RON HENGGELER

October 7, 2011
Sunrise, San Francisco, spars & sails. . . sunset

A gift to the city from banker Samuel G. Murphy, the now-restored Murphy Windmill was the largest in the world when it was built. Able to pump 40,000 gallons of well water a day for park irrigation, its purpose was to save the city from the exorbitant costs that the private Spring Valley Water Company charged.

The Murphy Windmill, sometimes called the South Windmill, had a moment of fame when it appeared in a 1915 Charlie Chaplin movie, The Jitney Elopement.

Electric pumps replaced the windmill's reason for existence fairly quickly. The structure fell into great disrepair in the decades after World War II, and may have spent more decades without its massive spars and sails than with them. A long campaign to restore the Murphy Windmill ended in 2012, and today the blades can often been seen turning in the face of breezes from the Pacific.

We stepped right in,
to a Pieter Brugel painting
this evening

and saw the movie
The Mill and the Cross.

Yes . . . definitely. . . it’s worth seeing.

Dawn in San Francisco as seen from my window

Unfurling the canvas on the sail stocks of the Murphy Windmill in Golden Gate Park

Unfurling the canvas on the sail stocks of the Murphy Windmill in Golden Gate Park

Unfurling the canvas on the sail stocks of the Murphy Windmill in Golden Gate Park

Inside the cap of the Murphy Windmill in Golden Gate Park

 

Sutro Tower

A view looking south from the Huntington Hotel

 

 

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