A foundation of bones 
Asian Art Museum building site covers a corner of 19th century cemetery

Sunday, May 13, 2001 
San Francisco Chronicle
Chronicle Sections

As a giant excavator dug a new foundation for the Asian Art Museum, 
Stuart Guedon stood in the dirt holding a little trowel and looking 
for pieces of an old one. 

The museum is being built in the Beaux Arts shell of the old 
Main Library, on the site where City Hall was before the 1906 earthquake. 

There are a lot of things buried beneath that skeleton, but nobody expected 
to find any real bones. Then one day last month, elevator operator Al Richey
noticed a white bone in the dirt, uncovered by an overnight rain. The heavy 
machinery was shut down while Guedon, the on-site archaeologist, got down 
with his trowel and started digging. When he was finished, a complete human
skeleton was uncovered lying face up, hands folded over his chest.
 
Guedon knew that the site included an edge of what had been the Yerba Buena
Cemetery, on a triangle of land bordered by Market, Larkin and McAllister 
streets. But all of the bodies presumably had been removed before construction
started on San Francisco's original City Hall in the early 1870s. It turns out
that some corners were cut, specifically the corner of McAllister and Hyde 
streets. So far, the remains of 18 people have been uncovered in what's left 
of wooden coffins found in neat rows about 25 feet in from the 
sidewalk and 13 feet below street level.

"They actually built City Hall right on top of these bodies," Guedon says. 
The library, too. The first remains were found right below where the book 
stacks used to be. To make sure no one put up a third building on top of the 
graves, Guedon, a historical geographer and archaeologist, was hired on a 
$50, 000 contract with Basin Research Associates of San Leandro. 

Guedon's job is to watch all the excavation and make sure nothing of historic
value is bulldozed. 

When he detects remnants of granite or sandstone or red brick or the dark 
sand that indicates a burial site, he calls a halt to the digging. The 
backhoe operator is then instructed to remove the dirt delicately until 
Guedon can come in with his trowel and a broom, or a toothbrush if it comes 
to that. He'll clear the dirt and study what is left. He photographs 
and charts it to make sure the information is consistent with old maps. 

"That would be 1893 right there," he says while looking at a layer of 
exposed brick that was terraced like an ancient pyramid. Looking at the old 
maps, Guedon deduced that this was the old City Hall's foundation beneath a 
row of windows on the northeast McAllister wing. 

Guedon's job got more interesting when the excavator dug three or four feet 
deeper than the City Hall foundation to make room for a sub-basement. 

Some of the remains uncovered had been undisturbed for 150 years. The coffins
have been reduced to just pieces of wood and a few nails, but the skeletons 
are remarkably preserved. The other day one was uncovered with three molars 
showing in his skull and a wooden button on his midsection. He was estimated 
to have died at 19. Guedon found another one with a vest still on and a coin 
in the pocket. They are studied, measured, cataloged, photographed. Then the 
bones are sent to the coroner. 

There they will join brethren dug up during construction of both the New Main 
Library across the street, and the old one. Those exhumed in 1916 were sent 
west to a graveyard in the hills and dug up a second time during excavation 
to retrofit the Palace of the Legion of Honor. 

The new museum, named the Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture, 
a $160 million public-private partnership,  is scheduled to open in 2002. 
To make sure there is no delay, there are five archaeologists on-site looking 
for skeletons. "This may be a $10,000 exercise," says Doug Henry, project 
engineer. 

It will cost a lot more if any remains turn out to be American Indians. 
Work would have to halt completely and tribal representatives hired to 
conduct ceremonies. But Guedon is certain they won't be found. 

"If it were Native Americans, there would be no coffins and it would be 
random," he says. And it is doubtful any American Indians would be buried 
in the cemetery, which operated from 1850 to 1870. "By that time they would
be at the mission or out of town." 

Guedon can deduce the age and sex of the deceased but not much beyond that. 
So far, only two headstones have been unearthed, one with just three initials, 
"H.M.H." On the second, "Sacred to the Memory of," is etched in stone, but 
everything else has been lost to time. 

Asian Art Museum Chronicles This is the fifth in an occasional series about 
the three-year project to convert the old Main Library to the new Asian Art 
Museum in the San Francisco Civic Center. 
E-mail Sam Whiting at swhiting@sfchronicle.com.