2011/12/san-francisco-christmas

Statue of Plenty Part of the Pioneer Monument with a disrespectful gullSculptor: Frank Happersberger. Dedicated to the City of San Francisco in 1894. The monument was a gift of philanthropist James Lick, who died in 1876, left $100,000 to the City for the creation of The figure of Eureka at the top of the Pioneer Monument, with 'forty-niners' in the foreground.Sculpture of the Pioneer Monument. After the discovery of gold near Sacramento in 1848, an epic gold rush sees 60,000 'forty-niners' flock to California's Mother Lode.Crossing the Sierra; relief on the Pioneer Monument with a touch of 'modern art'.The statue of Ashurbanipal faces the San Francisco Library. He was an Assyrian king, who established the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, the Library of Ashurbanipal, which survives in part today at Nineveh.… in San Francisco style.Christmas spirit with a small jazz bandIf you fold 1,000 cranes, Japanese legend says, you're granted a wish.Ok, we didn't find Obama's wish, but this one is just :D My wish for the world is that we would stop raising too many cows because their farts make green house gasses.I wish people would stop killing other peoples' families. That's not right for the other family!The Tree of Hope has thousands of origami paper cranes bearing wishes from around the world, from the likes of President Obama and Jane Goodall to anonymous schoolkids.People are gazing the Tree of Hope and listening the jazz tunes. The floor made out of Tennessee pink marble, the walls are made of Colorado limestone.The Ceremonial Rotunda, where the wedding of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio was performed.The structure's beautiful dome is the fifth largest in the world, even higher than the United States Capitol.George R. Moscone was the Mayor of the city beetween 1976-1968. The floor of the elevators is wood, inlaid with brass, and features the official monogram of San Francisco.Mayor Jim Rolph was the visionary who insisted that the City of San Francisco build this magnificent structure.The design of the Civic Center was the city's architectural expression of its grandeur, vitality and international importance.The dome atop San Fransisco's City Hall that was completed in 1896 supported a twenty-foot statue, The Goddess of Progress. The statue was so securely mounted that on April 18, 1906, when the City Hall and the city around it lay in ruins from the great earthquake-fire, it continued to stand at the peak of the now-exposed steel tower. After workmen brought it down, the statue fell from a wagon and the 700-pound head broke off.An original vault used for the Treasury of the City and County of San Francisco.The exit from the interior of the building is through the windows. The ladder from the lowest level of the fire escape to the ground is folded up to prevent persons (such as burglars) from accessing the fire escape from the ground.Looks like there is a gulch on the other side of California Street - but it's just the steep Jones Street.Moses receives the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.The private social club is located at the top of Nob Hill and it was founded in 1889. This was one of the few structures to survive the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.The picture was taken at the intersection of Mason and California Street. The huge height differences and the steepness of the streets are just amazing.There are more than 600 murals in San Francisco! This one can be found at the intersection of Grant Ave and Broadway.The most populous city named after Saint Francis of Assisi is San Francisco.Located at 666 Filbert Street… :)As seen from the Telegraph Hill in the late afternoon.is an artificial island in the San Francisco Bay, connected to Yerba Buean Island. It was created for the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939), and it is named after the novel Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in San Francisco from 1879 to 1880.The Yerba Buena Island lays in the San Francisco Bay between San Francisco and Oakland. The eastern and western spans of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge are connected through the island's tunnel. The island was named after the aromatic herb, yerba buena (means With the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, looking from Coit Tower.This is a Roman Chatolic Church in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, which is known as The parallels are the Filbert and the Greenwich streets, which run through San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood with the Saints Peter and Paul Church in the center.The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline with its 260 m (850 ft) hieght. It contains 48 floors and was built between 1969 and 1972. This building was the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation wich is now a subsidiary holding company of AEGON. But Transamerica was founded by that A. P. Gianni in 1930 who had also been the head of Bank of Italy which became later the Bank of America.Picture of the Transamerica Pyramid through the window of Coit TowerWith the statue of Columbus in the center.Cristoforo Colombo was born in 1451 in Genoa which is part of the present-day Italy. Although he wasn't the first explorer to reach the Americas, his four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to the first lasting European contact with the is a 64 m (210 ft) tall tower at the top of the Telegraph Hill. The art deco tower was built in 1933 at the request of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the city of San Francisco. She was a well-known volunteer firefighter and an eccentric character of her time. Despite of her special intrest and relationship with firefighting, the tower was allegedly not designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle… :)At the bottom of the Filbert Steps.The stairs have wonderful views of San Francisco and feature well tended gardens and art deco buildings on either side along the way.Unfortunatelly less fascinating than the bushy part, it is concrete and steel.In the background the Bay Bridge can be seen with the lights of Oakland and the dark patch of the Yerba Buena Island.Mohandas K. Ghandi lived beetween October 2, 1869 - January 30, 1948. The skyscrapers of the Embarcadero Center in the background.The sculpture, which is a a 40-foot high geodesic sphere, stands in the Hyatt Regency's atrium lobby. The lobby itself is also famous for its architecture, designed by John Portman: each successive floor streches further and further into the atrium. This makes the upper floors look like they are just floating over the atrium without any support. It's similar to the interior of the Hotel Luxor (a pyramid) in Las Vegas.… as viewed from the California Street. The cap is indirectly illuminated from within.Chinatown treasures in the shop named 'Michael' at the Dragon Gate.Chinatown treasures in the shop named 'Michael' at the Dragon Gate.Chinatown treasures in the shop named 'Michael' at the Dragon Gate.With the temporary skating rink and the huge christmas tree - and with part of the Dewey Column and the famous Westin St. Francis Hotel in the background.…otherwise this is the equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar near the Civic Center. He was a Venezuelan military and political leader, who played a key role in Hispanic-Spahish America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire.