Cindy

Whispering Dishes

 Posted by on January 28, 2014
Jan 282014
 

Market Street and Yerba Buena Lane
Financial District

 

Whispering Dishes

This exhibit is the first of  a series titled Living Innovation Zones.  Living Innovation Zones (LIZ) are new public spaces opening up along Market Street between Octavia and The Embarcadero.  The LIZ’s  are collaborationa between the community, innovators, and the City to enhance the public good, foster learning and sharing, and showcase innovation.  The City plans to streamline permitting in order to boost participation in the program and bring more projects to sidewalks.

“Whispering Dishes” is the first exhibit, and is a partnership between the Exploratorium and Yerba Buena Community Benefit District.  It features two 8-foot-tall dishes facing each other on the sidewalk 50 feet apart. They focus sound in such a way that two people whispering across the 50-foot distance are able to hear each other even with surrounding street noise.

The project was funded through Indiegogo.  The goal was $75,000.  The amount raised was $32,696.  with an additional $5000 matching funds by the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District (YBCBA).

 

The Singing Bench

This is the “Singing Bench.”  It is next to the Whispering Dishes.  If two people sit down, each places one bare arm or hand on the metal-plated armrests, then they hold hands with the other, a tune plays as a subtle electric current courses through this newly created circuit.

LIZ of San FranciscoThese two projects are some of the favorites at the Exploratorium on the Embarcadero, which is how they were chosen.

Living Innovation zone on Market at Yerba Buena

This piece no longer resides on Market Street

Os Gemeos, Bode and The Warfield

 Posted by on January 27, 2014
Jan 272014
 

Taylor and Turk
The Tenderloin

Os Gemeos and Mark Bode

This fun mural was finished in September of 2013.  It is a collaboration between Os Gemeos and Mark Bode, both whom have been in this site before.

This whimsical piece sits on the back of the Warfield Theater on Market street.  The two cousins from Brazil and San Francisco artist Mark Bode  painted this mural which includes one of Os Gemeos’ characters and the iconic comic character “Cheech Wizard” created by Mark’s father Vaughn Bodé in 1957.

Cheech WizaardCheech Wizard

The wall was organized by the Luggage Store Gallery and Wallspace SF.

Os Gemeos and Mark Bode Collaborate at the Warfield in San Francisco

Jan 242014
 

EL Granada At Sather Gate
2510 Bancroft
Berkeley, California

The Granada was built by Patrick O’Brien in 1904, and had been passed down in the family ever since.

He built it so that everybody in the family would always have a roof over their heads, and so the building would always support the family.

El Granada newer0001

Like so many projects that go through time, the ornamentation was removed in the 1960’s or 1970’s to create a more streamlined effect.  In 1995 The Munger Brothers hired Michael H. Casey to recreate the two highly ornamented decorations above the windows.  Working from old photographs from the early 1920’s, Michael H. Casey sculpted one of the cornucopia.  The cornucopias were then molded by an expert mold maker and cast by staff of Michael H. Casey Designs.

Brothers Maynard and Edward Munger, who were grandchildren of O’Brien, had made arrangements for the building to be sold upon their death. Edward Munger died most recently in February 2008.  The building was sold in March of 2011.

 

The architect for the project was Robert Walker.

Michael H. Casey Cornucopia Granada Building Berkeley

If you look very closely you will see a Cal Bear in amongst the fruit.

 

Caruso’s Dream Causes Pianos to Fly

 Posted by on January 24, 2014
Jan 242014
 

55 Ninth Street
Mid Market/SOMA

Caruso's Dream by Brian Goggins

I spoke with Brian Goggin about his installation of Caruso’s Dream well over a year ago.  While it is taking a long time to get installed, and is was not quite finished when I wrote this post, I thought I would bring it to you anyway.

Brian has been in this site many times, you can read all about him here.

This is a public site-specific artwork commissioned by the developers of AVA 55 Ninth, a 17-story apartment complex on Ninth Street, sitting between Market and Mission.

After singing Carmen in San Francisco, the famous tenor Enrico Caruso woke the next morning in his room at the Palace Hotel to the shaking of the 1906 Earthquake. “But what an awakening!” he was quoted in the newspaper, “…feeling my bed rocking as though I am on a ship in the ocean, and for a moment I think I am dreaming.”  This artwork, inspired by that quote, imagines Caruso’s dream on that fateful night.

Brian Goggin Caruso's Dream

Goggin, studying SOMA history, found that several piano companies were founded in San Francisco, most notably Sherman Clay. Sherman Clay is built on the spot where a piano was buried to fill a large pot hole thus inspiring Goggin and Caruso’s Dream. “Potentially that piano is still under Mission Street today,” says Goggin.

This installation is a joint project with Goggin and Dorka Keehn.  They brought San Francisco the “Language of the Birds” that you can read all about here.

To build the 13 pianos, Goggin and Keehn collected 900 pieces of chicken-wire glass of different textures and colors.

The wooden struts that support the pianos were salvaged from pilings in the old Transbay Terminal. The ropes used to lash the piece are modeled after nautical hemp, tied in knots used by longshoremen.

The project was done at a cost of $750,000.  This was part of the 1% for the arts program.

 

Flying Pianos on 9th Street in San Francisco

For those not familiar with the story:

The evening prior to the Great 1906 Earthquake and fire had been the opening night of the New York Metropolitan Opera Company’s San Francisco engagement. Caruso—already a worldwide sensation—had sung the part of Don José in Bizet’s Carmen at the Grand Opera House on Mission Street.  “But what an awakening!” he wrote in the account published later that spring in London’s The Sketch. “I wake up about 5 o’clock, feeling my bed rocking as though I am in a ship on the ocean….I get up and go to the window, raise the shade and look out. And what I see makes me tremble with fear. I see the buildings toppling over, big pieces of masonry falling, and from the street below I hear the cries and screams of men and women and children.”

The Palace Hotel, where Caruso and many others in the company were staying, collapsed later that day, and sadly, not all would make it out alive. Caruso, however, made it out safely, his obviously very devoted valet even managed to remove the bulk of his luggage, which included 54 steamer trunks containing, among other things, some 50 self-portraits. “My valet, brave fellow that he is, goes back and bundles all my things into trunks and drags them down six flights of stairs and out into the open one by one.” That same valet would eventually find a horse and cart to carry the great Caruso and his many belongings to the waterfront Ferry Building—no mean accomplishment on a day when tens of thousands were attempting to escape the fires ravaging the city.

“We pass terrible scenes on the way: buildings in ruins, and everywhere there seems to be smoke and dust. The driver seems in no hurry, which makes me impatient at times, for I am longing to return to New York, where I know I shall find a ship to take me to my beautiful Italy and my wife and my little boys.” By nightfall, Caruso was across the bay in Oakland and boarding a train back to the East Coast.

After this experience Caruso vowed never to return to San Francisco, and he kept his word. Unlike Caruso, I promise to return to the site and bring you photos of the finished project soon.

Jan 222014
 

114 Powell Street
Union Square

Helen Bruton Bell

In the very narrow entry way to the Hotel Union Square are these two exquisite tile murals.  While the hotel was originally built in 1908 for the 1915 Pan Pacific International Exposition, the murals were not added until 1935.

Murals at the Golden West Hotel

The murals were done by Helen Bruton Bell (1898-1985)  Ms. Bell was a fascinating woman.  One of three artistic sisters, she was born in Alameda.  She attended the University of California for one year.

During World War I, she worked with her sisters Esther and Margaret in occupational therapy at the Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. In 1920 she moved to New York to take classes at the Art Students League for one year under sculptors Stirling Calder and Leo Lentelli.  (She returned several years later to study drawing with Boardman Robinson.)

After those two years, she joined her sisters in Europe to study art, mainly in Paris.

Returning home, she became interested in California-Spanish architecture. She was commissioned by tile producer Gladding-McBean and Company to create mosaic panels for the Mudd Memorial Library at the University of Southern California. In 1929 Helen, her mother and her sisters traveled to New Mexico where all three girls painted and sketched. When they returned they gave a joint exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco. Helen also exhibited at the California Society of Etchers and the Progressive California Painters in 1934.

 

Fleishacker Pool Tile Murals Bruton

*Fleishacker Mural by Margaret and Helen Bruton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Murals by the Bruton Sisters – The Fleishacker Building.

 

Helen later worked with her sister Margaret on a W.P.A. project for the Fleishacker Park in San Francisco. The sisters designed and implemented the two mosaic panels that were the first tile mosaics to be done in San Francisco by local artists. Helen later received a commission from the University of California Berkeley to create mosaic panels to adorn the University Art Gallery (1936).

She continued to live in the San Francisco Bay Area eventually settling in Monterey, California with her sister Margaret until her death in 1985.

There is a marvelous interview done by the Smithsonian of the two sisters in their later years that you can read here.

 Helen Bruton Murals at the Hotel Union Square

Murals at the Hotel Union Square

The Golden West Hotel

The hotel was known at the Golden State Hotel in the 1950’s and became the Hotel Union Square in 1982.

Cosmo Cocktails

 Posted by on January 21, 2014
Jan 212014
 

20 Cosmo Place
Lower Nob Hill/Tenderloin

 20 Cosmo Place, San Francisco

This unassuming building has been providing fine drinks, food and happiness to San Francisco’s since 1951.

Trader Vic’s opened in Cosmo Alley in 1951.  The restaurant was built from an old corrugated parking garage.  Passing along the narrow walk way through a tropical garden, customers entered the rustic shed.

Trader vic's under construction

This photograph, from the archives of the San Francisco Chronicle (with no caption or story) must show the very beginnings of the place, if not the construction for its opening.

While I spent fond nights there eating Pu pu Platters and downing Trader Vic’s famous Mai Tai’s I never took photographs, so we will have to rely on old photographs for pictures of the interior.

Postcard of Trader Vic's

 

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Trader Vic's on Cosmo Place

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Trader Vic's on Cosmo PlaceWhile famous for so many things Trader Vic’s was the first restaurant to serve Queen Elizabeth II.  Until her visit with the Reagan’s in 1983 she had never eaten in a restaurant.  Sadly Trader Vic’s closed in 1994.

Doors to Trader vics

Victor Bergeron, Trader Vic, was also a sculptor and has two sculptures in Golden Gate Park that you can read about here.

 

Trader Vic’s was replaced with Le Colonial.  A fabulous French Vietnamese Restaurant.

Le Colonial San Francisco

Le Colonial Veranda

San Francisco has so very many hidden treasures, Cosmo Place is no different, who knew you would find so much San Francisco history down an alley such as this.

Cosmo Alley in San Francisco

Cosmo Place San Francisco

 

Painted Grain Silos in San Francisco

 Posted by on January 15, 2014
Jan 152014
 

696 Amador Street
off 3rd Street / Pier 90/92
Bayview/Hunters Point

Painted Grain Silos in San Francisco

A while back I wrote about these grain silos, I also mentioned at the time they eventually would become an art project.  You can read all about the silos here.

This project is part of the Blue Greenway Project, a $2.2 million project funded through the Port of San Francisco.

The Project was awarded to  the Seattle based firm of  Haddad/Drugan.  It is titled “Bayview Rise” and is expected to be in place for a minimum of 5 years.

Bayview Rise Art Project

 

According to their website:

Bayview Rise works 2-dimensionally as a graphic image, 3-dimensionally as it articulates the folded, rolling, and textured surfaces of the historic architecture with color and pattern, and 4-dimensionally at night as colored lights cycle through the colors red, green, and blue causing the mural imagery to change its appearance. Diffenrent light colors will cause parts of the mural of that same color to be highlighted while other colors recede into the dark background. As the light colors shift, images will appear to float in and out of the scene. This striking effect will result in the appearance of an animated graphic abstractly representing a neighborhood in transformation, Bayview Rising.

In early 2013 Haddad|Drugan researched the history, culture, and future plans for Bayview Hunters Point. They identified stories that could be included in the artwork, ranging from industry to infrastructure to community to ecology, and compiled them in a layered map. The artists met with community representatives and shared their research and a group of words inspired by the research. From this process they developed the artwork to emphasize the concept of “rise,” a word they had shared with the community and which tied together some of its most inspiring stories. The graphic imagery of the mural is rooted in the Bayview’s historic and future conditions, but with an emphasis on elements that float, fly, and rise.

Haddad Drugan Bayview Rise

The composition creates a spatial illusion in which elements appear to rise up and out from a horizon where water meets land and sky. Grounding the image is a bottom layer of water, representing both San Francisco Bay and the past marshlands of Islais Creek. Submerged in the water as a symbol of the neighborhood’s past is the head of a steer in homage to historic Butchertown and the cattle that once marched down Third Street. The primary icon rising from the horizon line is a soaring heron, which ties to nearby Heron’s Head Park, a successful environmental restoration by the Port. Other imagery represented in the artwork includes native cherry plants, shorebirds, and a reference to a quote by community activist Essie Webb who likened Hunters Point to a balloon waiting to be re-inflated. The images within the mural have been combined, overlapped, and juxtaposed in a triangular matrix so there appear to be metamorphoses between cherries and balloons, water and birds, land and leaves. This shift is emphasized with the changing colors of lights.

Bayview Rise Hadda Drugan Grain Silos

Bayview Rise was funded and commissioned by the Port of San Francisco with coordination from the SFAC.  The painting was by R.B. Morris III and the lighting by Legend Theatrical.

The proposal by the Port of San Francisco can be read here.

These shots of the installation at night are from the Hadda/Drugan Website.
Haddad Drugan Silos Painting at night
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Mural on the grain silos in San Francisco

Windmills of Portola

 Posted by on January 14, 2014
Jan 142014
 

Palega Park
500 Felton
Portola District

Palega Park Mural

In November of 2013 eighty year old Palega Park underwent a $21.2 million Restoration.

The Park’s new clubhouse features a mosaic mural by Kelly Ording commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission through the city’s two-percent-for-art ordinance. Located behind the clubhouse’s portico windows and visible from the street, Windmills pays homage to the Portola’s  past as the center of the city’s commercial flower industry.  The mural cost $127,400.

Kelly Ording Windmill Mosaic

According to Ording, “This mural contains four main elements that I found fascinating when researching this neighborhood; the wind, the windmills, the greenhouses and the fertile land.  I used these elements to create an image of how this neighborhood may have once looked; calm and peaceful, yet, alive.”

Kelly Ording Mural

The windmills and greenhouses featured in the mural were once abundant in the Portola District. The mural depicts three types of flowers, which were selected by the artist because of their specific meanings to the area. The California Poppy represents resilience and beauty, the Maltese Cross reflects the diversity of the people who call the neighborhood home, and the Rose recalls a time when the Portola’s many nurseries supplied cut flowers to the city.

Palega Park Mosaic Ording

 

Kelly Ording a San Francisco, Bay Area born artist received her  B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000

Tile Benches at Alta Plaza

 Posted by on January 13, 2014
Jan 132014
 

Alta Plaza
Steiner/Clay/Scott/Jackson
Pacific Heights

Tile Benches at SF Alta Park

 

There are two benches in the children’s area of Alta Plaza Playground covered in beautiful tile mosaics.

Commissioned by Friends of Alta Plaza Park, the artist, Aileen Barr, combined handmade tile and mosaic to create the two seating walls for the newly renovated playground. A series of donor tiles are integrated into the design, which display the names of community members who contributed to the fund for the renovation. The seating walls measure 30 ft and 50 ft in length.

Alta Plaza Playground Tile Benches

 

Aileen Barr has been in this website many times, you can see her other work here.

Aileen Barr Tile Work*

Tile bench at top of Pac Heights Park*

Tiles in the bench at Alta Plaza in Pac Heights SF

 

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Tile Benches by Aileen Barr in Pacific Heights

 

The scope of this renovation was focused on the play area, which was renovated to comply with the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s guidelines for playground safety, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Title 24 of the California Building Code. An accessible route to the play area was provided as a part of the project, along with ADA renovations to the existing restroom.  The cost of the renovation was $817,850.

 

 

Restoring Historic Murals

 Posted by on January 10, 2014
Jan 102014
 

Franklin Square Park
2500 17th Street
Potrero Hill

Brotherhood of Man Mural at Hamilton ParkBrotherhood of Man by Anthony Stellon 

This once abandoned mosaic was found by David Schweisguth in 2006. While walking his beagle Huxley in Franklin Square Park one afternoon, Huxley sniffed around a large concrete slab serving as a makeshift potting table, Schweisguth looked under the plastic sheet covering the table top and found this treasure.

With the help of local mural expert Lillian Sizemore, who wrote A Guide to Mosaic Sites: San Francisco, they discovered that the artist was Anthony Stellon, who died in 2005.

Schwiesguth’s discovery came at the right time. A neighborhood group called Friends of Franklin Square had just formed and were raising funds to restore the 30-year-old, decaying park. When Schwiesguth and Sizemore brought the mosaic to the group’s attention, they decided to unite behind the cause and ask the city to restore it.

It took more than five years for the San Francisco Arts Commission to find funds for the restoration.

The challenge with restoring the piece was that the mosaic needed to be removed from its concrete backing and mounted on a waterproof material. The project cost $115,000.

 

Found Mural from Alioto gets reinstalled in Potrero Hill

The mural was originally a gift to the city from Mayor Joseph Alioto.

In the late sixties, when movie companies used San Francisco as a backdrop, the city had not yet begun to charge the film companies for film permits. Mayor Joseph Alioto negotiated with Warner Brothers Pictures when Bullitt was made for a one time donation of approximately $25,000 to be used for the construction of the new pool at the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center in the Hunter’s Point/Bayview neighborhood.  With his personal funds, Mayor Alioto commissioned Anthony Stellon to create a mural for the building’s exterior.

Brotherhood of Man was the result.  The mural depicts two figures, one black and one white, flying amidst the cosmos as they hold hands around the earth. Stellon, who was deeply moved by King’s assassination, infused the mural with symbolic meaning that visualizes world peace and harmony. An infinity symbol unifies the composition.

The mural was installed at the recreation center in 1968.  In 1998, the mural was removed from the building and placed in storage to make way for a new swimming pool.  How it ended up as support for a potting table at Franklin Square Park is still a mystery.

 

Tiled Stairways to Heaven

 Posted by on January 9, 2014
Jan 092014
 

Golden Gate Heights
16th Avenue between Kirkham and Lawton

Stairways of San Francisco

This is the second project by Aileen Barr and Colette Crutcher covering stairways in the Golden Gate Heights area. You can read about both of them and their first project here.

Stairways of San Francisco

 

This project was made possible by a group called Hidden Garden Steps.  According to their website: The Hidden Garden Steps Project is a community-based, public art initiative to create mosaic steps, a public garden and a wall mural on 16th Avenue extending uphill from Kirkham to Lawton in the Golden Gate Heights/Inner Sunset neighborhood. Formal partners include the San Francisco Parks Alliance, the San Francisco Department of Public Works Street Parks program, and artists Colette Crutcher and Aileen Barr who designed the Moraga Mosaic Steps. Other collaborations include the Inner Sunset Park Neighbors, the Golden Gate Heights Neighborhood Association, Woodside International School, volunteers from Nature in the City’s Green Hairstreak (Butterfly) Ecosystem Corridor project, and individual local merchants.

Colette Crutcher and Aileen Barr

 

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Hidden Stairways of San Francisco*

16th Avenue Tile Stairs*

DSC_2477*

16th Avenue Stairways*

Aileen Barr and Collette Crutcher*

Tile Stairways of San Francisco*

Mosaic Stairways*

Mosaic Tile Stairway Art*

16th Street San Francisco Tile Work*

Tile Mosaics of San Francisco

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eng-Skell

 Posted by on January 8, 2014
Jan 082014
 

1043 Howard Street
SOMA

Eng Skell Building on Howard Street SF

It is hard to believe that in a world of corporate mergers and gentrification of neighborhoods, that the original company that built this wonderful deco building still occupies it.

In 1900 W.A. England and H.D. Skellinger founded the Eng-Skell Company.  The company made flavoring extracts for the bakery and bottling trades and specialties such as orange bitters for the bar trade.

Eng-Skell on Howard

In 1930 the company built this three-story Art Deco building in SOMA.  The building was designed by architect A.C. Griewank.  It is 100,000 square feet and originally housed a laboratory, manufacturing plant, warehouse and office space.  There was a Research Department with a staff of trained chemists. Somewhere along the line they became ESCO but their website still proudly displays this Howard Street Building.

DSC_5854

224 Townsend Street (1935) was also designed by A.C. Griewank. Both buildings feature fluted pilasters that divide the bays and a three-dimensional, stepped triangular parapet over the primary entrance. Although we know he was an engineer/architect there is no information about A.C. Griewank to be found at the City of San Francisco, the San Francisco Public Library, or San Francisco Heritage.

We do know he was a writer for the Architect and Engineer. In November of 1917 they published an article titled “California Cotton Mills’ New Building,”  by Mr. A.C. Griewank, the architect of the California Cotton Mills Factory in Oakland, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

(update)  The San Francisco Public Library has informed me that Mr. Arthur Carl Griewank was born on the 6th of September 1886 in Laporte, Indiana and died in San Francisco on October 9, 1942,

I found an A.C. Griewank listed in the 1911 alumni record of the University of Illinois stating Mr. A.C. Griewank was a 1910 graduate of the University and was then working with the Sacramento Valley Irrigation Company.

He was also listed as a San Francisco Port Engineer in 1930.

From the November 1930 American Chemical Society Publication:
The Eng-Skell Co. , 208 Mission St., San Francisco, Calif., manufacturer of flavoring extracts, chemical specialties, etc., has approved plans for a new three-story plant at Russ and Howard Sts., and will proceed with work on the superstructure at once. It is reported that it will cost over $54,000 including equipment. A. C. Griewank, address noted, is company engineer.

Despite not knowing much about Mr. Griewank personally, I am sure he would be please to know that some of his structures he designed still stand today.  They include: (in San Francisco) 1130 Howard, 1035 Howard, 1126 Howard, 224 Townsend and Piers 1-35 where he acted as engineer on the substrates and transit sheds, as well as, the California Cotton Mills Building in Oakland

Shining Paths

 Posted by on January 7, 2014
Jan 072014
 

SFO
International Terminal
Gate G level 3
Post TSA

Floor of SFO International TerminalShining Paths: San Francisco’s Sister Cities 2006 by Lewis Desoto
16 Derkson projectors, lamps and gobo light gels
68 in. in diameter.

This work in its entirety consists of 16 light projections (divided between boarding areas A and G) that celebrate San Francisco’s Sister Cities around the world. The work is an extension of the artist’s On the Air project, located on the floor of the international terminal arrivals lobby. Here, each Sister City is represented by the aeronautical map for its airport, overlaid with the image of the city flower.

Sister Cities SFO

The cities depicted in terminal G consist of : San Francisco Taipei, Osaka, Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh, Tessalonika, Zurich and Assisi.

Desoto received his Master of Fine Arts,  at Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA., 1981. and his Bachelor of Arts at University of California, Riverside, 1978.

Lewis Desoto SFO

 

The artists statement:

“Shining Paths” extends the work “On The Air,” 2000 at SFIA by combining pilot’s maps and medieval botanical illustrations to depict San Francisco Sister Cities.  Each map is keyed to that city’s airport and each flower is related to a declared city flower or famous local specimen.  The imagery combines the scientific certitude of the maps with the romantic illustration of the flower.  A Derksen projector mounted on the ceiling passes a light through a glass etched “gobo” on an area of the terrazzo floor in each terminal.

Blue Deer

 Posted by on January 6, 2014
Jan 062014
 

SFO
International Terminal
Gate G Level 3
Post TSA

Blue Deer

Blue Deer 2006-2007
Oil and Pigmented Ink with Gesso Ground on Wood Panels
Clare Rojas

The plaque on this piece reads:  Inspired by American folk art, quilting and storytelling, Clare Rojas creates dreamlike images executed in tightly drawn crystalline shapes.  Rojas intends to bring a sense of warmth and comfort to the viewer and she often changes the exhibition space to better fit the feeling of her work.  Here she transforms the gate room wall into space more reminiscent of home. “Blue Deer” is based on a children’s book Rojas wrote and illustrated. Blue Deer and Red Fox.

Clare Rojas was born 1976 in Columbus Ohio.  She received her MFA,  from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2002 and her BFA, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, 1998.  She lives and works in San Francisco

Baile

 Posted by on January 3, 2014
Jan 032014
 

SFO
International Terminal
Gate G
Level 3
Post TSA

Baile at SFO“Baile” – Copper and Powder Coated Steel – 1999 – Carmen Lomas Garza

The plaque on this piece reads:

This image of Mexican Flokloric dancers is inspired by the tradition of Mexican and Chinese tissue paper cutouts and French silhouettes.  As an artist, Carmen Lomas Carza often recalls her memories of growing up in South Texas as inspiration for her imagery  Shi is known for her portrayal of popular customs and events, from tamale-making to community fiestas.

Carmen Lomas Garza was born in Kingsville, Texas. At 13, she made a commitment to pursue a career in art and taught herself elements of drawing. Her works of art depict childhood memories of family and friends in a wide range of activities from making tamales to dancing to Tejano music. Garza has a bachelor’s degree in science from Texas A&I University (currently Texas A&M University, Kingsville) where she studied art education and studio art. She also has a master’s degree in education from Antioch Graduate School-Juárez/Lincoln Center and a master’s degree in arts from San Francisco State University, where she concentrated on lithography and painting in oil and gouache.

Carmen Lomas Garcia

The artists statement for this piece:

When waiting passengers see the copper cutout Baile it is as if they are looking in through a window of an artist’s studio. The artist is painting an image of Jarabe Tapatio dancers from Mexico. The metal cutout was based on a paper cutout that was photographed, digitized, and cut with a high-pressure jet stream of water.

Sanctuary

 Posted by on January 2, 2014
Jan 022014
 

SFO
International Terminal
Gate G Level 3
Post TSA

Sanctuary at SFO

The plaque on this piece reads:

Arrival at SFO is the beginning of a new life for many immigrants.  Just as the surrounding wetlands prove sanctuary for shore birds during their annual migration.  the mural is painted in fresco buono an ancient technique that mixes pigment directly into wet plaster.

The artists on this piece were Juana Alicia and Emmanuel Catarino Montoyo.  Both of these artists have been in this website before, you can read about both of them here.

Sanctuario at SFO

This piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission for the Airport in 1999.

Bird Technology

 Posted by on January 1, 2014
Jan 012014
 

SFO
Boarding Area G
Level 3
International Terminal
Post TSA

Bird Technology at sFOBird Technology – Hand Painted Ceramic Tile – 1999 by Rupert Garcia

The plaque on this piece reads:

This work combines two images: a bird that symbolizes natural flight, and a geometric grid that symbolizes the technological advances that made human flight possible.  Implicit in the work is the potential for conflict between the natural world and technology.

According to the Smithsonian:

Rupert García came from a family active in the creation and instruction of folk arts and traditions. After completing his service in the U.S. Air Force in Indochina, García attended the San Francisco School for the Arts on the G.I. Bill. As his education in art intensified so did his interest in politics. He joined Latino and minority movements in the Bay area protesting the disproportionate number of these groups being sent into battle in Southeast Asia.

García has proven himself to be not only one of the most important artists of the last twenty-five years, but an important political force as well. Much of his work has dealt with issues of racism and the mistreatment of Latinos in the United States. His style is direct and powerful; he seeks to be both forceful and readily accessible to a wide audience. Keeping these goals in mind, both García’s graphic art and paintings display a skillful unification of the Mexican tradition of Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco, with elements learned from European artists and those of the American Pop art movement. García’s art has evolved stylistically throughout his career, but he has constantly maintained a strong balance of graphic and “fine art.”

García has also played an important role in Latino art scholarship. He holds two M.A. degrees—one in studio art and the other in art history. He is the author of an important thesis on California Chicano Muralists and has published essays on a number of different subjects including the work of Frida Kahlo. García’s continuing legacy constantly addresses the most important issues of contemporary society, both thematically and stylistically.

Bird Technology was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for the Airport in 1999 for $5,500.

Thinking of Balmy Alley

 Posted by on December 31, 2013
Dec 312013
 

SFO
International Terminal
Boarding Area G
Level 3
Post TSA

Remembering Balmy Avenue by RigoCeramic Tile Mosaic – 1999 by Rigo 99

The plaque on this piece reads:

This work, of a solitary boy totally absorbed in the act of paining, is inspired  y a mural (since destroyed) painted in 1993 by the artist and local youth in Balmy Alley, located in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Rigo 99 has been in this website many times before.  This piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission for the airport.

Fly, Flight Fugit

 Posted by on December 30, 2013
Dec 302013
 

SFO
International Terminal
Boarding Area G – Level 3
Post TSA

Fly Flight Fugit at SFOFly, Flight Fugit by Squeak Carnwath
Porcelain Enamel on Steel – 1999
210 in. x 210 in.; each panel is 30 in. square

The plaque that accompanies the piece states:

“When I’m I’m a Plane, I often think about things that fly naturally.  This work is about those things – Bees, Flags, Snow Bugs, Mercury, Rain and Flights of Fancy”

Much of Cornwath’s work is about her own thoughts, reactions, and memories.  She frequently combines hand-scrawled words, visual images and color into luminous paintings that prompt the personal thoughts and memories of her viewers.

 Squeak Cornwath was born in Abington, Pennsylvania. After receiving a Masters of Fine Arts from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1977, she began exhibiting her work in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She lives and works in Oakland, California. Carnwath taught at the University of California from 1982 to 2010; she is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

Fugit is latin for flee, most often seen in the term Tempus Fugit, meaning Time Flees.

Glass that challenges your understanding

 Posted by on December 27, 2013
Dec 272013
 

San Francisco International Terminal
Terminal Two

Exterior of Terminal 2 at SFOAir Over Under by Norie Sato – 2011

These two Huge panels are easier to see than to photograph.  (The above photo is courtesy of FlySFO) They are hand painted and silkscreened glass enamels on float glass and measure 16 ft. x 150 ft. each.

Norie Sato’s imagery was inspired by our relationship to clouds and flight. Specifically, her work delves into some of flight’s inherent qualities: ephemeral, abstract, pictorial, natural, man-made, symmetrical and changeable. The artwork depicts the dual experience of being under or over clouds when flying in a plane. According to the artist, “Air Over Under is about perception, relativity and how our position and situations are never static.”

Norie Sato Air Over UnderThis was taken from inside the building notice the vibrant colors

The façade installation is comprised of a grid of 120 pieces of laminated glass panels approximately 4’ x 10’ each covering two 16’ x 150’ areas. Produced at Franz Mayer Studios in Munich, Germany, the laminated panels are comprised of one layer of glass with hand-painted glass enamels and another layer that includes a silkscreened pixilated image in white. The combined effect is of a photographic image that, depending on the viewer’s distance or point of view, either looks clear or more abstract and atmospheric. The colors are subtle, and change gradually from blue to green on one side and from blue to purple on the other side.

Norie Sato

 

The view from AirBart is one of the best.

SFO Big Glass Art

Norie Sato is an artist living in Seattle, whose artwork for public places over the past 25 years has incorporated individual, collaborative, design team and planning of public art projects. Much of her work involves collaboration with architects and integration with the site or context.

 

 

 

Ford Elementary School Lunette

 Posted by on December 23, 2013
Dec 232013
 

Ford Elementary School
2711 Maricopa Avenue
Richmond, California

sculpture on Ford Elementary SchoolSally Swanson Architects of San Francisco designed a new $19 million energy-efficient school to replace the outdated original Ford Elementary School in Richmond, California.

The new school’s design is a modern interpretation of the Mission Style. The school’s framework, a repeating 30-foot grid, creates the flexibility for the educational programming in the interior, and easily accommodates a variety of alternative teaching methodologies. The light-filled corridors, with articulated beams, double as a collaborative in-between area where learning can also take place.  On the second floor, the corridor is transformed into a street for the innovative learning required in the ‘MicroSociety’ educational program.

Ford Elementary SchoolThe Lunette that sits above the entry door was sculpted by Michael H. Casey.  After his sculpture was finished it was molded by skilled mold makers and then cast in GFRC (Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete) by the staff of Michael H. Casey Designs.

Sally Swanson Architects, Inc. Ford Elementary School, Richmond » Sally Swanson Architects, Inc - Windows Internet Explorer 11252013 31255 PM Construction, by Alten Construction Company, began in 2010 and was completed in December 2011.

The Lunette was designed by the architect – this is a photo of an original sketch by Michael H. Casey for the interior quatrefoil.

Ford Elementary Lunette0001

Flight Patterns

 Posted by on December 23, 2013
Dec 232013
 

San Francisco International Airport
Terminal One
Boarding Area C

Flight Patterns by Larry KirklandFlight Patterns by Larry Kirkland – 1987

Stainless steel cables, painted aluminum tubing, sheeting and screening
264 in. x 276 in. x 756 in.

Larry Kirkland

Born in 1950 in Port Hueneme, California, Larry Kirkland moved with his military family throughout the U.S. and abroad during his childhood. He received his undergraduate degree in environmental design in 1972 from Oregon State University and his Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1974 from the University of Kansas.

Kirkland created these large, aerial sculptures that are characterized by its nearly transparent, ethereal quality. This work was conceived by Kirkland after he spent time observing airport activities from an air traffic control room. Each of the 1500 elements suspended by 3000 wires represents an air traffic control symbol: triangles (landmarks),dotted lines (land boundaries) and x’s (flying objects).
Flight Patterns
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Larry Kirkland Flight Patterns SFO

A Mosaic of Bay Area History

 Posted by on December 20, 2013
Dec 202013
 

San Francisco International Airport
Terminal 1 Connector
Level 2

Joyce KozloffBay Area Victorian, Bay Area, Deco, Bay Area Funk by Joyce Kozloff – 1982

This artwork is inspired by historical decorative styles found in the Bay Area. The left panel, Bay Area Victorian, draws its sources from the ornament on old homes in the Mission District, Pacific Heights, the Western Addition and Potrero Hill.  The right panel, Bay Area Deco, references downtown Oakland in its heyday, when the Fox and Paramount theaters were built.  Both the celadon grey-green of the I. Magnin store and the cobalt blue and silver facade of the Flower Depot were inspirations.  Bay Area Funk, the center panel, is the collection of Berkeley memorabilia from the 1960’s. There is a humor and lightness to the appropriations of comic books and record album covers, alongside flyers and posters from clubs that were popular during that decade, such as the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom.
Joyce Kozloff at SFO
Joyce Kozloff was born December 14, 1942, in Somerville, New Jersey.  She received her

B.F.A. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1964 and her M.F.A. from Columbia University, New York, NY in 1967.

Bay Area Funk

The mosaics were fabricated by Crovatto Mosaics, Yonkers, New York. The tiles were fabricated by the artist and art consultant Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz.

Terminal 1 long mosaic SFO

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Mosaics at SFOsai

Thousands and Thousands of Tiles

 Posted by on December 19, 2013
Dec 192013
 

San Francisco International Airport
International Terminal
Main Hall

Tile mural at SFO International TerminalGateway 2000- by Ik-Joong Kang 

This artwork contains 5,400 unique 3 in. x 3 in. paintings, wood carvings, tiles and cast acrylic cubes. The artist began working in this 3 in. x 3 in. format when he was a student and commuted long distances to various part-time jobs. The 3 in. canvases were small enough for him to carry in his backpack and paint on the subway.

The piece is mixed media including canvas, wood, ceramic tile and found objects, it measures 120 X 720 inches.

Ik Joong Kang
Born in 1960, in Cheong Ju, Korea, Ik-Joong Kang has lived and worked in New York City since 1984. He received his BFA from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea, and his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Gateway 2000
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Ik Joong Kang at SFO

Stacking Stones

 Posted by on December 18, 2013
Dec 182013
 

San Francisco International Airport
Terminal Two
Level Two

Stacking StonesStacking Stones by Seiji Kunishma – 1983

These stones were commissioned by SFAC for the airport in 1983.  They remained in the airport during the new construction.

Born in Nagoya, Japan, Seiji Kunishima is an internationally renowned artist whose sculptures are characterized by a serene balance between the traditional and the modern. Stacking Stones weighs 14 tons and is created from stone quarried near Nagoya. Each section of rock was shaped to fit into the next and the outer surface was chiseled or polished to create contrasts of color, texture and depth. The stones weigh over 14 tons.

 

DSC_5750

 

 

Tapestries to take your breath away

 Posted by on December 1, 2013
Dec 012013
 

San Francisco International Airport
Terminal 2
Waiting Area

Mark Adams Garden Ouside Gate

This is a series by Mark Adams.  They include Garden Outside Gate, Garden in Golden Gate Park, and Garden in San Andreas Valley.  They have been in storage for over 20 years at the SFAC.  They were brought out and installed as part of the complete remodel of Terminal 2 at SFO.  They are absolutely stunning, and thank goodness they have been brought out for all to enjoy.

Woven in the traditional Aubusson style, these flax woven wool tapestries represent various gardens that the artist remembers from his years living in San Francisco. Irises, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums and wild dahlias are featured in rich, deep shades.

His 2006 obituary Reads:

Mr. Adams was known for the grace and delicacy of his spare, single-object still life pictures, and for the big stained-glass windows and tapestries he was commissioned to create for churches, synagogues, libraries and office buildings around the Bay Area. He made stained-glass windows for Temple Emanu-El and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and the Lafayette-Orinda United Presbyterian Church, among others, and did tapestries for such diverse places as the San Francisco International Airport, the Marina branch of the San Francisco Public Library and the Dallas Fairmont Hotel.

Mark Adams Flax Tapestry SFO

Mr. Adams’ more intimate work was shown in group and solo exhibitions at museums and galleries around the Bay Area and the country and found its way into many private collections.

“He was a lovely man, a real gentleman with a great soul,” said San Francisco art dealer John Berggruen, who showed Mr. Adams’ work for 25 years. “He did these beautifully poetic watercolors that had a real presence about them. His floral images, and his depiction of common everyday objects, were very compelling. We would exhibit his watercolors every two or three years, and they’d all sell. People would be lined up at the gallery at 9:30 in the morning to buy them. He had a wonderful run.”

Berggruen recalled the warm feeling of the old Mission District firehouse where Mr. Adams and his wife, artist Beth Van Hoesen, lived, worked and entertained friends for more than 50 years.

Mr. Adams was born in Fort Plain, N.Y., and studied at the University of Syracuse’s School of Fine Arts. He moved to New York City in 1945 and studied at painter Hans Hoffman’s School of Fine Arts and at Atelier 17. The next year, he hitchhiked to San Francisco and worked on the restoration of Carmel’s Mission San Carlos Borromeo under the leadership of Harry Downie, digging ditches and painting the Stations of the Cross in a Spanish Colonial style in the mission chapel.

Mark Adams Tapestry

After further study at Columbia University, Mr. Adams returned to San Francisco and got a job making window displays at Gump’s. Inspired by the tapestries he had seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, he began creating his own tapestries in 1952. His first piece was included in a show of religious art that year at the de Young Museum. Three years later, he apprenticed with French tapestry designer Jean Lurçat and traveled with his wife through Europe and North Africa.

Returning to San Francisco, Mr. Adams began doing commissioned tapestries for public and private buildings, and in 1960 got the first of many stained-glass commissions, for San Francisco’s Clarendon School. He was painter in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1963 and over the years taught at various colleges in the Bay Area and beyond

Topo in Cloth and aluminum

 Posted by on November 27, 2013
Nov 272013
 

San Francisco International Airport
Departure Lobby
Terminal 2

Topograph 1 & 2Kendall Buster -Powder coated steel tubing; greenhouse shade cloth- 288 in. x 288 in. x 192 in

Topograph I & II

Kendall Buster earned a BFA degree from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington DC and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University as well as participating in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Studio Program in New York City.

Kendall Buster SFO

His website explains the piece:

Topograph was designed and constructed for the San Francisco International Airport Terminal 2 departures area. A raised entryway forms a kind of narrow bridge above a massive open space in the main floor of the terminal and this presented very specific opportunities both functionally and formally. Travelers are typically moving quickly across the bridge and through the lower level. The form was intended to participate in what I saw as rapidly and sequentially changing positions of viewer to object. The work is constructed out of a series of vertically hung planes that behave like slats. As one moves in relation to the work, whether looking from above into the sculpture or from below, the planes seem to pivot. At one point when one is perpendicular to the thin slats that form the sculpture the form almost disappears. Alternatively, from some vantage points there is a suggestion that the planes have been compressed into a single form. But viewed from other points these vertical planes decompress and expand. Perhaps suggesting clouds dispersing or shifting landscapes.

The design grew out of my interest in these dynamic viewing points from above and below as well as an interest in how I might create a single sculpture in two sections – one on either side of the bridge in such a way that a viewer would walk between fragments of a kind of ephemeral landscape. To this end Topograph consists of two groups of vertically hung panels sighted on either side of the bridge/mezzanine to create a fragmented topography map.

Topograph I and II

Rigging by Methods and Materials
Project management by Mark G. Anderson Consultants

Welcome

 Posted by on November 26, 2013
Nov 262013
 

San Francisco International Airport
Terminal 2
Baggage Claim Level 1

Dan Snyder at SFODan Snyder – Polyurethane Paint on Aluminum -1983

Titled Welcome North, Welcome South, Welcome East, Welcome West, is designed to greet visitors from around the world.

According to Mr Snyder’s website:

Dan was born in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in 1941. His father was a naval officer stationed there at the time. Growing up he lived largely in seaport towns in the United States. After graduating from Wesleyan University in Connecticut with a major in theater, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then went on to the University of New Mexico where he received an MFA in studio art and art history.

For many years Mr. Snyder taught both art and theater in private schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut. After teaching he worked as an illustrator for advertising, editorial illustration for The Hartford Courant, and children’s book illustration, as well as designing and painting sets for local theater productions. Then for three years he was head designer of exhibits at the Science Center of Connecticut.  In 1995 Dan moved to Maine with fellow artist Betsy Gardiner. He continues to paint and exhibit his work, as well as do design and illustration for businesses and organizations. 

DSC_5747*

Welcome at SFO

 

Caduceus

 Posted by on November 25, 2013
Nov 252013
 

110 Sutter Street
Financial District

French American Bank

This was originally designed in a skeletal Chicago School manner by the important but little-known firm of Hemenway and Miller and remodeled with an overlay of Beaux-Arts details by architect E. A. Bozio.

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This slightly stuffy, but excellent article, written in 1979, explains the building and its environs perfectly.

In 1902, the architectural supplement to the San Francisco periodical Town Talk called the original design “A modern, superbly appointed, fire-proof building, now in the course of construction.” It was designed for the Bullock and Jones Co., who occupied the lower two floors, with offices above. At that time it was a two-part vertical composition, strongly skeletal in expression with the principal differentiation between the 2-story base and the shaft being the color of the decorative tile cladding. The shaft was terminated in a frieze punctuated by small round windows recalling Sullivan’s Guaranty and Wainright buildings, among others. Ornamentation was Renaissance/Baroque, applied in a purely decorative manner except in the traditional cornice and cresting. Unfortunately the tile cladding of the steel frame failed in the fire and the exterior was badly damaged. In 1907, it was apparently rebuilt to its original design.

110 Sutter Street

At some point after 1907 the building was taken over by the French American Bank. In 1913, it was enlarged and remodeled by E. A. Bozio for the French Bank. As remodeled, although the facade was still skeletal, its composition and ornamentation became even more elaborate and its base and columns were treated as rusticated masonry. Piers were clad in gray Colusa sandstone; spandrels and cornice were copper. The design and placement of the decorative iron grilles above the spandrels are taken directly from Ernest Flagg’s first Singer Building in New York, of 1904, as is a certain quality of the overall conception, albeit in miniature. The building was extended for three bays down Trinity Street and is fully ornamented for the length of that alley facade. Although part of that facade is hidden by the California Pacific Building, much of it is visible above the low buildings on Montgomery Street. The small but sumptuous marble banking hall, with its coffered ceiling, has been partially remodeled. In composition, the present building is a three-part vertical block.

Sutter Street Architecture

Apart from its great architectural value, the French Bank (now the French branch of the Bank of America) is extremely important as a supportive structure to the Hallidie Building and as a part of one of the finest rows of buildings in downtown San Francisco in this block of Sutter (and extending west another block to Grant). The block can be viewed as a capsule history of downtown San Francisco architecture which has come together in an aesthetically highly successful group. This building represents both the skeletal, Chicago-derived aspect of the city’s buildings and the influence of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and also serves as an integral element in the progressively taller buildings on the block whose cornices change in design and color at every step.

Michael R. Corbett – 1979
Splendid Survivors: San Francisco’s Downtown Architectural Heritage
Hemenway & Miller designed several significant buildings in San Francisco during the first decade of the twentieth century. Comprised of architects Sylvester W. Hemenway and Washington J. Miller, the firm was responsible for several prominent pre-quake commercial buildings in downtown San Francisco including the Aronson building at the corner of 3rd and Mission, also done in the Chicago Style.

110 Sutter StreetThe ground floor columns display a handsome scrolled shield with a caduceus, the symbol of Mercury, the god of commerce.

One of only Two Octagonal Houses in San Francisco

 Posted by on November 22, 2013
Nov 222013
 

1067 Green Street
Russian Hill

Feusier Octagon House

 

The Feusier Octagon House, built between 1857 and 1858, is one of only two surviving octagon plan houses in San Francisco. The other is the Colonial Dames Octagon on Gough Street. Both Houses retain their original exterior construction and reflect their eight-sided shape in the interior. This house was originally two stories and copied from a plan in a book on octagon houses by Orson Squire Fowler.

Phrenologist, Orson Squire Fowler published The Octagon House: A Home For All, or A New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building in 1848. He started a 19th century fad in house building. Fowler maintained that the most efficient shape for a house is a circle, but that an octagonal house is almost as efficient and much easier to build, especially for carpenters of that period with their expertise in bay windows, towers, turrets and other fashionable follies. According to Fowler, octagons enclose more space with less material, provide more light and are more efficiently heated in winter and cooled in summer.

The house, originally built by George Kenny, his grandson Robert W. Kenny was Attorney General of California from 1943 to 1947. George Kenny was an agent for H. H. Bancroft, the famous bookseller, publisher and historian. (The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, named in his honor, was founded when the University of California purchased his book collection in 1905.)

Octagon House

The house was sold to  San Francisco businessman Louis Feusier  in 1875, and his family remained there until they sold it in 1954.

According to the family history, Louis Feusier arrived in California about 1852, spent the years 1857-1867 in Nevada, and then returned to San Francisco, later marrying Louise Guerne, daughter of the pioneer for whom Guerneville was named.

Feusier is said to have been a companion of such San Francisco notables as Leland Stanford and Mark Twain. Feusier’s many business interests include wholesale produce, mining, salmon canning, winemaking, and importation of oriental goods. His wife Louise lived in the house until her death, as did their son Clarence who died in 1951. In 1954 the Feusier Octagon was sold by the family.

The original two-story house was modified late in the century when the Feusiers added a third story with Mansard roof, topped by an octagonal cupola. Like other buildings on Russian Hill, the Feusier House escaped the 1906 Earthquake, but because of the fire, the outbuildings were dynamited but the main house was saved.

Octagon House on Green Street

It is San Francisco Landmark 36. On March 24, 1974, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The House was listed for sale in 2012 for 5.2 million.  These pictures are from that real estate listing.

Octagon House on Green Street

 

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Russian Hill

 

 

 

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