| Statue of John McLaren | |
|---|---|
 The statue in 2015 | |
 | |
| Subject | John McLaren |
| Location | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| 37°46′19″N122°27′53″W / 37.77208°N 122.46472°W | |
A statue of horticulturist John McLaren is installed in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, in the U.S. state of California. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
In 1911 Alma de Bretteville Spreckels and her husband Adolph B. Spreckels, park commissioner and namesake of Spreckels Lake, wanted M. Earl Cummings to capture McLaren's likeness. The San Francisco Examiner reported in 1911 that McLaren had modeled for Cummings, and the statue was to be shown at a Bohemian Club art exhibition. [6] The Examiner reported in 1921 that park commissioners wanted the statue erected in Golden Gate Park "soon." But in 1922, according to the Oakland Tribune , McLaren hid it in a box in the park stables as "[he] did not want to see it". [7] [8]
The statue was found after McLaren's death in 1943 and erected in John McLaren Memorial Rhododendron Dell in 1945. [9] It is a bronze 5'7" likeness. [7] It does not sit on a pedestal and has no identification, as Cummings thought everybody would know who McLaren was. Over time the statue has turned green, so it is unassuming and blends into its surroundings. In one hand McLaren is holding a pine cone.
Saw marks are on his right leg from an attempt to steal the statue on December 17, 1953. Two attempts were made, in the first of which the thieves tried to "crowbar the statue off its base." Three days later, on what would have been McLaren's birthday, a hacksaw was used to try to cut the statue down. [10]
Golden Gate Park is an urban park between the Richmond and Sunset districts of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the largest park in the city, containing 1,017 acres (412 ha), and the third-most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 24 million visitors annually.
Adolph Claus J. Spreckels was a major industrialist in Hawai'i during the kingdom, republican, and territorial periods of the islands' history. He also involved himself in several California enterprises, most notably the company that bears his name, Spreckels Sugar Company.
KALW (91.7 MHz) is an educational FM public radio station, licensed to the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), which serves the San Francisco Bay Area. Its studios are located at Phillip and Sala Burton Academic High School off Mansell Avenue in San Francisco, and its transmitter tower is on Twin Peaks.
John McLaren Park is a park in southeastern San Francisco. At 312.54 acres (126.48 ha), McLaren Park is the third largest park in San Francisco by area, after Golden Gate Park and the Presidio. The park is surrounded mostly by the Excelsior, Crocker-Amazon, Visitacion Valley, Portola and University Mound neighborhoods.
The Wave Organ is a sculpture located in San Francisco, California. It was constructed on the shore of San Francisco Bay in May 1986 by the Exploratorium, and more specifically, by installation artist and the Exploratorium artist-in-residence Peter Richards, who conceived and designed the organ, working with stonemason George Gonzales.
Fred Harry Lau is a former Chief of Police for San Francisco, having served from 1996–2002. He was the first Asian American to ever hold that position, and has been called the first Chinese-American to lead the police in any major American city. In 2013, he became the TSA Federal Security Director of the San Francisco International Airport.
Sutro Heights Park is an historic public park in the Outer Richmond District of western San Francisco, California. It is within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Sutro Historic District.
Mission Creek is a river in San Francisco, California. Once navigable from the Mission Bay inland to the vicinity of Mission Dolores, where several smaller creeks converged to form it, Mission Creek has long since been largely culverted. Its only remaining portion above-ground is the Mission Creek Channel which drains into China Basin.
John Hays McLaren was a Scottish-born American horticulturalist. For 53 years (1890–1943) he served as superintendent of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California.
The California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, commonly referred to as the "Midwinter Exposition" or the "Midwinter Fair", was a World's Fair that officially operated from January 27 to July 5 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Central Tower is a 91 m (299 ft) 21-story office building at Market and Third Streets in San Francisco, California. The building has undergone numerous renovations since its completion in 1898 as the Call Building. It was later known as the Spreckels Building.
Adolph Bernard Spreckels was a California businessman who ran Spreckels Sugar Company and who donated the California Palace of the Legion of Honor art museum to the city of San Francisco in 1924. His wife, Alma, was called the "great grandmother of San Francisco". His 1912 mansion is in Pacific Heights and is San Francisco Landmark #197.
Outside Lands, formerly known as the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, is a three-day music, art, food, wine, beer and cannabis festival held annually in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Multi-genre and multi-generational, it is the largest independently owned music festival in the United States. It was founded in 2008 by Another Planet Entertainment, Starr Hill Presents, and Superfly.
The Music Concourse is an open-air plaza within Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Flanking the oval-shaped concourse are the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Academy of Sciences.
The Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility, commonly referred to as "Spreckels Lake", is an artificial reservoir behind an earthen dam and adjoining clubhouse situated on the northern side of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Completed in mid-March 1904, the reservoir was built for the use of model boaters of all ages, interests, and skill levels, designed specifically for racing model sail and power boats and to propagate the skills and crafts necessary to build and sail competitive model boats of all types. The Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility is considered one of the finest examples and one of the most beautiful of the naturalistically styled, man-made model boating facilities in the world and is always open to anyone wishing to sail its waters with few restrictions. The facility is also the permanent home to the San Francisco Model Yacht Club (SFMYC), the organization at whose request Spreckels Lake and the adjoining clubhouses were built and whose history is and always will be irrevocably intertwined with the history of the facility.
Melvin Earl Cummings, also known as M. Earl Cummings, was an American sculptor active in San Francisco, California.
The Jerry Garcia Amphitheater is an outdoor concert venue located in McLaren Park in San Francisco, California, opened in 1971. Its maximum capacity is 1,200 people. It is named after Jerry Garcia of the rock band Grateful Dead, and is the site of the annual Jerry Day event, at which various musical groups perform.
Gerald Weil Nachman was an American journalist and author from San Francisco.
A memorial statue of Francis Scott Key stood in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, in the U.S. state of California, from 1888 until 2020.
The William McKinley Memorial is a statue honoring the assassinated United States President William McKinley. It stands at the foot of Panhandle Park, San Francisco, California, and faces the DMV across Baker Street. Created by Robert Ingersoll Aitken (1878–1949) in 1904, the Monument was dedicated in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt, who succeeded McKinley after his assassination in 1901. The monument was unveiled on November 24, 1904 at the entrance to the Golden Gate Park panhandle. Over 5,000 people came to the unveiling. Speeches were made by former Mayor James D. Phelan, Mayor Eugene Schmitz, John McNaught, and others.
Media related to John McLaren by Melvin Earl Cummings at Wikimedia Commons
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
| |||||||||
