This Day in San Francisco History: The Founding of Mission Dolores (Mission San Francisco de Asís)

William Alexander Coulter (b. Ireland, 1849-1936)

Mission San Francisco de Asis, 1910

Oil on canvas, 11 -1/2 x 17 -1/2 inches

California Historical Society, acquired through purchase and exchange

Acc. 62-88-1-2

On June 29, 1776, Mission San Francisco de Asís, named after St. Francis of Assisi but commonly known as Mission Dolores, was founded by Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and Francisco Palóu. It was officially dedicated on October 9, 1776. Today it is the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco and is in active use by the local Parish. On the 240^th anniversary of the founding of Mission Delores, we look back on the importance of this institution in shaping California and its history.

Called “Mission Dolores” because of the nearby creek named “Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores” (meaning “our lady of sorrows”), Mission Dolores was built on the site of the Ohlone Indians of the Chutchui village. The Ohlone Indians comprised one of 40 tribes in a large Native American population —numbering 10,000—that predated the arrival of the first Europeans to the Bay Area. For thousands of years they occupied the area in settlements of 200 to 500 persons and sustained themselves with a “hunter-gatherer” lifestyle: they did not cultivate crops or herd domestic animals but instead hunted native game as needed and utilized naturally available foods

Under the leadership of Father Junípero Serra, a Majorcan and superior of the Franciscan Fathers, the first mission was dedicated Mission San Diego de Alcalà on July 16, 1769. It was the first of nine missions Father Serra would personally found and the beginning of a series of twenty-one missions that formed the framework of what is now the modern state. Some of these sites evolved into cities we recognize today: San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Jose, and San Francisco. The Spanish used the missions as frontier outposts to colonize and convert Native Americans thus the missions provide a window to California and our nation's past. Few regions of the world have such a physical, visual timeline of a nation's growth and development.

Padre Fray Junipero Serra

Courtesy, California Historical Society, FN-23572

Jeu des habitans de Californie, 1822, Choris

Courtesy, California Historical Society

Vault 910.4 C45_004

Mission Dolores was the sixth mission established by Father Serra. Father Serra remains unchallenged as a pivotal force in California’s early history, though his canonization on September 23, 2015 was met with controversy and protest from many indigenous groups who criticized his treatment of the Native Americans. For more than twenty-five generations prior to the Missions, Native Americans lived in their own places and under the terms of their own culture;  however, the social forces, diseases and violence they encountered soon brought them to the brink of extinction. The missions enslaved Native Americans and used them for labor. Those who ran away were captured by soldiers, brought back, and whipped severely. The conditions allowed disease to spread like wildfire, ravaging the native population.

In 2004 artist Ben Wood and archeologist Eric Blind investigated a centuries-old mural

concealed behind the wooden altar of Mission Dolores. It was painted in ochre, white, red, yellow, black, and blue/gray directly onto plaster by Native Americans, though the names of the artists are unknown. A reredos covered up the 22 feet by 20 feet mural in 1796.  Whether the mural was a gesture of Christian piety on the part of the natives or if it reflects a native aesthetic or symbolism remains unclear. Wood and Blind photographed the mural over two weeks, shooting one foot at a time. The images were then manipulated into a single composite.

Photo of the recreated mural on Bartlett at 22nd Street.
Photographer: LisaRuth Elliot
San Francisco, CA

On April 14, 2011 a public painting of the mural was unveiled on Bartlett at 22^nd Street in San Francisco. It was the result of a collaboration between the Mission Community Market and Jeremy Shaw and recreated by Ben Wood and local muralists Jet Martinez, Bonnie Reiss, and Ezra Eismont. The mural and Wood’s work with Mission Dolores has provided the public a glimpse of a very important piece of San Francisco history.

Mission Dolores and the Parish
Photographer: Kathleen Yago
San Francisco, CA

Mission Dolores. Dolores & 16th (Sixteenth) St., CA (1906)
Courtesy of the California Historical Society

The Mission Dolores chapel was finished in 1791 and built with adobe walls that were four feet thick. This may have been one of the reasons that the chapel was one of the buildings left standing after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. In 1916 the buildings were reinforced with steel and survived subsequent earthquake Loma Prieta in 1989. Today the Mission continues to play a central role in the religious, civic, and cultural life of San Francisco.

Sarah Lee

Intern

California Historical Society

Sources

· Ben Wood, "The Hidden Mural At Mission Dolores", Foundsf.org.

· Guire Cleary, "Encyclopedia Of San Francisco", Sfhistoryencyclopedia.com.
http://www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/articles/m/missionDolores2.htm

· "Junipero Serra", Biography.com.
http://www.biography.com/people/junipero-serra-9479243#synopsis

· Kevin Starr, California. (New York: Modern Library, 2005)

· "Native Groups Protest Pope Francis' Canonization Of Junípero Serra Over Role In California Genocide", Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/23/native_groups_protest_pope_francis_canonization

· Rickie Lazzarini, "The History Of California", Kindredtrails.com.
http://www.kindredtrails.com/California-History-2.html

· "San Francisco De Asís | California Missions Resource Center", Missionscalifornia.com.
http://www.missionscalifornia.com/keyfacts/san-francisco.html

· Tricia Weber, "Mission San Francisco De Asis (Mission Delores)", Californias Missions.
http://www.californias-missions.org/individual/mission_san_francisco_de_asis.htm

· University of Santa Clara, "Historical Information - Mission Santa Clara De Asís", Scu.edu.
https://www.scu.edu/missionchurch/historical-information/

Anton Wagner's Images of Los Angeles

The California Historical Society is pleased to offer a sneak preview of images from our inaugural digitization project - the photographs of Anton Wagner, a PhD candidate at the University of Kiel, Germany, who came to Los Angeles to conduct research on the city’s growth from a dusty town into a metropolis. Wagner's photographs of Los Angeles between the years of 1932-1933 depict the Depression's impact on the rapidly growing urban landscape and demonstrate the socio-economic, ethnic, and cultural diversities of the Los Angeles region. 

We share only five of Wagner's images of Los Angeles, but stay tuned! The culmination of our pilot digitization project, scheduled in March 2016, will include all of Wagner's 438 photographs of Los Angeles' streets, neighborhoods, businesses, industries and landscapes and inhabitants. 

Looking west from Wall St. between 8th and 9th Sts., Los Angeles: 1932-1933 by Anton Wagner, PC17, California Historical Society. 

 Looking north on Wall St. from between 8th and 9th Sts., Los Angeles: 1932-1933 by Anton Wagner, PC17, California Historical Society.  

Drive-in market, northeast corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Hamilton Dr.,  Los Angeles: 1932-1933 by Anton Wagner, PC17, California Historical Society.  

Looking northwest from west of Mission Rd., pipe yard in foreground, Los Angeles: 1932-1933 by Anton Wagner, PC17, California Historical Society.  

Buddhist temple, Terminal Way, Terminal Island, Los Angeles: 1932-1933 by Anton Wagner, PC17, California Historical Society.  

N. Bunkerhill St. from Boston, looking north at rooming houses where Mexicans live, Los Angeles: 1932-1933 by Anton Wagner, PC17, California Historical Society.  

If you would like to know more about Anton Wagner and his photographs take a look at an earlier blog post written CHS' own, Shelly Kale.

Jaime Henderson,
Archivist/Digital Archivist
jhenderson@calhist.org

Lawrence Halprin and the Plaza That Changed the World

Sproul Plaza, courtesy Alison Moore.

Is architecture capable of changing the course of history?

On October 1, 1964, in the midst of a growing protest, University of California, Berkeley student Mario Savio hopped onto the roof of a police car in Sproul Plaza, the open space in front of the University’s administration building.  Sitting in the car was former UC student Jack Weinberg who had been arrested for staffing an “illegal” table on Sproul on behalf of the civil rights organization, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). Their actions, and those of others, not only helped launch the Free Speech Movement, which would forever alter not only the UC campus, but also the fabric of American society.

Choreographing the Environment: The Counterculture of Anna and Lawrence Halprin

Anna Halprin; photo by Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

San Francisco Magazine called her a “postmodern dance legend.” The San Francisco Chronicle declared that she “essentially invented postmodern dance.” Today dance pioneer Anna Halprin turns 95. To celebrate her birthday, fans worldwide in fifteen countries are staging hundreds of events this summer, including last week's "95 Rituals" in San Francisco 

Anna Halprin has won numerous awards, most recently a Doris Duke Impact Award in 2014. That award—for artists who have influenced and are helping to move forward the fields of dance, jazz and/or theatre—acknowledged her work in revolutionizing dance and extending the impact of the performing arts “to address social issues, build community, foster emotional healing, and connect people to nature.”

Over the decades, Anna has created more than 150 dance-theatre works. She remains an arts educator through workshops and the Tamalpa Institute, an international movement-based expressive arts training program. As she has explained: “I want to integrate life and art, so that as our art expands, our life deepens, and as our life deepens, our art expands.”

Experiments in Environment

In California, Anna and her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, created a new way of thinking and moving through the physical environment. During the 1960s and 1970s—decades of experimentation and radical social and political change—these two cultural leaders in their seemingly unrelated fields of landscape architecture and dance were at the forefront of a sea change in how we experience public spaces.

(Left) Col. Arthur Roth (Photographer), Hippies in Powell and Hyde St. Phone Booth, San Francisco, c. 1969–70, California Historical Society, CHS2013.1238; (right) Photographer unknown, Vietnam War Demonstration, February 19, 1965, Federal Office Building, San Francisco, California Historical Society

In the explosive place and time that was San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, free love and drug cultures intersected with free speech and antiwar sentiment. Experimentation and open-mindedness ruled the day. The Halprins found common ground—the environment—in which to explore their fields in a transformative way: a series of experimental, interdisciplinary workshops called Experiments in Environment.

Set in the streets of San Francisco, on the shores and cliffs of Sea Ranch (a coastal community in Sonoma County designed by Lawrence), and on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais in northern California, the Halprin workshops brought new environmental awareness to artists, dancers, architects, designers,  and others.

From movement sessions on a dance deck, to blindfolded awareness walks through the landscape, to collective building projects using driftwood and choreographed urban journeys, participants engaged in multisensory activities in alternating environments. “We were trying to break down the aesthetic barriers that we had inherited,” Anna told the Chronicle in 2013. 

Men’s Dance, Kentfield, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 7, 1966. Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Blindfold Walk, Kentfield, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 2, 1968. Courtesy of the Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Driftwood Village—Community, Sea Ranch, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 6, 1968. Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Market Street Walk, San Francisco, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 8, 1966. Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph by Joe Ehreth. 

Impact

In January 2016 the California Historical Society (CHS) will examine this seminal period in our history—50 years after the first Halprin workshops were held. The exhibition Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971, along with a series of public and educational programs and events, including dance performances, will explore the impact of the 1960s counterculture on California and the nation by examining the significant contributions the Halprins made to their fields.  CHS will be collaborating with the Museum of Performance + Design, which houses the Anna Halprin archives, and other groups on this effort.

At a time when we are rethinking and reactivating our public spaces—in our parks, streets, plazas, business districts, and communities—and exploring the role of art and artists in cities, a renewed awareness of the Halprins’ groundbreaking creative process and their legacy on city planning and the arts contributes to the ongoing public discourse about how we create, use, and value public space.

Shelly Kale

Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org