by the Tanforans’ daughter Mary and were handed down from sister to sister until 1952. It is not known if Torbio and Maria ever lived in them. They both died in San Francisco in 1884 and were buried in Mission Dolores; the home address listed on their obituary was Well Street.

In 1995, 220 Dolores was purchased by Dolores Street Community Services. It opened as a residential care facility for homeless men and women living with disabling HIV and AIDS. Originally the home was called Hope House, but was renamed when a neighbor (Richard M. Cohen)-who died of AIDS-bequeathed a significant portion of the funds for the renovation. Renovation was not an easy task, as 220 Dolores was already designated San Francisco Landmark #68. The architects took great care in maintaining the façade, and yet were able to add a lower floor, allowing the home to handle up to 10 residents at a time.

In 2002, 214 was repurposed as a home for drug and alcohol addicts in need. 214 Dolores is San Francisco Landmark #67.

If you are in the neighborhood, take a stroll past these two lovely homes, enjoy the gardens, and marvel at a time in San Francisco real-estate history when front porches, picket fences and expansive gardens were the norm.

Mission Dolores in the 1800s (Photo credit: San Francisco Public Library)

Juan Bautista de Anza at Lake Merced

Posted by Cindy on September 18, 2012

Sep 182012

Lake Merced

This equestrian statue of Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, founder of the City San Francisco, is located in a parking lot off Lake Merced Boulevard on the north shore of the Lake. A plaque, in both Spanish and English, on the statue base reads:

As a high tribute to an illustrious historical
figure born in Sonora, founder of
the City of San Francisco and with the purpose of
strengthening the friendly ties between the
peoples of Mexico and of the United States,
the state of Sonora of the Republic of Mexico
presents this statue to the City of San Francisco
this month of August of 1967,
at which time Lic. Luis Encinas was governor
of Sonora, the Honorable Ronald Reagan
Governor of California and the Honorable
John F. Shelly mayor of the City
of San Francisco.

The artist is Julian Martinez, a prolific sculptor of heroic Hispanic figures, about whom very little is known.

Juan Bautista de Anza found an overland route from Sonora Mexico to San Francisco in 1776. Anza’s diary tells of him camping at Mountain Lake Park near what is now Lake Street as he explored the area. From what is assumed to be the Golden Gate Bridge overlook area he chose the site for the Presidio. He then proceeded to the southeast to select the site for Mission Dolores. In 1990, Congress acknowledged the significance of the Anza expeditions by establishing the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. The sculpture was a gift to the City from Luis Encina, the Governor of the State of Sonora, Mexico in 1967. Sculpture dimensions:Bronze: 11-1/2 ‘ H x 42” W x 70 “, weighs approximately 8,000 lbs.

This statue, along with Carlos III of Spain resided in Justin Herman Plaza. In 2003 they were moved to Lake Merced to accommodate construction.The original intent was to have the two statues together near the de Anza National Historic Trail. That did not happen. Why Lake Merced was chosen is unknown.

The pedestal was recast when de Anza was moved to Lake Merced.

Mission District – Bartlett Street Mural

Posted by Cindy on August 31, 2011

Aug 312011

Mission District – San Francisco

85 Bartlett Street

Right next to the bright and colorful Amate Mission mural by Jet Martinez, is this fascinating mural. It is a partial reproduction of an original found behind the altar of Old Mission Dolores. The original was believed to be painted by Mission Indians somewhere between 1791 and 1796.

Here is all the information in the Jet Martinez’s own words:

“When Ben [Ben Wood, the freelance artist who, along with archaeologist Eric Blind, photographed the mural by lowering a camera behind the 18th-century altarpiece blocking it from view] approached me, I didn’t want to do it. I grew up in Mexico. I saw a lot of murals of priests saving the souls of kneeling Indians. And this mural is really about the Catholic missionaries’ oppression of the natives. They painted those hearts — the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Sacred Heart of Mary — because that’s what the missionaries told them to do.

But my New Year’s Eve resolution was to be more open. Ben wanted me to restore the mural to what it would have been, but I didn’t want to. Huge sections were missing. To imagine what the mural would have been [would be] to put my own interpretation in it. I left the gaps.Working with two other painters [Bunnie Reiss and Ezra Eismont] helped me remove myself a little. People would ask me, “Why are there no Native Americans working on this mural?” Because we had one Mexican-American guy, one German guy and one Jewish woman.I thought, Native Americans were already forced to paint this once. We’re not going to make them paint it again.”

I apologize for the angle on this, but the sidewalk is narrow, and lined with cars.