Phil Williams stands in the patio of his home in Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, next to his statue of the Roman goddess Fortuna.
As landscape artist Amey Papitto prepared for the San Francisco Artists Guild Fair in Washington Square Park on Sunday morning, her eye caught a writhing figure on the roof of Telegraph Hill opposite the park.
“It was like a woman with an umbrella to protect herself from the wind,” Papito said. She noticed that the umbrella was moving just enough to draw her attention to the point between the pointed spire of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul and the Coit Tower on the hill.
Sandwiched between these two sights, curiosity seems to have been swept into the sky during a winter storm, and if Papitto could leave the art fair and follow her curiosity through the park, through the Sunday morning queue at her mom’s house, the dining crowds, and down Greenwich— street to Grant, she recognizes Phil Williams on top of the hilltop house.
Williams, a retired civil engineer, erected a statue of the Roman goddess Fortuna here, a replica of the one he saw on the Grand Canal in Venice. He built a replica and installed it on his roof in February, simply because he felt his new city needed a refresh.
“Everyone in San Francisco is stuck and depressed,” Williams, 77, explained to reporters knocking on his door. “People want something that looks good and reminds them why they lived in San Francisco in the first place.”
Essentially a weather vane, the work of art was built on a showcase-style mannequin that had to be taken apart to climb the 60 steps of the extremely narrow staircase of the three-story Williams House after the 1906 earthquake. Once on the roof deck, it is mounted on a four-foot-tall box topped with a plinth that allows the piece to rotate on its axis. Fortune herself is 6 feet tall, but the platform gives her a whopping 12 feet, on a rooftop 40 feet from the street that can be reached by stairs. Her outstretched arms hold a sail-like shape, as if flapping it in the wind.
But even at such a height, the view of Fortuna from the street is practically closed. She haunts you in all her golden glory, as does Papitto, who is in the park across from Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Shop.
A statue of the Greek goddess Fortune was lit up on the rooftop patio of Phil Williams’ house during a party in San Francisco.
Monique Dorthy of Roseville and her two daughters traveled from Greenwich to Coit Tower on Sunday to see the Cramer Place statue, which was enough to keep her from crawling out of breath to the middle of the block.
“It was a woman. I don’t know what she was holding – some kind of flag,” she said. Saying that the statue was a resident’s work of art, she said, “If it brings joy to him and joy to the city, I like it.”
Williams hopes to deliver a deeper message to Fortuna, the Roman goddess of fortune, from her rooftop.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to nail something to the roof of a building,” he said. “But it makes sense. Fortune tells us where the winds of fate blow. It reminds us of our place in the world.”
Williams, a British immigrant best known for his engineering work on the Chrissy Field swamp, had never heard of Fortune before taking his wife Patricia on holiday to Venice before the pandemic. Their hotel room overlooked Dogana di Mare, a 17th-century customs house, across the Grand Canal. There is a weather vane on the roof. The guide said it was the goddess Fortuna, created by the baroque sculptor Bernardo Falcone. It has been attached to the building since 1678.
Williams was looking for a new rooftop attraction after a camera obscura he had built into the ceiling of the top-floor media room leaked and had to be demolished.
He walked in and around Washington Square to make sure his roof was visible. He then returned to his home and called his friend, 77-year-old Petaluma sculptor Tom Cipes.
“He immediately recognized the artistic potential of reimagining 17th-century Venetian sculpture and bringing it to San Francisco,” Williams said.
Cipes donated his labor, which was worth six months. Williams estimates the materials cost $5,000. A fiberglass base was found at Mannequin Madness in Auckland. Cipes’ challenge was to fill her with a skeleton of steel and cement that was strong enough to permanently support her ground, yet light enough to twist when the wind blew through her beautifully coiffed hair. The final touch was the patina on her gold, making her look weather-beaten from fog and rain.
A statue of the Roman goddess Fortune stands on the roof of Phil Williams’ house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.
Williams built a frame over the hole where the camera obscura would have stood, making room for Fortune’s pedestal. He installed floor lamps to illuminate the statue from 8 to 9 p.m., long enough to add a nighttime vibe to the park, but not long enough to greatly disturb dimly lit neighbors.
On February 18, on a clear, moonless February night, in the flickering of city lights, a closed opening for friends took place. One by one they climbed the stairs to the roof, where Williams played a recording of Carmina Burana, an oratorio written for Fortuna in the 20th century. They fried it with prosecco. The Italian teacher read the poem “O Fortune” and attached the words to the base of the statue.
”Three days later, we set her up and made a hurricane,” Williams said. “I don’t want to be too creepy, but it was like she summoned a wind genie.”
It was a cold and windy Sunday morning, and Fortune was dancing, managing to put a crown on her head and raise the sails.
“I think it’s cool,” said a man who identified himself as Gregory’s namesake, who drove from his home in Pacific Heights for a stroll through Washington Square. “I love hipster San Francisco.”
Sam Whiting has been a staff correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1988. He started out as a staff writer for Herb Kahn’s “People” column and has written about people ever since. He is a general-purpose reporter who specializes in writing lengthy obituaries. He lives in San Francisco and walks three miles a day through the city’s steep streets.
Post time: Mar-12-2023