A statue of horticulturist John McLaren is installed in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the development ...

, in the U.S. state of

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Background

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 The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...

reported in 1911 that McLaren had modeled for Cummings, and the statue was to be shown at a

Bohemian Club The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journal ...

art exhibition (Carvala). The Examiner also reported In 1921 the Examiner reported, park commissioners wanted the statue erected in

“soon.” But in 1922 according to The Oakland Tribune, McLaren hid it in a box in the park stables as " McLaren did not want to see it " (Carvala, Peterson). It was found after McLaren's death and erected in John McLaren Memorial Rhododendron Dell in 1945. It is a bronze 5'7'' likeness (Carvala). 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 he is holding a pinecone. Saw marks are on McLaren's right leg from an attempt to steal the statue on December 17, 1953. Two attempts were made, 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 hack saw was used to try to cut the statue down. (

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

References

External links

* {{Commons category-inline, John McLaren by Melvin Earl Cummings Tre. "John McLaren Statue." Atlas Obscura. n.d. WEB. Accessed on: April 10, 2021. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/john-mclaren-statue Golden Gate Park Monuments and memorials in California Outdoor sculptures in San Francisco Sculptures of men in California Statues in California