The soaring Native Sons’ Monument, also known as the Admission Day Monument, celebrates the admission of California to the Union.

It was unveiled on September 5, 1897, and stood for 51 years at the intersection of Mason, Turk, and Market Streets.

Commissioned by Mayor James D. Phelan, this striking monument was the work of sculptor Douglas Tilden and architect Willis Polk, who designed the base and column. The angel atop the monument, modeled after the sculptor’s wife, holds an open book over her head inscribed “September 9, 1850” — the date California became a state. At the shaft’s base, a young miner, with a pick on his shoulder and armed with a six-shooter, waves an American flag. Amazing photos after the 1906 fire and earthquake show it standing tall in the midst of a scene of utter destruction. The monument was moved to the Redwood Memorial Grove of Golden Gate Park in 1948 and was shifted to its present location (at the intersection of Post, Montgomery, and Market Streets) in 1977 after lobbying by the Native Sons of the Golden West.

Tilden had scarlet fever at the age of four and was completely deaf; his talent for modeling with clay was noted at the school for the deaf and he was sent to New York and Paris for study. His marriage, to Elizabeth Delano Cole, (the angel atop the monument) was tempestuous and ended in divorce.

Because Phelan greatly admired his work, Tilden was commissioned to do a number of San Francisco civic sculptures, including The Baseball Player in Golden Gate Park, the Mechanics Monument where Market, Bush and Battery Streets meet, and California Volunteers on Market Street.