Public art was an intrinsic part of Timothy Pflueger’s vision for the Ocean Campus of City College of San Francisco. Two massive sculptures, installed over eighty years ago, continue to please and inspire me: Fred Olmsted’s “Leonard Da Vinci” and “Thomas Alva Edison.” Their creation is tied to founding of the campus in 1940.
Leonardo Da Vinci by Fred Olmsted. Science Hall, City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus. Photo: Amy O’Hair
Leonardo Da Vinci by Fred Olmsted. Science Hall, City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus. Photo: Amy O’Hair
The monumental faces themselves show smooth modernist planes and simplicity—and each reveals a secret on the reverse side, which I’ll get to.
Thomas Alva Edison by Fred Olmsted. Science Hall, City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus. Photo: Amy O’Hair
Thomas Alva Edison by Fred Olmsted. Science Hall, City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus. Photo: Amy O’Hair
Fred Olmsted was part of Pflueger’s stable of artists, one of many mural painters and sculptors whom he commissioned for works on the inside and outside of the many buildings he designed in San Francisco. Science Hall, the first classroom building on the campus, has murals inside the west entrance (which is also Olmsted’s work) as well as one each exterior end (by Herman Volz). Continue reading “City College Heads: Science and Inspiration”→
[Update Dec 2023: some photographs of the quickly rising Gateway building now found at the end of this post.]
As recently revealed in the Ingleside Light, three of City College of San Francisco’s iconic public artworks are slated for relocation into the new Gateway building complex currently under construction at Ocean Avenue and Frida Kahlo Way. The collection of public art belonging to City College is significant and extensive, and the selection of these three works, spanning 65 years, forms a suitably impressive welcome to any student or visitor, and a visual statement about the importance and history of the college.
Let’s take a closer look at the works and the artists.
Bighorn Mountain Ram
In 1940, in the Art In Action ‘pit’ at the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE), Dudley Carter skillfully carved the form of a springing ram into a massive redwood trunk using just a woodsman’s axe.
Dudley Carter in the Golden Gate International Exposition Art-in-Action ‘pit’, carving ‘Bighorn Mountain Ram’. 1940. RiveraMural.org
Nearby, up on scaffolding above the ‘pit’, famed muralist Diego Rivera was also at work, painting the panels of Pan-American Unity, which would also later end up on the college’s campus. Rivera was so impressed by Carter that he made the process of the Ram’s creation and its sculptor the centerpiece of the mural. One Dudley Carter was not enough for Rivera; to show what he so admired, he painted three Carters.
A portion of ‘Pan-American Unity’ by Diego Rivera, showing his three depictions of Dudley Carter at work with his axe, carving ‘Bighorn Mountain Ram’. The centerpiece of the enormous mural by Rivera. Lower right: Carter with Timothy Pflueger. Lower left: Frida Kahlo. RiveraMural.org
This website, which I began in 2015, has not been the only effort to collect and rediscover the stories of this neighborhood; almost twenty years ago, Sunnyside Neighborhood Association initiated a wide-ranging project to rediscover historical materials and record oral histories of old-time residents. One result of the group’s work was to present a history fair in February 2006, where documents and photos were shared with the community. Another product of their efforts was a little booklet, “A Brief Look at Sunnyside”.
The members of Sunnyside Neighborhood Association (SNA) who worked on the project were led by Jennifer Heggie, and included Daphne Powell, Robert Danielson, David Becker, Karen Greenwood Henke, Bill Wilson, and Rick Lopez. They were aided in their work by Woody LaBounty and Lori Ungaretti at Western Neighborhoods Project (WNP). Other contributors included Julia Bergman, City College of San Francisco’s Chief Librarian and Archivist (now deceased), and local history author Jacqueline Proctor, as well as two workers at St Finn Barr Church, Denise McEvoy and Kathleen Ramsay.
The Oral Histories
The oral history interviews took place in 1995, 2005, and 2006, and were conducted with six people who grew up in Sunnyside, mostly before the Second World War. To preserve the interviews, the transcripts were later archived at the San Francisco History Center.[1] The subjects described what it was like in the neighborhood, where they played and went to school, what transit they took, the landscapes and animals that were a part of their childhoods, and so on. (I’ll quote extensively from the oral histories later in this post.)
By Amy O’Hair More photos and history about the Balboa Reservoir here.
The Balboa Reservoir is due for big changes, if all goes to plan—perhaps the last of its many transformations since Adolph Sutro’s eucalyptus trees were cleared from this corner of his massive forest in 1894. From these recent images I hope to someday create then-and-now photo sliders, showing dramatic changes after housing and a park go up on this land. These are places that automated street-mapping cameras never went, but later will go, when there are new streets and houses.
On the Lower Reservoir, the planned housing project has yet to break ground, but I have included some images from the developers’ projections. See plans here (under ‘Meetings’ > PDFs labeled ‘Boards for Community Feedback’; the most recent one has been removed unfortunately). More about the planned housing project on the developers website. Read some recent news on the funding at theIngleside Light.
Meanwhile, on the Upper Reservoir, City College is presently in the process of building the STEAM Center, for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math; a tall crane rises over the construction area, an unusual but increasingly more common sight in these neighborhoods. Read about the new project at the Ingleside Light. Or on CCSF’s own page about the new construction. Rendering and floorplans here.
In related news, the Board of Supervisors has approved naming the extension of Lee Avenue through the housing project after the mayor who set the ball rolling for the new development in 2014: “Mayor Edwin M. Lee 李孟賢市長街”. The other planned new streets have been given generic plant names–read more at the Ingleside Light.
First some general views, then some attention to existing and projected pedestrian accessways.
Balboa Reservoir, spring 2023. View south from north berm. Ocean Avenue multi-unit development in view. Photo: Amy O’Hair.Developers’ projected view of central park, Balboa Reservoir. View toward south. Document here. Balboa Reservoir, spring 2023. View northeast from west berm. Mount Davidson and City College construction in view. Photo: Amy O’Hair.
Looking north from Summit Street near Thrift in Ingleside. Note changes in the Balboa Reservoir and along Ocean Avenue (center), while residential streets are little altered (except perhaps bigger trees) in 50 years. Science Hill at City College Ocean Campus visible on the far right.
Future changes planned for the Balboa Reservoir will alter the view once again in coming years—both the housing development on the western portion, and City College’s plans for the eastern portion. A new house on the lower left muddles the 2022 view a bit.
Traffic calming – planting and saving trees – safe places for children to play – newly revealed local history: the issues on the minds of Sunnysiders fifty years ago were not so different from things that interest residents now. The newsletters of Sunnyside’s local organization from those years have recently been archived and made available online at the Internet Archive, and tell some inspiring stories about actions that still impact our lives today.
Although Sunnyside has seen organized advocacy by residents since the 1890s (more here), the current organization, Sunnyside Neighborhood Association (SNA), dates to late 1974.[1] The 1970s saw a surge of local activism in the many neighborhoods in San Francisco. Five decades later, we still enjoy some of the fruits of that upwelling, for instance in open spaces that were established as parks. There was also a downside to the activism then that still affects the city; in some areas, such as the Richmond district, residents fought density with downzoning measures, working to exclude multi-unit buildings and “retain local character,” resulting in a dearth of housing units in subsequent decades, and de facto residential segregation.
But SNA was, according to the record of these early newsletters, more intent on trees, parks, and calming traffic. Monterey Boulevard had already undergone big changes in the 1950s and 1960s, with an extensive apartment-building boom. The 1970s saw even more upzoning on the boulevard. SNA didn’t oppose more housing, but as we’ll see, it did try to rescue trees that were eventually to fall victim to a particularly determined developer of multi-unit buildings, among many other projects, such as tree-planting and boosting local businesses.
The shabby open space that makes up the remaining portion of the Balboa Reservoir was certainly one place where a person was unlikely to catch Covid this year. Plenty of people came to chill out, literally in the fog or figuratively in the solitude.
From February to June 2021, the reservoir land played its part in the recovery by serving as an overflow route for people in cars coming to the adjacent City College of San Francisco mass vaccination site. The goats were back for their annual munch in August. The big storm in October briefly left more standing water than this would-be reservoir ever held before. Construction on the planned housing project. for the site is due to begin in 2022. All photographs Amy O’Hair except where noted otherwise. Thanks to Susan Sutton and Joanna Pearlstein for their contributions.
A sunset at Balboa Reservoir in March 2021.This modest swing has seen a lot of both joy and contemplation over the years. Sept 2021.Masked teens, lounging on the berm. Mar 2021.
In the next few years, a large section of the Balboa Reservoir land will be developed as a housing project and park, making it a good time to review its long, complex, and often surprising history.
When the old gymnasiums at the City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus were torn down in 2008, as the new Wellness Center was built, three pieces of artwork by Sargent Johnson attached to the structures had to come down too. Fortunately they were preserved, though their destiny remains undetermined.
Mounted over the entrances of the old gyms were three bas-reliefs Johnson created when it was built in 1940. Architect Timothy Pflueger commissioned the works, just as he commissioned art for almost every building he designed, even something as modest as a gym.
The gyms (one for women, one for men) were two of the first three buildings designed by Pflueger and constructed for the campus, the third being Science Hall. That building’s colorful murals are much better known as public art, and still stand. Johnson’s works were removed before the gyms were demolished, and have been in storage since then.
The Sports Figures
The three reliefs depict sports-related subjects: a group of female ball players; a female tennis player; and a group of male athletes. They are made of cast concrete.
On the South Gymnasium (women’s) there were two figures. First, a set of three women playing medicine ball. (See the end of this article for an explanation of medicine ball.)
Sargent Johnson, medicine ball players, cast concrete relief, 7’4” x 9’, 1940. City College of San Francisco. Photo: Will Maynez.
