If we are going to make real change, let’s do the work with our impacted communities to make that change. To do that, I have asked the Arts Commission, the Human Rights Commission, and the Recreation and Parks Department and its Commission to work with the community to evaluate our public art and its intersection with our country’s racist history so that we can move forward together to make real changes in this City. Who and what we honor through our public art can and should reflect our values.”
Mar 042012
Golden Gate Park
Music Concourse
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Ulysses S. Grant by Rupert SchmidThe pedestal of the bronze bust lists the principle battles of the generals’ command. It was sculpted by Rupert Schmid and funded by a citizens committee in 1904. (However, there are articles the say it was installed in 1894 and 1896). Schmid had modeled the General at Mount McGregor a few weeks before he died and that concluded in a monument at Grant’s Tomb in Riverside Park, New York. This was why Schmid was chosen.
This is excerpted from “San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories”
Several unfortunate events during the creation of this sculpture make its story colorful. Just weeks after Ulysses S. Grant died in 1885, a committee was formed to erect a memorial to the Civil War General and 18th U.S. president, who spent time in northern California The desired funding of $500,000 couldn’t be raised, however, and what little money was collected sat in a bank account for nine years. When the project finally proceeded, the committee members – Cornelius O’Connor, Theodore Reichert, and Isaac Hecht – agreed to shore up the funds to create an appropriate monument. …
With the project underway, plans were made to dedicate the monument on Memorial Day, 1896, and the sculpture was complete by mid-May. It was torn down a few days later, however, a victim of the stonecutters’ union and public opinion. To save money, the granite portions had been cut and dressed by convicts at Folsom Prison. The union protested, claiming that the use of prison labor had desecrated Grant’s memory. A new base, using materials from the McClennan Quarry in Madera County, was in place by late June.
Complete, the veiled monument awaited dedication, but a new complication arose. Schmid billed the monument committee $560 more than the agreed-upon $8000…(there was a change in the design for the base by committee member Hecht, who died before getting permission from the others).
The work was officially but unceremoniously accepted… If it was dedicated the date is obscure…(explaining the conflicting dates for the statue)
The obelisk-shaped granite pedestal was once draped with a bronze grouping containing a uniform, campaign hat, trench coat, rifle, spear, and sword. One of the four cannonball corner supports has been missing for decades.
Born in Egg, Bavaria, Germany, Rupert Schmid was a sculptor who was the son of a stone carver. He studied at the Royal Academy in Munich, and in 1884, immigrated to the United States. The next year he exhibited at the National Academy of Design, and by 1890 had settled in San Francisco where he established a studio and got many important commissions including the decorations for the Spreckels and Chronicle buildings as well as portraits busts of many prominent persons of San Francisco.
UPDATE: June 20, 2020
This statue was vandalized by protestors. The fate of the statue is unknown and this post will be updated when more is learned.
Notification San Francisco Mayor London Breed:
I’m sorry but you had me grinning by the time I got to the end of your commentary. U.S. Grant was a character and I don’t think much of a president. It’s kind of fitting that this sculpture should come out of a lot of turmoil and chaos!
$500,000 was quite a lot of money back in those days.