Facts about the Soldier's Monument for Memorial Day

On Monday, the Soldier's Memorial Monument will be the site of a . Here are some facts about the monument that you may not have known. 

Dedicated: December 11, 1927

Height: 45 feet

Weight: 150 tons

Original location: The intersection of the Victory Highway and the Pacific and Redwood Highways. It moved to Boyd Road in 1954, when it was rededicated to include veterans of WWII and the Korean War.

Sculptor: Ralph Stackpole was a well-known San Francisco artist who designed the tympanum, and other architectural features, for the Palace of Varied Industry at the Pan Pacific International Exposition. He was a friend of Diego Rivera and involved in the labor movements of the 1920s and 30s, teaching for a time at the leftist California Labor School. According to one of Stackpole’s former students at the California School of Fine Arts, his progressive values didn’t temper a male chauvinist streak, allegedly telling women in his classes that the place they really belonged “was in bed.” Perhaps that’s why he moved to France after WWII. He died there in 1973.

Features: The bas-relief soldiers at the top of the monument depict three white soldiers and one black soldier. A staircase inside the tower leads to a viewing area at the top, which is closed to the public.