The Wax Museum at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, USA, has over 270 wax figures.[1] Originator Thomas Fong opened the museum in 1963 after seeing the wax figures at the Seattle World's Fair and it has been run by the Fong family since. It is one of San Francisco's largest wax museums and has attracted over 400,000 visitors a year.[2]
Contents |
Thomas L. Fong was born in Canton Province, China on January 4, 1913 and grew up in a small village. He emigrated to San Francisco, aged 17, when a family friend who was there offered to sponsor a member of the family. By 1938 he was running a jewelry store, and developing real estate projects.[3]
In the early 1960s Fong bought a run-down grain mill called Smith Anderson Mill, near Fisherman’s Wharf and decided to open a wax museum. The attraction opened on May 12, 1963. With the success of their first museum, the family purchased Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California on April 1, 1985 and ran it until it closed on October 31, 2005.[4]
By 1989, Thomas decided to leave the business and museum to his son Ron and his grandson Rodney Fong. He died on November 26, 2000, aged 87.[3]
The old museum was demolished in 1998, having had over 10 million visitors since it opened, including almost half a million in the year before it closed.[5] It reopened two years later in a new 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m2) four-story building, designed by MBH Architects. Inspired by French Victorian public architecture, it cost $18m and includes retail space and a restaurant. The Wax Museum officially reopened on July 13, 2000; it is in the basement of the new building and lies nine feet below the bay level.[6] According to Rodney Fong, in 2008 it was attracting 250,000 visitors a year of whom around 10% were from abroad.[1]
The museum displays a few figures of current interest in the lobby, which is open to the street.[1] The bodies of the wax statues are made of wood, fiberglass, papier-mâché and beeswax. The process to make each figure and prepare it for display takes approximately two or three months. Many of the sculptures were created by Gem's Wax Figures in London. A few were crafted by Ron Fong, others by Los Angeles wax sculptor Henry Alvarez, and the museum's resident sculptor, Kahn Gasimov who was hired away from London's Madame Tussauds.[7]
The underground exhibits contain more than 270 figures and scenes, ranging from The Last Supper and Wizard of Oz to King Tut and the Chamber of Horrors which includes Anton LaVey, the late San Francisco satanist whose wax figure attended his funeral. There are famous sports-people and important historical figures including a display of dictators featuring Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Napoleon Bonaparte and Hideki Tōjō. A display of World War II generals features an authentic World War II Willys jeep and the sound of explosions and machine-gun fire. A scientists' section includes Galileo, Albert Einstein and a young Bill Gates. Other displays include famous composers, artists and current celebrities.