M. H. de Young Memorial Museum (San Francisco, California)

 art museum / art gallery  Add category

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 750-3600
www.famsf.org/deyoung/

The M.H. de Young Museum (commonly called simply The de Young) is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H. de Young.

The museum originally opened in 1895 as an outgrowth of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 (a fair modeled on the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of the previous year). The building was originally decorated with cast-concrete ornaments on the façade. The ornaments were removed in 1949 as they began to fall and had become a hazard. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake severely damaged the building.

Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and engineers Arup designed the newly rebuilt structure, which reopened on October 15, 2005. The current building is clad with perforated copper plates, which will change colors through exposure to the elements. A 144 ft. (44 m) observation tower allows visitors to see much of Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse and rises above the Park's treetops providing a view of the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands.