24th and Mission: the plaza by the station

A street staircase leads underground to the city rail station, but the low-rise Mission block remains behind it. For the new hub, high office buildings, garages, and elevated walkways were planned here; some homes and shops had already been removed, but residents stopped further redevelopment. That is why small businesses and residential buildings stand beside the concrete of the tracks, while on the wall above the descent you can make out three enormous figures repeating the shape of the supports. The mural's present brightness is the result of a later restoration, when its author returned to the wall and redrew the outlines.

The northeast corner of the intersection serves both as a subway entrance and as a city plaza. People transfer to buses here, trade, arrange meetings, and hold public events. Above the stairs, three enormous figures hold a silver BART train in their hands. Their bodies resemble concrete supports.

When the station was designed, no such mural was planned. In nineteen sixty-six, architects proposed surrounding the future entrances with buildings at least thirteen stories high, offices, garages, elevated walkways, and commercial spaces. Part of the homes and shops was demolished for the station itself. Mission residents secured the cancellation of the rest of the redevelopment, and after the subway opened in nineteen seventy-three, a block of small businesses and residential buildings remained behind the stairs.

Michael Ríos, a young artist working in the Mission, wanted to fill the new city wall with an image made by people from the neighborhood itself. On their way to school, local children passed advertisements for cigarettes and alcohol; Ríos called his first murals a fight against billboards. One day, he rode past BART's elevated tracks and saw human figures in the concrete supports. That is how the sketch of people holding up the train appeared.

In nineteen seventy-four, Ríos brought the idea to the San Francisco Arts Commission. The National Endowment for the Arts allocated seven thousand five hundred dollars for the work. Together with the artists Anthony “Tony” Machado and Richard Montez, Ríos transferred the composition onto the wall. They completed it in nineteen seventy-five.

At the top, the artists painted a BART train; at the bottom, a crowd of faceless passengers; and between them, they placed the people-supports. Ríos explained the image literally: the trains appeared thanks to the work of residents and the taxes they paid, but construction raised land prices, closed shops, and forced some families to leave. That is why human hands bear the load in the mural.

The painting became one of the early large works by Latin American artists from the Mission. Carlos “Kookie” Gonzales saw it as a teenager when he rode the train from here; Suaro Cervantes passed beneath it on his way to school. Both grew up, became muralists, and in nineteen twenty-three climbed the scaffolding as Ríos's assistants. The seventy-six-year-old author himself cleaned the wall and redrew the outlines. Richard Montez came to the unveiling of the restored work, but Tony Machado did not live to see it.

The current bright colors appeared during that restoration. The figures holding the train above the station stairs remain from the original nineteen seventy-four design.