Walk down 18th Street between Guerrero and Valencia and it is hard to miss the Women’s Building. Its walls are covered in MaestraPeace, one of the largest murals in San Francisco. The Women’s Building says the name means “woman teacher of peace.” Mission Local called the mural one of the gems of the Mission District, a place where art, politics and history collide.

The building

Wikipedia says the four-story building was built in 1910 by architect August Reinhold Denke for the German Turnverein exercise movement and was long known as Mission Turn Hall. The Sons and Daughters of Norway bought it in 1935 and renamed it Dovre Hall. The San Francisco Women’s Center bought it in the late 1970s and turned it into a community center for women. Wikipedia says the center paid off the mortgage in 1995. The building became a San Francisco landmark in 1985 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.

Seven muralists

MaestraPeace was painted in 1994 by Juana Alicia, Miranda Bergman, Edythe Boone, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton and Irene Perez. The Women’s Building says they worked with artist and calligrapher Olivia Quevedo and almost 100 volunteers. Wikipedia says the mural covers the outside of the building as well as the interior entrance hall and stairway. It features female icons from history and fiction, along with the names of more than 600 women written in calligraphy.

El Tecolote reported in 2012 that the mural covers a total of 10,400 square feet and cost $43,000 to make in 1994. Its images include Georgia O’Keeffe and 1993 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú, among dozens of goddesses. The paper said a fantasy goddess conceived by Cervantes drew controversy when the city’s Landmarks Advisory Board threatened to block municipal funding over the figure’s nudity.

The 2012 restoration

By 2012 the mural was peeling and had been hit by graffiti. El Tecolote reported that the Women’s Building had raised $60,000 from SF Beautiful and Mayor Ed Lee toward a $130,000 restoration. The original artists planned to restore the reds and yellows and seal the painting against weather and aging. Wikipedia notes that many of the artists had also returned for an update in 2000 and an expansion inside the building in 2010.

Mission Local covered a March 2013 celebration of the finished restoration. Six of the seven artists attended. Juana Alicia said the muralists, then ages 46 to 75, knew they were passing the work on to the young women volunteers who had joined them on the scaffolding. “It’s just as meaningful as it was the day we did it,” Cervantes said.

Visiting

The mural wraps the 18th Street and Lapidge Street sides of the building, so you can see it from the sidewalk at any time. For more Mission murals, see our Balmy Alley guide and our Clarion Alley guide.