This 29"x41" Watercolor is in the Collection of Mr. Steven Bechtel of Becthel Industries. The work was derived from the G.R. Fardon Collection which commissioned Fardon to photograph the city of San Francisco in its earliest stages of development. This was the first such commission ever given anywhere in the world. One of the reasons That Fardon was commissioned was tha the city of San Francisco would experience a major fires which would provoundly alter the landscape of the city. This photographhic series served the purpose of creating a visual record to aid in the reconstruction effort. When one peruses the photographs, one can see that there are a surprisingly large number of Catholic Bookstores on every block. This was because ofthe large number Irish and Italian immigrants that came to this city to work the gold fields and follow the oppurtunities that the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill provided. For decades, the city of San Francisco had the highest percentage of Roman Catholics of an city in the United States.