history of Pagoda Gate

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To whom it may concern: I desperately need information about Pagoda Gate on Grant and Bush in San Francisco. For example: what artist designed it? when? ...and any other facts! thank you, Lily

-- Lily deSaussure (maccake7@usfca.edu), October 07, 1998

Answers

I think I know a lot of the unanswered questions but I don't answer them because I don't want to be wrong since my memory is not perfect and since many of the questions asked are 40, 50 or 60 or more years ago.

Sometimes people have told me how the heck I remember those things about them that happened to them many years ago when they don't even remember. I tell them simply that I was not asleep at the wheel when those events happened. If you are not asleep at the wheel, then you remember stuff. But mostly my memory is not perfect and it does fade over time.

Now if this question is about the Chinatown gate which I think it is since that Gate is on Bush and Grant then I'm going to take a shot at it because I'm a little more confident of being right about this one than some of the others.

I remember pretty well that there was a contest in the late 60s to make a Chinatown gate which I believe was sponsored by some of the businessmen in Chinatown. The contest was won by an American Chinese architect named Clayton Lee. And for some very strange reason, perhaps because of cost, the gate was constructed in Taiwan. I'm 90 percent sure that I'm right about all of that.

-- Harry Murphy (harrymurphy*@bigmailbox.net), December 22, 2003.


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