John Winfield Pearson

This handsome fellow was born in 1875 in Oakland, California. He was highly educated having attended Stanford University in the same class as Herbert Hoover. He became an engineer and inventor and opened and office in San Francisco at the turn of the century. He commuted on the ferryboat across the bay to work. His office was on New Mongomery Street in the business district. He took to exercising at the Olympic Club, which remains a private mens club on Sutter Street to this day. He eventually was to meet his hero Eugen Sandow, and even Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

His lean, though athletic, physique was to be immortalized when he became a model for one of the statues atop the "The Mechanics Monument", a group of muscular male figures which was fashioned of bronze and dedicated on May 15, 1901. It survived the great 1906 earthquake and fire, and stands impressively today at the corner of Market and Bush Streets. The sculptor was Douglas Tilden who was one of the formost artists of his day, and he was totally deaf. The sculpture was recently restored and looks nearly new once again.