Jan's Blog: San Francisco: Union Square

Union Square is San Francisco’s version of King George Square, or perhaps I should say that the other way around.
Union Square was built and dedicated by San Francisco's first American Mayor John Geary in 1850, and is so named for the pro-Union rallies that happened there before and during the US Civil War.

I would also have to say that Union Square is greener and more people-friendly than King George Square. Maybe they change the colour of the umbrellas every day.
This picture is taken from The Cheesecake Factory, the open air restaurant on the top floor of the department store Macy’s. You can look directly over the square to Sak’s Fifth Avenue and Tiffany’s.

Here’s Macy’s, taken from Union Square. You can see the trees on the top floor – that’s the Cheesecake factory.
Macy’s is similar to Myer’s, and Bloomingdale’s is similar to David Jones.
We found clothes cheaper in America than in Australia, although you have to add on tax, which is not included in the price. Pat bought some Reebocks in Macy’s for $30, but they were in a 70% off sale. We didn’t buy anything in Bloomingdale’s.

And guess what, inside Macy’s, were lots of pictures of a girl with “flowers in her hair”.
San Francisco seems to want to hold onto its hippie image.

In 1903 the 30 metre tall monument honouring naval hero Admiral Dewey and also the recently assassinated president William McKinley, was installed, by sculptor Robert Aitken. (Being a president in the US seems to be a high-risk occupation.)

Aitken’s sculpture featured the figure of Victory - “a triumphant bronze libertine atop a granite pedestal, her right arm outstretched, holding the laurel wreath of peace towards the horizon, her left arm, raised above her head, valiantly pointing a trident to the heavens.” (Encyclopedia of San Francisco.)
Aitken’s model for Victory was the remarkable Alma Emma de Bretteville Spreckles, considered by many local historians to be the "great grandmother of San Francisco." Born in 1881 to impoverished Danish immigrant parents, Alma was obliged to leave school at 14 to work in her parents’ laundry. She continued to educate herself, enrolling in art classes at night school, where her “wholesome beauty” led to work as a model at the school, which paid for her lessons, then to work as a nude model, which paid for much more. It was at this time that she posed for Aitken’s sculpture which still stands in Union Square. Aitken's work would not have been chosen had it not been for the crucial vote of the Committee's chairman, wealthy bachelor Adolph Spreckels.
Alma blossomed into a proper belle of San Francisco and attracted the affection of miner Charlie Anderson, whom she later successfully sued for "personal defloweration" in a breach of promise suit that made newspaper headlines. Five years later, Alma married Adolph Spreckels, who was 22 years her senior. He built her a massive Beaux Arts style mansion at Pacific Heights, where Alma hosted lavish parties.
It turned out that Spreckles took so long to marry Alma because he had syphilis, which he refrained from telling her until his health deteriorated because of it.
Alma took this in her stride, and went to Europe, to shop for 18th century furniture for her opulent mansion. There she met the pioneering sculptor Auguste Rodin, whose works made an indelible impression on the culture-hungry Alma, and she set about acquiring works of art. Next step was to build a museum to house them. With some convincing, the reluctant Adolph agreed to fund Alma's museum project.
Her architect, George Applegarth, designed a three-quarter scale adaptation of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Paris. This museum, completed in 1924, is now one of San Francisco’s premier art galleries.
Adolph died of pneumonia in 1924, making Alma a very wealthy widow. In 1939, at the age of 56, she married flamboyant cowboy businessman Elmer Awl, nine years her junior, but divorced him when she discovered he was having an affair with her niece.
Alma performed a great deal of philanthropic work during her life, especially during both World Wars.
As well as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (to which she donated more than 70 Rodin sculptures she had acquired, as well as large portion of her collection of French furniture, silver, ceramics and antiquities) Alma founded the Maryhill Museum in Washington and the San Francisco Maritime Museum at Fisherman's Wharf.
The later years of Alma's life were spent in near seclusion in her Pacific Heights mansion. She settled into a routine of morning nude swims in her backyard pool, mystery novels, and drives out to visit her two daughters, and six grandchildren. She died of pneumonia in 1968.
The Spreckels mansion is now the private residence of successful writer Danielle Steel.