• Mission Dolores
• Beach Chalet
• San Francisco Water Department
• St. Francis Yacht Club
• 3450 Washington house
• New College of California
• Abbreviations

Powerfully crude, stumpy columns march up and down the gable. The interior should be seen. At the rear the peaceful, timeworn cemetery with its lush vegetation blurs the harsh existence of the original mission population: 5,000 Indians were buried here. The original cemetery extended beyond what is now Dolores St. (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 138).

In 1916 architect Willis Polk carried out a restoration of Mission Dolores, so meticulous that today it is difficult to determine which details are original and which have been restored. Besides reinforcing the walls with steel girders, Polk may have added support for the heavy rafters, which are still held in place by their original rawhide thongs. The chevron decoration on the rafters may have been restored, but the confessional doors that line the wall to the left of the entrance are original, as are the three bronze bells which came from Mexico more than two hundred years ago (Alexander and Heig 2002: 23).

Polk carefully studied the techniques in which the mission Indians had been trained to build the California missions--the old ways of making roof tiles and fashioning the ancient beams. In those days, when restoration was done at all, it generally followed the whims of the restorers, who often cared little for authenticity. Polk employed a method of proper, even scientific restoration. So subtle was his work that the mission's biographers often claimed that it had never been restored at all. If he had done nothing else, Willis Polk's preservation of some of the city's most treasured landmarks deserves the highest commendation and gratitude (Alexander and Heig 2002: 338).

Appropriately, the Mission district contains San Francisco's oldest building, Mission Dolores at Sixteenth and Dolores Streets. The cornerstone of the church was laid by Father Palou in 1782, and the building completed in 1791. An excellent example of the late Baroque ecclesiastical style of Mexico, with intimations of Classical Revival, the old church building appears today much as it did at the time of its construction--when Indian neophytes laid up its adobe bricks, shaped fastenings out of tough manzanita, and lashed the redwood roof trusses together with rawhide strips.

Indian artisans, using reds made from cinnabar and yellows from ochre clays of the Peninsula, executed much of the interior decoration, including the lively ceiling. The elegant carved wood and painted canvas retablos (screens behind the altars) were imported from Mexico. The church bells, presented by Mexican Viceroy Mendoza, are dated 1792 and 1797. The church has withstood three major earthquakes, and not until 1920 was major renovation necessary. Fortunately, Willis Polk was retained to handle this job; he accomplished such things as reconstruction of the roof without finding it necessary to throw away the old trusses and tiles. Further, Polk restored architectural details which had been altered previously (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 102-04).

A hipped-roof pavilion, which houses a remarkable set of WPA murals by Lucien Labaudt executed in 1936-37 illustrating recreational activities in San Francisco. Polk was also the architect for the Portals of the Past on Lloyd Lake, an Ionic colonnade that originally graced a Nob Hill mansion he designed. It burned in 1906 (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 166).

Willis Polk designed this simple, unadorned Spanish Revival structure with handmade roof tiles, which was restored in 1996. Originally built with a lounge and changing rooms for ocean bathers on the ground floor and a municipal restaurant on the second floor, it has also served as a tearoom, headquarters for coastal defense forces during World War II, and a Veterans of Foreign War bar. Funded by the WPA, Lucien Labaudt, the director of a successful school of fashion and design, painted the murals in 1935 and then supervised the mosaic work of Primo Caredio and the wood carving in magnolia on the columns and balustrades by Michael Von Meyer (Wiley 2000: 372-73).

A similar composition to the Native Sons Building, but with a more restrained use of materials and decorative detail. But observe that the ground floor drips with stony water which even runs over the keystone above the entrance arch. Inside on the north wall over the elevator is a mural by Maynard Dixon of the Sonol Water Temple built by the Spring Valley Water Company, the original clients for this building. The owner, William Bourn, was Willis Polk's patron. Polk designed his house at 2550 Webster Street and Filoli, his estate in Woodside (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 12).

A reinforced concrete office building with a stone base, originally designed for the Spring Valley Water Co. A three part vertical composition with Renaissance/Baroque ornamentation. The business office inside is decorated with murals by Maynard Dixon (Corbett 1979: 145).

After this venerable San Francisco institution suffered fire damage in 1976, the interior was redone by Marquis (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 94).

...one of the city's elite private gathering places, designed by Willis Polk in 1928 in the Mediterranean Revival style (Wiley 2000: 346).

(Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 101).

(Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 119).

The New College of California School of Law (14) (1932) at 50 Fell is a Spanish Revival work by Willis Polk (Wiley 2000: 216).

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