Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Category: Union Square

  • Convergence: Commute Patterns

    Convergence: Commute Patterns

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    Union Square BART Station The painted glasswork can be seen both inside and outside the station and spans the facade, roof deck, and the ceiling of the entrance on Geary. The base images of “Convergence: Commute Patterns” are a blue topographic map of the city with circles in different colors painted on top of the…

  • Lucy In The Sky

    Lucy In The Sky

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    Union Square Muni Station This immersive work by Erwin Redl consists of more than 500 translucent 10-by-10-inch light panels that each contain an array of LED lights spanning the color spectrum. They are suspended from the ceiling along the entire length of the 670-foot concourse level. The panels are programmed to change color and create patterns,…

  • Silent Stream

    Silent Stream

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    Silent Stream can be found at the Union Square Muni station. Meant to evoke an underground creek “Silent Stream” consists of 12,000 highly polished stainless-steel disks of varying sizes; it measures 250 feet in length with widths that vary from 4 feet to 8 feet. Originally from Chicago, San Francisco based Jim Campbell is an…

  • Native Sons of the Golden West

    Native Sons of the Golden West

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    414 Mason Street Union Square The Native Sons of the Golden West Building on Mason street is an eight story, steel frame structure, with a highly ornamented façade of granite, terra cotta and brick. Around the two main entrances to the building are placed medallions of men associated with the discovery and settlement of California.…

  • Females Grace the Olympic Club

    Females Grace the Olympic Club

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    665 Sutter Street The Olympic Club Parking Garage Union Square I have showed you the figures at the front of the Olympic Club here.  But at the back, the entry to the parking garage, are 9 female nudes. The sculptures are by Michelle Gregor.  Michelle has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from University of California,…

  • An Ode to the Automobile

    An Ode to the Automobile

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    Mason and O’Farrell Streets Union Square The construction of the Downtown Center Garage, now the Mason O’Farrell Garage,  harkens back to when the automobile was king. San Francisco now has a Transit First Policy which specifically gives priority to public transit and other alternatives to the private automobile as the means of meeting San Francisco’s transportation…

  • Helen Bruton’s Tile Murals at the Golden West Hotel

    Helen Bruton’s Tile Murals at the Golden West Hotel

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    114 Powell Street Union Square 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. The murals were done by Helen Bruton Bell (1898-1985)  Ms. Bell…

  • Bernstein’s Fish Grotto

    Bernstein’s Fish Grotto

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    123 Powell Street San Francisco * Bernstein’s Fish Grotto was opened by Maurice Bernstein (1886-1932) in 1907.  It was known for its unique entrance, a ship’s bow jutting into the sidewalk. The ship was a faithful reproduction of Christopher Columbus’s Nina. Inside the restaurant, the marine theme continued. Bernstein’s had seven colorful dining rooms: the…

  • Damoxenus and Kruegas

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    Entryway to the Olympic Club 524 Post Street Union Square Domoxenus Established on May 6, 1860, The Olympic Club enjoys the distinction of being America’s oldest athletic club, which makes it appropriate, that these two statues of Damoxenus and Kreugas stand outside its front door. Damoxenus and Kreugas were boxers. Domoxenus of Syracuse was excluded from…

  • Five Questions

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    Mint Plaza SOMA/Market Street Area/Union Square WHAT is on the Side of the San Francisco Chronicle Building at 5th and Minna   These two sculptures are part of a large project, within an even larger project. The larger project is called the 5M project. The 5M Project is a creative development in downtown San Francisco designed…

  • 55 Stockton Street – Looking up

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    55 Stockton Street Union Square / Market Street This building, designed by Heller Manus Architects in 1989 stands at a very busy corner one block off of Union Square. If you look closely you can see 14 figures drumming or holding spheres. * According to the Smithsonian Institute, these figures were done by Tom Otterness.…

  • Notre Dame des Victoires Church

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    566 Bush Street Union Square/Chinatown There are a handful of buildings in San Francisco that turn 100 this year.  This will be the beginning of my covering those buildings over the next few weeks. Notre Dame des Victoires is one of the names for the Virgin Mary. This statue of Jesus’ mother is in front…

  • Tile and Bronze Column

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    580 Bush Street Financial District/Union Square/Chinatown This little hidden gem, done in 1992,  is a collaboation of Ruth Asawa, her son Paul Lanier and artist Nancy Thompson. Ruth Asawa has been on this website many times before. I recently found this article by Milton Chen and Ruth Cox at Edutopia that gives a few new details…

  • The Home Telephone Building

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    333 Grant Avenue Chinatown Union Square Ernest Albert Coxhead of Coxhead and Coxhead has given the city of San Francisco many of its finest buildings — one sits at 333 Grant Avenue, San Francisco landmark #141. The Home Telephone Company was San Francisco’s first telephone exchange site. The building, built in 1908 in the Mannerist…

  • Ruth Asawa at the Parc 55

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    55 Cyril Magnin Union Square Area Parc 55 Hotel porte-cochere San Francisco Yesterday and Today by Ruth Asawa 1984 – Cast Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete Ruth Asawa used baker’s clay to sculpt these panels.  Ms. Asawa has many works around San Francisco.  An American artist, who is nationally recognized for her wire sculpture. Ruth, at the age…

  • 450 Sutter, A Mayan Palace

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    450 Sutter Street is San Francisco’s monument to the Mayan Revival branch of Art Deco. Art Deco draws on a variety of sources including Art Nouveau, Cubism and the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Art Deco celebrates the technological wonders of the early 20th century, the frivolities of the roaring twenties, and the hard times of…

  • San Francisco All Wrapped Up in a Fountain

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    Union Square Hyatt Hotel 345 Stockton Street This fountain by Ruth Asawa was commissioned by Hyatt in 1970 and completed in 1972, the fountain consists of 41 individual bronzed plaques each about 26X32 inches depicting San Francisco landmarks covering the entire circular wall of the fountain bowl and measuring over 14 feet in diameter. At the center of the…

  • Skyward and Confluence on Post Street

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    Academy of Art College Post and Mason Streets Union Square Skyward by Peter Schifrin 2004- Bronze Confluence by Peter Schifrin 2004-Bronze Peter Schifrin holds a BA from San Jose State University in Sculpture and an MFA in sculpture from Boston university. He is the Sculpture director for the Academyof Art University in San Francisco. These…

  • Dancing Dahlias on Claude Lane

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    8 Claude Lane Union Square/Financial District * This mural, (on  the outside of Claudine Restaurant) is by Vogue TDK.  According to an interview he did with 1:AM he got into graffiti in late 1984, after school, I turned on the TV to the local PBS station and caught the start of the documentary “Style Wars”.  There…

  • Union Square – Manifest Destiny

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    Downtown/Union Square 453 Bush Street * * Manifest Destiny by Jenny Chapman and Mark Reigelman Southern Exposure (SoEx) is a nonprofit visual arts organization that supports emerging artists.  This project, the first of its kind for SoEx is a result of the support of The Graue Family Foundation. In 2009, the foundation offered Southern Exposure…

  • Union Square – Dewey Monument

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    Union Square * Most everyone that visits San Francisco sees this piece of public art.  Two years before the Gold Rush, in 1847, Jasper O’Farrell, the first surveyor of San Francisco,  created a design for the city, with Union Square as a public plaza. By the 1880s, it was a fashionable residential district, and in…

  • Union Square – Lamp Posts

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    Union Square * * * Union Square Collonade by Ron M. Fischer Union Square was built and dedicated by San Francisco’s first mayor, John Geary in 1850 and is so named for the pro-Union rallies that happened there before and during the United States Civil War. Since then, the plaza has undergone many notable changes…

  • Claude Lane Mural

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    Union Square – San Francisco Claude Lane Claude Lane is a small alley that runs between Bush and Sutter Streets in San Francisco.  It began developing in 1989 when Cafe Claude opened up with an alley entrance.  It blossomed over the years and now rivals Belden Place for shopping, dining and that European cafe experience. Mear…

  • Union Square 1:AM

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    Union Square – San Francisco Saks Fifth Avenue – Fifth Floor It is difficult to write about Union Square when discussing art.  The only form of art that you actually find is the pursuance of the all mighty dollar.  It is what many think of when they travel to our fair city, and it’s center…