San Francisco: Coit Tower

Coit Tower, built in 1933, is a 64 metre art deco monument to the fire fighters of San Francisco in the Telegraph Hill neighbourhood.  The tower includes murals by 26 different artists and numerous assistants.


Lillie Coit was one of the more eccentric characters in the history of North Beach and Telegraph Hill, smoking cigars and wearing trousers long before it was socially acceptable for women to do so. She was an avid gambler and often dressed like a man in order to gamble in the males-only establishments that dotted North Beach. She was reputed to have shaved her head so her wigs would fit better.


Lillie's fortunes funded the monument after her death in 1929, as she had requested. At the age of fifteen she witnessed the Knickerbocker Engine Co. No. 5 in response to a fire call up on Telegraph Hill when they were shorthanded, and threw her school books to the ground and pitched in to help.  After that Lillie became the Engine Co. mascot, and was frequently riding with the Knickerbocker Engine Co. 5, especially in street parades and other celebrations. Through her youth and adulthood Lillie was recognized as an honorary fire fighter.

Her will read that she wished for one third of her fortune "to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved." Two memorials were built in her name. One was Coit Tower, and the other was a sculpture depicting three firemen, one of them carrying a woman in his arms. Lillie is today the matron saint of San Francisco fire fighters.

Coit Tower with kite.



Despite Coit's affinity with the San Francisco fire fighters, Wikipedia assures us that the tower was not designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle.

San Francisco: Yerba Buena Gardens

Yerba Buena was named in 1835 when the English family of William A. Richardson settled in the area. Wild mint grew rampant in the surrounding hills, and the name translates from the Spanish for "good herb."  

In 1846, Captain John Montgomery took possession of the Yerba Buena settlement in the name of the United States of America.  Mexican General Vallejo bargained to give up a portion of his property in exchange for naming the new town after his wife, Francisca, so the entire settlement was renamed San Francisco.
At the time, its 462 inhabitants lived in tents, shanties, and adobe huts.
The present Yerba Buena Gardens opened in 1993.  The gardens include various cultural buildings, such as the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, public art, a children’s garden, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, fountains and different kinds of gardens.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is situated behind a majestic waterfall 50 feet high and 20 feet wide which cascades over Sierra granite.


You can walk behind the waterfall to see back-lit photos from the civil rights movement and twelve glass panels set in granite and inscribed with Dr. King's inspiring words.  These inscriptions are always wet with mist from the waterfall.


The water from the waterfall circulates around a small square garden.


Specialised gardens within the Yerba Bueno include the Cho-En Butterfly Garden and the Sister City Gardens  which present plants native to the 13 sister cities of San Francisco.  Sydney is one of them, and its plant is the Australian Bluebell Sollya Heterophylla which I have to admit I’d never heard of.  Looking it up, I found it’s a native of W.A.  (I hope that at least some grow in Sydney.)


Opposite the Yerba Bueno gardens is St Patrick’s Church, established in 1851 to serve the largely Irish population of the goldfields.


Inside St Patrick’s Church – very traditional.


The back of St Patrick’s Church contrasts sharply with the Contemporary Jewish Museum, where we saw the exhibition Gertrude Stein: Five Stories.


On the other side of the Yerba Bueno Gardens is the fabulous San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) where we went to see the exhibition The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.  There’s Pat who can hardly wait to get inside.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Steins — writer Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael's wife, Sarah — were among the first to recognize the talents of avant-garde painters like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Through their friendship and patronage, they helped spark an artistic revolution. This landmark exhibition draws on collections around the world to reunite the Steins' unparalleled holdings of modern art, bringing together, for the first time in a generation, dozens of works by Matisse, Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and many others. Artworks on view include Matisse's Blue Nude (Baltimore Museum of Art) and Self-Portrait (Statens Museum, Copenhagen), and Picasso's famous portrait Gertrude Stein (Metropolitan Museum of Art).  See http://www.sfmoma.org/

This was a seriously splendid exhibition.

Caught up in the magic of the moment, I bought Gertrude Stein’s book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.  This is not the autobiography of poor Alice at all, but rather the memoirs of Gertrude (who always calls herself Gertrude Stein, in every paragraph).  The book gives an interesting insight into the Stein’s life in Paris, their friendship with these emerging artists and purchases of their paintings while they were still unknown.

However, I am finding Gertrude’s style irritating and condescending, she repeats herself, she repeats herself, she uses commas where most people use full stops, this makes her work tiring, very tiring to read, I find myself dropping off in the middle of paragraphs, yet I suppose this is what you should expect from someone who has coined the famous phrase “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” among others also the one "To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write".

San Francisco: Contemporary Jewish Museum

 

This building is a diversion of angles from the expected.  The contents, for Pat at least, were also a diversion from the expected.

 

The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) was founded in 1984 in San Francisco, with the goal of offering contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas. In 2008, the Museum moved to the Yerba Buena Gardens district of San Francisco’s South of Market neighbourhood, into a funky new building designed by architect Daniel Libeskind.  The museum occupies and extends the 1907 Jesse Street Power Substation, originally designed by Willis Polk.

 

The museum has no permanent collection. Instead, it curates and hosts a broad array of exhibitions.  Pat was expecting to see exhibits of Moses parting the Red Sea, or perhaps bits of the Burning Bush.

 

In his viewpoint, Pat was unknowingly in accordance with Edward Rothstein of the New York Times, who   criticized the museum for its dedication to “multiple perspectives and open-mindedness…without a grounding in knowledge, without history, detail, object and belief.” Without a permanent collection, the Contemporary Jewish Museum forgoes a sense of a collective Jewish past, he says.  (So does Pat.)

 

When we visited, the museum was presenting Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories .  The exhibition is “an art-filled biographical exploration of Stein’s identities as a literary pioneer, transatlantic modernist, Jewish-American expatriate, American celebrity, art collector, and muse to artists of several generations. The exhibition also features Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967), Stein’s life-long partner, and explores the aesthetics of dress, home décor, entertainment, and food that the two women created together.

 

Gertrude and Alice OUT as a couple!  (From http://gsteinpics.blogspot.com)

 

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), one of the most influential Americans of the 20^th century, is perhaps most famous as a modern writer and the creator of such oft-repeated phrases as “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” But Stein’s reach across the arts was extraordinary, extending well beyond literature to include collaborations in opera, ballet, and more, and her influence as a style-maker, art collector, and networker was considerable.  (From http://www.thecjm.org/)

 

 

George Platt Lynes, Gertrude Stein, Bilignin, 1931, toned gelatin silver print.  (Courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection.)

 

Stein almost became a medical doctor, worked with William James, dropped out of that plan, joined her brother in Paris, learned to appreciate modern art before it was trendy, collected paintings, collected artist friends, collected writer friends, and influenced Hemingway (most famously). Her writing was never understood or successful until she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and then she was a sensation.  (I bought the book later that afternoon at a related exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which we visited next, and I’m really struggling with it!)

 

Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906.  (From http://gsteinpics.blogspot.com) 

 

We later saw the original of this portrait in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

 

Gertrude beside her portrait by Picasso.  (From http://gsteinpics.blogspot.com)

When someone commented that Stein didn't look like her portrait, Picasso famously replied, "She will."

 

I found the exhibition extremely interesting, while Pat did not.

 

Stop Press.  About a week after we returned to Australia, a security guard (who turned out to be a temporary employee), asked two women in the museum to stop holding hands. Ironically, they were viewing the Gertrude Stein exhibition, which not only celebrates her life and work, but also emphasizes her life long partnership with Alice B. Toklas and their circle of gay friends.

Apparently, the guard told the couple that they couldn’t hold hands in the museum, and the two women started to argue with him. After a small crowd began to form around them, the guard attempted to escort the couple out the door.

The museum has apologized to the couple and has asked the private security agency that employs the guard to reprimand him.  The agency will now be instituting “sensitivity training” for their personnel.

 

In addition, to demonstrate its ongoing commitment to diversity, the Museum is staging a special Hand Holding Day on Sunday 24th July.  Visitors are encouraged “to come and stroll hand in hand through the galleries, no matter who you love, and to celebrate the LGBT families in our community.”

“We are excited about welcoming everyone to the Museum for a day of celebration,” says CJM Director and CEO Connie Wolf. “The Museum is dedicated to engaging all visitors in the diversity of culture, history, art, and ideas. Sunday at the Museum will be an extraordinary opportunity to share in the diversity of people, ideas, and community.”

 

Can’t wait to see how it goes.

San Francisco: Glen Canyon Park

Last Christmas, in preparation for our visit, Laura gave me the book Stairway Walks of San Francisco by Adah Bakalinsky, who is currently about 85 and still doing book signings.  This is apparently the definitive book on stairway walks, and was specifically recommended to us by Sean Timberlake, our Castro guide.  We found the book very informative and helpful, and used it a lot.
So did Laura – she suggested this walk, and discovered this magnificent area of San Francisco she hadn’t known about either.

 We took the trail leading into the park from the Diamond Heights Shopping Centre.  From being in suburbia, suddenly you are in a wilderness.
Pat and Laura go boldly forward.


In the 1850s, Adolph Sutro (of Sutro Tower fame) bought 28 hectares of the canyon, which he named "Gum Tree Ranch" after the Australian blue gums he had planted there (one in the foreground).
Pat and Laura find a seat.


The first commercial manufacturing of dynamite in the US occurred in this canyon. In 1868, the Giant Powder Company began production at its factory in the park under license from Alfred Nobel, to produce his new explosive in America. 
The factory did not last long. A year later, an explosion completely destroyed the entire facility, turning every one of the buildings on the place into "hundreds of pieces", according to a newspaper account. Two people were killed, and nine injured.  The plant was subsequently rebuilt in the sand dunes south of Golden Gate Park, but was moved several more times following more explosions.
Alfred Nobel (1833 – 1896) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer and   the inventor of dynamite.  In his last will, he used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and for work in peace.
Pat and Laura contemplate the canyon.


Oh look, there’s the Sutro Tower (the Alien) watching over us.
Pat and Laura descend….

  ….and descend….


….and descend.
I think this is how this walk came to be included in the book of stairway walks.


The park includes diverse terrains.  At the top can be seen some of Adolph Sutro’s blue gums, and some extensive grassland.


There are also some striking rocky outcrops, popular with rock climbers.


At the bottom of the canyon flows Islais Creek, surrounded by willow thickets.


Pat and Laura descend the steep track into the willow thickets.


In the willow thickets beside Islais Creek, the temperature was immediately several degrees cooler.  Laura is still carrying Stairway Walks of San Francisco .
Down here, we could walk over things….


….and under things.


We came across this pretty blue bird, which I haven’t been able to identify.  Any help would be welcome.


We then emerged into a clearing, with more of Adolph Sutro’s blue gums….


….and more rocky outcrops.
Then we turned round and went all the way back again.

While the weather had been very clear when we entered the canyon, when we were leaving, a couple of hours later, the fog was beginning to roll in over Mt Davidson.  Here are some pictures:

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.


The next time we were in town, we went to the burger bar on the second top floor of Macy’s.  The view was just as good and there wasn’t a long wait.


Down below in Union Square, people were enjoying the outdoor tables….


…..or just lying on the grass.
(Now wouldn’t some grass in King George Square be a good idea!)

San Francisco: Palace of Fine Arts

The Palace of Fine Arts, which we visited by bike on our way back from the Golden Gate Bridge, is a monumental structure originally built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Expo, to exhibit works of art.  It was designed as a fictional ruin, inspired by Roman and Greek architecture.
After the Expo, most of the buildings were demolished. However, the Palace was so beloved that a Palace Preservation League was founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst while the Expo was still in progress, and so it was saved from demolition.  From 1915 until 1964, it was used for various purposes, including:
   *  An art exhibition
   *  18 lighted tennis courts
   *  Storage of trucks and jeeps during WW2   
   *  Storage for limousines used by United Nations
   *  A city Park Department warehouse
   *  A telephone book distribution centre
   *  A flag and tent storage depot
   *  A temporary Fire Department headquarters
Originally intended to stand only for the duration of the Expo, the building was not durable, and by the 1950s the simulated ruin was in fact a crumbling ruin.  In 1964 the original Palace was completely demolished and reconstructed, and became home to the Exploratorium interactive museum, and the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre.
It is now a favourite location for weddings, wedding photographs, and wedding watchers, and such an icon that a miniature replica of it was built in Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim.


There was a wedding in progress when we were there, complete with a group of wedding watchers…..


…..and the next wedding, complete with its watchers, waiting in the wings.


This rather bouffant dress was being photographed on the other side, duly observed by a couple of cyclists.


On the way home, Laura drove us through the exclusive neighbourhood of Pacific Heights, with blocks of Victorian mansions and stunning views of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge (and the Palace of Fine Arts).
The steps at Broadway and Lyon Streets, lined with sumptuous houses and manicured hedges, are the jogging track for the rich and fit.