Mothers Building 100

I cannot let 2025 end without recognizing the 100th anniversary of a unique and historical San Francisco landmark.

The city talked of some sort of ceremony or event to mark the centennial, but the city isn’t really much for valuing its history and now here we are in December. So, to make some note of the anniversary, below I have updated a short piece I wrote in 2022:

In the southwestern corner of the city, tucked in a corner of the San Francisco Zoo, stands the Delia Fleishhacker Memorial Building, commonly known as the Mothers Building. Imbued with women’s history and artistic achievement, it has been shuttered for almost 25 years, unused, neglected, its tan stucco reliefs wearing away under an assault of salt air and ocean fogs.

Opened in 1925, the Mothers Building was a gift to the city from Herbert and Mortimer Fleishhacker in memory of their mother. San Francisco had created a sprawling public recreation complex south of Sloat Boulevard on former Spring Valley Water Company land, which included a playground, an enormous open-air swimming pool (named after the Fleishhackers), and the beginnings of what would become the zoo.

In the middle, the Mothers Building provided a place of rest and refreshment for mothers and their children. Matrons doled out milk, sandwiches, bandages for minor injuries, and even parenting advice.

George W. Kelham, architect of the Shell Building, the Russ Building, and the 1917 San Francisco Main Library building (now the Asian Art Museum), chose an Italian Renaissance style for the Mothers Building. The rectangular structure was steel-framed, a little over 100 feet by 40 feet, with a hipped roof of red tile and an exterior featuring pilasters, recessed apses, and friezes of children at play.

Despite the Corinthian columns and the broad entry steps, the overall visual impression of the building isn’t monumental grandeur, but one of a country villa, a place of leisure and welcome. Its nomination report to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 noted that the Mothers Building—a place for the comfort of mothers and young children enjoying recreation together—was “probably the only structure of this type in the West.”

In the 1930s the Federal Arts Project added to the building’s uniqueness by commissioning women artists to elaborate both the inside and outside of the building. Nationally, women were a small minority of the artists granted New Deal projects, but five were employed at the Mothers Building.

Helen K. Forbes and Dorothy W. Puccinelli painted a series of Noah’s-Ark-themed murals in egg-tempera on the upper walls of the lofty main room. Sisters Helen, Margaret, and Esther Bruton created mosaics in each end of the building’s recessed entry loggia featuring St. Francis and children living in a peaceable kingdom of animals and nature.

When I was a child visiting the zoo in the 1970s, the Mothers Building served as a welcome center and gift shop, ideally situated just inside the main entrance gate below Sloat Boulevard and 45th Avenue. In the early 2000s, the zoo relocated its main entrance to face the ocean and a new paid parking lot laid over the former Fleishhacker Pool. The Mothers Building was determined to be seismically unsafe and closed to the public in 2002.

Community members, especially the indefatigable Richard Rothman, have pushed for conservation, maintenance, and a reuse plan for the building for more than 15 years. Former District 4 supervisor Katy Tang secured $400,000 to assist with immediate repairs to shore up and protect the structure, but a conditons assessment of the building by Architectural Resources Group (ARG) estimated long-term repairs and upgrades would cost over $10 million.

That estimate is now almost ten years old. 

Other San Francisco public buildings with New Deal-era murals have been restored and celebrated: Coit Tower, the Beach Chalet, Rincon Annex... The Mothers Building, without a defined purpose, trapped behind the paid gates of the zoo, in what one writer has called a “geographically marginalized location,” has languished.

Every five years or so, hope is raised that something will be done, mostly thanks to Richard’s polite nudging at commission meetings, to the media, and his almost weekly visits to city departments and supervisors’ offices.

In 2022, through the efforts of supervisor Myrna Melgar, the Mothers Building was designated a city landmark. That spring, the Recreation and Parks Department hosted a tour of the inside with two parks commissioners, two city supervisors, and representatives of interested groups to view the state of the building and its artwork.

I joined the small party representing San Francisco Heritage.

While the murals on the west wall were damaged from previous water infiltration, the rest of the Noah’s Ark scenes, covering 1,200 square feet of the interior, were intact. Everyone on the tour took out their phones to photograph the delicate menagerie of llamas, raccoons, lions, and baboons above them.

While the exterior plaster and decorative precast concrete was cracked and spalling, the interior wood paneling, decorative light fixtures, and the Bruton mosaics in the entryway seemed in good condition overall.

Sketched-out proposals to activate the large room as a learning center, meeting hall, and perhaps a return to its original use as a place of relaxation, were all discussed during the tour. Supervisor Melgar acknowledged the architectural beauty, the inspiring woman-created art, and the importance of the building as a relevant historical space associated with mothers and all women.

But now three more years have slipped away. Updated estimates just on the stabilization of the building have soared and they are only going to rise.

As Richard Rothman continues his nudging, our most recent seed of hope is that 2025 saw both the San Francisco Zoo and Recreation and Parks Department get new leadership.

Every seed needs sunshine and water to grow. Is San Francisco now “back” enough to find millions of dollars so mothers and their children can once more take refuge under the animals of the ark?

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund

Apologies if you tried to email me this week and received a bounce-back. My 20+ year ISP had some issues which I hope are corrected now. It was interesting to be somewhat unreachable, but I do want to hear from you and get a coffee or beer sometime. So let us try again!

Remember it is my treat. Well, technically, the treat of nice people who have contributed to the Woody Beer and Coffee Fund like Vincent C. (F.O.W.). We can toast them collectively when we get together. When are you free?