Photograph shows a statue of William McKinley on the park grounds. Plotted by Chester Lyman in his 1848 survey, the park evolved over the next half century as the focus of many of San Jose's most important civic and religious buildings. It remains the city's most significant urban open space. Major public and private buildings – the Post Office, several churches, club and lodge headquarters – were built along its perimeter and it became a site for public gatherings and demonstrations. Major labor rallies took place in the park in 1931 and 1933. California's last lynching occurred here in 1933 – John Holmes and Thomas Thurmond, accused of kidnapping and killing the son of the Hart Department Store president, were taken from the county jail by a mob and hanged. Monuments commemorate speeches made here by President William McKinley and Senator Robert Kennedy, both assassinated shortly after their visits to San Jose. Scanned with Microtek Scanmaker 1000XL Pro; as a 600 dpi TIFF image in 8-bit Grayscale. Auto Level image processing applied and compressed into JPG format using Photoshop CS3.
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