Who swiped the cannon from William McKinley?
Missing: A 151-year-old, bronze howitzer cannon, filled with cement, last seen at St. James Park.
That’s right, the 3-feet-long cannon bolted to the granite pedestal of the statue of President William McKinley in downtown San Jose has been purloined. It’s actually been gone for a little over a year, though you’ll be forgiven for not noticing, as the past year has been a bit distracting.
Daniel Lazo, a spokesperson for San Jose’s Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services department, said the cannon disappeared in late May or early June 2020 and the city filed a police report on the theft.
You’ll remember that’s around the same time protests over the murder of George Floyd filled downtown streets. Nobody is connecting the protests and the theft, but given the widespread anger directed at monuments nationwide that
summer — mostly Confederate statues, but also ones honoring Father Junipero Serra and Christopher Columbus, as well as the Thomas Fallon statue in San Jose — it wouldn’t be a total shock if somebody broke the cannon loose in an attempted blow against the patriarchy.
Or it could have been entirely unrelated to the protests, which would actually be stranger — because who would want it? And, given the cannon’s weight and size, how did they lug it away? It’s not something you just slip into a backpack. (This is not unheard of in San Jose, of course: The massive Orchard Supply Hardware arrow sign was “liberated” from its roost off West San Carlos Street in 2018 and recovered a few months later after a police investigation.)
The cannon has a bit of history to it, too. President McKinley spoke at St. James Park in May 1901, five months before his assassination in Buffalo, N.Y. Patriotic San Joseans raised $13,000 to commission the monument, created by San Francisco sculptor Rupert Schmid. It was installed in late 1902, the year inscribed on the pedestal, and dedicated in February 1903. The cannon does not appear in some early photographs, but appears to have been installed shortly thereafter. Many cities received guns like the howitzer when they were retired and put them on display at civic plazas and buildings, so it wouldn’t have been unusual to place one with this statue.
According to a listing in the Smithsonian Institution’s art inventories catalog, the inscription on the cannon indicated it was a boat howitzer cast at the U.S. Naval Yard in Washington, D.C. in 1870. Known as a “12 pounder” because of the weight of its projectile, the cannon itself weighs more than 425 pounds. A city historical report on St. James Park says the gun was originally on the USS Kearsarge, a Civil War-era sloop that hunted Confederate ships in European waters.
An interesting footnote to its lore is that on Halloween 1932, a trio of San Jose teens put an explosive charge into the muzzle of the cannon and set it off as a prank, blowing out the windows of the courthouse across the street and toppling the gun off its mounts. To prevent any repeat performances, the barrel was filled with concrete.
And while that made the cannon safer for display, it probably destroyed much of its historical value, which would be bad news for whoever has it. Only about 180 howitzers of this type were made and fewer than two dozen are known to still exist. Two of them, in much better condition than the San Jose example, were auctioned at Christie’s for
$16,250 and $17,500 in 2017.
Yeah, I bet you’ll be looking for it now.
MAKE THIS WOMAN A STAR
San Jose needed a good laugh, and we got a lot of them this weekend from comedian Anjelah Johnson, who was the headliner for seven sold-out shows at the San Jose Improv from Thursday through Sunday. We got in for the first of her two shows Thursday night, and the San Jose native really brought the house down with a lot of new material that touched on shelter-in-place, Zoom etiquette and her recent part-time move to Nashville, as well as some fan favorite bits — all delivered with the signature edge her fans love.
While Johnson appeared on “MADtv” and had a Netflix special in 2015, you would think a film producer or TV executive would have lined her up for a starring role by now.
SAVE THE MUSIC >> People are vaccinated and the weather’s nice, so you would think it’s a great time to restart all the outdoor events, right? Well, lots of the summer fare we usually enjoy tends to get booked months in advance, and nobody knew what the summer would be like a few months ago (and with this delta variant surge, who knows what things will be like a few months from now). Jazz on the Plazz, the weekly summer music series in Los Gatos, was one of the events that couldn’t really plan for an in-person season and had to call off shows for a second year in a row.
But Los Gatos Music and Arts has put together two Jazz “off” the Plazz events that will help the popular series survive. The first is a July 25 concert featuring Grammy Award winner Tony Lindsay, along with Janice Maxie-Reid and Deszon Claiborne, at Silver Mountain Winery in Los Gatos. The $120 ticket includes wine tasting and a tapas buffet before the 6 p.m. show.
And on Sept. 26, Linda L. Lester is co-presenting Los Gatos Music and Arts’ annual fundraising gala featuring vocalist Kim Nalley in a special tribute to Billie Holiday. The 5 p.m. show and party will take place at La Estancia, the Los Gatos home of Larry Arzie and David Stonesifer. Tickets to both events are available at jazzontheplazz.com.
AUDIENCE ENCORE >> Like many other venues, the Hammer Theatre Center in downtown San Jose will be welcoming back audiences this month — but it’s only the crowd in the auditorium that’ll be live. That’s because the Hammer’s first events are the return of its popular National Theatre Live screenings, kicking off July 22 and 25 with Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies,” followed by “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (July 29 and Aug. 1) and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (Aug. 5 and 8), starring James McAvoy. Get tickets and more details at hammertheatre.com.