Mission Dolores, San Francisco

1790-1800

Name(s) currently unknown

San Francisco, CA, USA

This is San Francisco de Asis, also known as Mission Dolores, the first church built in San Francisco, California. Originally constructed in the late 18th century by indigenous converts to Christianity, the church formed part of a mission complex overseen by Franciscan friars.

Under a rough shelter, the first mass was celebrated in 1776 on this site not far from the San Francisco Bay. The present building dates to the 1790s. The three niches at the top of the mission, each with its own bell, date from the late 18th century. The bells were imported from Mexico in the 1790s. They traveled along the Camino Real(the Royal Road) that ran from Mexico to California. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the church bells would have tolled frequently—in the morning to announce mass, at noon time, and again in the evening. On Sundays and Feast Days, the bells would also have rung to call the converted to prayer. The larger basilica next door to the right was built in the 1920s, replacing an earlier building from ca. 1880. It accommodated the growing congregation. Today the neighborhood is home to many Mexican and Central American residents. A graveyard is set adjacent, to the left in this photograph, where parishioners were buried, including thousands of Ohlone. While most of the interior has been heavily restored, the façade of the building has remained relatively intact, having been re-plastered and re-painted. The arched doorway opens onto a rectangular church interior. The thick walls and buttressing have helped the Mission withstand California’s earthquakes, including a major one in 1906.

San Francisco was founded as both mission and presidio (or military garrison). In keeping with instructions issued by Fray Junípero Serra, Father Francisco Palóu founded the mission church in 1776—the sixth of 21 missions built along the coast of California. Like other California missions, it was a Franciscan project, with strong ties to Mexico. Palóu, for instance, served in Querétaro before coming north to found San Francisco de Asis. The local, indigenous people, the Ohlone, were both the primary builders of mission structures and their primary inhabitants.

As was the case with many of the California missions, the first structure at Mission Dolores was a small one, built largely of wood, with more permanent architecture coming later. In this case, in 1791, Mission Dolores was constructed of adobe bricks. Its roof was supported by large wooden beams and tiled on the outside.

The Alta California missions, of which Mission Dolores was among the northernmost, reinforced Spanish claims to territory—particularly in the face of Russian threats from the north. The missions also introduced to indigenous people Christianity, European livestock, foods, cultural values and, perhaps most dramatically, disease. By most measures, mission life in Alta California was a hard one. While some indigenous people actively participated (even as elected officials within the missions), others resisted Franciscan transformations of their lives. Regardless, the Church and its cycles of mass played a central role in all mission life. Not only was attendance mandatory for Ohlone residents, but on some feast days, they were expected to attend mass and prayers for up to five hours. This interior was thus one people in Mission Dolores came to know well.

The Franciscan friars in Alta California sought to build fully Christian communities, punctuated by spaces for worship and places where indigenous people—in this case, the Ohlone—could embrace Christianity and European modes of life. Yet by any measure, the mission life in Alta California was harsh and unforgiving. The Ohlone who worshipped at San Francisco de Asis were, in many cases, also those responsible for constructing and maintaining both the church and its broader community. As with other churches in Alta California, San Francisco became more than a house of prayer. It was also a site where the complexities of conversion and colonization—Franciscan demands for labor, pious devotion to Christianity on the part of both friars and some Ohlone—intermingled, as did the celebration of the Mass and anxieties about the realities of making a “Christian” life in California.

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

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