Few in San Francisco know that one of its finest architectural gems lies in a hidden valley 40 miles southwest of The City. The eminent San Francisco architect Willis Polk considered the Sunol Water Temple (photos, Wikipedia) his masterpiece: he designed the circular Corinthian structure for mining baron William Bourn in 1910 after Bourn bought the Spring Valley Water Company that then supplied San Francisco with its water.
Bourn was classically educated at Cambridge and wanted to create a classically inspired landmark to celebrate the joining of the waters from San Francisco’s Alameda County watershed. His engineer, Herman Schussler, designed a unique system that flooded a gravel bed under the valley’s exceptionally rich topsoil. Thus, San Francisco got an evaporation-free reservoir underneath what became known as the Million-Dollar Walnut Orchard. This was a sustainable system long before anyone was talking sustainability.
Polk modeled the temple on one at Tivoli in the hills outside of Rome. It’s a reminder that cities are sustained by treating their soils and water wisely. Rome did not, so the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli is now a picturesque ruin in a barren landscape.
The Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the Sunol Temple. The city closed it to the public and removed its tile roof so that it rapidly fell into ruin itself. I believe that it intended to just get rid of it. But when Dennis Normandy became president of the PUC, something extraordinary happened. He committed himself to a first-rate restoration of the Temple.
But Dennis didn’t stop there: unlike other city managers, he did not treat the remarkable community at Sunol that had fought for the restoration as colonial rubes. He made himself a much loved and respected part of their community, visiting often and listening to their concerns with sincere concern of his own. Bureaucrats often get a bum rap these days, but Dennis is exceptional: he not only possesses a keen eye for beauty, but he has a big heart. He is, in the fullest sense, a public servant, and his service extended beyond the city limits of San Francisco to the territory that supplies it.
After an exemplary restoration supervised by Project Manager Lena Chen, the temple once again stood at the end of a road backed by golden hills and a magnificent grove of poplars and sycamores, just as Willis Polk and William Bourn intended. But the city subsequently leased the adjacent valley floor to a mining company that is gouging out the topsoil to get at the lucrative gravel underneath. The temple will overlook a crater in the future, a reminder of what happens to cities that ignore their responsibilities, just like the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. Dennis Normandy was the exception: he understands responsibility, and he exercised it brilliantly while he was able.
Thank you, Dennis, for setting the bar so high.