Presidio Gate gets a facelift, neighborly help

As the architectural conservator for the Presidio Trust, Christina Wallace spent 12 months overseeing the $100,000 restoration of the Presidio's historic Arguello Gate.

The centerpiece of the project was repairing and replacing the capstone atop the gate's southwest pier. Now, a concerned and observant neighbor, fortified with computer diagrams and photos, was suggesting that the newly restored capstone had been put on backwards.

"Fortunately, I have done enough of these projects to have checked and double checked everything I could think of before we started," Wallace said. "I was actually pleased that someone took the time and was interested enough to send us the detailed message. I'm also glad we did our homework."

More than a century of San Francisco weather and other wear and tear had taken its toll on the Arguello Gate since it was erected in 1896, and the gate had been showing its age for some time. Some of its columns had cracks so large the public could see through to the other side.

In 1996, the gate's capstone was knocked off when a truck crashed into the wall. Since that time, the damaged capstone had been hidden away in a National Park Service storage facility in the Marin Headlands.

"We always hesitated to start the gate restoration until we knew what to do with this big missing piece," Wallace said. "It really didn't make sense to do a restoration of the gate without the capstone."

After determining the capstone was indeed repairable, Wallace received permission in March to return it to the Presidio. Restoration work began two months later.

The gate's care has been in the skilled hands of master carver Oleg Lobykin, founder of Stonesculpt. He and his team have been bringing the gate back to life through a combination of brute force and painstaking sculpting.

To repair the cracks in the pillars, they wrapped them with nylon straps and pulled them together. Working from photographs and using mortar and basic sculpting tools, they set about recreating the intricate designs. They were able to use the Presidio's Lombard Gate, which has the same designs, as a reference.

Lobykin compared his work to that of a dentist filling a cavity.

"We remove the cavity and replace it with filler," he said. "You're looking for color; you're looking for texture. You're trying to make it as invisible as possible.

"We very much respect the labor that went into creating the gate," he said. "It's a monument, artifact and piece of history so we try to preserve it as much as we can. It's been a really remarkable transformation."

This article first appeared in the fall issue of "At the Presidio."