San Francisco Couple Unearths 150-Pound Mystery Sculpture

Greg Gatwood thought he'd hit an old fence post while working in his San Francisco backyard this May. Instead, he unearthed a stunning limestone sculpture of a woman's head weighing 150 pounds.

"It's probably the most exciting thing I've ever dug up in a yard, and I've dug up a lot of things over the years," says Gatwood, a 65-year-old landscape contractor. The hefty bust measures 22 inches wide and 18 inches high, with sophisticated craftsmanship that suggests a skilled artist created it.

Gatwood's partner, Judy Gittelsohn, is a professional painter who immediately recognized the piece's quality. She's spent months investigating the mystery, talking to nearly 50 people trying to identify the sculptor.

"It was done by someone with a sophisticated skill level," Gittelsohn tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "It was not created by a hobbyist."

Gittelsohn believes the sculpture might be linked to Ralph Stackpole, a renowned American sculptor who shaped San Francisco's art scene in the first half of the 20th century. Stackpole created frescoes inside Coit Tower and carved the towering Art Deco figures guarding the historic Pacific Coast Stock Exchange building.

The connection gets more intriguing: the building that housed Stackpole's sculpture department at the California School of Fine Arts sits directly across the street from the couple's home. Before their house was built in 1948, the property was an empty lot where Stackpole or his students might have worked.

Historian Anne Schnoebelen suggests the bust could have been featured at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, possibly as one of the Pacific Unity sculptures. She also thinks two of Stackpole's students who lived nearby, Adeline Kent or Helen Phillips, might have created it.

Sunny's Take

What makes this story special isn't just the archaeological thrill of finding buried treasure in your own backyard. It's watching a couple transform curiosity into mission, determined to honor an unknown artist's work from decades past.

Gatwood is building a pedestal to display the sculpture in their garden, where it will stay unless they discover it belongs in a museum. He has a hopeful theory about its origins: perhaps it was once proudly displayed, fell from a wooden pedestal as the yard became overgrown, and gradually disappeared beneath soil and time.

"I've always thought every yard deserves a nice piece of garden art," Gatwood says. Now his garden has a story that connects modern San Francisco to its artistic golden age, when Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo walked these same streets as Stackpole's guests.

The couple may never solve the mystery completely, but they've already given this forgotten sculpture something precious: a second chance to be seen and appreciated.