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Beach Chalet Murals Part III

Posted by Cindy on July 6, 2012

Jul 062012

Land’s End

The Beach Chalet – Part III

1000 The Great Highway

Lucien Labaudt’s Beach Chalet murals: John McLaren (G.G. Park Superintendent) in left foreground on bench, with Jack Spring (later General Manager of Parks and Rec Dept.) holding redwood tree’s root ball, while behind on horseback (upper right corner) sit sculptor Benny Bufano and Joseph Danysh, then head of California Federal Art Project.

Labaudt, following the precedent set by many of his era’s fellow artists to include other artists, depicts here Gottardo Piazzoni, a Swiss-Italian muralist who worked in San Francisco during the first two decades of the 20th century.

There are a few monochrome murals under the stairway they are also by Labaudt.

Beach Chalet Murals – Part II

Posted by Cindy on July 5, 2012

Jul 052012

Land’s End

The Beach Chalet Part II

1000 The Great Highway

It was common for WPA muralists to place people they knew or people of note in their work. Here Lucien Labaudt inserts Arthur Brown Jr.. Brown was the Architect of City Hall (shown over his left shoulder) and architect of Coit Tower, where Labaudt worked as well.

A few scenes from around San Francisco including Japantown.

Beach Chalet Murals

Posted by Cindy on July 4, 2012

Jul 042012

Land’s End

The Beach Chalet – Part I

1000 Great Highway

The Beach Chalet has its own fascinating history. This is however, about the WPA work found at the Beach Chalet.

Port Scene by Lucien Labaut -Beach Chalet Murals

Fisherman’s Wharf

A peaceful beach scene that incorporates some of Labaudt’s friends and family.

All the murals in the Beach Chalet were done by one artist, Lucien Labaudt. Born in France, he came to the United States in the early 1900s. He was an accomplished dress designer to the rich and famous of San Francisco High Society. He is responsible for decorating the curved walls in Coit Tower with frescoes (these frescoes are not available for public viewing). In 1936 he painted Advancement of Learning throughout the Printing Press, a fresco at George Washington High School. When asked about the limitations WPA art often came under he wrote “limitation forces one to think and therefore to create…Far from destroying the artist’s individuality, these limitations give him something to fight for. He must solve a problem. ” Labaudt died in a plane crash over Burma in 1943, on assignment to do war sketches for Life Magazine.

“San Francisco Life” is the title of the frescoes covering three walls of the first floor of the Beach Chalet. The mural depicts four San Francisco tourist locales: the beach, Golden Gate Park, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Marina. Recognizable figures of the time from the arts and politics are shown in the mural scenes, engaging in leisure activities. Since Labaudt painted the mural in 1936-37, during the Great Depression, such leisure would have actually been out of reach for most people. Showing high-profile figures, including WPA administrators, enjoying their leisure time, was most probably a political comment on the inequalities of the times.

The Beach Chalet

Posted by Cindy on March 5, 2013

Mar 052013

Designed by architect Willis Polk, the Beach Chalet has served as a gathering spot on Ocean Beach for most of its life. With its hipped roof and hand-made roof tiles, this Spanish Revival building survived a takeover by the US Army, the raucous residence of a biker bar and 15 years of abandonment. Today it houses two restaurants, offering visitors a variety of dining fare to accompany the breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean (more on that later).

The City of San Francisco built the Beach Chalet in 1925, at a cost of $60,000, to provide facilities for beach goers. The ground floor consisted of a lounge and changing rooms, while the upstairs held a 200-seat bar and municipal restaurant.

Labaudt’s mural of sunbathers with a backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction

In 1936, under the auspices of the Works Project Administration (WPA), Lucien Labaudt was hired to execute 1500 square feet of frescoes on the first floor. California WPA artists believed that their art should be inspirational, and they often painted the world not as it was, but as how they wished it to be. The Beach Chalet murals depict a serene and simple San Francisco life, which contrasted with the harsh reality of what many were experiencing during the Great Depression.

Two other WPA projects can be found at the Beach Chalet: a magnolia wood staircase titled Sea Creatures by Michael von Meyer, and a series of mosaics designed by Labaudt and installed by Primo Caredio.

During WWII the Army commandeered the Beach Chalet for use as its Coastal Defense Headquarters. The military considered San Francisco a potential target during WWII, so several defensive fortifications were established throughout the Bay. The soldiers moved out in 1941, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) took over.

Members of the 78th Coast Artillery pitch camp behind the Beach Chalet. October 1941. (Photo credit: San Francisco Public Library)

The VFW used the upstairs as a meeting room, and the downstairs became a biker bar of some disrepute. The VFW held the lease on the building for 15 years. In 1981, when the bar became a public nuisance, the City raised the rent by $500. The VFW moved out, and the building was shuttered.

In 1981 the National Park Service declared the Beach Chalet a National Landmark, but the building was padlocked and surrounded by a chain link fence, left to remain unused for 15 years-with the exception of feral cat squatters and an occasional fire-inciting vagrant.

In 1987 the city allocated $800,000 for infrastructure repairs, including restoration of the artworks. This work was completed in 1989, and yet the building continued to sit empty.

Beginning in 1993 restaurateurs Gar and Lara Truppelli saw the commercial potential of this historic building and led a movement to reopen the chalet.

A $1.5 million grant in 1996 to the Friends of Recreation and Parks (courtesy of the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund) gave the building its second life. Under the supervision of the architecture firm Heller Manus, an elevator was installed, and the bathrooms were made ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant. The Beach Chalet opened its doors to the public once again.

The Brewery sits behind the second-floor bar.

The upstairs now houses the Truppelli’s Beach Chalet Brewery and Restaurant, which makes beer with wonderful local names like VFW Light, Riptide Red and Presidio IPA. The downstairs lobby is open for visitors to enjoy the murals and mosaics, and has a few small displays of San Francisco trivia. Behind this main lobby is a sunny window-filled restaurant, the Park Chalet, serving lighter fare for those not inclined toward pub fare.

The Beach Chalet has shown the resilience of so many San Francisco buildings, surviving abuse by man and Mother Nature for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations.

Telegraph Hill – Coit Tower Murals

Posted by Cindy on June 3, 2012

Jun 032012

Telegraph Hill

Coit Tower

WPA Murals

The California Agriculture Industry by Gordon Langdon

The dairy business is represented in this mural as well as several of the artists friends. Gordon Langdon was assisted by Helen Clement Mills on this mural.

Fellow artist Fred Olmsted and his assistant Tom Hayes

Fellow artist John Langley Howard holding a pitchfork

Fellow artist Lucien Labaudt showering a cow

Gordon Langdon did not stay long on the Coit Tower project. His friends remembered him as a “handsome young man”. His other murals in San Francisco include Modern and Ancient Science over the main entrance to the library at George Washington High School and The Arts of Man in the Anne Bremer Memorial Library at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Telegraph Hill -Coit Tower Murals

Posted by Cindy on May 30, 2012

May 302012

Telegraph Hill

Coit Tower

WPA Murals

This is the beginning of a series on the WPA murals of Coit Tower. When the Great Depression hit, like everyone, artists were not finding work. George Biddle, a prominent lawyer turned successful artist, a member of a socially prominent family from Philadelphia, and most importantly, a Groton and Harvard classmate of Franklin Roosevelt, went to the President with an idea.
He suggested that America hire American artists to paint murals depicting the social ideals of the new administration as well as the American way of life, on the walls of public buildings.

The WPA, created by an order from the President, was funded by Congress with passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 on April 8, 1935.

San Francisco became District 15 of the National Plan. Coit Tower was one of three large WPA mural projects in San Francisco the others are at Rincon Annex Post Office and The Beach Chalet.

Dr. William Heil, a new immigrant from Germany and the director of the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park was chosen to select and supervise “worthy artists”. It was also Dr. Heil who suggested the medium of frescoes for the project.

According to Masha Zakheims book Coit Tower. there were few interpersonal problems; the “purists” created their preliminary sketches and layouts in their own studio. The artists put in their thirty hours a week as they chose, often working into the small hours to meet the demands of the rapidly drying plaster. Surprised at their diligence it was reported to Washington D.C. that the artists at Coit Tower were very moral and conscientious, not drunken, promiscuous, and orgiastic as some had predicted a group of Bohemians would be.

Fresco (plural either frescos or frescoes) is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls, ceilings or any other type of flat surface. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the Latin word for “fresh”.

“Advancement of Learning through the Printing Press” by Lucien Labaudt

Posted by Cindy on May 3, 2019

May 032019

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue

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.

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.

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.