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San Francisco Statue
A campaign to have a Burns statue in San Francisco was started by John McGilvray in 1905.
The necessary cash was soon raised and Melvin Earl Cummings of Salt Lake City whose grandparents were born in Scotland was commissioned to produce the figure. Cummings modelled a standing figure of the poet which was sent to the De Rome Foundry in San Francisco for casting but on 18th April 1906 the foundry and its entire contents were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and the fire that swept the city in the aftermath.
The rebuilding of the city took all the time and energy of the Scottish community as well as all other citizens alike, and it was not until the middle of 1907 that the project was resurrected. Cummings started all over again, but by the end of that year the model was successfully cast, and the statue itself was unveiled in Golden Gate Park on Washington's birthday, 22nd February 1908.
The statue itself is eleven feet high and stands on a pedestal of Californian granite nine feet high. Burns stands to attention, right hand by his side, his left holding a small book. The head is closely modelled on Nasmyth's bust.
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