Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Music Concourse Drive

The Music Concourse, a landscaped basin between the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young Museum, is a vital civic and cultural space within Golden Gate Park, hosting free concerts on Sundays during the summer and serving as a respite and picnic spot year-round for visitors to nearby cultural facilities. The concourse’s grove of pollarded (severely pruned) trees are primarily London plane trees and Wych elms, with some maples and walnuts. (In case you were wondering, the Oxford English Dictionary defines "pollarded" as referring originally to an animal of a kind naturally horned, such as an ox or a stag, which has cast or lost its horns; or to an ox, sheep, or goat of a hornless variety. In his novel, Little Dorritt, Charles Dickens borrowed the word to describe bald-headed old men.) It’s not clear when the present trees were planted. Original drawings and photos of the concourse show fewer trees.

The Music Concourse, a landscaped basin between the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young Museum, is a vital civic and cultural space within Golden Gate Park, hosting free concerts on Sundays during the summer and serving as a respite and picnic spot year-round for visitors to nearby cultural facilities. At its centre is a fountain, dedicated in 1924, made possible with a $10,000 gift from Corrine Rideout. The statue in the fountain’s centre depicts the unlikely scene of a saber-toothed tiger wrestling a serpant. Corrine Rideout was the widow of banker Norman Rideout. Mr. Rideout came from Maine to Oroville, California and opened a bank. He successfully opened five more in the central valley of California. After his death in 1907 his widow sold them to A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy later to become the Bank of America. The cast stone pool was designed by architect Herbert A. Schmidt. The statue is by M. Earl Cummings. The original intention was for the statue to be of bronze, but the budget did not allow for this.

Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson Hearst (1842-1919) was an American philanthropist, feminist and suffragist. She was the mother of the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. In the 1880s, she became a major benefactor and director of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association and the first president of the Century Club of California. She was a major benefactor of the University of California, Berkeley and its first woman Regent, serving on the board from 1897 until her death. Also in 1897, she contributed to the establishment of the National Congress of Mothers, which evolved eventually into the National Parent-Teacher Association. In 1900, she co-founded the National Cathedral School in Washington, DC. A public elementary school near the National Cathedral School bears her name. In 1901, Phoebe Hearst founded the University of California Lowie Museum of Anthropology, renamed Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in 1992, in celebration of the museum’s ninth decade. The original collection was founded with about 230,000 objects representing cultures and civilizations throughout history. Hearst was raised a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian faith. In 1898 she converted to the Bahá’í Faith, and helped play a key role in the spread of the religion in the United States. This This cast stone fountain, a tribute her memory, stands on the south side of the music concourse in front of the California Academy of Sciences. The photograph shows the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in the background.