Mount Davidson
Part 2
Entry Author: Jacquie
Proctor
With the popularity of this civic gathering, George Decatur
received donations from A.S. Baldwin and others to build a
more permanent 87-foot-high cross. When it burned to the ground
a year later, donations were solicited for a third one. At
the same time, Baldwin (like Sutro) found fortune with a tunnel.
This one was constructed through Twin Peaks in 1917 to bring
downtown workers to the new homes he was building on the slopes
of Mt. Davidson. Mrs. Edmund N. "Madie" Brown, ardent
nature lover and State Park Commissioner, began a campaign
in 1926 to stop "the subdivider's axe and steam shovel
from destroying in ruthless fashion the beauties of nature
on our beloved Mt. Davidson." She made a plea for help
to the Commodore Sloat Parent-Teacher Association "to
preserve for San Francisco this wooded hill, Mt. Davidson,
which will serve to provide our school children with the environment
for nature study, the Boy Scouts with an outdoor playground
for hikes and overnight camping, the Easter pilgrim with a
place of worship on its summit at dawn, and the visitor with
unsurpassed views from the highest point in the city."
The mothers and their children volunteered to collect wildflowers
to send to individuals as pleas for support. Exhibits were
arranged for display at flower shows and schools. With their
recent 19th amendment rights, the 15,000-member City and County
Federation of Women's clubs joined the campaign to preserve
Mt. Davidson as a city park. Prominent citizens were interviewed,
letters were written to individuals and organizations asking
for their support, and publicity was secured through press
and movie newsreels. This grassroots effort resulted in a
popular demand for the preservation of the city's highest
point.
The sum of $15,000 was appropriated by the city to purchase
the first 20 acres in 1927 with the support of Mayor Rolph
(who served four terms and would become governor) and the
first woman elected to the Board of Supervisors, Margaret
M. Morgan. The land was dedicated as a city park on the 84th
birthday of Park Superintendent John McLaren in 1929. The
same year, George Decatur succeeded in building a third and
more permanent cross for the sunrise ceremony. It was seventy-six
feet high, set in a concrete base and covered with stucco
and three hundred lights. It lasted two more years until it,
too, burned. A fourth temporary cross was built, but plans
were underway with the help of the Native Sons and Native
Daughters of the Golden West to build a bigger and stronger
monument. Before 32,000 attendees at the 1932 sunrise event,
Governor Rolph dedicated the cornerstone of the new 103-foot-high
concrete cross. Inside it was a transcript of the original
title to Mt. Davidson signed by the first Mexican governor
of California.
The monument would be located on the six-acre summit donated
by Mrs. A.S. Baldwin and designed by a leading architect of
the time, George W. Kelham, Chief of Architecture for the
Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in 1915. He came to
San Francisco to rebuild the Palace
Hotel after the 1906 earthquake and went on to design
the historic Main Library, the art deco Shell Oil Building,
and the thirty-one story Russ Building at 235 Montgomery Street.
Built in 1927 and the tallest building in San Francisco until
1964, the Russ Building was the first to have an indoor parking
garage. His partner for these projects was Henry J. Brunnier,
consulting engineer for the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge,
the longest steel high-level bridge in the world. Brunnier
would survive Kelham and go on to build an even taller skyscraper
for the Bank of America. These creators of San Francisco's
world famous skyline would build their only monument on its
highest point. Like their massive skyscrapers and bridges,
the cross they designed is constructed of concrete (seven
hundred fifty cubic yards) and steel (30 tons). The foundation,
18 feet in diameter at the bottom and 14 feet at the top,
extends 16 feet down into solid rock. The 103-foot concrete
shaft is 10 feet square at the base and tapers to 9 feet at
the tip, with nine-foot-square arms that measure 39 feet from
tip to tip.
In the midst of the hardship and conflict of the Great Depression,
union members and business leaders, homemakers and politicians,
children and the unemployed, came together to raise funds
for the Mt. Davidson Cross. Other monuments to economic recovery
included the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges and the Empire State
Building; these were dedicated by presidential lighting ceremonies.
Madie Brown wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1934
asking him to dedicate the cross in such a fashion. "As
chairman of arrangements, I have dared to dream that you would
press a button in Washington, D.C., which in turn would light
for the first time this giant cross in San Francisco at its
dedication on March 24. It seems most appropriate that you,
who have brought light to many a darkened American home and
who through your New Deal has instilled the principles of
the Golden Rule into American business, should take part in
this cross-lighting ceremony." President Roosevelt agreed,
and pressed a golden-keyed telegraph switch to light the cross
at 7:30 PM before a crowd of 50,000-just two days after successfully
convincing the International Longshoremen's Union to postpone
their General Strike planned for the day before.
While mayors can no longer own the city's highest point, they
continue to make the annual pilgrimage to its summit for the
Easter sunrise service. During the remainder of the Depression
and through the early 1940s, CBS Radio broadcast the sunrise
services coast-to-coast. The level of attendance and expansion
of the park coincided with subsequent historic events. Seven
acres were added to the park in 1941, as up to 75,000 attended
the Easter events during World War II. The last of the 38
acres of Mt. Davidson Park were purchased in 1950, and funds
were subsequently raised to light the cross year-round after
a soldier bound for Korea wrote of it being his last sight
of home. The lit cross can still be seen in the 1971 film
Dirty Harry, in which Clint Eastwood engages in a dramatic
struggle at its base. Visible from 75 miles away, the twelve
1000-watt lights were turned off in 1976, except during Easter
and Christmas weeks, because of the energy crisis. Live television
broadcast of the sunrise ceremony began in 1977 with national
coverage by CBS in 1979 as attendance surged in response to
the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor
Harvey Milk.
After the lighting of the Golden Gate Bridge was expanded
in 1987, fundraising began to resume year-round lighting and
obtain historic designation of the cross. However, in response
to complaints that public ownership of a religious landmark
was a violation of the separation of church and state, the
city restricted the lighting to two hours before Easter sunrise.
A subsequent lawsuit took ownership of Mt. Davidson to the
California Supreme Court a second time. The importance of
preserving the site as a city park would be used as an argument
for removing the monument. Barely visible amidst the trees
and dwarfed by a nearby transmission tower named for Adolph
Sutro, nine times its size, the Supreme Court ruled that the
cross was a violation of the California Constitution for being
on the city's highest point. (An offer by master artist Beniamino
Bufano to erect an even taller 180-foot-high sculpture of
St. Francis on the top of Twin Peaks in 1938 had been declined.)
After a five-year battle, the city was forced to sell the
parkland under the cross at a public auction to the highest
bidder, or remove the historic monument. Neighborhood leaders
negotiated limitation of the property transfer to .38 acre,
with deed restrictions ensuring public access and protection
of the open space in perpetuity. A campaign like the one initiated
by Madie Brown convinced San Francisco voters to overwhelmingly
ratify the sale of the landmark to the auction's highest bidder,
the Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern
California, in November of 1997. The historic lights turned
on by President Roosevelt were removed, but portable lighting
of the cross is allowed two days a year. This Depression-era
public art project continues to be lit on Easter eve as a
testament to the ideals of preservation and civic spirit.
Bibliography
Rosalie Kuwatch, Miraloma Park, A Suburb within a City
(San Francisco: City College, 1984)
Marie Bolton, The Contemplative Ideal in Public Space:
The Cross at Mt. Davidson Park (San Francisco: City Attorney,
1991)
William Benedict, The Story of Mt. Davidson (San Francisco:
The Municipal Employee, 1928)
Jacquie Proctor
is one of the founders of the Friends of Mt. Davidson Conservancy.
Copyright 2001
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Blue Mountain was mapped in 1826 by British explorer Frederick
Beechy