$200-Million Shrine to Common Man : Museum Would Hold Little Bit of Everything

A tobacco-chewing millionaire in khaki work clothes says he is going to make nothing less than the “Eighth Wonder of the World” rise from wind-swept hills near San Francisco.

Some folks like the idea, others don’t. A few think he is crazy. But it seems they are all taking him seriously.

Mario Sengo, a businessman with a regular-guy image, wants his legacy to be a $200-million museum complex on the outskirts of Fairfield that he says would celebrate “the whole history of our country and all the people in it.”

Principally, it would be a sort of shrine to the common man, with emphasis on agriculture, Sengo says. A 160-foot-tall statue of a farmer would be the largest in the world, surpassing a Soviet statue in Leningrad by just six inches, he said.

Acres of Gardens

In its shadow would stretch acre upon acre of outdoor and hothouse gardens with every type of fruit, vegetable, flower, tree and bush in the country.

The main museum building would depict the history of U.S. agriculture, art, the performing arts, nationalities, religions--and the women’s movement.

Famous people such as U.S. Presidents and their wives would be honored, but nearly all the enshrined would be just the regular people that made the country he loves great, said Sengo, the son of Portuguese immigrants who owned a Central Valley dairy farm.

Regular folks could pay a fee--perhaps $10,000--to set up an exhibit that would include family photographs and history.

A nonprofit museum foundation that Sengo has formed would use donations to build the complex on 185 acres of farmland that he is buying for nearly $1 million along Interstate 80, the major east-west artery serving San Francisco, about 45 miles to the southwest.