University patron Jane Sather dedicated this Beaux-Arts gateway in to her husband, Peder, to mark what was then Cal's south entrance at the terminus of Telegraph Avenue. The eight anatomically correct nude plaques -- each allegorically representing an academic discipline -- that graced John Galen Howard's design caused a sensation when the work was completed in 1910, and Mrs. Sather quickly had them taken down. Reports differ as to whether she was disconcerted by the nudity or by pranksters' reactions to it (the male figures were discovered one morning to have sprouted fig leaves). The plaques moldered in a Hearst Gym storage room until their rediscovery in 1977; they were reinstalled on the gate four years later. Reversing their original placement, the male nudes now face north, away from the university entrance. The gate's bronze and steel metalwork were restored from 2008-2009, in time for the monument's centennial.
