Deaf. D'Estrella enrolled at Fremont School for the Deaf at age 8 and later was the first Deaf person to attend UC Berkeley, where he became a photographer. D'Estrella never married. Tilden and d'Estrella met at age 15 at California School for the Deaf. According to the diaries they rekindled their relationship later in life once with a camping trip in which Tilden drew pictures of d’Estrella sleeping in the tent and fishing nude. Tilden wrote of their night together: it was a 'very warm night'. Gallaudet's collection also has love letters from Tilden writing from his Paris trip to d'Estrella in Berkeley. D'Estrella traveled to Paris and stayed with Tilden for a month. Upon d'Estrella's return to Berkeley he wrote over 30 letters in the newspaper the 'California News' about his travels. Some believe there are hints to their relationship in the articles. D'Estrella, Theophilus Hope. (1889). Summer Trip to Paris. The Weekly. California School for the Deaf, Berkeley. October 26, 1889. 3. Newsletter. Tilden was found dead in his Berkeley studio on August 6, 1935; he had died of a heart attack while trying to heat water. He is buried in the Cole family plot of Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California with his ex-wife Bessie (died 1949) and son Willoughby (died 1931). In 2017, the Tilden Hotel at Taylor & O'Farrell in San Francisco was renamed to honor Douglas Tilden; it originally opened as the Linden Hotel in 1928 and was renamed almost immediately to the Hotel Mark Twain. See also Granville Redmond, an artist who also studied under Theophilus d'Estrella at the California School for the Deaf and shared a room with Tilden in Paris Melvin Earl Cummings, a sculptor trained by Tilden References Bibliography External links Guide to the Douglas Tilden Papers at The Bancroft Library The History of the Mechanics Monument by R. Christian Anderson. Guidepost 1861 births 1935 deaths 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area Burials at Mountain View Cemetery (Oakland, California) Deaf artists Modern sculptors University of California, Berkeley alumni 19th-century American sculptors American male sculptors American deaf people Sculptors from California 19th-century American male artists