Martin Hanson's spite monument was a one-of-a-kind, 7-foot middle finger to San Francisco.
“It’s remarkably ironic that what he railed against came back and bit him again years after he died,” Gallagher told SFGATE. “‘We took your property, now we’re going to tear down your monument too.’ On its face, he’s another SF character in a litany of characters from Emperor Norton to Frank Chu. That’s what captivated me.”
Even before Hanson built his monument, he was the subject of a 1923 San Francisco Chronicle story detailing his fight with the city. In 1920, San Francisco condemned some of his lots on Twin Peaks, at the time a sparsely populated hillside area where he lived. By 1923, Hanson had moved to an apartment in the Mission District, and he left behind some large signs on his cottage to voice his discontent. One large, black-and-red sign on the roof read, “Improvement or confiscation?” It continued to say, “This property has been isolated. Former value, 4,500. Present value, NIL. Compensation received, NIL.”
In 1925, with the message “A measure of progress” inscribed on top, the spite monument was born on Hanson’s remaining triangular lot. A bench sat next to it, with an iron picket fence around it. He chose Nov. 11 as the day his letter was to be opened because it would be exactly 50 years after Armistice Day — the end of World War I two years earlier and the peak of his hopes for humanity: “that militarism and absoluteism, etc. would be ended, the international spirit would supplant race hatred, and civilization would advance rapidly.”
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