Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Moscone Park
Moscone Park 1800 Chestnut Street Marina District This Leatherback Sea Turtle and the Pink Short Spined Starfish in the playground of Moscone Park were gifts to the San Francisco Arts Commission from the Friends of Moscone Park These bronze sculptures were the work of Jonathan Roberson Beery. Jonathan Beery is a California native and studied…
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Birds in the Mission
In Chan Kaajal Park 17th and Folsom Mission District There are two California birds represented in this Mission district park. They are painted water-jet cut steel panels created by Carmen Lomas Garza. San Francisco-based artist was born in 1948 in Kingsville, Texas. She attended Texas Arts and Industry University (now Texas A&M) and received a BS in…
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Esmeralda Slide Park
Winfeld and Esmeralda Bernal Heights April 2017 In the 1970s a group of volunteers, with some help from the city, conceived and created Esmeralda Slide Park. That volunteer organization later became the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center. A New York Times article published in 2010 noted that “At the park’s dedication party in 1979, a shrieking Mayor Dianne Feinstein…
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Civil Rights Monument
Capitol Park Richmond, VA March 2017 The Virginia Civil Rights Memorial sits on the grounds of Capitol Square in Richmond VA and commemorates the protests which helped bring about school desegregation in the state. Unveiled in 2008 this $2.8 memorial was designed by Stanley Bleifield. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “A Commonwealth once synonymous with defiance…
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Reconciliation Triangle
East Main Street Richmond, VA March 2017 Reconciliation Triangle has a fascinating and worldwide story. The statue represents Richmond, Virginia’s place in slave history. With the addition of Liverpool, England, and the republic of Benin, West Africa, identical statues by Liverpool artist Stephen Broadbent are in place in each country marking the three points of…
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Woodward Garden
Woodward Gardens Duboce and Woodward Street Mission/South of Market On January 19, 1873, 12,000 people showed up at Woodward’s Garden in the Mission District to watch Frenchman Gus Buislay and a small boy soar aloft in a hot air balloon. The man who made it happen was Robert B. Woodward. Woodward had made his fortune…
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Shadow Kingdom
16th at Missouri Potrero Hill The plaque at the site reads: This artwork is inspired by the history of Mission Bay, a 5,000 year-old tidal marsh that was once the habitat of a rich array of flora and fauna. Growth of the city in the 19th century brought shipyards, warehouses and railroads and this part…
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Mosaics of Balboa Park
Ocean and San Jose Avenue Mission Terrace/Outer Mission There are several mosaics throughout the new Balboa Park Playground. This bench sits on the exterior of the playground and explains about the restoration of the park, it also lists all the donors that helped to make the project possible. The mosaic work is by Rachel Rodi. …
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Balboa Park’s Art Fence
Ocean and San Jose Avenue Mission Terrace/Outer Mission Balboa Park became part of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department in 1908. In the 1950s a swimming pool and baseball fields were added. Then in 1953 a 3,000 person soccer stadium was included in the park. The 1970s brought a tot park, and then age and…
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Monarch
1600 Owens Mission Bay, San Francisco Cliff Garten Studio is internationally recognized for creating integrated public art projects which collaborate with urban design, architecture, landscape architecture and engineering to challenge the assumptions of how public places are built and used. Through a diversity of materials, methods and scale, the studio is committed to exploiting the…
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The Park Emergency Hospital
811 Stanyan Golden Gate Park The Park Emergency Hospital is part of a system of Emergency Hospitals that existed in San Francisco during the early 1900s. There were four of them. Park, Central (in Civic Center and still functioning), Alemany and Harbor (since torn down). This particular hospital has been designated City Landmark #201. Built in…
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Anima by Jim Sanborn
1700 Owens Street Mission Bay, San Francisco This piece, in Mission Bay, is titled Anima, and is by American Sculptor Jim Sanborn (1945 – ). Sanborn is best known for creating the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a piece of work that has captured the imagination of cryptologists around the world for years. He…
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Central Emergency and Detention Hospital
50 Dr. Tom Waddell Place previously 50 Lech Walesa previously 50 Ivy In the alley, somewhat behind the Public Health Building that dominates the corner of Polk and Grove in San Francisco’s Civic Center is a small building that was once the Central Emergency and Detention Hospital. According to the 1918 Municipal Record Volume 11…
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Overflow X
1500 Owens Street Mission Bay, San Francisco Overflow X is a stainless steel sculpture by Jaume Plensa. Jaume Plensa was born in 1955 in Barcelona, where he studied at the Llotja School of Art and Design and at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Art. He has been a teacher at the École nationale supérieure…
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Elevators and Marine Engines
235 First Street Foundry Square This wonderful building, sitting amongst all of the surrounding high-rises brings joy to the eye and a question to the mind. The City of San Francisco has labeled this the H.N. Cook Belting Company designed by Ward and Blohme. However the American Architect and Architecture Magazine, Volume 113 disputes that…
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The Metropolitan Laundry Company
7 Heron South of Market, San Francisco The lovely trumpet vine on this building is hiding a lot of the detail of the brick work, but the buildings history is the real charm. Built around 1907, this was once part of the Metropolitan Laundry Company and Power Plant. According to the January 8, 1910 Journal of…
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The Bethlehem Steel Building
Pier 70 Dog Patch The Bethlehem Steel Office Building, also known as Building 101, was designed by San Francisco architect Fredrick H. Meyer. The building anchors Pier 70, sitting at its entry on the corner of Illinois and 20th Street. Built in 1917, the building is Classical Revival in style. The three story building consists of 56,268…
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1176 Harrison
This 9,796 square-foot building is actually two: the east section was constructed in 1912 and the west section was constructed in 1929. The buildings were unified by the present façade in 1929, This 1-story, steel and reinforced concrete industrial building was designed in the Art Moderne style. The interesting architectural details include an incised sign that reads…
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1140 Harrison Street
This nondescript industrial building is about to be torn down for a giant condominium project. I thought it time to get it documented before it disappeared. Part of the SOMA Light Industrial and Residential Historic District, the building has been marked historical due to its age, but that does not prevent it from being torn…
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Lily Pond
125 W. Fullerton Parkway Lincoln Park Chicago, Illinois Chicago’s official motto is “Urbs in Horto,” which translates to “City in a Garden”, much of the garden aspects of this town can be attributed to Alfred Caldwell and his mentor Jens Jensen. Lily Pond is the work of Alfred Caldwell. During the depression, Caldwell worked on…
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Boulder Man
951 Chicago Avenue Oak Park, Chicago On the piers flanking the entry to Frank Lloyd Wrights 1898 architectural studio in Oak Park, Illinois, sit these two pieces, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and executed by Richard Bock. “Boulder Man” is the most valuable of Richard Bock’s work. He originally designed and modeled the piece to…
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Standing Lincoln
Off N. Lake Shore Drive near W. North Avenue Chicago This is one of the two sculptures in Lincoln Park that were bequeathed to Chicago upon the death of lumberman Eli Bates. This 12 foot tall figure known as the “Standing Lincoln” was the first of Saint-Gaudens’ statues of Lincoln. He received the commission for…
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Shakespeare in Chicago
N. Lincoln Parkway West and W. Belden Avenue Chicago According to the Chicago Parks Department: “When Samuel Johnston, a successful north side businessman, died in 1886, he left a sizeable gift in his will for several charities as well as money for a memorial to William Shakespeare in Lincoln Park. A competition was held to…
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Eli Bates Fountain
This whimsical fountain is known as both the Eli Bates Fountain and “Storks at Play”. Eli Bates was a Chicago lumberman who died in 1881. He bequeathed a fund for the commission of Standing Lincoln, also by Saint-Gaudens, and this fountain, both to be placed in Lincoln Park. Installed in 1887 it was a joint…
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Columbus Circle
Columbus Circle In front of Union Station Washington D.C. The fountain, which was co-created by Lorado Taft and architect Daniel Burnham, was influenced by a fountain designed by Frederick MacMonnies that was displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. MacMonnies work depicted a figure of Columbia sitting on a ship with a…
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Fountain of Time
6000 Cottage Grove Avenue Chicago, Illinois Fountain of Time, or simply Time, is a 126 foot long sculpture by Lorado Taft, within Washington Park in Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture was inspired by Henry Austin Dobson’s poem, “Paradox of Time”. “Time goes, you say? Ah no, Alas, time stays, we go”. The sculpture includes Father Time, hooded…
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Fountain of the Great Lakes
Nichols Bridgeway Off E. Jackson and South Michigan Avenue Chicago Fountain of the Great Lakes or Spirit of the Great Lakes Fountain is an allegorical sculpture by Lorado Taft at the Art Institute of Chicago. The fountain was moved to this spot in the 1960s. Created between 1907-1913, the bronze fountain depicts five women arranged…
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Eternal Silence
The Eternal Silence, (also called Eternal Silence or Statue of Death) marks the grave of Dexter Graves, who led a group of thirteen families that moved from Ohio to Chicago in 1831, making them some of Chicago’s earliest settlers. Graves died in 1844, seventy-five years before the creation of the statue, and sixteen years before Graceland…
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Adam’s Memorial
Section E Rock Creek Cemetery Washington D.C. I visit the Adams Memorial whenever I am in Washington D.C. This hauntingly beautiful sculpture is one I can never tire of. It is by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The Smithsonian probably writes about it best: Marion Hooper “Clover” Adams, wife of the writer Henry Adams, committed suicide in…
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Clara Porset
Nespresso is running an ad for Cuban Coffee. On Sunday June 26, 2016, they took out a full page ad using Hemingway’s home in Havana as the perfect backdrop. There in the photo were two exquisite Clara Porset chairs. I thought it time to talk about her. Clara María del Carmen Magdalena Porset y Dumás…
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