The Palace of the Legion of Honor

The Palace of the Legion of Honor in the mid-1990s.

The Palace of the Legion of Honor was a gift of Alma de Brettville Spreckels in 1922. Conceived as a 3/4 size replica of the Hotel de Siam in Paris, it serves as a memorial to the California soldiers killed in the First World War. The building is surrounded by wind-swept trees and a golf course on the bluffs overlooking the outermost corner of the Golden Gate. There are views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the northern part of the city. Below the sheer cliffs are nude beaches, ruined roads, and paths created by people in their search for golf and empty space.

When excavation began in the courtyard (beneath Rodin's "Thinker") some archaeological remains were anticipated, although the extent of the finds was both a surprise and a problem. It seems that the palatial memorial to the dead had been built directly atop the graves of paupers from the Gold Rush era. Bodies of gold diggers from all over the world were interred here. These earliest settlers had been buried in the San Francisco Cemetery and were moved to Lincoln Park (the site of the Palace) in the 1870's to make room for the burgeoning city. In 1909 the graves were supposed to have been moved again to Colma to make way for a golf course, but most of the graves were never moved--the markers had simply been kicked over and covered with dirt.

When the Palace was built in 1922, its foundation was poured on the redwood coffins of the city's pioneers. Would-be nude bathers routinely find headstones and markers in the gullies that lead down to China Beach. Every time there is any construction human skeletons will appear.

About 800 bodies were recovered while thousands more remain, some as backfill against the walls of the new museum cafe. The opportunity for discoveries about life in early San Francisco was immense and there was even the possibility of identifying some remains. But the rainy season was approaching and further archaeological removal of bodies was consuming time. After months of supporting the archaeology the coroner suddenly cut it off. Bodies were rushed off to Colma without detailed study, and field notes and photos from the dig were confiscated by the Museum. Only a cursory analysis of the immense store of knowledge has been undertaken to date.

The Museum took the project out of the hands of the archaeologist, even disallowing a private fundraising effort proposed by the archaeological team. Why was this research stopped and the affair covered up? One answer lies in the legal minefield of obligations that the identification of any bodies might lead to.

Influential and wealthy families setting out to build memorials to themselves faced wildly escalating costs brought on by the dead. If these had been the bodies of the wealthy with important descendants, would they have been treated differently? This new rush to ship off the bodies mirrors the original disinterment and successive cover-ups of1909--when the bodies weren't moved--and the construction of the museum on their coffins in 1922.

There is even more death around this peaceful hillside. Across the road, tastefully hidden below a corner of the parking circle in the sweep of a 270-degree turn with vistas of the ocean to distract your vision, is a poignant holocaust memorial by George Segal.

--from YOU ARE HERE (YOU THINK)*: A SAN FRANCISCO BUS TOUR A reflection by Bernie Lubell, Dean MacCannell, and Juliet Flower MacCannell forthcoming in City Lights "Reclaiming San Francisco" Jan. 1998.

Contributors to this page include:

Carlsson,Chris - Photographer-Artist

City Lights Books,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer

San Francisco Examiner,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer

James,Brook - Writer

Carlsson,Chris - Photographer-Artist

Carlsson,Chris - Photographer-Artist

Prev. Document  Next Document