Russian Hill couple finds mysterious 150-pound stone sculpture buried in backyard

SAN FRANCISCO - A San Francisco couple doing yard work at their two-story Russian Hill neighborhood home recently uncovered what may be a piece of the city’s artistic past: a 150-pound stone sculpture buried nearly 2 feet underground in their Russian Hill backyard.

Discovery while grading the yard

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Greg Gatwood said he first mistook the object for construction debris while grading the yard.

"I was doing a little grading and I came across what I thought was a piece of concrete, rectangular, and I thought, I’ll just pop it out and throw it to the side," Gatwood said.

It wasn’t until he turned the heavy slab over that he realized it was something far more unusual.

Judy Gittelsohn, an artist and Gatwood’s longtime partner, said the carved face immediately stood out as the work of a skilled hand.

"To get that smooth transition in carving a stone, any kind of stone, is really a masterful piece of work," she said.

The limestone sculpture measures about 2 feet wide and 9 inches thick. 

Its origins remain unknown, and that uncertainty has quickly become part of the intrigue.

"It is a treasure that they just found," said Ken Middlebrook, curator of collections at History San Jose. "The difficulty will be trying to identify who made it."

Trying to find answers

Doing the research:

As word of the discovery spread, Gittelsohn began consulting fellow artists and friends. 

One name surfaced repeatedly: Ralph Stackpole, a prominent San Francisco sculptor and teacher in the early and mid-20th century.

"One of them said, ‘That looks like a Stackpole,’" Gittelsohn said. "All the hairs on my body stood straight up."

Stackpole, who taught at what is now the San Francisco Art Institute, left work across the city, including at the former Pacific Stock Exchange building and Coit Tower. Still, Gittelsohn believes the piece is more likely the work of one of his students than Stackpole himself.

"Probably it was one of his students," she said.

Middlebrook said the find reflects the kinds of unexpected discoveries that surface in a city with a deep and layered cultural history.

"I call these history ‘mystories,’" he said. "We find these things either in the ground or in a box, or even in a newspaper, and you kind of sit there and scratch your head and say, ‘What?’"

For now, the couple is not planning to sell the sculpture. Gatwood is continuing yard work around the heavy stone, while Gittelsohn is reaching out to art experts in hopes of tracing its origins and how it came to be buried beneath their property.

Whatever its history, the carved face is likely to remain a focal point of the newly renovated garden — and a small, enigmatic piece of San Francisco’s artistic legacy.