Portsmouth Square – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

The First School of California

Posted by Cindy on September 13, 2013

Sep 132013

Portsmouth Square
Chinatown

This marks the site of the first public school in California.

Erected in 1847 Opened April 3, 1848

This commemorative marker was erected in 1957 by the grand lodge of free and accepted masons of the state of California California Historical Landmark 587.

The following contemporary account of the little schoolhouse in Portsmouth Plaza was written by Charles P. Kimball in 1853 for the San Francisco Directory:

In April 1847, the number of inhabitants exclusive of Indians, was 375. Eight months afterwards, when a census was taken by the Board of School Trustees, the number exceeded 800. Of these there were adult males, 473; adult females, 177; children of age proper to attend school, 60. This increase of more than an hundred per cent, in eight months, took place some months before the discovery of gold, and when California was sought merely for agricultural and commercial purposes.As early as January 1847, a complaint was published in the California Starthat there was no school for children, the writer stating that he had counted forty children playing in the street. A public meeting was then called, to adopt measures to found a school. But the project failed. Some months later it was revived, with better success. A school house was built, and completed by the 1st of December….

The first American school in California was duly opened on Monday, the 3d day of April, 1848….

This first American school on the Pacific coast south of Oregon, though founded apparently on a basis so safe and economical, had a short lived existence. In less than a year the gold excitement was to sweep over the country like a whirlwind, and for a season to crush everything like intellectual and moral culture, substituting the one all-absorbing passion for the accumulation of wealth.

At this time, I have been unable to find who the sculptor was.

Goddess of Democracy

Posted by Cindy on November 6, 2012

Nov 062012

Portsmouth Square
Chinatown

During China’s 1989 Tianamen Square protests, when hope for sought-after reforms seemed to be fading, artist activists unveiled a 33-ft. tall paper mache and foam sculpture of the “Goddess of Democracy.” The statue, in the tradition of other giant torch-brandishing women, became an icon for the Democratic Movement, though it was demolished by government troops only five days after its appearance.

Not surprisingly, replicas and tributes to the figure cropped up in other countries. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, a 10-ft. tall bronze version on a granite base was dedicated in 1994. The work was created by sculptor Thomas Marsh from the San Francisco Academy of Art, with the assistance of a group of anonymous Chinese students and other volunteers.

Thomas Marsh was born in Cherokee, Iowa in 1951. He received a BFA in painting from Layton School of Art in Milwaukee Wisconsin and an MFA in sculpture from CSU Long Beach. He is a classic figurative sculptor.

Robert Louis Stevenson in Chinatown

Posted by Cindy on December 2, 2011

Dec 022011

Chinatown

Portsmouth Square

San Francisco remembers Robert Louis Stevenson with the first monument to Stevenson in the United States. It sits in Portsmouth Square in Chinatown. In 1876 Stevenson was at an art colony in France and fell in love Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, who was not only married with several children, but was 11 years his senior. In 1878, Fanny was called home by her husband in San Francisco. After a while Fanny telegraphed asking Stevenson to join her and he headed to San Francisco.

At the time Stevenson was not the world renown author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he was just a sickly and unknown writer. When he arrived in San Francisco he rented a room at 608 Bush Street, and often visited Portsmouth Square for the sunshine.

In 1880, once Fanny was free to marry Stevenson, they did and after a honeymoon in Napa Valley (home of the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park and a museum that is dedicated to his work), they headed back to Europe. In 1888 the Stevensons chartered a boat for the South Seas and eventually settled in Samoa. Stevenson died there in 1894 at the age of forty-four.

This monument was designed by Bruce Porter, landscape designer of Filoli Gardens and architect Willis Polk. It was unveiled in 1897. The inscription is from the Christmas Sermon in Stevensons’ book Across the Plains.

It reads: To remember Robert Louis Stevenson – To be honest to be kind – to earn a little to spend a little less – to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence – to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered to keep a few friends but these without capitulation – above all on the same grim condition to keep friends with himself here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.

In his novel The Wrecker, Stevenson said this of San Francisco: “She is not only the most interesting city in the Union, and the hugest smelting-pot of the races and the precious metals. She keeps, besides, the doors of the Pacific, and is port of entry to another world and another epoch in man’s history.”

608 Bush Street