“I estimate that a dime dropped on the crest of California Street would gather speed enough to kill a horse on Market Street, unless it hit a Chinaman on Grant Avenue”
—PHILIP GUEDALLA
WHENEVER the builders of San Francisco could not go forward, they went up. In Currier and Ives’ bird's-eye view, The City of San Francisco—1878, they already had leaped that crescent-shaped barrier of hills which swings from Telegraph Hill on the northeast to Twin Peaks in the middle of the Peninsula. Persistently the long files of houses climbed to the crests and down the other side. Where the heights defied scaling even by the cable car, the city's uphill progress was facilitated by steps.
No San Franciscan was amazed to behold even that doughty railroad builder, Collis P. Huntington, being towed uphill to his mansion by the California Street grip. The pinnacle to which a man's rise in riches might carry him had a name in those days—Nob Hill, inspired by those “nabobs” of commerce and finance who looked down from its crest. To Robert Louis Stevenson, the “great net of straight thoroughfares lying at right angles, east and west and north and south over the Shoulders of Nob Hill, the hill of palaces, must certainly be counted the best part of San Francisco. It is there that the millionaires who gathered together, vying with each other in display, looked down upon the business wards of the city.”
When Dr. Arthur Hayne, having made a comfortable fortune at his medical practice, desired to settle down with his bride, actress Julia Dean, he chose Nob Hill and, hacking a trail through the brush to the summit, built in 1856 a house of wood and clay on the future site of the Fairmont Hotel. A short time later, a merchant, William Walton, erected a more pretentious dwelling at Taylor and Washington Streets. Not until late in the 1860’s, however, when the mass exodus of the elite from Rincon Hill began, was Nob Hill populated extensively.
Among the first men of wealth to settle there was Maurice Doré, banker William C. Ralston's confidante, who bought Walton's house. The first palatial homes built by millionaires—recalled Amelia Ransom Neville, chronicler of San Francisco's social elite—were Richard Tobin's, “distinguished by reason of having what might be termed a hand-picked library”; James Ben Ali Haggin's, “a large gray mansard with stables behind it where were all the most fastidious horses one could desire”; Lloyd Tevis’, where “wonderful parties were given…” Later William T. Coleman built “a white Roman villa in a walled garden” and Senator George Hearst, “a long Spanish palace of white stucco.”
The Hill's inducements as a residential site were greatly augmented by the advent of the cable car in the 1870’s—that curious vehicle whose means of locomotion puzzled the visiting English noblewoman, Lady Duffus Hardy, almost as much as the “newly arrived Mongolian” whose remarks she quoted: “ ‘No pushee, no pullee, no horsee, no steamee; Melican man heap smart.’ “
And from the summit of Nob Hill were rising, in the 1870’s, those “really palatial residences, the homes of the railway and bonanza kings,” of which Lady Hardy wrote. To advertise their new-found wealth, a half-dozen “get-rich-quick” millionaires—Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker of the “Big Four”; David Colton, who was known as the “½” of the “Big 4½”; James C. Flood of the “Nevada Four”; and E. J. (“Lucky”) Baldwin—lavished their railroad and mining millions in unbridled display. Of wood treated to resemble stone they built their palaces, and stuffed them with objets d'art imported from Europe in shiploads. In their ostentation they were anything but discreet, as they must have realized when Dennis Kearny led an army of “sand-lotters” up the hill one autumn day in 1877 to shake angry fists at the mansions. For three decades the vainglorious display continued to dazzle all beholders—until one by one, the mansions burst into blaze as fire swept the hill in April, 1906.
Risen from the ashes, Nob Hill continues to justify its proud epithet, “Hill of Palaces.” Where the bonanza mansions stood, luxury hotels, aristocratic clubs, and towering apartment houses overlook the Bay. Fastidious old gentlemen still reach their homes on the heights by cable car. Nob Hill ladies out airing their dogs, doormen resplendent in uniform before gleaming entrances, shining limousines attended by liveried chauffeurs perpetuate the traditions of the hill's golden age. But the days of reckless ostentation passed with the fire; the Nob Hill of today breathes an air of subdued gentility.
Nob Hill was but one of the summits claimed and held by the rich. As the rest of the city began to swarm around, the vanguard of the “Four Hundred” moved northward to Russian Hill or westward to Pacific Heights, where they could dwell surrounded by gardens looking down upon the Golden Gate.
What part the Russians played in the naming of Russian Hill remains a mystery. According to one legend, a colony of Russian farmers raised vegetables on its slopes for the seal catchers of the Farallones; according to another, certain Russians of unknown identity were buried there; and according to still another, a Russian sailor of prodigious drinking habits fell into a well on the hill, where he drowned. The place made its earliest appearance in the city's annals as the site of a gibbet, where on December 10, 1852, one José Forni was hanged in the town's first official execution.
When Joseph H. Atkinson built his house in 1853 on the south side of Russian Hill, it stood alone. But Charles F. Homer, a government contractor, soon built next door; and next to Homer, W. H. Ranlett erected his “House of Many Corners.” William Squires Clark, who had constructed the town's first wharf, built the two-story house later purchased by William Penn Humphreys. And not far away were erected two of the city's eight octagonal houses.
One of the first panoramas of the city, drawn and lithographed from daguerreotypes made from the summit of the hill about 1862 by C. B. Gifford, shows a few straggling fences and a handful of isolated houses among unpaved streets on the hill's northern and southern slopes. From its summit rises the “observatory”—somewhat resembling an oil well derrick with a spiraling stairway—which Captain David Jobson erected in 1861. From the crow's nest atop this structure (known as “Jobson's Folly”), picnickers who had toiled uphill from Harbor View Park on the Bay could survey, for 25¢, the landscape and seascape through a telescope.
Almost from the beginning, Russian Hill was the haunt of the city's artists and writers. Of their number, however, Robert Louis Stevenson—whose “homes” are almost as numerous as the beds “in which George Washington slept”—was not one, although his widow carne here to live after his death. Ambrose Bierce's cynicism found vent there. Joaquin Miller composed poetry there, as did Ina Coolbrith and George Sterling. Frederick O'Brien lived there when he wrote White Shadows of the South Seas. There Peter B. Kyne wrote many of his “Cappy Ricks” stories, and Stewart Edward White, his novels. Will and Wallace Irwin, in the days when Will was co-editor with Frank Norris and Gelett Burgess of The Wave, found refuge on the hill. It was because he lived there that Burgess conceived his “Ballad of the Hyde Street Grip”:
“Rush her at the crossings, catch her on the rise,
Easy round the corners when the dust is in your eyes!”
Of the colony were John Dewey, before he acquired his fame in the East; Mary Austin and James Hopper, before they went to join the colony at Carmel; Kathleen and Charles Norris, before they deserted the city for the Peninsula. On the crest of the hill, Rose Wilder Lane found inspiration. And here Inez Haynes Irwin wrote The Californians and Charles Caldwell Dobie, San Francisco: A Pageant. Sculptors Douglas Tilden and Haig Patigian have lived here, and the painter Maynard Dixon.
In a walled cavern built from an old cistern, “Dad” Demarest, high priest of Russian Hill's bohemia since 1872, lived for two weeks after the fire in 1906—and he still keeps it fitted up as a den, “just in case.” Tall apartment buildings began invading bohemia's province on the Hill long ago. Higher and higher the newcomers have lifted their steel-and-concrete shafts. But despite this invasion, Russian Hill is still a world removed, where steps climb and brick-flagged lanes twine up sheer heights between green hedges. Gracious homes and rambling studios perch among gardens spilling downhill on its slopes. Among the Tudor villas and the neo-French chateaux, chastely simple dwellings of plywood and glass brick, designed with corner windows and sun decks to admit sunlight, air, and the view, have begun to appear of late years.
(From Market and Powell Sts., the Washington and Jackson cable car crosses Nob Hill via Powell and Jackson Sts.; from Market and California Sts., the California St. cable car via California; from the Ferry Building, the Sacramento St. cable car via Sacramento. From Market and O'Farrell Sts., the O'Farrell, Jones and Hyde Sts. cable car crosses Russian Hill via Hyde; from the Ferry Building, the Municipal Railway “E” car via Union St.)
127. From the verge of the hill, the 20-story MARK HOPKINS HOTEL, SE. corner California and Mason Sts., above a triangular plaza entered between pylons and enclosed by balustrades, lifts its beacon-tipped minarets 563 feet above sea level. Opened in December 1926, it looks down on one of the city's most magnificent panoramas.
Famous orchestras broadcast nightly beneath painted peacocks flaunting their plumage on the ceiling of Peacock Court. Adjoining is the Room of the Dons, decorated with the murals of Maynard Dixon and Frank Van Sloun, depicting the story of California with its recurrent theme of “Golden Dreams.” “The Mark” is the scene of such established cults as the Friday night dance and the annual Junior League dance and fashion show.
To guests of sybaritic tastes, the solid gold bathroom fixtures of several of the tower apartments may recall the overwhelming lavishness of the mansion which railroad magnate Mark Hopkins built on the site in the 1870’s. Presented after Hopkins’ death to the San Francisco Art Association, the mansion became the scene of extravagant annual Mardi Gras balls.
128. On the foundations laid by James G. (“Bonanza Jim”) Fair for a Nob Hill mansion which would outshine all others, the FAIR- MONT HOTEL, California, Mason, Sacramento, and Powell Sts., rears its lordly pile of white granite. Only the granite walls enclosing the grounds had been built when domestic troubles interrupted Fair's plans. To memorialize her father, “Tessie” Fair Oelrichs undertook the erection of a de luxe hotel. The Fairmont stood complete but for its windows—and crates of sumptuous furnishings had been moved into the lobby—when the fire of 1906 demolished everything but the walls. Under the direction of Stanford White the hotel was repaired and refurnished, and on April 17, 1907—one day short of the anniversary of the fire—it was opened with a banquet for 500 guests. It at once became the resort of the elite, led by Ned Greenway, self-appointed arbiter of the city's “Four Hundred.”
From a semicircular drive flanked by lawns and shrubs, a portecochère leads to the entrance, marked by six gray stone columns rising six stories to the roof. From the walls of the vast, white-columned lobby, splashed with vivid red furnishings, look down panelled Fiorentine mirrors mounted in carved frames inlaid with gold leaf, imported from the Castello di Vincigliata in Italy. From the lobby open the Gold Room, scene of brilliant Army and Navy balls; the Laurel Court, fashionable at tea time; and the Venetian Room, where guests dance to “name bands.” In the Circus Lounge, against a background of gold leaf, eight murals by Esther, Margaret, and Helen Bruton depict men and animals performing under the “big top.” Popular Fairmont diversions are swimming in the fresh-water Terrace Plunge (open 10-10) and sun-bathing on the Terrace Lawn overlooking the Bay.
129. The PACIFIC UNION CLUB, NW. corner California and Mason Sts., occupies the only residence on the hill to survive the fire of 1906—the massive $1,500,000 Connecticut brownstone mansion built by James C. Flood after his return from a trip to New York, where he was impressed by the brownstone mansions of the rich. Flood's “thirty-thousand-dollar brass fence,” recalled Amelia Ransome Neville, “flashed for the entire length of two blocks on the square…and it was the sole task of one retainer to keep it bright.” The foundations of the Flood fortune were laid in the “Auction Lunch” kept by Flood and his partner, W. S. O'Brien, “where an especially fine fish stew drew Patrons from the Stock Exchange nearby. Daily the proprietors heard talk of Stocks and mining shares and together decided to invest. Results were overwhelming.”
In Steve Whipple's saloon on Commercial Street was founded the Pacific Club, first “gentlemen's club” in San Francisco, of which Cutler McAllister, brother of New York's social arbiter, Ward, was a founder. It was amalgamated eventually with the rival Union Club, founded in 1854. Its memberships, restricted to 100, pass like inheritances from father to son. Near Point Reyes, in Marin County, members hunt and fish in a preserve of 76,000 acres.
130. Where nursemaids trundle streamlined prams along the shrubbery-bordered paths of HUNTINGTON PARK, California, Taylor, and Sacramento Sts., Collis P. Huntington used to stride up to his front door from the cable car stop on California Street. Huntington bought his mansion from the widow of his one-time friend, David D. Colton, legal counsel for the “Big Four.” After Colton's mysterious death in 1878, the “Four” brought pressure upon her for the return of securities on the grounds that Colton had embezzled funds from their properties. Mrs. Colton vindicated her husband's name by introducing at a subsequent trial the famous “Colton Letters” exposing the machinations by which the four partners had acquired their railroad properties. From his enemy in court, Huntington bought Colton's house. Unlike the mansions of most of his contemporaries, the railroad lawyer's was in good taste, copied (wrote Mrs. Neville) “from a famous white marble palace of Italy…” Its site was bequeathed by Huntington's widow to the city in 1915.
131. Like those Gothic churches of the Middle Ages under construction for generations, GRACE CATHEDRAL, California, Taylor, Sacramento, and Jones Sts., is not finished, although its cornerstone was laid by Bishop William Ford Nichols 30 Years ago. Its spire—from which an illuminated cross will rise some day 230 feet above the hilltop—is still a gaunt skeleton of orange-painted girders. The dream which inspired its founders has been nurtured since September 1863, when the Right Reverend William Ingraham Kip, first Episcopal Bishop in California, placed his Episcopal Chair in Grace Church (founded 1850), thus establishing the first cathedral seat of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America.
The Grace Cathedral of Bishop Kip's day (California and Stockton Streets) was destroyed in the 1906 fire. On January 27, 1914, the Founders’ Crypt of the new church was opened. Halted by the War, construction was resumed toward the end of the next decade, to be delayed again by the economic depression. Present (1940) completed units include the sanctuary, choir, north and south transepts, three bays of the nave, and the Chapel of Grace. When completed the north tower will support a carillon whose 44 bells—weighing from twelve pounds to six tons each—were cast in Croydon, England. The carillon is the gift of Dr. Nathaniel Coulson.
The cathedral is 340 feet long and 119 feet wide (across the main front). The towers rise 158 feet from the Street; the 87-foot-high nave extends 300 feet. The use of undisguised concrete for the exterior gives the massive, buttressed walls an air of enduring strength. In the Chapel of Grace are an altar from tenth-century France, an altar rail of Travertine marble, and a reredos of fourteenth-century Flemish wood carving.
Property on which the cathedral Stands was deeded to the diocese by the heirs of Charles Crocker, whose mansion stood here until 1906. Attempting to acquire possession of the whole block in 1877, Crocker was defied by a Mr. Yung, whose home occupied a 25-foot strip on Sacramento Street. In revenge, Crocker had Yung's property hemmed in by a fence that shut out the sunlight. During the ensuing deadlock gripmen stopped their cable cars at the spot, hackmen brought ogling tourists, and souvenir seekers removed pickets from the “spite” fence. It was not until after the death of the principals that the Crocker family obtained the property.
132. Second oldest surviving residence in San Francisco, the ATKINSON HOUSE (private), 1052 Broadway, was built by Joseph H. Atkinson and his wife in 1853. Entered through an iron gate from the grass-grown cobblestones of the Street, the gray plaster two-story house clings to the steep hillside, its narrow second-story balconies level with the terrace at one side. Through creepers and ferns wind narrow brick-flagged paths. The old house was occupied by Atkinson's relatives until recent years.
133. The OCTAGONAL HOUSE (private), 1067 Green St., first of a number of such architectural oddities conceived by an early Eastern builder, has been occupied continuously by descendants of the French settler, Feusier, for whom it was built in 1858. With every room a front room, the large double windows on all sides stare like so many Argus eyes upon a world of rapid change.
134. Overlooking the Golden Gate from the end of a graveled walk between interlacing plane trees, half-way down the hill from the Lombard Street Reservoir, the GEORGE STERLING MEMORIAL, Hyde, Greenwich, and Lombard Sts., is a simple bench inlaid with warm-hued tiles, dedicated by the Spring Valley Water Company June 25, 1928, “To Remember George Sterling, 1869-1926.” The bronze tablet is inscribed with a stanza from the “Song of Friendship” (a musical composition whose lyrics were written by Sterling) and a quotation from the poet's “Ode to Shelley”:
“O Singer, Fled Afar!
The Erected Darkness Shall But Isle the Star
That Was Your Voice to Man,
Till Morning Come Again
And Of the Night That Song Alone Remain.”
Sterling's death by his own hand marked for many of his admirers the passing of that bohemia of which he had been one of the chief representatives.
135. An abandoned rain-filled cistern saved San Francisco's oldest surviving residence, the WILLIAM PENN HUMPHRIES HOUSE (private), NE. corner Chestnut and Hyde Sts., from the 1906 fire. The owner's sons and neighbors cleared the debris from the unused backyard reservoir and drenched the house with buckets of water. The handiwork of William Squires Clark, who built the town's first wharf, the house was constructed in 1852 of heavy white oak timbers brought around the Horn. Its broad verandas resemble the decks and its third story, the captain's bridge of a ship. Into the garden at its feet, flag-stones lead from wooden gates, one shadowed by a towering eucalyptus, the other by a twisted acacia. Along its western side gnarled cypresses border the tall latticed fence built for a windbreak. Honeysuckle climbs about the verandas, weeds glut the yards, lattices and fences are falling. Like many another ancient residence, the mansion now is a “guest house”; efforts to secure its purchase by the City and County of San Francisco for preservation as a museum have been unsuccessful.
136. Above a hillside garden overlooking the Bay soars the tile-roofed tower of the CALIFORNIA SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS (open Mon.-Sat. 9-4; Mon., Wed., Fri., 7-10 also), Chestnut and Jones Sts., dominating the rambling, three-story structure of painted concrete, which surrounds a patio with a tiled fountain at its center. A constantly changing Student exhibit of murals and frescoes Covers the interior walls. In one of the Studios is Diego Rivera's Age of Industry, one of two Rivera murals executed in San Francisco. The school was built in 1923 by the San Francisco Art Association, from profits derived by the sale of the Mark Hopkins property on Nob Hill, where since 1893 it had conducted the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. It houses the ANNE BREMER MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open to students Mon.-Fri. J 0-5), endowed by art patron Albert Bender, which contains fine prints, current art publications, and valuable books on ancient and modem art. A full program of courses in fine and applied arts is conducted for an annual enrollment of about 650 students.