To Whom it May Concern                                                          October 22, 1999

It is now a third of a century since San Franciscans began a project to
insure the permanence of a vision which, in the hearts of many of its
citizens, had come to represent the very "City by the Bay."  In the mind of
the world citizen, Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts was (and is) as
much the iconic landmark of San Francisco as the Eiffel Tower, or the
Sacré-Cœur, is a symbol of Paris or Big Ben "means" London.   There is,
with respect to Maybeck's Palace, a citizen-wide obligation of stewardship,
which is shared throughout the broad culture and can be supported
internationally; the Maybeck Foundation's initial goal is to define the
extent of that spirit and commitment to stewardship.  I suspect, sustained
by its educational mission, that effort will  gain support from a
broadening base of those who understand the meaning of the Palace of Fine
Arts.

That today's citizens can still enjoy a twentieth century site, which is
both an architectural, landscape, and painterly vision, is remarkable in an
era characterized by increasing planned  obsolescence and by a national
experience moving at late-century toward personal experience reduced to
sound bites and virtual reality.  Each year, newspapers and nightly
television newscasts suggest that fewer outdoors urban experiences in the
heart of America's largest cities, are positive. The Palace with its Lagoon
is a cultural oasis, and it embodies values which our fathers cherished,
which our contemporaries may be close to losing, and which we should not
forfeit, by neglect, for posterity.

The Maybeck Foundation's mission is ambitious but it has national support.
Its "Proposed Improvements" and "Historic Preservation Project" for the
Palace of Fine Arts are carefully and thoroughly considered, staging
intention and potential accomplishment as support materializes.  The six
project goals give promise of a model preservation effort and will bring
San Francisco international acclaim for both how and what the city has
preserved.  By reconstructing a lost facade and preserving a structure, San
Francisco will have preserved a vision, a place, and if there was ever a
site where visitors experience a sense of place, it is the Palace Rotunda,
Colonnade, and Lagoon.

Potential donors might be encouraged to recognize that Walter Johnson's
name is as well known as any building sponsor and philanthropist of this
century, both within San Francisco and nationally, and he continues to be
remembered as the catalyst for and sponsor of the 1964 reconstruction
effort which current generations now have the opportunity to complete.
Seize the day!  There are few opportunities as rewarding as the proposed
saving of this remarkable vision, a Maybeckian vision which is a
quintessential, humanistic,  San Francisco vision of place. Might we be
able to answer architect Henry Bacon's remark to Willis Polk, "You will
hear of this someday," with the assurance to posterity that "You will know
of this forever, and your children's children will thank you for it."
 

Robert M. Craig, Ph.D.
Professor
Georgia Institute of Technology