Mission Dolores
(LA MISIÓN SAN FRANCISCO DE ASÍS)
(continuation)
Part 2
Entry Author: Br.
Guire Cleary, S.S.F
MISSION DOLORES - POST-FRANCISCAN HISTORY
The period 1835 to 1846 was an uncertain time for the now
secularized missions of Alta California. Most of the buildings
in the compound of Mission Dolores were taken over for secular
purposes. The building of two plank roads from Yerba Buena
to the Mission District in the 1850s allowed easy access to
what became an entertainment district. Bull and bear fights,
gambling, drinking, and other entertainments became a feature
of the place, although the mission church continued as a place
of prayer. Some of the buildings were turned into a hospital,
German brewery, saloons, gambling hall, etc. The acquisition
of Alta California by the United States of America began an
investigation into the land claims asserted by the Mexicans.
Most of these claims had been carved out of what had previously
been mission holdings. Much of the immediate land of the mission
became part of Rancho San Miguel, owned by the Noe family.
On March 3, 1851, President James Buchanan confirmed some
four acres of the original immense holdings of Mission Dolores
to Bishop Alemany. On March 18, 1848, one of San Francisco's
most prominent citizens, William Alexander Leidesdorff, died
and was laid to rest inside the mission church. Most of San
Francisco's population of some 400 were said to have attended
the burial.
Mission Dolores (Church and Mission). Ca.
1898
The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley
Within two years the population had grown to more than 25,000.
Many of the Argonauts were Irish, French, and German Roman
Catholics and the burial registers show a change from predominately
Spanish names to Irish. In honor of the centennial of San
Francisco in 1876 and to accommodate a growing population,
Mission Dolores dedicated a new red brick Victorian neo-gothic
church. The erection of a modern church next door to the old
mission allowed for the adobe church and its Spanish era art
to be preserved, or at least largely forgotten except as a
relic of the past. On April 18, 1906, a major earthquake that
created fires that heavily ravaged the Mission District struck
San Francisco. In an effort to save Mission Dolores from destruction,
firefighters dynamited the Convent and School of Notre Dame
across the street from the mission church. Later this was
thought to have been unnecessary. While the adobe structure
survived, the red brick church was structurally compromised
and torn down. Some 23 square blocks of the 46 square blocks
comprising the parish of Mission Dolores were destroyed on
April 18-20, 1906. A temporary church was erected along 16th
Street.
Noted San Francisco architect Willis Polk supervised a sensitive
retrofitting and restoration of the adobe church in 1917.
Foundations for a new parish church of steel and concrete
were laid in 1913 and the first Mass was held on Christmas
Day 1918. World War II saw many changes in the parish. Its
Irish population relocated, and increasingly the parish served
a largely Latin American population. On February 8, 1952,
Pope Pius XII raised the church to the honor of a Minor Basilica.
Mission Dolorebecame the first church designated a basilica
west of the Mississippi River and only the fourth to be so
honored at that time. On September 17, 1987, Pope John Paul
II became the first reigning Roman Pontiff to visit San Francisco
and pray at the Basilica. Particularly memorable and moving
was his embracing of a child with AIDS. Another earthquake
in 1989 occasioned a major campaign for retrofitting, strengthening
and conservation. The cemetery and the artwork of the old
mission church were restored to period appearance in 1995.
MISSION DOLORES - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
The mission church we see today is a rectangular adobe building
114 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 21 feet high from floor to
ceiling. The walls are four feet thick, except for the walls
facing Dolores Street, which are ten feet thick. It is thought
that the mud for the adobe was taken from the banks of Dolores
Creek about where Dolores and Dorland Streets are today. The
foundations are four feet wide and four feet deep and said
to be of stones quarried from Mint Hill. In the front wall
(fachada) of the mission are three niches containing the three
original bells brought up from Mexico in the 1790s. The names
of the bells, from south to north are San Martin, San Francisco
and San Jose. The central bell is in its original wooden stocks
secured by rawhide. Many of the roof tiles are the originals
made on site in 1794. Mission Dolores is particularly famed
for its artwork. Most of the paintings were imported from
Mexico before the Revolution of 1810. The principal ornaments
are the altars, statues and reredos. The principal altar was
brought by ship from Mexico in 1796, while the two side altars
followed in 1810.
The U.S. Department of the Interior in its Historic American
Buildings Survey of 1936 said of the interior decoration,
"It is a most extraordinary piece of Spanish Baroque
decorative art, possibly without equal in North America outside
of Mexico." The principal altar is fashioned in Baroque
taste, while the side altars reflect an Enlightenment period
taste with a more severe neoclassical style. Also notable
are the ceiling rafters decorated in an Ohlone motif of ochre,
white, red, and blue/gray colored chevrons. Comparisons have
been made to similar motifs in Ohlone basket work. The holy
water fonts at the back of the church are Chinese plates brought
to California on the Manila Galleons in the 18th century.
The standing candlestick in the sanctuary is of Ohlone manufacture.
Among the most interesting 18th century Mexican paintings
is an oil painting of "Our Lady and the Christ Child
Arriving to the New World." Sometimes this painting has
been humorously called "Our Lady Sailing through the
Golden Gate."
The parish church, commonly called the Basilica, was dedicated
on Christmas Day 1918. Architects Frank T. Shea and John O.
Lofquist designed the new parish church in the California
Mission style and of concrete and steel to withstand earthquakes.
Decoration of the new church continued for another 15 years
and included much Baroque Mexican architectural embellishment.
This work, under the direction of architect Henry Minton,
was undertaken for the celebration of San Francisco's sesquicentennial
in 1926. Particularly noteworthy are the interior mosaics
and stained glass windows depicting the 21 Franciscan missions
of Alta California executed by the Meyer Company of Munich.
Considerable care went into the design of the art and a letter
from the Meyer Company to the pastor, Rev. Andrew B. Abrott,
complained that each window had been redesigned once or twice
and that the devalued American dollar made the project a "sour
deficit." The Basilica, in addition to being a place
of prayer and pilgrimage, is a performance venue for such
renowned groups as the Coro Hispano de San Francisco, Conjunto
Neuvo Mundo, and Chanticleer.
MISSION DOLORES CEMETERY
Mission Dolores contains one of the two remaining cemeteries
within the city limits of San Francisco. The first burial
at Mission Dolores was that of a nine-year-old daughter of
the soldier Francisco Alvarez in 1777. The last burial was
1898. The original burial site was some three times larger
than the now existing site and there has been some consolidation
and removal of remains. Although there are only about 200
existing headstones, some 10,000 people were buried here,
of whom some 5,000 were Indians. Notable burials in the cemetery
include early colonial families such as Noe, Sanchez, and
Bernal. Luis Antonio Arguello, the first Mexican governor
of Alta California, and Francisco de Haro, the first alcalde,
are buried close to each other. The cemetery is also the final
resting place of three victims of the Committee of Vigilance,
James "Yankee" Sullivan, Charles Cora, and James
Casey. Inside the mission church are buried Lt. Moraga, Rev.
Richard Carroll, William Leidesdorff, and three members of
the Noe family. The Noes owned Rancho San Miguel, which extended
over a considerable area of Noe and Eureka Valleys.
The body of the founder of the Mission and Royal Presidio
of San Francisco, Lieutenant Jose Joaquin Moraga, was laid
to rest in the previous mission church after his death on
July 13, 1785. So deeply was he esteemed by the Franciscans
that when the current church was dedicated in 1791, Moraga's
body was reinterred inside the mission close to the altar.
As Padre Palóu recorded in the Burial Register, "The
remains of the body of Don Jose Joaquin Moraga, founder and
captain commander of the neighboring Presidio and of this
establishment of our Father Saint Francis, were transferred
from the old church to the new one, with all the pomp that
was possible and becoming to his merits." These and other
handwritten documents and manuscripts are still preserved
at Mission Dolores.
MISSION DOLORES - TODAY
While the merits and justice of the mission system are still
a matter of debate, the centrality of the missions to California
history has never been questioned. Mission Dolores was the
meeting place between the First Peoples and the Spanish Empire
and Mexican Republic. The ramifications of the Encounter (encuentro)
are still playing out whenever San Franciscans attempt to
make sense of their identity or history as a community. Mission
Dolores continues as an active parish of the Roman Catholic
faith. Mission Dolores Elementary School serves some 233 children.
The year 2001 marked the designation of Mission Dolores as
a Jubilee Pilgrimage site and the 225th anniversary of its
establishment. In celebration of these events Ohlone descendants
were invited to plant specimens of culturally significant
flowers, shrubs, and herbs. A traditional tule reed house
was also erected. The Native Sons of the Golden West placed
a plaque on the wall of the mission paying tribute to the
Ohlone Nation as the founders and builders of the mission
and this community, thus making Mission
Dolores one of the very few colonial places in California
explicitly memorializing the contributions of the First Peoples.
Mission Dolores has been recognized as a landmark by both
the City of San Francisco and the State of California. The
Old Mission welcomes thousands of tourists, visitors, pilgrims
and school children every year. Its beauty has captured the
imagination of poets (Bret Hart, "The Bells of Mission
Dolores"), filmmakers (Alfred Hitchcock, "Vertigo"),
rock musicians (Jerry Garcia, "Mission in the Rain"),
shipbuilders (S.S. Mission Dolores and S.S. Mission San Francisco),
and tens of thousands of people wishing to take in the beauty
of its architecture and art, the peace inside its walls and
cemetery, and the continuous history of living the Franciscan
motto, "La Paz y Bien," Peace and All Good.
[Mission Dolores is located at the corner of 16th and Dolores
Streets. The mailing address is 3321 16th Street, San Francisco,
CA 94114. Visiting hours are seven days a week, 9:00 a.m.
to 4:00 p.m. (4:30 p.m. in the months of May through October).
The mission is closed on some holidays. Visit the web site
at http://www.missiondolores.citysearch.com/
for days of closure, listings of special events and obtaining
information packets for school reports. Telephone: 415-623-8206.
Telephone the curator for information on tours, history, and
volunteer opportunities.]
Bibliography
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Wallace Herberd, 1963.
Bolton, Herbert Eugene. Font's Complete Diary. A Chronicle
of the Founding of
San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1933.
Englehardt, OFM, Zephyrin. San Francisco or Mission Dolores.
Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1924.
Cleary, S.S.F., Guire. "Franciscan Sunset at Mission
Dolores." The Argonaut, Volume 12, No. 2 (Winter
2001).
Cowan, Robert Ernest. Mission Dolores. San Francisco:
Eureka Press, 1916.
Davis, John F. The Founding of San Francisco, Presidio
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Merrill, George A. The Story of Lake Dolores and Mission
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Millikin, Randall. A Time of Little Choice. Menlo Park:
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O'Kane, Thomas. Sermon on the Occasion of the 160th Anniversary
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Co., 1936.
Portman, Frank. "Pedro Benito Cambón, OFM:
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of San Francisco Mission. Hong Kong: Libra Press. 1979.
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