Western Addition
“…monotonous miles of narrow-chested, high-shouldered, jimber-jawed houses strongly reminiscent of the scroll-saw period of our creative artistry…”
—IRVIN S. COBB
LIKE the backyard of some imposing but superannuated mansion, the Western Addition is cluttered with the discarded furniture of the city's Gilded Age. It is a curious district whose claim to distinction is its disdain of all pretense. It is not beautiful, and yet San Franciscans refer to it almost affectionately as “The Fillmore,” the name of its busiest thoroughfare, and love it, as Charles Caldwell Dobie says, “for its supreme grotesqueness.”
Once it was what its name implies—the “western addition” to the old town—but now it lies in the very middle of the city. Its eastern boundary is the broad traffic-thronged artery of Van Ness Avenue, “automobile row.” Westward it spreads as far as Lone Mountain's vanishing old graveyards, once far out of town in a sandy brush-grown wilderness. Northward it extends to the heights above The Marina, and southward almost to Market Street.
The preposterous old houses built here in the 1870’s and 1880’s when San Francisco was expanding westward, and spared by the flames of 1906, are monuments to the bonanza era. In them the nouveau riche of the Gilded Age attempted to outdo the fantastic wooden castles on Nob Hill. What the jigsaw and the lathe could not accomplish the builders supplied with Gothic arches and Corinthian pillars, with Norman turrets crowned by Byzantine domes, with mansard roofs, balconies, gables, and stained-glass windows. Interiors were resplendent with horsehair divans, marble-topped tables, and bronze statuary. Gaslight flickered in dim vestibules and up redwood staircases. No longer fashionable, the old mansions have been converted into boarding houses and housekeeping rooms.
In the days before the fire, while the Western Addition was still the abode of fashion, Fillmore Street was a suburban center of commerce. After 1906 it had a brief and sudden boom. Before the charred wreckage of Market Street could be cleared off and stores rebuilt, the flow of commerce ran into Fillmore Street—and its delighted merchants sought to keep it there, Arches supporting large street lamps were erected over each intersection from Sacramento to Fulton Street and festooned with electric lights. Through five or six years the great days lasted, but when Market Street reclaimed its commercial prestige after 1910, Fillmore Street was doomed. Today its ornate arches are incongruous reminders of its hour of greatness. Fillmore Street, however, is more than a commercial thoroughfare. It represents a way of life, and is the stronghold of San Francisco's cosmopolitan tradition. Raffish, optimistic, blissfully vulgar, Fillmore Street keeps alive that inimitable social spirit of which San Francisco is the larger expression.
From The Marina, north of the Western Addition, Fillmore Street climbs the precipitous slope of Pacific Heights scaled by two diminutive cable cars. Down the slope below Sacramento Street are stores, movie theaters, and restaurants, a scene of lively disorder. Chaste little antique shops stand next door to radio stores; hamburger joints thrive beside the austere facades of branch banks. Past the sidewalk vegetable stands stroll housewives, pinching grapefruits, tomatoes, and peaches with the fingers of connoisseurs. At convenient intervals are neighborly little bars offering the tired shopper a moment's refreshment while the understanding bartender wheels her offspring's carriage to a quiet corner at the end of the counter. And day or night pass laughing Negroes, dapper Filipino boys, pious old Jews on their way to schule, sturdy-legged Japanese high school girls, husky young American longshoremen out for a quiet stroll with the wife and kids.
Near the southern end of Fillmore Street's lengthy market place, where its noisy turbulence gives way again to prosaic respectability at the foot of another hill clustered with turrets, bay windows, and mansard roofs, lies the city's Jewish commercial center, the heart of the before-the-fire section, where bedizened old houses of the 1880’s advertize housekeeping rooms on grimy signs. Yet, paradoxically, here is a gourmet's paradise; along adjacent blocks of Golden Gate Avenue and McAllister Street the atmosphere is spicy with the odors of delicatessen shops, bakeries, and restaurants. In a dozen strange tongues, bargaining goes on along McAllister Street—San Francisco's “second-hand row”—for begrimed statuary, ancient stoves, Brussels carpets with faded floral patterns, chamber pots and perambulators, Dresden figurines and fishing tackle, gilt-framed oil landscapes and canary bird cages. Gathered in this district are a large number of the city's 30,000 Jews, most of them immigrants from eastern Europe, many being recent arrivals. But Fillmore Street's Jewish quarter is scarcely representative of the city's Jewish citizenry as a whole. Not confined to any one district, profession, or mode of life, they have played a leading role in the city's development since the first of them came during the Gold Rush. Scattered throughout the Western Addition, as elsewhere in the city, are numerous synagogues, both orthodox and reformed, and their charitable institutions and fraternal organizations. Though the city's Jews have no native theater, they support a Yiddish Literary and Dramatic Society and numerous social clubs, musical societies, and schools.
East of Fillmore Street, north and south of Post Street, is “Little Osaka,” home of a vast majority of the city's 7,000 Japanese. Unlike the Chinese, they have made almost no attempt to establish in miniature the graceful scenes of their native land. For the most part, they have simply moved in and put up their electric signs on faded facades. The older generation still clings to religious beliefs and folkways, and schools the second and third generations in the ways of the homeland. Little Osaka's young attend not only the city's public schools, but also one of the colony's half-dozen native schools, of which the Golden Gate Institute, on Bush Street near Buchanan, is the second largest in the country. At the Japanese branch of the Y.W.C.A., in a modern building on Sutter Street near Buchanan, young girls practice cha-no-yu, the age-old tea ceremony, and ike-bana, the ancient art of flower arrangement. Young men are taught jiu-jitsu and kendo, in which armor-clad participants fence with bamboo sticks.
The Japanese New Year is celebrated throughout the colony on January 1 when the polite pay calls and partake of sake (rice wine) and foods dedicated to the occasion. On March 3 the Doll Festival (Hinamatsuri) is observed with ceremonious display of exquisite miniature figures dressed in the costumes of old Japan and the serving of flavored rice, with seki-han, sakura-mochi, and rice dumplings wrapped in cherry leaves; the display of dolls during Hinamatsuri at the downtown Western Women's Club is reputed to be the finest of its kind in America. The Birthday of Buddha is observed on the Sunday nearest April 8 in the Japanese Tea Garden (see Golden Gate Park: Points of Interest). The colony's other Buddhist festival, observed as well by Buddhists of other races, is Ura-bon (Festival of Souls), celebrated with a religious dance in the Buddhist Church at Pine and Octavia Streets on the Sunday evening nearest to the sacred day. At the celebration of Boys’ Day (Osekku) on May 5, intended to inspire young males to swim against the current of life with vigor and courage, kashiza-nochi (rice dumplings wrapped in oak leaves) is served ceremoniously and native folk dances are staged.
In Little Osaka's restaurants on Post and Sutter, between Octavia and Buchanan Streets, are served such delicacies as soba and undon (noodles); roasted eel and rice; chicken soup, amber-clear, with seaweed, fish, or red beans; and tempura, concocted of deep-fried fish and prawns with such vegetables as leeks, soya bean cake, gelatin strings, and bamboo shoots. San Francisco's Japanese have no native theater, though occasionally a troupe of actors or dancers presents the dramatic art of both modern and old Japan. Japanese music, played on native instruments, may be heard at the colony's various church auditoriums and language schools. Two Japanese daily newspapers are published in the city, each with its section in English for the benefit of younger readers. Imported Japanese films, both silent and vocal, are shown at a local bookshop.
Throughout the Japanese settlement is scattered a Filipino colony, smaller than the quarter on upper Kearny Street but distinguished by the same social features. Wherever these jaunty, small-statured people congregate at social functions, the carinosa, their national dance which resembles the tango, is danced to the orchestral accompaniment of bandores, twelve-stringed mandolins of native origin. The disparity of the sexes among the city's 3,000 Filipinos lends a pathetic note to their social life.
West of Fillmore Street and south of Sutter Street live many Russians although their folkways are more apparent in their other and tighter little colony on Potrero Hill. Divided by opposing political loyalties, the city's Russians never have created a distinctive colony of their own. The older immigrants came to escape the Tsar, the newer to escape the Soviet regime. The ways of both are the ways of exiles who strive to keep alive the customs of their forbears among alien surroundings. In the Western Addition the Russian residents are chiefly émigrés from the Russian Revolution. The older generation is defiantly monarchist in politics and orthodox in religion. Until recently they kept up the courtly ceremonials of their former life, appearing in faded regimentals of the Imperial Army to pay each other elaborate respects over vodka, tea, and caviar. Annually they squandered the savings of a twelvemonth on a grand ball in honor of their Petrograd days. Easter is still celebrated as gaily as ever at the Russian Orthodox Church on Green Street at Van Ness Avenue.
The greater number of San Francisco's 7,000 Negroes live in the neighborhood west of Fillmore between Geary and Pine Streets. Among them are representatives of every State in the Union, of Jamaica, Cuba, Panama, and South American countries. Of those from the South, the greater number are Texans who arrived after the World War; these still celebrate “Juneteenth,” Emancipation Day for the Texas Negroes, who did not learn of the Emancipation Proclamation until June 19, 1863. The colony's social life revolves around its handful of bars and restaurants, its one large and noisy night club, its eight churches of varying faiths, and the Booker T. Washington Community Center on Divisadero Street, where trained social workers guide educational and recreational activities for children and adults. Occasionally, in churches and clubs, are heard old Negro folk songs surviving the days of slavery.
With its confusion of customs from half the world, the Western Addition is more entitled than any other section of the city to be called San Francisco's International Quarter. But the Western Addition abhors labels. It is just “The Fillmore,” and proud of it.
POINTS OF INTEREST
160. The stately, white, six-story MASONIC TEMPLE, SW. corner Van Ness Ave. and Oak St., was dedicated on October 13, 1913. Of Romanesque design (William B. Faville, architect), the building is faced with Utah marble and adorned with sculptural decorations representing Biblical and allegorical figures by Adolph A. Weinman and Ralph Stackpole. A small rotunda leads into the main lobby of polished gray and white marble. In the large halls on the second and fourth floors are portraits of past grand masters, many by Duncan C. Blakiston. The great Commandery Hall on the third floor is surmounted with a dome rising 85 feet above the floor; two large murals on religious subjects are by Arthur F. Matthews.
SW. from Van Ness Ave. on Market St. to Haight St.; W. from Market on Haight.
161. A collection of frame and stucco structures, the five variously styled buildings of SAN FRANCISCO STATE COLLEGE, main entrance SE. corner Haight and Buchanan Sts., stand closely together on a two-block hillside campus bare of trees. Above the arched main entrance to stuccoed, tile-roofed Anderson Hall is a fresco, Persian in style, picturing California flora and fauna. The frescoes depicting children at play on the patio wall of the Frederick Burk Grammar and Training School, at the southeast corner of the campus, are by Jack Moxom and Hebe Daum of WPA's Northern California Art Project. A teachers’ college, San Francisco State grants teaching credentials in kindergarten-primary, elementary, and junior high school fields. Average yearly attendance is slightly more than 2,000 students. The Frederick Burk Training School, accommodating about 450 children, follows a modern progressive philosophy of education. Launched in 1862 in one room of the city's only high school, San Francisco College was housed in the Girls’ High School until 1899, when the Legislature provided for foundation of the San Francisco Normal School in a red brick building on Powell Street, between Clay and Sacramento Streets.
S. from Haight St. on Buchanan St. to Hermann St.; W. from Buchanan on Hermann.
162. The $1,000,000 UNITED STATES MINT (not open to public), Hermann, Buchanan, and Webster Sts. and Duboce Ave. (Gilbert Stanley Underwood, architect), rears its fortress-like walls from the solid stone of steep Blue Mountain. Constructed of steel reinforced with granite and concrete, the building's severe facades are pierced by three sets of windows, the middle tier barred with iron. Above and between the middle sets are large bas-reliefs in concrete of United States coins of various denominations. On the first floor are a marble lobby and large storage vaults for gold, silver, copper, and nickel, with concrete walls two feet thick. Second and third floors hold offices, minting rooms, an assay laboratory, and a women's lunch room. On the fourth floor particles from the vapor given off by melting and refining furnaces is recovered in a series of tubes; the vapor is electrified with a 75,000-volt current which causes the metal particles to cling to the tubes’ sides. A guards’ pistol range occupies the fifth floor, and all approaches to the mint are covered by gun towers; the surrounding area can be illuminated by batteries of floodlights set in the walls. A network of pipes entering all key points of the building is designed to discharge a flood of tear gas at the sounding of an alarm. Both front and rear entrances are barred by electrically operated doors made of heavy double steel, only one of which can be opened at a time; the door guarding the main vault weighs 40 tons.
163. The landscaped terraces of 4-acre DUBOCE PARK, W. end of Hermann St., rise gradually to the row of old-fashioned frame dwellings on its western side; once a mound-dotted wasteland on which tons of rock had been dumped, the park was opened to the public in 1900.
164. In the city's western residential districts real estate prices shot skyward when SUNSET TUNNEL, E. Portal at S. side of Duboce Park, was opened October 21, 1928, with Mayor James Rolph at the controls of the first streetcar to make the tunnel trip. Piercing Buena Vista Hill, the tunnel is 4,232 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 23 feet high.
N. from Hermann St. on Steiner St.
165. In 1860, Charles P. (“Dutch Charlie”) Duane, undaunted by threats of the Vigilance Committee, fought for his squatter's rights to ALAMO SQUARE, Steiner, Fulton, Hayes and Scott Sts., 12 acres of smooth green lawn and rustling pine and cypress trees on the top of a hill. Wide cement steps ascend to a palm-fringed circular flower bed, and shrubbery-lined paths lead to an adjacent picnic grove and children's playground. Squatter “Dutch Charlie,” chief fire engineer from 1853 to 1857, gained the attention of the Vigilance Committee of 1851 for his shooting, two years earlier, of a theater manager. He was later exiled from the city under penalty of death by the Vigilance Committee of 1856 for the then greater crime of stuffing a ballot box. Returning in 1860, he waged an unsuccessful suit until 1877 for the property, which had been acquired by the city in 1853. Refugees from the fire of 1906 lived on the hill, and some of the victims, it is believed, were buried here.
E. from Steiner St. on Hayes St.
166. The old Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church was converted in 1930 into the HAYES VALLEY RECREATION CENTER AND COTTAGE (open Mon.-Fri. 2:30-5, 7-10; Sat.-Sun. 10-12, 1-5), SE. corner Hayes and Buchanan Sts. Open to all boys over 14, it provides facilities for indoor games, dancing and theatricals, a camera club, a band and orchestra, and study groups in arts, crafts, cooking, gardening, and sewing. More than 2,500 children weekly attend the center in a district once noted for its high ratio of juvenile delinquency. The property was leased in 1930 through a legacy left by Adolph Rosenberg, merchant and philanthropist, and established as a recreation center under the Jurisdiction of the Recreation Commission.
N. from Hayes St. on Laguna St.
167. Five days after the 1906 fire the Board of Supervisors assembled in what was MOWRY'S OPERA HOUSE, SW. corner Grove and Laguna Sts., a three-story red-brick and frame building erected in 1879, on whose gaslit stage appeared “Gentleman Jim” Corbett to be acclaimed for his victory over John L. Sullivan. At subsequent secret sessions of the Supervisors, during which Abe Ruef issued his Instructions, detective William J. Burns gathered evidence leading to the graft prosecutions that destroyed the Ruef machine. Since December, 1906, when it ceased to serve as a city hall, the sturdy old building, with its triangular wooden parapet decorated with a harp in bas-relief and its brick ground floor with huge double doors, has been occupied by various mercantile firms.
168. Sometimes referred to as San Francisco's Hyde Park, JEFFERSON SQUARE, Golden Gate Ave., Laguna, Gough, and Eddy Sts., is noted for the stormy character of its political meetings. On pleasant Sunday afternoons every shade of political and religious thought is expounded in open-air forums by old-age-pension advocates, single taxers, and fanatical champions of religious cults. In 1906 the park was used as a refugee camp. The park slopes downhill, its green sward broken by tall eucalyptuses, evergreens, and shrubs planted along graveled walks. In the playground, named for Margaret S. Hayward, for many years a city recreation commissioner, are tennis courts, volley and basketball courts, baseball diamonds and Stands. In the center of the park is the low stucco building housing the San Francisco Fire Department's Central Alarm Station with its aerial and high-tension electric transformer towers. Situated in a congested area, the park is a favorite recreation center for youngsters of many national groups.
W. from Laguna St. on Golden Gate Ave. to Masonic Ave.; S. from Golden Gate on Masonic to Fulton St.; W. from Masonic on Fulton.
169. Founded in 1855 as St. Ignatius Church and College, the UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO, Fulton St., Parker and Golden Gate Aves., Stands beside St. Ignatius Church on part of the site of the Masonic Cemetery, one of four burial grounds encircling the base of Lone Mountain. Conducted by the Jesuits, the university is open to male students of all denominations; only its law and evening classes are co-educational. On the broad hillside campus stand the gray three-story Faculty Building, which houses the priests of the teaching staff; the four-story Liberal Arts Building of gray reinforced concrete; a one-story, stucco tile-roofed structure containing classrooms; and the sole surviving cemetery structure, a small wooden edifice resembling a Greek temple, once the tomb of a San Francisco brewer, in which students now attend classes. Offering liberal arts, premedical, law, economics, and commerce and finance courses, the institution has an enrollment of more than 1,000 students and a faculty of more than 80. Established as St. Ignatius Church and College in 1855, it was empowered by the State Legislature in 1859 to grant degrees and honors. The school won fame in 1874 when Father Joseph Neri, a professor, introduced San Francisco to the are light with an exhibition on the roof of the school building; during the centennial celebration of American Independence in 1876, he strung three are lamps of his own invention across Market Street. The university was renamed at the request of prominent San Franciscans in 1930.
170. Standing on Ignatius Heights, the buff-colored brick structure of SAINT IGNATIUS CHURCH, NE. corner Fulton St. and Parker Ave., with its campanile, twin towers, and golden dome glinting in the sun, is a San Francisco landmark. Dedicated in 1914, the church is seventeenth-century Renaissance in design (Charles Devlin, architect). The interior is still unfinished, with exposed loudspeaker system and racks bulging with religious tracts. Under the dome is the sanctuary, bordered by fluted pillars; above the white marble altar, flanked by filigreed gilt candelabra, is suspended an ornate gold sanctuary lamp. On the right are the altar of St. Joseph and the crucifix; on the left, the altar of the Blessed Mother and the pulpit. The altars, both of marble, stand against blue wall panels ornately filigreed with gold. The two murals of the altar, by Tito Ridolfi, are dedicated to St. Robert Bellarmine and depict the seventeenth-century Cardinal of Milan in two poses. Ridolfi also painted the series of murals in the frieze above the colonnades on either side, depicting the 14 stations of the cross, in which Christ is shown in mediaeval tradition wearing an under cloak of dull red and an outer cloak of dull blue. Above the frieze are round windows, to be replaced with stained-glass representations of Catholic scholar saints; the two installed depict St. Ives, patron of lawyers, and St. Augustine, doctor of theology. In the campanile is the old bell, now battered and rusty, that hung in the original church of 1855, obtained from a local volunteer fire company which had ordered it from England but was unable to pay for it.
Saint Ignatius Church was founded in 1855, when Father Anthony Marachi dedicated a small wooden building in the waste land of what was then known as the Valley of St. Anne, south of Market Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets. The present buildings, both church and college, were begun in 1910 and completed in 1914.
N. from Fulton St. on Parker Ave.
171. From the top of Lone Mountain, the Spanish Gothic tower of the SAN FRANCISCO COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, Parker and Masonic Aves. and Turk St., lifts an iron cross 115 feet above the mountain's flattened crest. A curving road winds up from Turk Street, past newly planted trees, shrubs and flower beds, to the flight of wide stone steps leading past terraced lawns to an ornamental arched doorway. The three-story building, Spanish-Gothic in design, has vaulted halls richly furnished with tapestries, paintings, statues, and wood carvings. In the east wing is the oak-beamed library; its 100,000 volumes, the majority donated by Monsignor Joseph M. Gleason, pastor of the St. Francis de Sales Church of Oakland, include rare manuscripts and first editions. Here are such rarities as the sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great; a set of wills and indentures covering the reigns of the English sovereigns from James I to George III; several papal bulls, one signed by nine cardinals who attended the Council of Trent in 1566, and the second by Pope Pius V, before the battle of Lepanto; a copy of the Nuremburg Chronicle; and what is probably the most complete collection of bookplates in the United States. Americana include a newspaper published in the South on wallpaper during the Civil War, an unpublished and autographed poem by Henry Wadsworth Long-fellow, and letters written by Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and other notables.
Having purchased Lone Mountain in 1860, Bishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany, Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, had a giant wooden cross erected on the mountain top. When the city acquired all “outside lands” west of the former city boundary in 1869, Lone Mountain was reserved as a future park site; but Bishop Alemany, through the persuasive abilities of his secretary, John Spottiswoode, succeeded in regaining title to the property. The old cross was replaced by a new one in 1875, and in 1900 a storm blew the great cross down, for the boys of the neighborhood had tunnelled under its base to make a cave in which they gathered to bake potatoes and banquet on other stolen delicacies. Again restored, the cross remained on the mountain top until grading for the college began in 1930. When Archbishop Edward J. Hanna of San Francisco suggested in 1929 that a Roman Catholic women's college be opened in San Francisco, the Lone Mountain site was purchased by the Society of the Sacred Heart. When construction was completed in 1932, the present iron cross at the top of the tower replaced the cross erected in 1900. The college has increased its enrollment from 60 to 223 students.
W. from Parker Ave. on Anza St. to Lorraine Court; N. from Anza on Lorraine Court.
172. In the old Odd Fellows Cemetery at the base of Lone Mountain, the only burial place within the corporate limits of San Francisco, is the SAN FRANCISCO MEMORIAL COLUMBARIUM, I Lorraine Court, originally erected at the entrance of the pioneer burial ground in 1898. It contains the cremated remains of more than 7,000 San Franciscans. Of modified Mediterranean design, the green-domed building of white concrete is noted for its stained-glass windows. From the rotunda marble stairways wind upward; on its four floors are galleries of niches, each named for a stellar constellation. Following removal of the Odd Fellows Cemetery to Lawndale, San Mateo County, the columbarium fell into neglect and decay. Acquired by the Bay Cities Cemetery Association in 1933, the structure has been remodeled and restored.
Retrace on Lorraine Court; W. from Lorraine Court on Anza St. to Arguello Blvd.; N. from Anza on Arguello.
173. Dominating most of the city's western residential area, the massive orange-domed TEMPLE EMANU-EL, NW. corner Lake St. and Arguello Blvd., is the religious and cultural center of Reformed Judaism in San Francisco. Of steel and concrete, faced with cream-colored stucco, the temple (Sylvain Schnaittaker and Bakewell & Brown, architects) is designed in the form of an “L” about on open court with low cloisters and fountain. The auditorium seats 1,700; besides assembly halls and Sunday school classrooms, the temple contains facilities for study groups and lectures, social halls, and a huge gymnasium.
Set in colored tile in the pavement before the main entrance is the familiar six-pointed star, the Seal of Solomon, surrounded by the seals of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The vestibule of the auditorium is a low vaulted gallery finished in light blue to contrast with the ivory tones of the interior walls. In solitary splendor, contrary to custom, the Ark of the Covenant, a gilded bronze cabinet with cloisonné enamel inlay, Stands out under its stone canopy against the undecorated walls and vaults around the altar. It contains two ornate scrolls of the Torah, one for regular Services, the other for special occasions.
Like other reform congregations, Temple Emanu-El does not require observance of strict dietary laws, wearing of hats or skull caps by male members, and segregation of the sexes on opposite sides of the auditorium during services. Contrary to orthodox ritual, music accompanies worship here. Some 750 heads of families constitute the Temple's regular congregation, though attendance is much larger. An important part of the temple's program are its classes for boys and girls.
E. from Arguello Blvd. on Washington St.
174. Tucked away in a tree-shaded garden behind high walls over-run with climbing vines and rose bushes, the little tiled-brick ivy-bowered CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM (services Sun. 11 a.m.), NW. corner Jackson and Washington St., is a reproduction of a village church near Verona, Italy. Surrounding a clear pool of water are trees from many lands. Completed in 1895, the church is a monument to its founder, the Reverend Joseph Worcester, who lived in dose association with the artists of Russian Hill. Its heavy-timbered coffered roof is supported by great hewn madrone trees. The square-framed, tule-bottomed chairs on mats of rushes from the Suisun marshes, the open fireplace ablaze with pine knots, and the wax tapers in wrought iron sconces reinforce the outdoor atmosphere. On the windowless north wall four allegorical landscapes of seedtime and harvest by William Keith are set against plain dark-stained panels of pine. The two beautifully executed stained-glass windows are by Bruce Porter. Following the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the simple services are opened and closed with a Bible ritual.
S. from Washington St. on Lyon St. to California St.; W. from Lyon on California.
175. The JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER (open Mon., Thurs., Sat. 9:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Fri. 9:30-6; Sun. 9:30-1), NW. corner California St. and Presidio Ave., is headquarters for communal activities of Hebrew organizations. The two-story structure of smooth tan concrete with red tile roof was opened in 1933 and houses an art gallery, library and reading rooms, a little theater workshop, swimming pool and gymnasium, and classrooms and lounges. The multicolored mosaic of glazed household tiles decorating the fountain and pool in the patio is by Bernard Zakheim of the WPA Northern California Art Project. A fresco in the patio, also by Zakheim, depicts the gaity and color of ancient Palestine's festivals. The educational program includes courses in law, journalism, languages, arts and crafts, and philosophical and religious subjects. There are book chats, play readings, open forums, concerts, musical recitals, and dancing.
176. Known to generations of San Franciscans as laurel Hill Cemetery, PIONEER MEMORIAL PARK, California St., Presidio and Parker Aves., a 54-acre area at the base of Lone Mountain, contrasts strangely with the apartment houses surrounding it. Sorrel, oxalis, and clover cover this graveyard of tottering stones and forgotten tombs, and offshore winds stir the branches of cypress, laurel, pine, and oak trees. In 1854, San Franciscans established Laurel Hill Cemetery here far out in the sand dunes so that it would not interfere with the city's growth. On a wooden board was inscribed a memorial to the first person buried : “To the Memory of the First Inhabitant of This Silent City… John Orr…interred June 10th, 1854.” Some inscriptions were laconic, as in the case of Silas W. Sanderson, judge and lawyer, whose stone simply recorded: “Final Decree.” Others, as this over an unknown woman, were elaborately “poetic”:
Pain was my portion,
Physic was my food,
Groans were my devotions,
Drugs did me no good.
Christ was my Physician
Knew which way was best,
So to ease me of my pain
He took my soul to rest.
A long list of names important in the city's history have appeared on the headstones: Fire Chief Dave Scannell; Mayor James Van Ness; smelting works founder Thomas Selby; barrister and bon-vivant Hall McAllister; William S. Clark, who drove the first piles in San Francisco Bay; Senator David C. Broderick, killed in a pistol duel with State Supreme Court Justice David S. Terry; Bulletin editor James King of William, whose murder by James Casey revived vigilante Organization; Samuel Woodworth, author of “The Old Oaken Bucket”; Edward Gilbert, California's first Congressman, slain in a duel by General James W. Denver, for whom Colorado's capital was named; Colonel E. D. Baker, killed with his regiment at the battle of Ball's Bluff in 1861; William Sharon and James G. Fair of Comstock Lode fame.
In 1912, when four cemeteries, Laurel Hill, Calvary, Odd Fellows, and Masonic, were grouped around the base of Lone Mountain, the Board of Supervisors, heeding the protests of the living, ordered the area vacated. All of the cemeteries save Laurel Hill were moved to San Mateo County. The controversy which ensued lasted for 28 years. In 1937 the people of San Francisco voted that the ground be cleared and emptied by the end of 1940. Coffins are being transferred at the rate of more than 2,000 each month to Cypress Lawn Cemetery in San Mateo County to be interred in catacombs and vaults until a mausoleum can be constructed at Lawndale.
N. from Geary St. on Fillmore St.
177. Hot spot of the “Gay Nineties,” headquarters of city government following the holacaust of 1906, and meeting place of political, language, and unemployed groups in its declining years, FRANKLIN HALL, 1859 Fillmore St., now wears a general air of neglect with its faded gray walls and unwashed windows. Built in 1895, the four-story wooden building with its auditorium and stage was popular as a public dance hall. Here “Professor” Bothwell Brown, “California's Greatest Female Impersonator,” held his audiences with his “art” up to the earthquake and fire in 1906, when the premises were occupied by the San Francisco Examiner, Mayor Eugene Schmitz, and the Committee of Fifty, composed of the city's financial leaders. The building later housed a dancing academy.
W. from Fillmore St. on Bush St.
178. The eight-spired Tudor Gothic tower of ST. DOMINIC'S CHURCH, NW. corner Bush and Steiner Sts., rises to a height of 175 feet, dominating the neighborhood. The present structure was completed in 1928 on the site of the original church destroyed in 1906. Stretched across the tallest of its interior vaulted arches is a rood screen bearing in its center the figures of a Crucifixion group. In the chief shrine along each side of the church is a figure of Christ, wearing a regal sceptre and robed in priestly garments. Woodwork of the altar rails and confessional doors is the work of the master carvers of Oberammergau, Bavaria, and of Bruges, Belgium.
N. from Bush St. on Steiner St.
179. ALTA PLAZA, Steiner, Scott, Clay, and Jackson Sts., was reclaimed by John McLaren when he filled a deserted rock quarry with rubbish, topped it with soil, planted lawns, and laid out walks and tennis courts. The stairway on the south side's steep terraced slope is a reproduction of the grand stairway in front of the gaming casino at Monte Carlo.
E. from Steiner St. on Jackson St.
180. The city's largest Protestant congregation worships in the CALVARY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NW. corner Jackson and Fillmore Sts., founded in 1854 by the Reverend William Anderson Scott, who was hanged in effigy in 1861. A supporter of the original church, William C. Ralston, is reported to have scattered $20 gold pieces among its pews.
The cornerstone of the present classic structure with Corinthian features was laid July 4, 1901, to the accompaniment of fireworks and Protestant hymns. Offering its spacious facilities to other religious congregations and to the city government after the 1906 fire, Calvary had Services conducted in its lecture room by the presiding Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, concerts by the Loring Club in its auditorium, and sessions of the Superior Court in its gymnasium.
S. from Jackson St. on Webster St.
181. The buildings, old and new, of the STANFORD-LANE HOSPITALS, Webster St. between Clay and Sacramento Sts., are the visible record of the institution's last half-century of progress. The huge five-story red-brick Lane Hospital was erected in 1893; the reinforced concrete Stanford Hospital, adjoining on the east, in 1917. The former contains medical, surgical, pediatric, neuropsychiatric, and obstetrical wards, and a clinical nursery, and is operated by a medical faculty chosen by a clinical committee appointed by Stanford University. Stanford Hospital, controlled by the same staff, contains 70 private rooms, a private surgery and a gynecological clinic ward, delivery rooms, hydro- and electro-therapeutic departments, a private clinical laboratory, and X-ray, diagnostic, and therapeutic departments. On the opposite side of Clay Street Stands the seven-story gray cement Stanford School of Nursing. Lane Hospital is an outgrowth of the first medical college established on the Pacific Coast in 1858 by Dr. E. S. Cooper.
Containing 90,000 volumes, the LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY, SE. corner Sacramento and Webster Sts., occupies a three-and-one-half-story fireproof building erected in 1912. It contains an early collection of valuable works from the New York Academy of Medicine and 5,000 volumes of medical history, which includes works by ancient or medieval authorities in the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian languages. The library is named for Dr. Levi Cooper Lane, a brilliant surgeon, nephew of the principal founder of Lane Hospital.
W. from Webster St. on Sacramento St.
182. In the DRAMA WORKSHOP, 2435 Sacramento St., a pale green one-story building with wide canary yellow door, costumes of every country of the world are designed, assembled, and stored for use of the San Francisco Recreation Department. Within the skylighted room are doll models and mounted water color paintings of the dress of the world's far places. Recreational activities sponsored by the workshop include puppetry, dance and drama, and adult story-telling groups. Here, too, is housed the extensive library of the Northern California Drama Association, for which the Drama Workshop is headquarters.
183. Its ponderous limestone mass capped with a gray Levantine dome, TEMPLE SHERITH ISRAEL (open daily 9-5), NE. corner Webster and California Sts., is a pioneer stronghold of reformed Judaism which has played a colorful role in the city's political history. Its stern main facade is distinguished by an entrance recessed behind a Roman arch which curves above a vast rose window. The interior auditorium is a huge square, surrounded by two tiers of galleries, from which a domed ceiling rises 80 feet above the floor. The present building was erected in 1904 for a congregation organized in 1850.
Serving as a temporary Hall of Justice immediately after the 1906 fire, the auditorium here was the courtroom in which Abraham Ruef was indicted on 65 counts of extortion by a grand jury. (During a recess, a juryman named Haas, who had been exposed as an ex-convict, shot and wounded Francis J. Heney, chief prosecutor and leader of the graft investigations.) Barely saved from lynching, Ruef was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in San Quentin. Asked by newspaper reporters how he liked exchanging his natty attire for a convict's striped gray uniform, the dethroned political boss of San Francisco replied: “The zebra is one of the most beautiful and graceful of animals. Why, therefore, should I cavil at my attire.”
E. from Webster St. on California St. to Laguna St.; N. from California on Laguna.
184. Site of the first observatory in California, LAFAYETTE SQUARE, Washington, Gough, Sacramento and Laguna Sts., is a sloping green hill crisscrossed with hedges and graveled walks, topped with tennis courts and a small playground. Erected in 1879, the observatory was maintained privately for 20 years by George Davidson, geodesist and astronomer. The park was created in 1867, but the top of the hill was owned by Samuel W. Holladay, ex-Oregon stage driver and owner of the famous Overland Stage Line, whose glistening white home on “Holladay's Hill” was a mecca for literary and Gold Rush aristocracy. Repeated suits by the city failed to dislodge Holladay, and the old mansion, with weathered timbers that had come round the Horn, was not razed until 1936, when the site was incorporated into the park.
E. from Laguna St. on Sacramento St. to Octavia St.; S. from Sacramento on Octavia.
185. Three tiny fragments of bone, each no larger than a grain of rice, repose in three little glass balls enclosed in a glass temple on a beautifully carved altar at the HONGWANJI BUDDHIST MISSION OF NORTH AMERICA (open daily; English Services, Sun. 1 p.m.; Japanese Services, Sun. 8 p.m.), 1881 Pine St., first Buddhist church in America and national headquarters of the mission. These sacred relics, reputed to be portions of the body of Buddha, were presented to Bishop Masuyama in 1935 by the King of Siam. The temple is a pearl gray, two-story concrete building, occidental in line; its slender dome is topped with an odd spearlike spire. Beautifully handwrought brass lanterns flank its three entrances.
In the auditorium filigreed black and gold folding panels shield the altar and inner shrine, decorated with pastel and gold leaf friezes representing Buddhist angels in heaven and birds of paradise. The screen panels, when unfolded, disclose the maejoku (altar table), with its candelabra, incense burner, and cut flowers in massive bronze urns, flanked on either side by a rinto (lantern) of heavily garlanded brass, suspended from a bell-like hood. Behind the altar rises the pagoda-topped shrine with heavily carved columns of gold-leaf; in the inner chamber is a reclining golden image of Buddha under a golden canopy.
The members of the temple are of the Shin sect, with headquarters at the Nishi Hongwanji Temple in Kyoto, Japan. This sect was founded in Japan in the year 1226 by Saint Shinran; its North American adherents number about 70,000. A modest two-story flat at 532 Stevenson Street served in 1898 as the first Buddhist Church in America. The present temple was dedicated in 1938.
186. On the northern fringes of the Japanese quarter a hospital marks the SITE OF THE THOMAS BELL RESIDENCE, corner Octavia and Bush Sts., long known as the “House of Mystery.” The house itself was torn down about 1927 but a short row of eucalyptus trees that once hedged it remains. Here, during the heyday of the Comstock period, lived that formidable sorceress known to every San Franciscan as Mammy Pleasant. Ostensibly, the great mansion with its mansard roof, its inner courtyard, and its mirror-lined ballroom, which was never used for dancing, was the private residence of Thomas Bell, reputedly the power behind William C. Ralston's throne in the Bank of California. Mammy Pleasant was to all appearances his housekeeper. There was scarcely a man in public life who did not treat the scrawny little Negress with utmost deference.
The truth was, of course, that she was a procuress of unusual resources and connections, and a remarkable cook. On her arrival in San Francisco in 1848, she quickly attracted to her boarding house the leaders of the town. The entertainment she provided soon enabled her to open a whole chain of boarding houses. Obeying the injunction of her dead first husband she devoted part of her legacy received from him to the Abolitionist cause, traveling to Boston, where she presented John Brown with a draft for $30,000. When Brown was captured at Harper's Ferry, a note was found on him, signed with illiterate Mammy Pleasant's “M. P.” It read: “The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.”
To ensure this, Mammy returned to San Francisco, set up her ménage in the mansion among the blue gum trees, and settled down to her long career of forwarding the infidelities of the city's men of affairs. She squandered Thomas Bell's fortune on her weird schemes, turned his wife against him, kept him virtually a prisoner, and starved his children. When he died of a fall into the courtyard from a third-story balcony, it was believed that his “housekeeper” had pushed him over. She carried on for years a bitter legal duel with members of his family. She died at the age of 92, penniless, asking only that her tombstone bear this epitaph: “She was a friend of John Brown.”
E. from Octavia St. on Bush St.
187. First of its denomination on the Pacific Coast, TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NE. corner Gough and Bush Sts., was founded in 1849. The present structure, built of rough-hewn Colusa sandstone, Norman in style, is flanked at either end of its main facade by bastions with conical turrets which contribute to the massive effect imposed by the square central belfry (Hobart, Cram, and Ferguson, architects). The interior nave of three bays contains lancet windows of stained glass portraying Biblical subjects, the work of Belgian craftsmen. Buried beneath the chancel is the Reverend Flavel Scott Mines, founder of the church, who died in 1852. Beside the altar Stands a bronze angel with folded wings who bears aloft a flat brass scroll on which rests a large Bible. Until 1867 services were held in a private house. From that date until the erection of the present church in 1892, its congregation met in a large frame building at Post and Powell Streets.
S. from Bush St. on Gough St. to O'Farrell St.; E. from Gough on O'Farrell
188. Its peaked gray roof rising between a cone-topped turret and a square pyramid-roofed bell tower, ST. MARK'S EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH (services Sun. 8:30 and 11 a.m.), O'Farrell St. between Gough and Franklin Sts., was the first Lutheran Church in California, founded in 1849. The red brick facade of the present structure, dedicated in 1895, is of Romanesque design. In 11 stained glass windows, which shed rich red, blue, and purple light on an interior decorated in French ivory and gold, are represented The Pascal Lamb, The Holy Writ, The Sacred Chalice, The Cross, The Crown of Christ the King, The Ten Commandments, and the name “Jehovah” in Hebrew. Behind the ornate altar rise the gilded pipes of the great organ, distinguished for its trumpet brass reed with clarion martial tone. One of the first pipe organs built in San Francisco, it was installed by Felix Schoenstein in 1886 in the church's former building on Geary Street. Until 1864, when orthodox members of its congregation with-drew to found the Church of St. Paulus, Masons and others belonging to secret orders were barred from membership. Following the 1906 disaster the slightly damaged church served as a refugee and hospital center. Until 1931 services were conducted in German.
189. Seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishopric of Northern California, ST. MARY'S CATHEDRAL OF THE ASSUMPTION, NW. corner O'Farrell St. and Van Ness Ave., is a huge ungainly red-brick structure of German Gothic design; its octagonal tower and spire and massive flight of granite steps are out of proportion to its severe and unimposing facade. The interior offers a contrasting aspect of simple magnificence. Royal Bavarian windows of stained glass lend it an atmosphere of symbolic grandeur. The three sections of the Assumption rise behind the archbishop's green and gold throne by the high altar, under a rose window in four segments. Behind the two small galleries are rose windows in 12 divisions. Along the north side of the nave are four larger windows representing the Wedding Feast at Cana, Christ in the Garden of Gesthemane, The Good Shepherd, and Peter Receiving the Keys. On the south side are The Meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, The Nativity, The Presentation in the Temple, and The Flight Into Egypt. The Stations of the Cross on either side of nave and transept are represented in white, gold, and blue enamel.
N. from O'Farrell St. on Van Ness Ave. to Geary St.; W. from Van Ness on Geary
190. Rich in historic tradition, the FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH, SW. corner Geary and Franklin Sts., an ivy-covered, gray stone edifice of modified Romanesque and Gothic design, with a square turret in place of the bell tower demolished by the earthquake of 1906, is reminiscent in its quiet dignity of the churches of the English country-side. In the little strip of churchyard is an oblong white marble sarcophagus hearing the simple inscription, “Thomas Starr King, born December 17, A. D. 1824—Died March 4, A. D. 1864”; here repose the remains of the militant pastor of the Civil War period with whom the church long has been identified. The church has a great circular rose window and perpendicular Gothic windows of stained glass. Bruce Porter's allegorical painting, Lo At Length The True Light, appears over the altar, which is flanked on either side by winged angels sculptured by Arthur Putnam. The marble baptismal font with rows of finely chiseled cherubs, under a spired Gothic canopy rising to the vaulted ceiling of the church, is the gift of the First Congregational Church of New York to the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco, made in 1864.
The city's first Unitarian religious service was preached on October 20, 1850, by the Reverend Charles A. Farley. A Unitarian society was soon formed and by 1852 was holding services in Armory Hall, then the largest auditorium in town. In a church of its own on Stockton Street the society began meeting in 1853. To this church in 1860 came a young Boston clergyman, Thomas Starr King. When the Civil War began a year later, he canvassed the State, helping to swing California to the side of the Union with his eloquence. Through King's efforts the cornerstone of a new church on Geary Street was laid in December, 1862. Only two months after its dedication January 10, 1864, King died of diphtheria. The Reverend Horatio Stebbins succeeded him and during the 35 years of his pastorate, many distinguished visitors spoke from the pulpit, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, Edward Everett Hale, Charles Eliot, and David Starr Jordan. Since the dedication of the present church on February 10, 1889, its pastor and membership have carried on the tradition of Thomas Starr King, playing a leading role in movements for political, economic, and social reform.
N. from Geary St. on Franklin St. to Post St.; E. from Franklin on Post to Van Ness Ave.; N. from Post on Van Ness
191. The chaste white granite and limestone SCOTTISH RITE TEMPLE, NW. corner Van Ness Ave. and Sutter St. (Carl Werner, architect), was dedicated in 1911 by the Masonic Order of Scottish Rite, first established in San Francisco in 1868. It has been used by clubs, political groups, and trade unions for grand annual balls, public forums, and convention headquarters. Beyond the lobby is the lodge room, seating 1,500, a vast two-storied chamber of English Tudor design, with high stained-glass windows lighting the dark walnut panels of the room. On the fourth and top floor is a library (open to members only) of 2,500 volumes, including a copy of Albert Magnus’ Sermons, printed in 1479, bound in leather with covers of thin wood; the History of St. Joan, printed in 1722; and what is perhaps the only complete Catholic Encyclopedia on the Pacific Coast.
192. Home of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America is the HOLY TRINITY RUSSIAN EASTERN ORTHODOX CATHEDRAL, NW. corner Van Ness Ave. and Green St., where on Orthodox Sunday (first Sunday in Lent) deep-voiced Russian singers intone their centuries-old laments for the godless. The first Russian cathedral in the United States and the oldest Russian church in San Francisco, the present structure is authentically Byzantine in design, a buff-colored frame building, its green dome surmounted with a gold Greek cross. It faces east in the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church. Within the belfry hang five bells, the largest of which, weighing two and one-half tons, was made expressly for the church in commemoration of the miraculous escape from death of the “little Father of all the Russias” in 1884. The church has two richly decorated auditoriums, one for daily services, the other for Sundays and holy days. Its murals depicting religious subjects are by Gleb Ilyn. The cathedral has no benches or pews, the congregation being obliged to stand or kneel on the bare floor while priests in colored vestments, thin and frayed from decades of use, intone the mass and vespers. Ikons are usually kept covered on a special table except during Easter, when they are placed on the altar for 40 days.
The first known services of the Russian Greek Orthodox Church held in San Francisco were conducted in 1863, when a priest from a Russian ship in the Bay baptized a Serbian infant in a private house. With the arrival of many Russian immigrants from Alaska, Father Ioann Metropolsky came in 1871 and organized the St. Alexander Russian Orthodox Church. In 1882-83 a cathedral was established on Powell Street; the memorial bells hung in the church were rescued during the fire and earthquake of 1906 and installed in the present structure after its dedication in 1909. The present titular head of the cathedral, Bishop Metropolitan Theopolis Bashkrovsky, former Tsarist army chaplain during the World War, was appointed bishop of San Francisco in 1932 and Metropolitan of the Russian Church in North America in 1934.
W. from Van Ness Ave. on Union St.
193. Of polyglot design, the HINDU TEMPLE (open Wed. 8 p.m.), SW. corner Filbert and Webster Sts., rears from its third story a bewildering array of minarets, cupolas, and towers of Gothic, Hindu, Shiva, and Moslem design. The upward-pointing architectural features of the temple, headquarters of the Vedanta Society, are intended to symbolize the goal of Vedanta teachings, ultimate perfection. To each of the six towers is attached a symbolic meaning: one, decorated with crescent, sun, and trident, symbolizes the path to knowledge through devotion and work. In the chapel and auditorium on the first floor, above the altar, hang two life-size portraits, one of Ramakrishna, patron saint of the Vedanta movement, the other of Swami Trigunatita, head of the temple at the time of its completion in 1904. Beside the platform is a large portrait of Swami Vivekananda, who brought Hinduism to the West and under whose guidance the temple was founded.