At his funeral in 1924, a friend eulogized famed architect Willis Jefferson Polk as a man whose “vision, to the last, was always of this city of San Francisco as the most noble architectural opportunity of the New World.”
Polk’s prestigious life as an architect brought him from humble beginnings in Kentucky and St. Louis to his start as an architectural apprentice in Chicago. Eventually, Polk found his way west to the city upon which he would leave his indelible and unique designer’s mark.
Perhaps Polk’s most famous structure is the Sunol Water Temple, constructed in 1910 and located in a 200-acre public park overlooking San Francisco Bay. Clearly influenced by Polk’s frequent visits to Europe (and Rome, in particular), the 60-ft.-high pavilion marks the nexus of three major water sources: the Alameda Creek, De La Laguna Creek, and Pleasanton Wells, which all flow into the Sunol Valley.
Polk designed the classical structure as a tribute to the Temple of Vesta outside Rome, built in deference to the source of ancient Rome’s water supply. For 65 years after he was gone, the temple stood as a monument to Polk’s aesthetic sensibilities and continued to watch steadfastly over the city that he loved.
Until 1989.
At 5:02 p.m. on October 17 of that year, the Loma Prieta Fault shook, sending a magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocking through the Bay Area, causing billions of dollars in damage and claiming 62 lives, homes, freeways, and Game 3 of the “Battle of the Bay” World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics.
Polk’s beloved Sunol Water Temple was not spared. Although it remained intact after the quake, the temple sustained substantial damage and was closed to the public.
It would be nearly a decade before the temple’s owner, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, committed nearly $4 million to restore the fallen icon to its early 20th century glory. Approximately $1.2 million would be spent to restore the structure, with another $2 million to $3 million being spent on landscaping and construction of a small museum for the historic monument.
Historic preservation architects: Carey & Co., San Francisco. General contractor: LTM Construction Co., San Francisco. Article reprinted from California Construction Link, February 2001, by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Author Eric Althoff is a contributing writer for Monrovia-based California Construction Link, a monthly magazine of the McGraw-Hill Companies, where he has covered such projects as the renovation of the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, the new Soka University campus in Aliso Viejo, and the reconstruction of the damaged South Portico of the Capitol in Sacramento.
Originally published 4th quarter 2001, in arcCA 01.4, “H2O CA.”
