George Washington High School’s football stadium, famous for its view of the Golden Gate, houses a remarkable frieze sculpted by Sargent Johnson.

Architect Timothy Pflueger’s original memo written between 1929 and 1936, Suggested WPA Project for Sculptured Frieze, specified the frieze contain a large depiction of George Washington. When the S.F. Board of Education requested funding in 1937, the brand-new school’s stadium had not yet been excavated, and the concept of depicting Washington in the frieze had evaporated. 

Selected to design and sculpt the frieze was well-known local sculptor Beniamino Bufano, whose numerous figural pieces are still found throughout the Bay Area; several are in San Mateo’s Hillsdale Mall. However, Bufano repeatedly delayed his drawings and models. When he finally presented his concept in March 1940, the School Board, S.F. Art Commission and Works Project Administration dismissed him from the project. It was never publicized or confirmed — no Bufano models or drawings survive — but conflicting stories point to either his depiction of unclothed athletes, or inclusion of International Longshore Workers’ Union leader Harry Bridges and Soviet leader Josef Stalin in his version of the frieze.

The School Board, S.F. Art Commission and WPA assigned Sargent Claude Johnson, award-winning African-American sculptor, to the project. Johnson combined images of athletes competing in Classical Olympic sports such as wrestling and track & field events to modern individual and team sports such as tennis, baseball and football, as well as perplexing figures such as a cleaning woman, a dog and a cat. He sculpted his original for molding concrete-poured slabs in sections which were installed in the stadium in the summer of 1942.

The frieze measures 185 feet long and covers 2,500 square feet of the football stadium’s south retaining wall. While water seepage and time have taken their toll on the frieze’s panels, for the most part it remains in very good condition. 

Johnson, whose father was Swedish and mother Cherokee and Black, was born in Boston in 1877. Both parents died when he was young, and for several years he lived with his uncle Sherman William Jackson, a high school Principal whose wife May Howard Jackson was a celebrated sculptor. He arrived in San Francisco during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, worked for artist Willard Worden and others, and received recognition for a piece of his own in a local exhibit in 1925. Johnson attended the California School of Fine Arts, produced more award-winning pieces, and apprenticed with Ralph Stackpole and Benny Bufano. Johnson produced large carved friezes and massive tileworks for the San Francisco Aquatic Park Bathhouse, now the Maritime Museum (featured in this 15-minute video). The friezes include covert depictions of the 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike, and the tileworks went unfinished when all artists quit in protest of the building’s lease to a private operator as a restaurant. He continued to receive awards for his works and additional public arts commissions until his death in 1967.