Rage against Serra grew, too. Statues were toppled in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Three years earlier, a statue of the priest at Santa Barbara Mission was decapitated and splashed with red paint.

Grant and Junipero Serra, who established and oversaw a number of Spanish missions. City workers had removed San Francisco’s Christopher Columbus statue the day before, following Mayor London ...

San Francisco leaders are hoping a 45-foot mesh wire sculpture of a naked woman with open palms is just the thing that will woo weary shoppers back to the city’s famed Union Square district.