Mission Dolores, San Francisco, Interior

1790-1800

Name(s) currently unknown

San Francisco, CA, USA

The architectural style of the interior of Mission Dolores, with exposed beams and adobe walls, was common in the missions built along the coast of California in the late 18th century.

The heavy adobe walls of the church were made from thousands of bricks, which were then plastered over. In places, the walls of San Francisco measure 10 feet in thickness. While the church has been repaired since the late 18th century, many of its earliest features remain in situ, including ceramic bowls imported from China (via galleons traveling from the Philippines) for holding holy water. The altar screen, visible at the end of the nave, was originally imported from Mexico and installed in the late 1790s. Just a few years ago, a large mural was discovered behind the altar. The painting, which is 20 feet in height and depicts two sacred hearts, was created by indigenous painters as part of an early church decorative program, perhaps dating from 1791.

The missions of Alta California, or northern California, were founded by Franciscan friars in the late 18th century. They are some of the latest missions built in Spanish America—with the earliest constructed in the 16th century, in central Mexico.

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

Hackel, Steven. 1997. “The Staff of Leadership: Indian Authority in the Missions of Alta California.” The William and Mary Quarterly 54 (2): 347-376.

Kajimoto, Aki, Robert McCumsey, et al. 1999. California Missions: Measured Drawings. Historic American Building Survey. Santa Margarita, CA: Learning Windows Publications.

Langellier, John Phillip and Rosen, Daniel B., 1996. El Presidio de San Francisco: A History Under Spain and Mexico, 1776-1846. Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Co.

Lightfoot, Kent. 2004. Indians, Missionaries and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

“Saved by Neglect.” 2004. Archaeology 57 (3): 11.

Skowronek, Russell. 1998. “Sifting the Evidence: Perceptions of Life at the Ohlone (Costanoan) Missions of Alta California.” Ethnohistory 45 (4): 675-708.