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“Contemporary Education” by Ralph Stockpole

Posted by Cindy on May 1, 2019

May 012019

George Washington High Schoool
600 32nd Street
Library

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.”

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.

“Athletics” by Sargent Johnson

Posted by Cindy on April 30, 2019

Apr 302019

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue
Football Field

Originally awarded to San Francisco artist Beniamino Bufano, the commission for this work went to Sargent Johnson after Bufano was fired by the WPA when he proposed to use the Marxist labor leader Harry Bridges as a model in his iteration for the frieze.

This 1942 Federal Arts Project gave Johnson the chance that he needed to express himself in new materials, and allowed him to work on a massive scale in well-equipped studios.

This giant sculpture was done in 3 by 4-foot panels so that it could be transferred from Johnson’s studio to the school.

There are Olympic rings between the female golfers and the relay racer. The frieze is framed by golf clubs on the east end and oars from crew races on the west.

Sargent Claude Johnson (October 7, 1888 – October 10, 1967) was one of the first African-American artists working in California to achieve a national reputation. He was known for Abstract Figurative and Early Modern styles. He was a painter, potter, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver. He worked with a variety of media, including ceramics, clay, oil, stone, terra-cotta, watercolor, and wood. Sometimes considered a Harlem Renaissance artist, Sargent Johnson spent his career in the Bay Area. Johnson moved to San Francisco in 1915 to study painting, drawing, and his primary medium, sculpture. He was committed from early on to using modern aesthetics to create positive representations of African Americans. Like many of his contemporaries, he studied African carvings. For Johnson, however, the purpose of these formal borrowings was to suggest racial continuity and dignity. In the 1930s, while working on public art projects for the New Deal, he began to expand his range of subjects, taking on aspects of abstraction as well as Mexican muralism.

Dewey Crumpler at George Washington High School

Posted by Cindy on April 28, 2019

Apr 282019

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue

This three panel mural by Dewey Crumpler is a direct response to the 1960s controversy over the Life of Washington murals.

However, even these stirred controversy in their day, not with the subject, but with the artist. The Art Commission, and the students had far different opinions as to the qualifications of the chosen artist. It is a fascinating story which you can read HERE in Crumplers own words.

In 1993 Crumpler wrote this about his murals: “In 1966 the student wing of the Black Panther Party saw some murals in the hallways at Washington High by Victor Arnautoff. They didin’t quite understand what he was doing, but they saw slaves in the murals so the reacted violently – carving into the murals and throwing black ink on them. The city and the school became very upset and concerned because the didn’t want these historic murals to be defaced. The black students said that if you want those murals saved then you better have somebody paint some murals that can go in the school that speak about the positive contributions and strengths of African Americans and not this slave stuff.

In fact, Victor Arnautoff was a communist and was simply trying to demonstrate that the Father of America owned slaves. He had studied in Mexico with Diego Rivera. The black students didn’t want to hear none of that and they put on a search for an artist. The students saw my work and related to it because it was very political. Therefore they said I had to be the one to paint the mural

The school district went along with the students, but sone members of the Art Commission said I was too young and inexperienced in painting murals. When they held up the process I went all over the country studying murals. I was able to travel a lot, because my father worked for Pan-Am

In 1968 I went to Detroit, Chicago and New York. I went to Chicago to talk to Bill Walker. I went to look at all the murals they were doing. They made me feel that was not what I wanted to do. They were painting what was going on in the streets. I felt that they were too much like posters. I was more interested in something that had so much power that it would be like African-American music, which speaks to the right this moment but is really beyond time.

Starting in 1969 or 1970, I went off to Mexico for about two years, trying to study mural painting. Siqueiros for me was the greatest painter and the greatest muralist I ever saw. That was what I wanted to do in mural painting.

The murals at Washington High School did not just deal with African Americans. I and several students in the Black Panther Party felt the mural should be broader, even though none of the students from the other communities participated in forcing this issue.”

Born in 1949, Crumpler is a Professor of Art and Art History at San Francisco Art Institute.

Crumpler has other murals in San Francisco that are still standing.

“Life of Washington” by Victor Arnautoff

Posted by Cindy on April 28, 2019

Apr 282019

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue
Foyer

Arnautoff mural George Washington High School

Washington’s early life as a surveyor, military officer in the French and Indian War and master of Mount Vernon

This twelve-panel mural covers all the walls and the stairwell of the entrance to the main lobby of the school. Depicting the life of Washington it covers 1600 square feet. Painted in the “buon” fresco style, which consists of painting with pigments directly onto wet plaster, Arntauff was able to cover about nine feet of wall per eight to twelve-hour day. This largest WPA-funded single-artist mural took ten months to complete.

Images of major events leading to the revolution: the Boston Tea Party, the burning of stamps, and the Boston Massacre. In the center, five revolutionaries attempt to raise the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.

This panel shows the surrender of a Hessian mercenary during the Revolution. Arnautoff researched everything he could about Washington, including the details of uniforms worn during the wars.

Washington as farmer and slave owner titled “Mt. Vernon”.

Washington and his aged mother.

Part of the panel titled “Westward Vision” “He put those ghastly gray pioneers literally walking over the dead body of an Indian to demonstrate that the settlement of the west was an act of conquest that involved the slaughter of Native Americans,” Cherny said at a 2018 Board of Education meeting. “That was a very bold effort on his part to counter the kinds of textbooks that students were seeing.”

This piece of artwork is not without its controversy. Arnautoff was considered a left-wing liberal and communist and many of his works feature themes about class divisions, labor, and undeserved power.

Robert Cherny, a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University who wrote a biography about Victor Arnautoff, believes the artist was presenting “a “counter-narrative” to the prevailing high school textbooks of the time because his representation of the westward expansion included the slaughter of Native Americans, and he presented Washington as a slave owner, both facts the official narrative back then tended to either ignore or gloss over.” SF Richmond Review

In Cherney’s book, he discusses this “Washington dominates five of the six smaller murals, but the centers of the four largest murals are held by Native Americans, working-class revolutionaries, and enslaved African Americans….Arnautoff’s portrayal of Mount Vernon puts Washington near the left margin and places enslaved African Americans at the center, more prominent than several white artisans on the right side of the mural. At the time, high school history classes typically ignored the incongruity that Washington and others among the nation’s founders subscribed to the declaration that “all men are created equal” and yet owned other human beings as chattel.”…Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art.

This controversy has risen many times, once in the 1960s when the school countered the problem with new murals in the adjoining hallway by Dewey Crumpler.

The controversy is once again boiling as a result of the process to establish the school as a landmark. The controversy has gone national and covered both in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Victor Mikhail Arnautoff was born on November 11, 1896, in Uspenivka, Taurida Governorate which at the time was part of the Russian Empire. Arnautoff was a Russian-American painter and professor of art. He worked in San Francisco and the Bay Area from 1925 to 1963, including two decades as a teacher at Stanford University, and was particularly prolific as a muralist during the 1930s. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen, but returned to the Soviet Union after the death of his wife, continuing his career there before his death in Leningrad on March 22, 1979.

Work in the San Francisco Bay Area by Arnautoff includes: work at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic where he had been a patient. The unveiling caused a traffic jam and controversy because the mural showed a doctor examining a female patient whose unclothed breasts were at eye-level. San Francisco City Life in Coit Tower, a mural at the Presidio Chapel and the California School of Fine Arts Library.

Bay View Police Station

Posted by Cindy on April 14, 2019

Apr 142019

1676/1678 Newcomb
Bayview

This old Bay View Police Station, with stables in the back, was built in 1911 in the Roman Renaissance style at a cost of approximately $22,000.

This police station was closed in the 1930s and consolidated with another Coffey designed station, the Potrero Hill Police Station at 2300 Third Street. The Potrero Hill station opened in 1915 at a cost of over $12,000. It too had a stable in the back and for a brief time was called South East Station.

Coffey also designed the North End Police Station, now in private hands.

Potrero Hill Police Station

Coffey was born in San Francisco in 1866. In 1910 he was appointed city architect and was responsible for designing schools, police stations, and hospitals. One of his more notable hospital projects was Southern Pacific Harkness Memorial Hospital (no longer existing). At the time of his death on November 11, 1931, he was the architect of the new Cancer Unit and Psychopathic Building of the City Hospital Group, what is now San Francisco General.

Coffey shared an office with Martin Rist at 785 Market Street. They are responsible for the historically protected University Mound Old Ladies Home at 350 University Street.

Together they also designed the Taraval Police Station, which is still in use as a Police Station today.

The highly altered Stable Building can be seen in the back yard

Treasure Island Museum Mural

Posted by Cindy on March 30, 2019

Mar 302019

Treasure Island Museum
Former Administration Building
Treasure Island

This mural resides in what was originally called the Navy Museum inside the GGIE’s Administration Building. The museum opened October 3, 1975 with exhibits representing the Navy and Marine Corps from the early 1800’s to the present.

Eventually the collection grew to include the Coast Gaurd and then the Golden Gate International Exhibition, the Bay Bridge, which runs through the island, and the island itself. Once the museum began covering far more than the Naval history the name was changed to the Treasure Island Museum.

The museum resides in a 1938 moderne style building designed by William Peyton Day and George William Kelham. It has also been known as Building 1, as Command Naval Base San Francisco Headquarters, as Naval Station Treasure Island and was once used as a terminal and ticket office for Pan American Airlines. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

The museum closed in 1997 when the Navy began to close down their base on the island and viewing the mural is limited. Dates and times can be found on the TI website schedule.

This mural, by Lowell Nesbitt, is 251 feet long and 26 feet high and was commissioned for the opening of the museum. You will find scenes showing the history of the Navy and Marine Corps in the Pacific since 1813.

Lowell Blair Nesbitt (October 4, 1933 – July 8, 1993) was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor.

Nesbitt was a graduate of the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and also attended the Royal Academy of Arts in London, England, where he created a number of works in the mediums of stained glass and etching.

Point Cloud

Posted by Cindy on March 26, 2019

Mar 262019

Moscone Center

“Point Cloud” by Leo Villareal, the designer of “The Bay Lights” on the Bay Bridge has been incorporated into the new East Bridge, which connects Moscone North and South.

Commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for $1.5 million, it is part of the city’ 2% for Art Program.

This light sculpture is made up of over 50,000 full-color LEDs arranged in a three-dimensional array. Approximately 800 mirrored stainless steel rods, hanging from the ceiling, support the LED matrix.

The lights on this site-specific artwork are sequenced with Villareal’s custom software. The patterns are constantly changing. While these photos, taken during the day, do not show how bright the lights actually are, it is a nice focal point for both walkers and drivers naviagting the crowded situation always found around Moscone.

Leo Villareal (born 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) lives and works in New York City. His work combines LED lights and encoded computer programming to create illuminated displays.

Villareal received a BA in sculpture from Yale University in 1990 and a graduate degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Geneses I at Moscone Center

Posted by Cindy on March 14, 2019

Mar 142019

Geneses I

Christine Corday was born in 1970 in Maryland. Before receiving her B.A. in Communication Arts (1992), she wrote an original research paper which led to an Astrophysics internship at NASA Ames Research Center.

She went on to do graduate work in Cultural Anthropology and the works as a graphic and structural designer for advertising companies. Corday received the Edison Ingenuity Prize in Montreal, Canada and has also won a number of international design awards for her patented glass bottle for the Republic of Tea. In 2000, Corday was selected for a Short Story prize from Francis Ford Coppola’s fiction magazine Zoetrope.

“Geneses” means “many beginnings,” and Corday sees her sculpture as begun but never finished. The finish will be continuously applied by the weather and the hand prints of passersby.

According to the San Francisco Art Commission: GENESES I is the first and unique work from a monumental series inspired by the concept of beginning. Its name is the phonetic fusion of the word in different languages. Its arcing segments are melted and hewn stainless steel supported by a concrete form. The work exhibits a cool planar edge and surface juxtaposed by the sensory examination of the grand-scale heat within its soft and epic melting cut. A heat allowing a material moment cooled or suspended between solid and liquid state, as well as mimicking the temperatures at the surface of the sun, the core of our earth. The work encourages touch, which is intended to provide a moment of respite and an engaged perceptual encounter.

This project is part of San Francisco’s 2% for Art Program. The piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Director of Cultural Affairs for a cost of $1,450,000.

Wall Art #1012 on Mission

Posted by Cindy on March 12, 2019

Mar 122019

1400 Mission Street

Wall Drawing #1012 by Sol LeWitt

This artwork is part of San Francisco’s 1% for Art Program.

The piece covers the façade at the corner of 10th Street and Jessie Street and is the height of the ground story, and spans approximately 66 linear feet of the facade along 10th Street and 27 linear feet along Jessie Street. The original wall drawing was created in 2002 and was originally installed in a private residence in Los Angeles. The drawing was applied directly to a plaster substrate, transported, and installed on site.

The installation is a rather complicated process done by a team of artists led by Takeshi Arita. LeWitt rarely did his own installations. When you purchased a pice from LeWitt you would receive a very detailed set of plans on how to paint or install the piece. LeWitt designed his wall drawings with the intention that trained artists would follow his detailed plans to install the work.

Wall Drawing #1012

Sol LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism.

LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and “structures” (a term he preferred instead of “sculptures”) but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and artist’s books.

LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut to a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His mother took him to art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. After receiving a BFA from Syracuse University in 1949, LeWitt served in the Korean War, first in California, then Japan, and finally Korea. LeWitt moved to New York City in 1953 and set up a studio on the Lower East Side.

In 1968, LeWitt began to conceive sets of guidelines or simple diagrams for his two-dimensional works drawn directly on the wall, executed first in graphite, then in crayon, later in colored pencil and finally in chromatically rich washes of India ink, bright acrylic paint, and other materials.

Wall Drawing #1012 Sol LeWitt

The work sits on a 190-unit below market rate housing complex for homebuyers earning 100% or less of the area median income.

For an explanation of the installation take a look at this YouTube video.

New Life at 77 Van Ness

Posted by Cindy on March 9, 2019

Mar 092019

77 Van Ness
San Francisco

New Life by Paul Gibson

Paul Gibson, born in Los Angeles in 1957, was educated at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California, in Architecture, and received his BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Following his passion for arts, he decided to move to New York City and received a full-time painting scholarship at the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York. Paul lived in New York for five years and became a believer in the visual arts and a collector of works on paper.

Gibson moved with his family to San Francisco in 1989, established a studio in Hunters Point and began teaching at the Academy of Art University in the art of drawing.

This is part of San Francisco’s 1% for Art Program.

San Francisco’s “Downtown Plan” adopted in 1985, was developed under the fundamental assumption that significant employment and office development growth would occur. New commercial development would provide new revenue sources to cover a portion of the costs of necessary urban service improvements. Specific programs were created to satisfy needs for additional housing, transit, childcare, open space, and art. The public art requirement created by this plan is commonly known as the “1% for Art” program. This requirement, governed by Section 429 of the Planning Code, provides that construction of a new building or addition of 25,000 square feet or more within the downtown C‐3 district, triggers a requirement that provides public art that equals at least 1% of the total construction cost be provided.

Effective May 2012, in certain projects, all or part of this requirement may be satisfied by either providing accepted art of the resulting 1% valuation on-site or paying such amount to a newly established Public Art Trust Fund (Fund), which is administered by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Words Fly Away

Posted by Cindy on March 8, 2019

Mar 082019

Ocean View Branch Library
345 Randolph Street

Words Fly Away by John Wehrle – 2003/2004

This is a fabulous piece for a library. John Wehrle imagined the library interior as a metaphor for a book. He covered the library in jumbled letters, words and pictures.

According to the artist’s website: Created in 2004, Worlds Fly Away is a complete installation – floor to ceiling, using a variety of materials to create a theater of effects permeating the stairwell and second-floor hallway of the Ocean View Branch Library in San Francisco. Color, image, and language are the elements that transform the library interior into an allegorical experience akin to being inside of a book. It is a bit of a perceptual puzzle. The flying and falling letters, stretched to the limits of comprehension, can be assembled (with some effort) into words, sentences and ultimately meaning. The textual intarsia of the hallway required over a thousand pieces of linoleum to create letters and shadows spelling out the line from the idiomatic folk tale, “ The sky is falling. A piece of it hit me on the head. Other literary quotes are embedded in the tile faience, and, in several languages, on the ground floor of the library.

Here is a video of the piece

Born in San Antonio Texas, Pratt is a graduate of the Pratt Institute. He moved to California and became a teacher at the California Academy of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

In 1973 he broke out on his own, he presently lives and works in Richmond, California.

The project was commissioned by the SF Arts Commission for $112,000.

Beneath the trees there is a saying. “and where is the use of a book: thought Alice, without pictures or conversation”

Art at Bernal Heights Branch Library

Posted by Cindy on March 5, 2019

Mar 052019

Bernal Branch Library
500 Cortland Avenue

Reuben Rude of Precita Eyes Murals was chosen for this project. It was a difficult decision, as it replaced a mural that had been on the walls of the library for years. A recent renovation required the removal of the old mural which the current mural attempting to pay homage to some of its elements.

This mural with its bronze book and tile embellisment was paid for by the San Francisco Arts Commission at a cost of $115,000.

Reuben Rude grew up in the woods of Northern California and studied at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. He utilizes his expertise in drawing, painting, and illustration in both the creative and commercial realms. He has shown in galleries, comic books, and magazines throughout the world.

Full Circles

Posted by Cindy on March 4, 2019

Mar 042019

Visitation Branch Library
201 Leland Avenue

Full Circles by Ilana Spector and Mark Grieve – 2011

This piece consists of interlocking steel hoops embellished with recycled bicycle gears and, according to Grieve, is intended to evoke a “universe of possibilities.”

Mark Grieve (1965-) is a contemporary American artist. He studied painting and drawing at the San Francisco Art Institute and the College of Marin and apprenticed in Japanese ceramics in the Hamada lineage. He practices in a variety of media including found objects and large metal sculpture as well as site-specific installations, performance, and public art.

Ilana Spector has a background in civics and law and brings a multidisciplinary approach to creating public artwork. She studied government and diplomacy, attending the London School of Economics and graduated from Georgetown University before attending UCLA School of Law. Ms. Spector joined Mr. Grieve in 2006 to complete an award-winning public sculpture. She studied drawing and painting at the College of Marin.

This piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission for $75,000.

WPA Map of San Francisco

Posted by Cindy 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.

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

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

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. 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.

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

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

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.

WPA Map of San Francisco Part 10 – Visitation Valley and Bayview Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 25, 2019

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

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.

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 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.
The 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

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.

WPA Map of San Francisco -Bernal, Excelsior, Ingleside and Portola Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 22, 2019

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

WPA map of San Francisco Part 8 -Ocean View and Glen Park Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 21, 2019

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

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.

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

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

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.

*The 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.

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.

WPA Map of San Francisco Part 7 – West Portal and Merced Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 19, 2019

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

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 Francisco The 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.

WPA Map of San Francisco Part 6 – Sunset, Ortega and Parkside

Posted by Cindy on February 17, 2019

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

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 was one of the large buildings in the area during that time.

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

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

Ortega Branch Library

This area was fascinating for how sparse it also was in the 1930s.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

WPA Map of San Francisco Part 5 – Richmond and Park Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 11, 2019

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

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

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 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.

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.

WPA Map of San Francisco Part 4 – Western Addition and Anza Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 9, 2019

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 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 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.

WPA Map of San Francisco Part 3 – Golden Gate Valley, Marina and Presidio Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 8, 2019

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

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 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

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 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

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.

WPA Map of San Francisco – Part 2 – SFMOMA, Mission, Noe Valley and Eureka Valley Branch Libraries

Posted by Cindy on February 5, 2019

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 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

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

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

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

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

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.

Paul Selinger piece is gone

Posted by Cindy on January 26, 2019

Jan 262019

This piece once stood in the Broderick and Bush Mini Park

Untitled by Paul Selinger – Photo from the San Francisco Parks Department

In 2010 the SFAC de-accessed this piece due to damage, one can assume it was destroyed. “Civic Art Collection Senior Registrar Allison Cummings informed the Committee of the need to remove Paul Selinger’s sculpture Untitled, 1971 (Accession #1971.44) from its current location at Broderick and Bush Mini Park due to the artwork’s advanced deterioration. Ms. Cummings stressed that as assessed by a Recreation and Parks Department structural engineer, the sculpture should be considered a threat to public safety and will need to be dismantled and stored on site while Arts Commission staff completes the formal deaccessioning process. Upon Ms. Manton’s suggestion, Ms. Cummings agreed that public notice of the artwork’s removal will need to be posted within the park.” SFAC February 17, 2010 meeting.

The untitled sculpture was created by Paul Selinger (1935-2015) with funds donated by the Levi Strauss Company, for the garden.

Paul Selinger was born in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of 12, his family moved to Mill Valley, California. In 1958, Paul completed his undergraduate studies at U.C. Berkeley with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, then followed with a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. Shortly after completing his master’s degree, he traveled to South Korea and began his lifelong love affair with Asia, living in Korea, then Hong Kong, for the next ten years. Paul taught sculpture at the University of Hong Kong and became an internationally recognized artist in 1969 when he created massive public sculpture installations and designed and built a playground filled with abstract sculptures — believed to be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia — in Hong Kong’s Shek Lei resettlement estate. After returning to the U.S. he continued to work in metal, plastic, wood, and other media, producing small pieces for homes and gardens, and large pieces for public display

Paul established his last studio in Petaluma in 1998, creating lyrical yet dynamic wall sculptures imbued with his love of nature, movement, poetry, and calligraphy.

This piece is still listed in the San Francisco Art Commission’s Data Base as existing.

The Big Fish

Posted by Cindy on January 26, 2019

Jan 262019

The Big Fish also called The Salmon of Knowledge is a printed ceramic mosaic sculpture by John Kindness. The 33-foot long statue was constructed in 1999 and installed on Donegall Quay in Belfast, near the Lagan Lookout and Custom House.

The Big Fish’s image regularly appears on tourism material related to Belfast and Northern Ireland.

* *The outer skin of the fish consists of ceramic tiles decorated with texts and images relating to the history of Belfast. According to the Belfast City Council, each scale “tells a story about the city”. Material from Tudor times to present day newspaper headlines are included along with contributions from Belfast school children (including a soldier and an Ulster Fry). The Ulster Museum provided the primary source of historic images, while local schools/day centers located along the line of the River Farset were approached to provide drawings for the fish.

The Big Fish contains a time capsule storing information, images, and poetry on the City.

John Kindness (born Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1951) is an Irish artist working a range of media including sculpture and painting. He attended the Belfast College of Art and now lives and works in London.

Spirit of Belfast

Posted by Cindy on January 26, 2019

Jan 262019

Cornmarket
Arthur Square
CornMarket Belfast

The Spirit of Belfast was unveiled in September 2009, this large-scale steel structure sits in the Cornmarket, where a bandstand once stood.

The four interlocking rings sit in the heart of the city center’s pedestrianized shopping area and are said to have been designed to reflect Belfast’s shipbuilding and linen industries.

Created by Dan George, it has been given the name Onion Rings, by the ever humerous Irish citizens.

Dan George was born in Lake George, New York and studied at the Arts Students League of New York and the Koning Academie in Antwerp.

He says of this piece: Spirit of Belfast engages images from the site’s history while respecting the circular flow of pedestian traffic and not obscuring sightlines along the streets.

Spirit of Belfast Cornmarket, Belfast Ireland

Madhubani Paintings of Patna

Posted by Cindy on December 21, 2018

Dec 212018

These Madhubani paintings are going up all over Patna, Bihar. The project is aimed at beautifying the walls in the hopes that people don’t spit or urinate out in the open, on the walls. “Vulnerable points have been selected for the painting. However, work will continue on most of the walls. ” according to Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) deputy commissioner Vishal Anand.

Before I left the United States, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco had an exhibit on Madhubani paintings. It was fun to discover these all over the town of Patna.

A painting in the Asian Art Museum Exhibit

Madhubani paintings originated in the Mithila region of Bihar. Some of the initial references to the Madhubani painting can be found in the Hindu epic Ramayana when King Janaka, Sita’s father, asks his painters to create Madhubani paintings for his daughter’s wedding. The knowledge was passed down from generation to generation and the paintings began to adorn the houses of the region. The women of the village practiced these paintings on the walls of their respective home. Their paintings often illustrated their thoughts, hopes, and dreams.

Over time, Madhubani paintings became a part of festivities and special events like weddings. Slowly, this art attracted collectors as many contemporary Indian artists took the art onto the global stage. The traditional base of plastered mud walls was soon replaced by handmade paper, cloth, and canvas. Since the paintings have been confined to a limited geographical range, the themes, as well as the style, are more or less, the same.

The colors used in Madhubani paintings are usually derived from plants and other natural sources. These colors are often bright and pigments like lampblack and ochre are used to create black and brown respectively. Instead of contemporary brushes, objects like twigs, matchsticks, and even fingers are used to create the paintings.

Women doing the wall paintings in Patna.

Secret Garden

Posted by Cindy on October 22, 2018

Oct 222018

Transbay Terminal
Second and Folsom

Julie Chang is a San Francisco-based artist who, at the time of her selection, coincidentally lived within blocks of the Transbay Transit Center. Chang received her MFA at Stanford University in 2007. She also received an MFA Studio Award from the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito in 2007.

Chang’s 25,000 square foot terrazzo floor of the Grand Hall of the Transbay Terminal is meant to evoke a lush sunlit Victorian garden. Mined from local ecology, design elements include California poppies and jewel-toned hummingbirds highlighted by mirrored glass. Integrated into the design is a subtle overlay of icons and patterns, which are drawn from the rich tapestry of people and cultures across the Bay Area: flower-like circular rings from an Indian sari, cloud-like curves inspired by Chinese embroidery, Japanese crests, diamonds and chevrons found in a variety of sources including African textiles and Grecian pottery, and star and cross motifs from Islamic tiles.

The Transbay Joint Power Authority (TJPA) committed $4.75 million to fund the acquisition of artwork for the program. The TJPA’s commitment is in the spirit of the city and county of San Francisco’s “Percent for Art Ordinance,” which allocates two percent of construction costs for the inclusion of public art in the civic structures and facilities, and is consistent with policies established by the Federal Transportation Authority encouraging the inclusion of art in transportation facilities.

TJPA engaged the San Francisco Arts Commission to manage and oversee the planning and development of the public art program.

The budget for the floor was $1,107,500.

The original proposal presented by Julie Chang to the TPJA for design approval

The Joker’s Chair

Posted by Cindy on October 15, 2018

Oct 152018

Joker’s Chair – Dermot Morgan Memorial (2002)
By Catherine Greene

The Joker’s Chair was erected in the memory of the Irish writer, actor, satirist and comic Dermot Morgan (1952-1998),

The inscription which accompanies this piece reads;
….and all the rest is laughter liberating laughter to be remembered

Catherine Greene was born in Galway and studied at the National College of Art and Design from 1979-85. Greene was approached by Dermot Morgan’s partner to create the memorial which was funded by RTÉ (Ireland’s National Television) and supported by Dublin City Council.

A condition of the commission was that it should be an allegorical piece rather than a representative image. Greene saw Dermot as being like the modern day seer who never feared to tell the truth, cleverly, searingly and with verve. This led her to the idea of the Shakespearean fool, who was always the closest to the throne and who never feared to tell the truth.

Underneath the seat, there is an eye, which Greene meant to represent the knowing eye. The balls on the top of the seat are like the hat of the jester.

Éire by Jerome Connor

Posted by Cindy on October 2, 2018

Oct 022018

Merrion Square
Dublin, Ireland
Eire by Jerome Conner Éire by Jerome Connor

Jerome Connor (February 1874 – August 1943) was born in Coumduff, Annascaul, Ireland. He was the sixth and youngest son of Patrick and Margaret Connor.

The family moved to Holyoake, Massachusetts in the 1890s.

Jerome ran away from home and settled in New York. After trying many trades (foundry-man, professional prize fighter, machinist, sign painter, Japanese intelligence officer in Mexico, and stonecutter) he became a sculptor.

His most notable sculptures are in Washington D.C.: statues of Robert Emmett (a cast of which is in Dublin) and Bishop John Carroll, and the Nuns of the Battlefield tablet.

When the Irish Free State achieved independence in 1922, Connor returned to Ireland

In 1925 he won a prestigious commission from a New York committee to create a monument in Cobh, County Cork to commemorate the lives lost in the sinking of the Lusitania. Sadly, eighteen years later, at the time of his death, the project had not been completed. Connor had become a bankrupt and alcoholic, and died in a Dublin slum at the age of 67. The Lusitania Monument was eventually completed by another artist.

In 1928 Jerome Connor became involved in a proposal to create a memorial to the Kerry poets, which was to commemorate four leading Gaelic poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. He chose a figure of Éire holding a harp seated on a rock, possibly inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem Old Ireland in Leaves of Grass (1861). The unstrung harp was based on the 1621 Cloyne harp in the National Museum. The work went as far as a full-scale replica in wax.

Éire was cast in bronze in Dublin many years after Connor’s death. It was erected in Merrion Square, without a title or an acknowledgment of the sculptor. It has a plaque inscribed “This statue was presented by Joseph Downes and Son Ltd. in Dec. 1976 to commemorate the centenary of the ButterCrust Bakery, Dublin”.

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