USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 64
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Appreciation of Local Talent
It is astonishing that among all this chaff there should have been so many real grains of wheat. There was matter produced by a goodly list of writers whose fame scarcely spread beyond the borders of the state which, while not entitled to rank as great, vied in excellence with the best turned out by the better rewarded professionals of a later date. Fashions change in literature as they do in dress or manners, but the letters of Prentice Mulford and the humorous skits of Derby read as well today as when they were first written. The work of Samuel Sea- bough, Newton Booth, Charles Henry Webb, Noah Brooks, Lauren E. Crane, A. P. Catlin, James C. Watkins, E. G. Waite, George Frederick Parsons, all contempo- raries of Mark Twain, and all of whom were contributors to San Francisco periodi- cals during this period, did not strike the same chord as that touched by the sage brush journalist, but it was not without reason at the time more esteemed than the best produced by Harte or Twain.
Art
in the
Sixties
Art during the Sixties did not attain to a high plane. The purchasers of good pictures were not numerous and the opportunities enjoyed by the public to see meritorious works were rare. A catalogue of an exhibition of paintings by Snow & Roos, No. 21 Kearny street, in 1869, notes that Thomas Hill displayed five
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canvases in the collection of 122 hung in the room dignified by the lofty title of art gallery. Among the names of exhibitors are those of A. Bierstadt, Bush, Moran, Narjot and Keith. Those of the remainder were scarcely a memory in the ensuing decade. There is mention of a Jupiter and Antiope, attributed to Guercino, 1630, but the collection was almost wholly made up of landscapes. If most of the writers of the Sixties were obnoxious to the charge that they avoided local coloring no such accusation can be brought against the painters of the period, for their subjects were almost wholly Californian. The brief description of this exhibition would be incomplete if it omitted reference to the fact that the catalogue accorded honorable mention to a dozen or so of "chromos," a form of art not so much looked down upon at that time as it is at present. In 1870 the only place in San Francisco where a permanent collection of pictures and statuary could be seen was in Wood- ward's Gardens. If the catalogue made a truthful statement European art was at a very low ebb at that time. It announced without reservation that "the art gal- lery is filled with statuary and paintings from the best artists of Italy, Germany, Holland and the United States." As a matter of fact, with the exception of a few canvases by Bierstadt and Virgil Williams, the 63 numbers were all Italian "pot boilers," and the statues were plaster casts. But the gallery nevertheless was a great attraction and the care with which the visitors inspected its contents indicated a growing appreciation of art even though the opportunities to gratify it were limited.
Charles Warren Stoddard in describing the interior of a house in the Fifties gave us a glimpse of the taste of the period which conveyed the impression that incongruities were not regarded with much disfavor. He tells of a drawing room on Rincon hill in a house with a shaky verandah and French windows, whose walls were innocent of plaster, muslin covered with paper being substituted. The lace draperies were almost overpowering, and satin lambrequins with "colossal cord and tassels of bullion" added to their magnificence. A plate glass mirror on the mantel reflected the Florentine carving on its elaborate gilt frame. There were bronzes on the mantel and tall vases of Sevres, and statutettes of bisque brilliantly tinted. At the two sides of the mantel stood pedestals of Italian marble surmounted hy urns of the most graceful and elegant proportions, and profusely ornamented with sculptured fruits and flowers. There was an old fashioned square piano in its carven case, and cabinets from China and East India; also a lacquered Japanese screen, marble topped tables of filigreed teak and brackets of inlaid ebony. Curios there were galore. Some paintings there were, and these rocked softly upon the gently heav- ing walls. As for the carpet it was a bed of gigantic roses that might easily put to the blush the prime of summer in the queen's garden.
This description cannot be quoted as typical in every particular, for even in the Fifties there were houses inhabited by substantial citizens which did not lack laths and plaster, but it undoubtedly accurately pictures the propensity to select ornaments with reference to their beauty rather than to their surroundings. That this tendency was more prevalent in San Francisco than in other cities where fortunes were made with less rapidity is undoubtedly true, but it was not entirely unknown in other sections of the Union. Art culture is a slow process, and it ·is not strange that there should have been plenty of men whose ability to procure costly and beautiful articles exceeded their knowledge of how to dispose of them after they were obtained. But experience sufficient to make a showing is gained Vol. 1-30
Interior Decoration and Adornment
Growth of Taste
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with comparative ease, and before the Sixties had become a thing of the past, there were many tastefully arranged homes in San Francisco. The dominant note of life in the community, however, was not that of the home. The hotel and boarding house, and the restaurant, still flourished in the Sixties and gave San Francisco a distinctiveness which it has not wholly lost, and which, perhaps, constitutes a part of that much talked of atmosphere whose discoverers find it so difficult to describe. It was the perception of this tendency, allied with megalomania which inspired W. C. Ralston to engage in the construction of a hotel that was to be the largest in the world. The idea was conceived before the opening of the Seventies and was executed in all its comprehensiveness in the first half of that decade.
It was a bold conception for there was no lack of hotels at the time. The Grand hotel on the corner of Market and New Montgomery street, whose founda- tions had been laid in 1869 had just been completed at a cost of $400,000 and was justly regarded as a caravansary fully abreast in every particular, when it opened in the spring of 1870, of the best in the East. The Occidental, on the east side of Montgomery street, between Sutter and Bush, erected on the site of the Old Music Hall and a public school, and later occupying the whole block frontage on Montgomery street, was famous for its accommodations from the time of its open- ing in the early Sixties. The Russ house, also on Montgomery street, between Bush and Pine, which was opened in 1862, was still flourishing, and the Nucleus, which occupied the site now covered by the Hearst building, had just commenced to bid for favor in 1867. At this time it was just as possible to say of San Fran- cisco as it was ten years earlier that no city outside of New York was as well provided with hotels and restaurants, and that the home instinct was less developed than in any other place in America.
Hotels in the Sixties
CHAPTER XLVI
DISASTERS OCCURRING DURING THE EIGHTEEN SIXTY DECADE
OPTIMISTIC TRAITS OF SAN FRANCISCANS-DISASTROUS FIRES FAILED TO DISCOURAGE THEM IN THE EARLY DAYS-THE FAILURE TO TAKE PROPER PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FIRES-BRET HARTE'S JESTING PROPHECY-THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1868-EFFECTS OF THE SHOCK-BADLY CONSTRUCTED BUILDINGS SUFFER-THE DISTURBANCE CAUSES NO APPREHENSION-WHY SAN FRANCISCANS ARE NOT APPREHENSIVE- INCIDENTS OF THE DISTURBANCE OF 1868-NEWSPAPERS STATE REAL ESTATE ONLY TEMPORARILY AFFECTED-NO ATTEMPT TO CONCEAL THE FACTS-A NITRO GLYC- ERINE EXPLOSION-OCEAN DISASTERS IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES-NO INTER- RUPTION OF PROGRESS-SIGNS OF AN IMPENDING DEPRESSION AT THE CLOSE OF THE DECADE SIXTY.
CIT
The undis- couraged Pioneer
HE most calamitous happenings of the Fifties were the great fires which threatened the existence of the City. Their seriousness can hardly be realized at this distance of time, but that they were staggering blows we can gather from published correspondence and other sources even if the SEAL OF OF SAN FRAN indomitable spirit of the inhabitants induced them to make light of the disasters. There was no attempt at conceal- ment, but what the "Annals" suppressed and the local papers avoided was dis- closed by letters sent to papers and people in the outside world. The "Alta Cali- fornia" in speaking of the fire of May 3, 1851, said "the energies of the people have not been depressed by this great calamity," and told how "within a week the buildings began to rise upon the burnt district and every portion was alive with mechanics," but at the same moment a correspondent of the London "Times" was writing a letter to that paper which was printed on July 5, 1851, in which he said: "Whether San Francisco will ever entirely recover from the blow is, I think, doubtful," but his pessimism did not permit him to overlook the fact that "energy unlimited is here-such energy and elasticity as were never equalled in so large and so mixed a population."
During the Sixties the City escaped destructive fires although there were fre- quent demands made upon the volunteer and later the paid fire departments. In a city constructed so largely of wood it would have been extraordinary if the records had told another story. The press in the days following the disasters of the Fifties had much to say about the folly of building with destructible materials, but its advice was only followed to a limited extent. As already related in the business portion of the City, the area of which was not very extensive, substantial structures of brick, and some of stone were erected, and they were provided with
Excessive Number of Fires
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iron shutters and doors, but redwood continued to be the favorite building material. Insurance actuaries claim that owing to adherence to wooden construction the destruction by fires up to 1899 was excessive, showing an average loss between two and three times that expected in cities having ordinary fire protection.
Despite this fact a mischievous belief grew up that redwood was not very in- flammable; it hardly went so far as to invest that sort of timber with fire-defying qualities, but it was largely responsible for the successful resistance to municipal regulation in the direction of extension of the fire limits. This and the cupidity of property owners who constantly fought efforts to compel the use of more durable materials was responsible for numerous fires which, in the aggregate, made a for- midable showing in the loss account of the City. It should be added that these two causes were reinforced by the prevalent opinion that houses constructed of wood were safer in a country subject to earthquakes than those of brick and stone, and to some extent by the conviction that frame buildings were better adapted to the climate than any other sort. These views combined did much to defer the discovery which was made in 1906 that any style of masonry construction may be securely followed in San Francisco provided the workmanship is good.
The effect of earthquakes upon walls was too much dwelt upon and the danger from fire too little considered in the Sixties, although candor compels the admission that the people of San Francisco at no time during the decade ever gave the subject much thought. There is nothing particularly remarkable about this attitude of apparent indifference. It does not indicate a spirit of levity as some assume. The absence of apprehension was no more singular than that displayed by people living in the cyclone regions of the East, which are annually visited by destructive storms. The inhabitants of earthquake countries would gladly dispense with the disturbing tremors, but they, unconsciously perhaps, become imbued with the belief that their disastrous effects are avoidable and hence they feel no alarm.
Not only were San Franciscans destitute of real apprehension concerning them, but they could actually make earthquakes a subject for jesting. In Bret Harte's condensed novels published in 1867 there is a passage which can be read with amusement despite the fact that the humorous prediction had some point given to it forty years later by a great disaster. Milpitas was unknown to fame in those days, so the author selected Oakland as the butt for his wit, which was as much relished by contra costans of the late Sixties as by San Franciscans. "To- wards the close of the nineteenth century," wrote Harte, "the City of San Fran- cisco was totally engulfed by an earthquake. Although the whole coast line must have been much shaken, the accident seems to have been purely local and even Oakland escaped. Schwapelfure, the celebrated German geologist has endeavored to explain this singular fact by suggesting that there are some things the earth cannot swallow --- a statement that should be received with some caution as exceed- ing the ordinary latitude of geological speculation."
The Earthquake of 1868
Perhaps no one in San Francisco recalled this jesting prediction when the City was subjected to a shaking far more serious in its results than its inhabitants had previously experienced, but the spirit it displayed was exhibited in a slightly dif- ferent form. There was no levity, but there was an abundance of assurance and an utter absence of hysteria. The disturbance referred to happened on the morning of Wednesday, October 21, 1868. The first shock occurred at 7:54 and lasted thirty seconds. It was followed at 10:35 and 11:20 A. M., by less severe shakes,
A Redwood Fallacy
Lack of Precaution Against Fire
Bret Harte's Jocular Prophecy
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which were interspersed with minor tremors. The vibration of the first quake was from northeast to southwest. Two or three days after the disturbance the local press stated that the number of fatal casualties was six and that there were about three times as many who had suffered more or less serious injury.
The effects of the shock were not confined to San Francisco or the peninsula. The accounts show that the disturbance was felt more severely on the other side of the bay than in the City. In Oakland a part of the wharf at the foot of Broad- way collapsed and a large quantity of coal was sunk in the waters of the bay. Several brick buildings suffered injury, the wall of one at Twelfth and Broadway falling with a great crash. At San Leandro the county jail tumbled down and the treasurer, whose office appears to have been in the building, was killed. At Red- wood and San Jose the shock was severe but not much damage ensued. Reports from the Sacramento valley indicate that the tremors were hardly noticed in that region. In San Francisco the principal damage was confined to the old city front between Sansome street and the bay on the east and west, and between Folsom street and Pacific street on the north and south.
There is no estimate of the extent of the pecuniary damage but the press fur- nished ample details which permit the inference that in most cases the injuries suffered by property owners were directly due to their own carelessness in dis- regarding the necessity of building properly. On the day following the disturbance the "Chronicle" stated "after a careful analysis of the reports from every quarter we find there is not a single case where any well constructed building standing on solid ground was damaged. Our great hotels, our churches, our large and stately private residences have suffered no injury. None but old and dilapidated buildings resting upon insecure foundations have been seriously injured. The Occidental, the Lick house, the Russ house, Montgomery block all stood firm, and yet they belonged to a class of buildings popularly considered most liable to danger." To this comment may be added the statement that the Montgomery block, the only one of the four buildings mentioned which escaped the flames in 1906 passed through the ordeal of April 18th unscathed, and still stands to remind San Fran- ciscans that proper construction may be depended upon to guard against earth- quake injury.
It is not difficult to find support for the assertion that the disaster of October 21, 1868, did not dismay the people of San Francisco. The evidence is abundant that they did not for a moment lose their nerve. The first shock was experienced at 7:54 A. M., and at 1:30 P. M., the "Chronicle" issued an extra containing six columns of fine print, made up of short paragraphs narrating injuries and damages and filled with bits of human interest. One of the reporters very properly thought it worth while to note that "a club of juvenile baseball players were playing a game on the corner of Stockton and Filbert streets, and when the 10:30 shock came they waited for the earth to cease oscillating and went on with their game." Another note is worth reprinting because it brings out clearly the reason why San Francisco escaped a real disaster on October 21, 1868. It stated: "While the firemen were rescuing two men covered with debris at the corner of Clay and Sansome streets an alarm of fire was sounded, and a fire was discovered in the building on the northeast corner of Clay and Battery streets which was quickly suppressed." Evidently the firemen were not confronted with the bitter experience
The Shock in Oakland
Badly Constructed Buildings Suffer
An Undismayed People
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of 1906 when all their energies went for naught because of the failure of the water supply.
It is sometimes said that the history made by the local reporter is undependable, but no such charge can be brought against the collection of facts presented in this extra which were gathered, written and printed while the ground was still shaking. It was an unvarnished tale, and by no means a rounded one, for it was absolutely destitute of embellishment. The writers adhered strictly to bald facts, and pre- sented what they learned without considering its effect. One item narrated in half a dozen lines the discreditable action of a number of men in the Pacific Tannery and Boot and Shoe Company's works, who in their eagerness to escape from the build- ing in which they were working pushed back the women, causing several of the latter to be injured. Another disposes of the scene in the county jail where pandemo- nium reigned because its custodian refused to release the prisoners by simply stating. that the inmates filled the air with shrieks which could be heard a block distant. But the most of the items simply recorded injuries to persons and prop- erty, and such occurrences as the busy reporters were able to learn about in the brief interval between, perhaps nine and half past twelve o'clock. They noted that at Fifth and Folsom the street had subsided, that a house at Folsom and Four- teenth had sunk four feet and they told of numerous fallen chimneys and cracked walls. They even took pains to deny rumors, as for instance this in the brief statement: "The Denman school house is not as badly injured as reported." They also related that "the Chinese at the Pacific Woolen Mills refused to return to their work," implying that the managers did not deem the shock of sufficient con- sequence to interrupt operations; and they were observant enough to note and record that steps were promptly taken to prop up walls that appeared in need of support. Several of the injuries resulted from frightened people jumping from windows, and we are told that two horses dashed through the windows of a dry goods store on the corner of Fifth and Folsom streets.
There were some incidents set down in black and white which might have been taken for granted, as for instance the statement that when the second shock at 10:30 was felt "women screamed violently." But there is real value in the informa- tion embodied in the brief note that "the school house on Post street is injured so that there can be no school for a day or two" as it permits the inference that the damage was not very serious. It is also interesting to learn that "one of the spires of the Sutter street synagogue was thrown to the ground and that the custom house walls were cracked, but the building, despite that fact, and notwithstanding the dubious character of its foundations, did service until it was torn down to make way for another edifice nearly forty years afterward.
Far more interesting perhaps than the relation of actual occurrences is the comment called forth by the event during the succeeding few days. The analysis of the results of the temblor has already been quoted, and it may be supplemented by the observation made a day later that "the severest shock San Francisco has ever experienced, or is ever likely to experience, has come and gone, resulting in less damage to life and property than attended the great earthquake in London in John Wesley's time." This sounds like making the best of a situation, and smacks of "whistling while passing through the woods," as does also the assertion made two days later that "the crowds that filled our streets on Tuesday did not wear an aspect of sadness or depression. In fact a stranger, ignorant of the cause of the excite-
Only & Temporary Check
An Exhibition of Newspaper Enterprise
Damage Not Serious
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ment, would have supposed that the people were enjoying some great holiday." But the matter of fact record in the column devoted to real estate news printed on the ensuing Sunday to the effect that "the recent severe earthquake shock has caused a temporary dullness but no depression of values," indicates in the most unmistak- able manner that San Franciscans had not lost confidence in their City; and a well displayed advertisement a week later, announcing that the "Chronicle" was about to issue an illustrated earthquake edition, which might be procured "in wrappers ready for mailing," shows that there was no disposition to conceal the facts of the disaster.
In this illustrated edition attention was called to a fact which, taken in con- nection with what happened about the time when the shock of 1906 occurred, may prove of special interest to seismologists. "The year 1868," said the writer, "will figure in history as the year of earthquakes. Tremendous phenomena in South America, the West Indies and the Sandwich islands were on a scale far transcend- ing any of those hitherto famous events in history." This assumption would not, perhaps, be assented to by more recent students of the subject, but it was undeni- ably true that the year mentioned was attended by great disturbances in various parts of the earth, just as was that of the year 1906. There may be no connection between the two facts, but the editor was not entirely unwarranted in saying that the shake seemed to establish that San Francisco was in touch with the rest of the world.
There was one other disaster during the Sixties which was attended with cir- cumstances that make it noteworthy, because it recalls the time when California was still unfamiliar with a class of high explosives which afterward came into com- mon use. On the 16th of April, 1866, a case of nitroglycerine which had been sent to San Francisco from New York with other express matter by way of Panama by Wells Fargo & Co., exploded in the company's office in this City in the building on the northwest corner of Montgomery and California streets. The dangerous package, which was in a leaking condition, was taken there for examination. The character of the contents was indicated on the box, but apparently no one about the office was familiar with the properties of nitroglycerine, which is not strange, as its invention or adaptation to explosive uses only dated back to 1863, and Nobel was still making experiments to develop its practicability. When the leak was noted an employe was directed to open the box and he proceeded to do so with a mallet and chisel. A terrific explosion followed which killed several persons and badly shattered the building. The force of the explosive was so great that a man who was on the sidewalk on the California street side of the building was instantly killed. The proximity of several establishments engaged in the manufacture of high explosives has made San Franciscans measurably familiar with the results of disasters of this character, but none of them since that date made so profound an impression as that which occurred in the heart of the City and made them acquainted with the dangerous substance which has since been so freely used in the prosecution of the mineral industries of the state.
The fate of ships has always been a matter of universal rather than local inter- est, but the ports of arrival and departure, no matter where the tragedy of their disappearance or destruction occurs, are the places where the greatest impression is made by the disasters of the deep. San Francisco has had many tragic reminders of the hazards of the ocean. In the Fifties the steamer "Central America" was
Facts not Concealed
A Nitro Glycerine Explosion
Ocean Disasters
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lost off the coast of Florida in 1857 while en route from Aspinwall to New York and 418 of her passengers were drowned, many of them from San Francisco. On the 22d of December, 1853, the steamer "San Francisco," when two days out from New York, encountered a fierce gale, in which her engines were disabled and it was found necessary to abandon her. The passengers and crew were all rescued before she went to the bottom. The Sixties were marked by several of these trage- dies of the deep. In 1860 three wrecks occurred on the northern coast, and in 1865 the "Brother Jonathan," on her way to Victoria from San Francisco, was lost with 109 passengers and a crew of 54. In 1866 the "Columbus" was wrecked and a year later the "John T. Wright" was burned at sea. The "Forward" and the "Oregonian" were lost in 1868, and in 1869 the steamers "Gold Hunter," "Her- mann," "Sierra Nevada" and "Tynemouth" (Br.), all sailing from the port of San Francisco, were wrecked and in the same year the "America" was burned. The most disastrous marine tragedy of the decade was the loss of the steamer "Golden Gate," on the 28th of February, 1862. She sailed from San Francisco for Panama on the 21st of the month and when seven days out a fire was discovered amidships which spread so rapidly that the cabin passengers could not get to the life boats in the forward part of the ship. The captain decided to beach the burning vessel, but only eighty of the 338 on board reached the shore. ' The "Golden Gate" had $1,400,000 of treasure on board. In 1870 another Pacific mail steamer, the "Golden City," was wrecked off the coast of Lower California, but the passengers and treasure to the amount of $790,000 were saved, but the vessel and cargo proved a total loss.
Progress Not Inter- rupted by Untoward Events
Crimes, disasters on sea and land, seismic disturbances, even scarcities which result in famines are but temporary afflictions and scarcely affect the progress of a country of great resources. California after the occupation never experienced the miseries of dearth, her fertile soil always responded freely to the efforts of the energetic. Even in dry years, before the diversification of the agricultural indus- try made the state less dependent upon the rainfall than when the cereals were the chief crop, the shortage of one section would be made good by the productivity of more favorably situated land. San Francisco experienced the benefit of this unvarying good fortune of the tillers of the soil, and profited by catering to the necessities of the miners. So it happened that in spite of what at the time appeared to be great calamities the City continued to prosper, increasing in wealth and popu- lation, making a showing at the end of the decade surpassed by that of no other community in the United States.
Signs of an Approaching Depression
But before the decade seventy was many months old there were signs of a halt in progress. There was discontent among the workingmen and meetings of the unemployed. The hopes built on the advent of the transcontinental railroad were found to be illusory. There was no rush from the East to fill up the vacant lands and to develop the general resources of the state, and the house of cards built upon this expectation tumbled to pieces. The trouble foreseen by thoughtful men and predicted was materializing, and the primary cause was accentuated by what may be called an industrial aberration which produced evil consequences far more serious in their immediate effect than would have ensued had the regular course of events not been interrupted.
A Gloomy Ontiook
The story of the period which opened in 1871 is a checkered one. In the main it is one of trouble and depression. It had its years of fancied prosperity, during
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which some men grew fabulously rich, but the City and state as a whole suffered because the riches which were gained by industry and good fortune instead of being fairly distributed were absorbed by the few. By speculative methods, more unscrupulous than daring, a foolish people were beguiled of their earnings by men whose rewards would without a resort to roguery have been sufficient to satisfy the ordinary dreams of avarice. And thus there was added to the drawbacks from which the state was already beginning to suffer the evil of improvidence. The outlook in the early Seventies was indeed gloomy, but it cannot be said that San Franciscans generally perceived the impending trouble. At times they were under the delusion that the evils from which they suffered were benefits, but this optimism gradually disappeared and long before a remedy for the difficulties was sought there was no question about the existence of the disease. There was much difference of opinion respecting the best mode of curing it, but there was little as to the causes. These were freely admitted to be land monopoly, railroad extortion and specula- tion, and the eradication of these absorbed the attention of San Franciscans, and influenced the destiny of the City during several years following 1871.
Vol. I-31
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