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Opponents of the move, who expressed concern that the mural might be damaged, prevailed. In hindsight, even some who favored the move say things may have worked out for the best. Although the new library would have been a better venue than the theater, they say, the atrium still would not have allowed for optimal viewing. "It was a blessing in disguise," says Bergman. "If the mural had been put there, that's undoubtedly where it would have stayed."
Since then, its protectors have had loftier goals.
During a brainstorming session in 1999, Guadalupe Rivera Marin challenged the college community to "think big" about the mural's future, suggesting that CCSF make the work the centerpiece of its own building. Chancellor Day seized on the idea, and the dream of a Pan American Center was born. "His attitude was, 'Sure, we can do that,'" recalls Bergman, who was present at the session. "It was a transformational moment."
Timothy Pflueger had grand plans for the mural. San Francisco's leading architect and one of its most important arts patrons during the first half of the 20th century, Pflueger had made his mark in the 1920s, designing the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. headquarters (at the time the city's tallest structure) and the Stock Exchange building. Pflueger's friendship with Rivera blossomed in 1930 after he arranged for Rivera to paint his Allegory of California at the Stock Exchange.
When finished, the Exposition mural was to have become the cornerstone of Pflueger's next project, the futuristic library he intended to build at San Francisco Junior College (as CCSF was then known). The library would complement a hilltop Science Building, also designed by Pflueger, and which remains the college's most imposing structure.
To accommodate the move from Treasure Island to the campus near Balboa Park, Rivera conceived the mural as portable, its 10 panels attached to steel framing. Portability appealed to him for reasons other than logistics. In 1933, his unfinished mural at New York's Rockefeller Center was tragically desecrated after Rivera and John D. Rockefeller came to an impasse over the latter's insistence that he remove an image of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.
As letters between the men contained in the archive reveal, Pflueger's library plans became more ambitious as Rivera's arrival neared. Pflueger envisioned the mural as covering the entire south interior wall of the library's reading room. Facing north off the hill in the center of the campus toward Judson Avenue, the mural would be visible from afar through the building's solid glass front. By the time Rivera was halfway finished, Pflueger had proposed an even grander idea. Although it would mean nearly doubling the scope of the work, why not have the artist cover the reading room's east and west walls as well? Rivera agreed. He would execute the nearly 1,800 square feet of mural envisioned for the Exposition and return once the library was constructed to complete the painting.
But with the United States' entry into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, steel that might have gone into the building's construction was instead used for Liberty ships. Within months of the war's end, the architect dropped dead of a heart attack on a downtown street.
The war and Pflueger's death contributed to the mural's fading into anonymity. Even now, the details surrounding its disappearance, as revealed in archival materials, are not widely known. Placed in temporary storage in a military hangar on Treasure Island after the gala unveiling in November 1940, the mural soon became a source of friction between the Navy, which wanted it moved, and the San Francisco Unified School District, which -- while hoping to see it placed in Pflueger's planned library -- had no idea what to do with it in the meantime.
Incredibly, the de Young Museum passed on the chance to take the mural in 1941 after determining that the panels were too large to fit through its doors. Museum officials balked at spending the $4,800 it would have cost to lower the work piece by piece through a skylight.
Meanwhile, the mural came perilously close to being destroyed while in the Navy's care. As he helped douse a hangar fire in 1941, a fireman pierced one of the crates with an ax, leaving a 20-inch gash in a section of the mural that depicts a woman embroidering beside a young girl. Pflueger wrote to Rivera, who was back in Mexico, to tell him about it, prompting Rivera to volunteer to repair it upon his return. In a letter, Rivera asks Pflueger to send him a photograph of the mural -- "one of the whole thing, and some details. Everybody is asking for them, and I have none." That was shortly before the library plans were halted. Rivera was never again to see the mural.
For a long time, neither was almost anyone else.
Early on a June morning in 1942, a convoy of trucks made its way across the Bay Bridge from Treasure Island to the college, coming to a halt at the foot of a hill. There, against the wall of the men's gym, workmen carefully offloaded the precious cargo, placing the crates vertically side by side. The next day a team of carpenters arrived to build the shed against the gym to cover the crates.
The move was well planned. Pflueger had seen to it that the panel damaged by the ax was put in place last. After the shed was built, a makeshift "door" was positioned against the spot so that Emmy Lou Packard, Rivera's mural assistant, could repair the damage in accord with Rivera's wishes. A memo reveals that Packard, accompanied by Pflueger, examined the damage in the summer of 1942 but decided against attempting the work, thinking it best to wait until the mural was moved for display.
