Melvin Earl Cummings – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Lions and Bears in the Park

Posted by Cindy on May 23, 2013

May 232013

The Brown Gate
8th and Fulton Street

This bear and lion that grace the pillars when you enter the park at 8th and Fulton are by M. Earl Cummings. Cummings has been in this website many, many times, he also has quite a few sculptures within Golden Gate Park.

These sculptures were a gift of Susanna Brown, a one time resident of San Francisco. Ms. Brown gave $5000 to create the animals which were installed in 1908 to honor her late husband.

Gustave Albert Lansburgh of Lansburgh and Joseph, a firm noted for its movie theater design, is responsible for the stonework.

Golden Gate Park – Robert Burns

Posted by Cindy on February 26, 2012

Feb 262012

Golden Gate Park

The Plaque reads:Robert Burns
1759-1796To a Mountain Daisy 1786

Wee, modest crimson-tipped flow’r,
Thou’s met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow’r,
Thou bonie gem.

This plaque donated by the Caledonian Club of San Francisco May 1979

A campaign to have a statue of Robert Burns in San Francisco was started by John McGilvray in 1905.

The required cash was raised and Melvin Earl Cummings (whose grandparents were born in Scotland) was commissioned to produce the figure. Cummings modelled a standing figure of the poet which was then sent to the De Rome Foundry in San Francisco for casting. Sadly, the foundry and its entire contents were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and the fire.

The rebuilding of the city took precedence and the project was put on hold until 1907. Cummings had to start from the beginning, however the model and casting were finished by the end of the year and the statue was unveiled in Golden Gate Park on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1908.

The statue itself is eleven feet high and stands on a pedestal of Californian granite nine feet high. The statue is off JFK Drive near the Rhododendron Grove.