Washington Square

We find ourselves inside of the Washington Square Park, in the heart of the North Beach district. Picture yourself in the 1800s, surrounded by nothing but open land. This land was owned by a mexican farmer named Juana Briones, she grew potatoes and raised cattle. Juana is sort of the founding mother of San Francisco, because she was so involved in the growth of the city. As you’ll see, there is a commemorative plaque in her honor on a bench at the corner of Filbert and Stockton Street. Anyway, in 1847, the town’s surveyor responisble for the city’s laying out, declared this particular rectangle would be a public park thus creating one of the first gardens of the city. In the center, you will find a statue of Benjamin Franklin. The same guy that you find on $100 bills. By the way, did you know that the $100 bill was the most circulated bill in the United States?! Coming in first before the famous $1 green bill, with President George Washington’s face on it. Interestingly enough, there are only 2 bills which do not have President’s head on them. Those being the $10 bill featuring Alexander Hamilton’s portrait, and of course the $100 bill with our beloved, inventor, publisher, writer and diplomat Benjamin Franklin. His statue, slightly smaller than life-size, contained a time capsule from 1879, bound to be open 100 years later! The idea of ​​placing symbolic objects from an era so that future generations would be moved to find them again came from an eccentric millionaire named Henry Cogswell, who amassed his fortune during the San Francisco Gold Rush in the 1840s. In 1979, San Francisco’s Mayor, Dianne Feinstein, opened the capsule in front of a mesmerized crowd and retrieved treasures from the past. Newspaper clippings in several languages, a box of mint candies, coins, a piece of silver ore, buttons (who knows why), and a letter written by a 14-year-old child, who predicted that in 1979, the sky would be filled with steam-powered flying machines, but that women still wouldn’t have the right to vote! Since the experience was rather fun and enriching, a new capsule has been placed in the statue with instructions to be opened in 2079.