Where to find the giant sculptures
The Chronicle census recorded 58 Benny Bufano works in San Francisco. Most of them are unmarked.
Frank Cresci Plaza — “St. Francis of Assisi” has stood on the corner of the union hiring hall parking lot, facing Fisherman’s Wharf since 1963. This year the Bay Area Longshoremen’s Memorial Association has given it and the surrounding park an upgrade, with benches and plantings. “St. Francis” is lit all night. One way to see it is from a vintage streetcar rolling by it on the outbound F-Market & Wharves line. 301 Beach and Taylor streets.
Valencia Gardens — Hidden away in a courtyard behind this public housing complex are six statues forming a perfect circle. You cannot see them from Valencia Street, so you have to know where to turn up Rosa Parks Lane and down Maxwell Court. It dead-ends into a courtyard between the community center and the playground. There is a bench for viewing a bear and cubs, two seals, a cat with a mouse on its back facing off against a rabbit, a butterfly, and two fish, in various shades of smooth granite. 360-390 Valencia St.
City College — After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Bufano decided to create a sculpture out of the melted firearms that people turned in, in protest. The result is “Saint Francis of the Guns,” a life-size figure standing in the weedy median between the stairs at the side entrance to City College of San Francisco. Portrayed in ceramic mosaic are the faces of the four martyrs — Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and RFK. 50 Phelan Ave.
UCSF Parnassus — “Bear and Cubs” is front and center while its mate, a “California Golden Bear,” is half a block away, both on the north side of Parnassus Avenue. A third Bufano, a bust of the Madonna, was added in 1976 in accordance with “Bufano Day” at UCSF. It sits on the ground on a pedestal in front of the nursing school, but you have to climb a steep hill and tromp through a construction zone to find it. 505 Parnasssus Ave. Maritime Museum — It takes some sleuthing to see these because you have to go through the front doors of this free museum and out the back door to the veranda, where the statues face Aquatic Park. One is a red granite seal with its nose up as if balancing a ball. The other is a frog in black granite. These are sisters to the sculptures at Valencia Gardens, all cast in the 1930s. 900 Beach St.
Brotherhood Way — “Peace,” dedicated on April 19, 1958, by Mayor George Christopher, was a landmark at San Francisco International Airport until it was airlifted to this new park, on a strip of land that serves as a buffer between roaring Brotherhood Way and a new row of little boxes on a hilltop behind it. Made of stainless steel and rising 38 feet, it looks like a spaceship that could lift off in the prevailing wind if not held in place by a stand made of black and white granite. 800 Brotherhood Way.
Lake Merced — “Penguin’s Prayer” looks like it was poured the same day and of the same concrete as the parking lot that surrounds it. On a foggy day everything is gray — the lake, the sky, the statue — and the penguin seems to be praying for summer sun. Its nose pointing upward is a happy perch for black crows flying by. 1100 Lake Merced Blvd.
The Gateway — “Penguins,” made of red porphyry and stainless steel on a concrete pad, is hard to find because it is not among the sculptures in Sydney Walker Square where you expect to find it. It is across the street in a small plaza between Safeway and Starbucks, and camouflaged by the arches of the apartments behind it. It is a sister of the penguins at the Lake Merced and the Stanford Court, only in smoother skin. 460 Davis Court.
Fort Mason Great Meadow — A four-eyed “Universal Child” in tile mosaic is set in a Madonna of stone, chipped at the edges. She looks across the Fort Mason Meadow and down on the Wendy Ross statue of the late congressman Phil Burton nearby. Bay and Franklin streets.
St. Mary’s Square — “Sun Yat-Sen.” This 1936 tribute to the People’s Republic of China is made of stainless steel and red-rose granite to match the tall redwoods it leans against in this park in Chinatown. It was commissioned for this location by the city and completed in 1937. 651 California St.
Stanford Court Hotel — A penguin hidden for years behind a tall retaining wall on the northwest corner of Pine and Powell streets has been removed for restoration. It will soon be on display at the hotel entrance. 905 California St. University Club of San Francisco — Inside this private club on Nob Hill is the only Bufano distinguished enough to have a bar named after it — the Black Cat. The sleek life-size sculpture with a bite out of its ear, once a fixture at the Press Club, was traded by the artist for room and drink. In its day, the Press Club regularly invited politicians and dignitaries to Gang Night Dinner, and the rule was if the dignitary stood behind the “Black Cat,” everything said was off-the-record. It now sits on its bar, waiting to tell its story. 800 Powell St.
Museo Italo Americano — An elephant carved of polished bronze is near the museum entrance in Building C, Fort Mason. There is also a small granite sculpture of St. Francis in the museum library. Admission is free. 2 Marina Blvd.
Grace Cathedral — Inside the sanctuary, to the rear of the pews, is a statue of St. Francis in black marble, dated 1970. It is dark but comes to life when backdropped by the western sun refracted through the stained-glass windows. 1100 California St.
Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial
Branch Library — a female torso in polished granite guards the entrance on 17th Street. It belongs to the city and was offered when the new Eureka Valley branch opened in 1961. It is the only Bufano in a public library. 1 Jose Sarria Court.
San Francisco General Hospital — A bullet-shaped Madonna in red granite with a mosaic front soothes the wounded in the Comfort Garden to the side of an old brick building at the corner of 22nd Street and Potrero Avenue. 995 Potrero Ave. San Francisco State University — “Head of St. Francis” carved in red granite rests on a granite plinth at the main quad. Nearby is a Greek kouros, a primitive male torso in the bushes. 1600 Holloway Ave. California Academy of Sciences — Five animal sculptures are scattered throughout the museum and its grounds in Golden Gate Park. Paid admission is required. 55 Music Concourse Drive
Sunnydale — A rare combination sculpture of a bear (or boar) growling over the woman’s head from “Peace” marks the entrance to the Sunnydale Development Leasing Office. It can be seen from Sunnydale Avenue just north of the Cow Palace. 1654 Sunnydale Ave.
Westside Courts — “St. Francis on Horseback” is atop a brick plinth in the courtyard of a public housing project, where it has been since the 1940s. 2501 Sutter St.
De Young Museum — a female torso from 1940 and the head of George P. Hunt in glazed stoneware from 1920 are in the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive.
San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art — Sixteen Bufano sculptures, ranging from the head of his mother to the “Crucifixion of Youth,” are in the permanent collection. 151 Third St.