37.7239, −122.4569 A locator map appears here once a Mapbox token is configured.
Know This Place

District 11 · Block 6942, Lot 050 · ZIP 94112

Ingleside Presbyterian Church and "The Great Cloud of Witnesses"

1345 Ocean Avenue · Oceanview / Merced / Ingleside

  • 2 stories
  • 17,600 ft2
  • 9,931 ft2 lot area
  • 16 rooms
  • Wood frame
  • Zoned NC-2
  • Historic resource
  • City landmark #273
Land$122,651
Improvements$409,379
Total assessed$532,030
37.7239, −122.4569 Street View appears here once a Google Maps embed key is configured.
  1. 1908

    The United Presbyterian Board announced its purchase of this lot for a permanent church for the Ingleside Sabbath School, which had been meeting in a nearby apartment basement.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  2. 1909

    Built.

  3. 1909–1910

    Reverend D.A. Russell led the building of the first church on this lot.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  4. March 1909

    The cornerstone of the first church on this site was laid in March 1909; inscribed 'U.P. MAR. 1909', it is set in the base of the western engaged column of the present building's portico.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  5. 1910

    A Sunday school for 1906 earthquake refugees, begun in 1907 in the basement of the nearby Robinson Apartments, moved into the first purpose-built Presbyterian church on this site in 1910 (not extant).

    OMI Neighborhoods Historical Context Statement, adopted 2010
  6. 1914

    Reverend W.R. McKnight added a gymnasium to the first church to give local youth an alternative to the bars and roadhouses of Ocean Avenue.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  7. 1920

    The 1910 wood-framed Presbyterian church on this site burned down in 1920.

    OMI Neighborhoods Historical Context Statement, adopted 2010
  8. September 1920

    The fire that destroyed the first church was electrical in origin.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  9. 1921

    Ingleside Terraces developer Joseph Leonard donated the land and designed the replacement church, built as a place for various Protestant faiths to worship. The context statement's narrative text dates the building to 1921; a photo caption in the same document dates it to 1923. Both readings are recorded here.

    OMI Neighborhoods Historical Context Statement, adopted 2010
  10. 1923

    The present church was completed at a cost of $65,000, paid for jointly by nine Protestant congregations, and opened as the Ingleside Community Church and Social Service Center.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  11. 1923

    The new building was fitted with a gymnasium, locker and shower rooms, a ladies' club room and a boys' room; the religious director, Rev. A.E. Kelly, chose the gymnasium over a pipe organ when funds ran short, which is why the church has no organ.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  12. 1926

    Reverend R.H. Gordon became pastor and started after-school clubs that filled the building with children in the afternoons and evenings.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  13. 1953–1957

    The sanctuary and gymnasium were remodeled and a new pastor's study built; the sanctuary's octagonal dome with colored-glass skylights and redwood supports dates from this 1950s modernization.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  14. 1972

    The church took on its first African American pastor, as co-pastor.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  15. August 1978

    With the congregation down to four members and facing closure, the church took on a first-year seminary student to preach on Sundays for $50 a week; he went on to create The Great Cloud of Witnesses.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  16. 1980

    The church's student pastor began The Great Cloud of Witnesses by gluing one newspaper clipping of Muhammad Ali to the gymnasium wall; the collage-mural of African American role models grew over the following decades to cover the gym, lobby, stairways and rooms on all three levels.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  17. 1986

    The Ingleside Community Center was founded as the church's nonprofit arm, raising money for education, advocacy and employment programs for youth and young adults.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  18. Apr 1986
    Permit 8604790 $$$ $5,000

    Install vent hood duct work & blower.

  19. Jun 1986
    Permit 8606992 $$$ $50,000

    New elevator, new handicap toilet & mens toilet.

  20. Aug 1987
    Permit 8711827 $$$ $35,000

    Remodel mens toilet, add shower @ basement level.

  21. Feb 1989
    Issued Permit 8902743 $$$ $30,000

    New electrical service, replace light fixtures, new exit lights.

  22. Nov 1990
    Permit 9023935 $$$ $8,000

    Remove and install new composition roofing over gymp.

  23. 1992

    Susan Cervantes of Precita Eyes Muralists, with Selma Brown and Ronnie Goodman, painted a sunset-sky mural with ten portraits (among them Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr.) around the top six feet of the gymnasium walls, funded by a city Community Development Block Grant.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  24. Sep 2007
    Issued Permit 200709061924 $$$ $15,000

    Remove 3' square section of private sidewalk and dig 12" hole. install 3' sqd 12"d footing w rebar per engineering drawings and calcs. deliver and install 5' diameter sculptural sphere by bolting into footing per drawings.cleanup.

  25. Jul 2008
    Issued Permit 200807297890 $$$ $15,000

    Renew appl#2007-0906-1924 to comple work.

  26. 2010

    San Francisco artist Eugene White added thirteen circular portraits of local and national civil rights leaders, painted on plywood and screwed over the 1992 gymnasium mural.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  27. August 10, 2011

    A painted sign by Eugene White naming the basement's President Barack Obama Technology Center, one of the collage-mural's themed rooms, is dated 10 August 2011.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  28. November 15, 2016

    Designated San Francisco Landmark No. 273, Ingleside Presbyterian Church and "The Great Cloud of Witnesses".

    SF Planning, landmark designation
  29. Nov 2019
    Filed Permit 201911086835 $$$ $100

    Install 18" diameter bronze historic plaque for landmark no. 273 at front entry.

  30. Jul 2020
    Permit 202007029545 $$$ $6,000

    Installation of ul300 fire system.

  31. Jul 2020
    Permit 202007109917 $$$ $10,250

    Install replacement kitchen hood.

  32. 2024

    The Great Cloud of Witnesses, an indoor collage and mural assembled over three decades inside Ingleside Presbyterian Church, covers its interior with thousands of images of civil rights figures, popular culture and congregation members. The church and mural together are a designated city landmark.

    African American Citywide Historic Context Statement, adopted 2024

2 nominal $1 street-space or sidewalk permits are omitted from the timeline. 5 expired permits are not shown. The assessor dates the building to 1909; the OMI Historic Context Statement (2010) gives 1921 in its narrative text and 1923 in a photo caption, for the church rebuilt after a 1920 fire destroyed a predecessor on this site. The church is dated both 1921 and 1923.

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