Museums In Motion - The Market Street Railway Mural

streetcar.org - museums in motion - spotlight on historic transit - san francisco today

Click here to view a five-minute MPEG movie of the mural in progress, shot in early December, 2003. Movie courtesy of Mona Caron.

This photo shows most of the 1920s section of Mona Caron's mural. Starting at the Ferry Building, the Roar of the Four travels up Market Street, with Market Street Railway Co. White Front cars on the center tracks (including Car No. 798, now under renovation at Market Street Railway's Pharr Division yard), and Muni Iron Monsters on the outside.

Here is a partial overview of the center section of the Mural, further up Market Street, and further through time, as Iron Monsters become streamliner PCCs who share the tracks with buses and heavy automobile traffic through several of Market Street's most significant social moments.

Here is a closeup of the section The Forties, where we see Muni PCCs and Iron Monsters being flanked by Market Street Railway Co. buses and automobile traffic on the edges of Market Street.

The artist, Mona Caron, working on the section of the mural that presents a possible future of our grand boulevard.

Residents and visitors along Church Street stop to admire Mona's work in progress, pointing out exciting little details to each other as they discover them within the artwork.

The Market Street Railway Mural

A beautiful new mural, currently in progress, is being painted at the corner of Church and 15th Streets in San Francisco, depicting the history of urban transit along Market Street, in incredible detail, from the turn of the Twentieth Century to the present day, and beyond.

The mural, named The Market Street Railway Mural by its creator, award-winning artist Mona Caron, and tentatively dedicated to the memory of Dave Pharr, is due to be completed by the first week of summer, 2004. It consists of three major sections, traveling the length of Market Street from east to west, and from yesterday to tomorrow. Starting at the Ferry Building, the Roar of the Four (including our own Car No. 798) heads up Market through several significant moments, both architecturally and socially, to emerge into the final section, a future Market Street envisioned by the artist, with a future mode of public transportation, yet to be revealed.

The brilliant artist behind this wonderful piece of public art is Mona Caron, a Swiss-born illustrator and muralist who currently teaches at the San Francisco Academy of Art, and is the artist responsible for the grand mural along the Duboce Bikeway, adjacent to Market Street Railway's "Pharr Division" restoration yard at Duboce and Market.

Aside from what the mural's title might imply, Market Street Railway did not commission this project, but we love it, and we are in the process of financing a portion of it. The project initially received $6000 from the Mayor's office's Neighborhood Beautification Fund, but since then has grown into a much more detailed and time-consuming endeavor for the artist, and the original funding is depleted. Joel Pomerantz, the force behind the Duboce Bikeway Mural, is trying to raise a second round of funding to ensure that the mural is completed properly, with all of the necessary materials, including paints and finishes, graffiti-proofing, etc.