SNGF -- A Place That Matters To You

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, is to:

1)  What geographic and community places matter to you? 

2)  Pick one place (building, village, town, city, county, state/province) and describe your connection to it and why it matters.

Here's mine:
I could not think of an ancestral place that matters to me. My families were always on the move and didn’t stay in one spot more than a generation or two.

However, I have a spot that matters to me. It’s the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. This structure with Corinthian columns, arches, sculptures, and the Greco-Roman rotunda, was created for the 1915 World’s Fair. California architect Bernard Maybeck designed it. It was supposed to be torn down after the fair like the other buildings but is the only structure from the fair that survives. Because it was meant to be temporary, it became in disrepair. In 1964 the building was taken down to its frame and rebuilt in a permanent light-weight concrete. By the 1970s it was back to its former glory.

My parents first took us there in the late 1960s on one of our rare family outings. There was a fence around the pond and buildings while the reconstruction was going on. A photo of us was taken in front, but I cannot locate it.

Any time I’m in San Francisco and I am near the Marina, I always stop by. One day, my girlfriend, Beth, and I stopped and found on the ground the sculptures of the women whose faces peer into the columns. For once, we could see their faces! Unfortunately those images are locked in slides that I have no way of scanning (at least not on demand).

When my daughter was turning 14, I created a scavenger hunt for her birthday party where I created clues and we would go to the places in San Francisco. The palace was one of those places. The girls didn’t appreciate the architecture as much I do. Rather, they were more interested in the turtles that lived in the pond.

Elizabeth and her friends checking out turtles

Just this past month, I dragged Jacqueline there after we visited spots in the Presidio for her National Parks tour. It was a beautiful day and the lighting was just perfect. If I lived across the street, I don’t think I would ever tire of looking at it.

The day with Jacqueline

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