Sydney Walton Park

This is one of the entries to Sydney Walton Park in the Embarcadero Area of San Francisco.  It sits surrounded by Jackson, Pacific, Davis and Front Streets.  This wonderful park is full of art, and history.  It is just a marvelous oasis in the middle of lots and lots of high rises.  You will also find Kokkari Restaurant across the street on Jackson, one of the best Greek restaurants you will ever have the pleasure of dining in.

The Arch above is the Colombo Market Arch on Front Street, it is the only structural piece remaining from the old San Francisco produce market, a series of brick buildings that occupied this area. This is the part of town nicknamed the Barbary Coast.  By 1892 it had become a raucous district of prostitution, dance halls and thievery. The Coast continued to flourish until 1911, when Major James (Sunny Jim) Rolph initiated a clean-up. Shut down for good in the early 1920’s, it became the Produce District.

Golden Gateway Center, created in the 1960s, was designed as a mixed-use, urban residential community. At that time, it was the largest project of its kind in the country. By law, art was required as part of the project, originally the pieces were slated to be spaced around the project, and indeed some are, but later it was decided to put all the art in the park, and this is the result.   The two-acre site was designed by the well-known landscape architect Peter Walker (managing partner of Sasaki Walker, later to become SWA).

Penquins by Benny Bufano was one of the original pieces and it stands outside the park on Davis Court. Bufano is one of San Francisco’s most prolific artists and you can find his pieces in many places on this website.

“Portrait of Georgia O’Keefe” Marisol Escobar, 1982

O’Keefe sits on an old tree stump like an ancient wizard, loosely dangling her walking stick and flanked by two compact woolly dogs.” This description is based on photographs Marisol Escobar took while visiting the 90-year-old O’Keefe in New Mexico. Her sculpture, with her two pet show dogs, is the product of that visit. Marisol Escobar was born in 1930 in Paris to wealthy Venezuelan parents who were traveling through Europe.  As a child, Marisol was educated in private schools in Los Angeles, then continued her art studies in New York City. In 1963 the Venezuelan Marisol became U.S. citizen.