Spanish Monastery Stones

The Spanish Monastery Stones consist of thousands of granite blocks stacked in orderly piles, remnants of a twelfth-century Cistercian abbey from Sacramenia, Spain. William Randolph Hearst bought the structure in nineteen twenty-five, intending to rebuild it on his estate. His agents dismantled the stones, numbered them, and packed them into eleven thousand wooden crates. Financial troubles forced Hearst to abandon the plan, and the crates sat in a warehouse for decades before they finally arrived in Golden Gate Park.