Edison and DaVinci by Olmsted

CCSF Ocean View Campus
50 Phelan
Sunnyside

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According to CCSF’s website “Archibald Cloud, the Chief Deputy Superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, began in 1930 to vigorously articulate a long held educational dream: that the “premier” county in the State—San Francisco—must have the same educational “jewel” as did 38 of the State’s 58 counties. That is, it must have a junior college! Cloud hired world prominent architect, Timothy Pflueger. The two rapidly moved ahead with the design and the construction of the gymnasiums as well as Science Hall, a building they were determined to make into “a showplace of monumental architecture.”

As Vice Chairman of Fine Arts at the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island, Pflueger was able to have transferred to the College, at no cost , several of the culturally significant projects created by artists during the fair.  These include these two sculptures carved by Fredrick Olmsted.  They are 7 feet high, four foot square, and 9 tons of granite, representing Leonardo DaVinci and Thomas Edison.  (In researching these two pieces I have also found reference that they are limestone or Tuff stone, my personal opinion is that they are limestone.)

The sculptures were carved for the WPA exhibition “Art in Action”.  Art in Action was an exhibit of artists at work displayed for four months in the summer of 1940 at the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) held on Treasure Island. Many famous artists took part in the exhibit, including Dudley C. Carter, woodcarver and Diego Rivera, muralist.

Frederick Olmsted (April 10, 1911-February 14, 1990) was born in San Francisco. A collateral relative of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Olmsted studied science at Stanford and art at the California School of Fine Arts, where he met and married Barbara Greene. In 1937, the couple visited fellow student Helen Phillips in Paris and spent time working at Atelier 17.

Olmsted worked in the WPA, assisting John Langley Howard and George Harris in the Coit Tower, creating his own mural on a three-foot panel above the main entrance. He also assisted Diego Rivera with his mural at the Art Institute in San Francisco. Olmsted created numerous murals and sculptures for public works in San Francisco, including the Theory and Science mural at San Francisco City College. He taught art for a while at Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

After Barbara and he divorced, he continued to work as a sculptor, moving to Cleveland where he designed medical equipment for the Cleveland Clinic. It was there he developed a machine to shock the diseased heart of one of his dogs, a prototype for today’s pacemaker. Olmsted then worked at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, designing equipment and machinery for the Oceanographic Institute.  He died in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

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