Ahead of Thanksgiving I’m thinking about the things I’m grateful for in Golden Gate Park. High on that list is Sharon Arts Studio, a phenomenal community arts program that’s been offering classes to children and adults of all ages for more than 50 years. It’s located in the Sharon Building, a beautiful sandstone building in the east end of the park, next to the carousel.
The building’s namesake, William Sharon, was one of the most ruthless businessmen of his era—no mean feat during the wealth mongering of the Gilded Age. Sharon dedicated his life to acquiring wealth and power in mining, real estate and politics. As the Bank of California’s point man for investments in the Comstock mining operations, he deployed savvy, unsavory and sometimes downright illegal practices to amass a fortune for the bank and himself.
He lived in San Francisco but finagled his way to become a senator from Nevada, where his absenteeism — he missed more than 90 percent of votes during his term — led one historian to describe his record as “one of the worst in the history of that legislative body.” He was a slight, mirthless man and inveterate womanizer, whose last affair with a woman named Sarah Althea Hill became one of the biggest scandals of the era. From what I have read, Sharon seems to have been widely disliked. (This excellent series of articles in The Tahoe Weekly outlines the many reasons why.)
But even awful people sometimes do good things. When Sharon died in 1885, he left $50,000 for the “beautifying the Golden Gate Park” with no further instructions. After much public debate over how the money should be spent, the executors of his estate -- his son and son-in-law -- decided to build a gateway at Stanyan St. It was to be a mammoth structure, made of white marble with three arches standing 60 feet tall and 190 feet wide and etched with the words “Golden Gate Park” and “Sharon-1885.” It would have been a self-aggrandizing monstrosity.
Once again, we can thank William Hammond Hall for a better idea. Now working as consultant to the park commission, he argued that the gateway would be “utterly useless.” He urged that the funds instead be used to create an area for children, a goal he’d harbored since first laying out the park. The commissioners agreed.
In 1888, the Sharon Quarters for Children was completed. It included a playground, replete with swings, tennis and croquet courts, a slide, a maypole, a carousel (more on these in a later post) and the two-story sandstone building known as the Children’s House. It was designed to be a place where children and their parents could have refreshments and play indoors when the weather was bad. The morning of its dedication it rained and then, fittingly, a rainbow appeared.
A few years later, in 1892, the building also became the site of the first museum in the park when a local taxidermist donated his collection. According to historian Raymond Clary, the basement was filled wall to wall with glass cases of specimens. There were all sort of birds, woodpeckers, cockatoos, flamingos, penguins, hummingbirds, even an auk; foxes, wildcats and other animals that had been found or killed in park; displays of oddities such as a monkey holding a a two-headed calf, and a boa constrictor wrapped around a four-eyed pig. There were also those weird, cunning arrangements taxidermists love to make: two rabbits playing cards; a huge rat, arm in arm with a duck; a sick rabbit being ministered to by a wise-looking cat wearing glasses. Needless to say, the museum was a popular attraction.
The 1906 earthquake badly damaged the building.
It was rebuilt. But for some reason, I’m not sure why, it gradually fell out of use. By the 1960s, it was only occasionally opened for events such as an annual doll show, or the odd chess or checkers tournament. A few times, it was the venue for jacks competitions. (Who knew there even was such a thing as competitive jacks.)
In 1968, the Chronicle ran a bemused story about “a free-style hippie with flowing hair” who camped out on the building’s front porch to protest its perpetually locked doors. That same year, Rec and Park did finally open the doors when the building was reborn as the Sharon Arts Studio with the mission of providing wide-ranging arts education for people of all ages.
I first visited Sharon Arts more than a decade ago when I got interested in pottery. I found there a place pulsing with creativity. Even the bathrooms were decorated.
Every week, I’d make my way to class, passing through the front room where the stained-glass students were piecing together panes of colored glass, past the roomful of painters perched at their easels, and down the steps to the capacious ceramics studio. (Which now that I think of it was the space that once housed all those taxidermied animals). The air would be filled with the mineral, earthy smell of clay and warm on those days that the two big gas kilns were going.
Over the years, I slowly learned how to take a lump of clay and turn it into something resembling a bowl or mug or vase. (Our cupboards and those of my friends and family are filled with the wonky results of my learning curve.) I had no great aptitude for throwing, but found the process of letting my mind drift as I my hands worked deeply sustaining.
There was also something wonderful about the studio community. The classes were filled with people of all ages and from all backgrounds -- students, nurses, teachers, stay-at-home parents, small business owners, retirees. I met people in the studio I’d never encounter otherwise. There was a cadre of old timers who’d been coming to Sharon Arts for decades and who knew each other well. They’d chat across the wheels about kids, work, a show they’d seen, a recent vacation.
The tenor of classes was always supportive and kind. We’d offer one another encouragement and help. We’d coo with admiration when a piece came out well and commiserate when pieces cracked in the kiln or on those days that the clay gods fouled everything you tried to make. I can’t say I was close to my fellow potters or made enduring friendships, but I valued the sense of connection born of our shared communion with clay. I imagine something similar happened throughout the building, within every group learning and making art.
The pandemic brought an end to all that — at least for me. The studio closed and when it finally reopened, it was with shorter, more limited hours that didn’t work for my schedule. I found another studio, but I have to admit I still miss the place.
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The Friends of Sharon Arts Studio is holding its annual winter sale, Dec. 10, 11-4 pm in the county fair building. It’s a great venue for picking up holiday gifts and supports a great cause. The Friends is the non-profit group formed in 1991 that works in partnership with Rec and Park to keep the studio going.
OK. What fun to read about the miraculous, beautiful donation from a terrible man. Thank you for this!
I love this post. I love the idea that a ruthless womanizing wealth mongering touchhole nonetheless made beauty and joy and community possible. It’s kind of what this “Life in the Park” seems to be all about. (And I would TOTALLY be up for competitive jacks. Just sayin)