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HAVOC AT PARK MUSEUM

Many Beautiful Works of Art Wrecked or Destroyed
Sentry Shoots at Prowler.


The Memorial museum at the Park was closed yesterday, and the approach to it barred by ladders stretched across the broad pathway. The cement path was littered with stucco shaken from the Egyptian facade, the doors were padlocked and the huge bronze Dore vase some twelve feet high was tilted over on its foundation.

damage to the Memorial Museum in Golden Gate ParkAlongside the museum a balustrade of stone was shaken to pieces. Part of the brick wall and the zinc cornice on the south side of the museum were thrown to the ground, breaking down two of the dragon’s blood trees and carrying along two of the huge columns which were shattered into fragments.

Part of the adjoining wall was cracked and shivered, pieces of it falling out. The west walls also suffered. From the main building masses of bricks fell through the skylights, and even the curator’s house did not escape, stucco and bricks littering the ground around it.

A big block of granite lying on the ground outside the museum, being exhibit 6950, was cracked across the middle. Some beautiful pillars of Colton and Inyo marble, broken by falling, had been removed from the museum and were lying outside with a pile of broken glass and other debris.

Inside the museum is a sad wreck, except the back wing where the Alaskan exhibits are. The art gallery is damaged, but the pictures are little hurt, although a few of them will have to be reframed. Some of the mummies, after surviving the trials and vissitudes of some 5,000 or 6,000 years, were smashed into bits. The china room would make a collector or a careful housewife weep. Many of the beautiful vases are ruined, and nearly all the statuary was thrown down and broken. The show cases were generally smashed and the work of cleaning up and estimating the damage, now going on, is considerable.

Meanwhile the public is is not admitted to the building. The collection of birds suffered little. Patrolman Phil Hering is on duty by day and M. Denny, Company C, Fourteenth Infantry, under Captain T.W. Daily, is on guard at night. About 2 o’clock yesterday morning Denny shot five times at a man who was prowling about the rear of the museum.


San Francisco Chronicle
April 29, 1906
Return to the 1906 Earthquake Exhibit.