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Museum Gives Away City's Ancient Spanish Abbey

Museum Society Director Harry Parker gave away, in the words of de Young
curator Lee Miller, "the most architectural portions" of over
three-million pounds of elaborate handcarved Spanish monastery stones. The
stones did not belong to the de Young Museum, but to the City and County
of San Francisco. According to the City Charter, all City property must be
valuated, receive public bids and Supervisor approval before it may be
disbursed. The abbey was bequested to the City and County by newspaper
publisher William R. Hearst in 1941. Hearst spent over a million
depression-era dollars on the 12-16th century architectural monument. The
relic stones of Santa Maria de Ovila, stored near the de Young in GG Park,
were delivered by semi-trailers to a Catholic monastery of thirty
cloistered monks in Vina, Ca., near Chico. "It sounds scandalous to me.
There seems to be some arrogance towards the law," Supervisor Terence
Hallinan told the Western Edition newspaper, which broke the story on July
10. "I always assumed the stones were there, and someday we would do
something with them."

History editor Walter Biller says reconstruction in SF was always
possible. He was developing a modern privately funded proposal for a San
Francisco reconstruction. "I can't believe Parker had any idea of the
abbey's extreme value and architectural importance," Biller said. "Even
remedial research in the de Young's own magazine (Pacific Art Review)
points up its title is held by the City (not the de Young), and gloats on
its historical and financial pricelessness." Biller says that Parker gives
his own account of the giveaway in the July 14 Examiner, four days after
the Western Edition revelations. "I can't comment on that rebuttal article
except to say there's something very wrong." The de Young actually tried
to give away the abbey before. On May 18, 1963, City Attorney Thomas
O'Conner ruled the historic relic was City property and must meet that
criteria in the Charter.

Biller has studied the monastery for some years. He says, "In 1941, famed
architect Julia Morgan drew elevations and had a model built. It is often
told by guides at the de Young that the abbey is not rebuildable after a
series of postwar fires, but in 1959, after the worst and final fire the
year earlier, architect Walter Steilberg, who worked closely with Julia
Morgan, did an exhaustive stone-by-stone survey for the Supervisors. He
reported 85% of the stones-nearly 1600 tons of the multi-building
complex-were buildable. Steilberg knew the abbey better than anybody-he
took it apart and crated it near Madrid, Spain, in 1931."  Hearst once
owned another prize monastery, from Sacramenia, Spain, which was
reconstructed in Florida in 1952 by two private developers. Today it is a
popular North Miami Beach site and a National Registered Landmark. Biller
is coordinating a growing citizens' group, "Knights of the Spanish Abbey"
to help illuminate the abbey's beauty and history. ([log in to unmask])
-Article by Margaret Heller & Walter Biller