USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume II > Part 46
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In March, 1888, Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett, with whom he was asso- ciated, opened the new California theater on Bush street, which took the place of the house erected in the late Sixties while William C. Ralston was at the zenith of his leadership in financial and other affairs in San Francisco. The theater was reached through a long entrance and was in the rear of the California hotel, but detached from it by an area way. At this date the amusement center was still in the neighborhood in which it had established itself in the Fifties. The opening of the Baldwin, which had occurred some years earlier, had not impressed the public that there was likely to be a flitting. The location of the Grand opera house, which was available for many years for the purpose for which it was erected, and for spectacles requiring a large stage, tended to hold amusements down town. But when the Mission street place was converted by Morosco into a temple for the presentation of melodrama of the most lurid type the glory of the opera house departed, and the movement westward was recognized as inevitable. A theater, the Columbia, was built on Powell street opposite the Baldwin hotel in May, 1895, and thenceforth shared with the Baldwin, until the latter was destroyed by fire, the distinction of being one of the two leading theaters in San Francisco.
But theaters do not take wings and fly by night to new locations. The Cali- fornia, long after its prestige had departed as a leading place of amusement re- mained the scene of many interesting performances. It no longer, as in the days preceding the rivalry of the Baldwin, maintained its stock company, but its excellent stage, and its accessibility, caused it to be sought by visiting combinations up to the time of the fire of 1906. But long before that date it was clear to any one that the town was making for itself a new amusement center. Before the erection of the Baldwin the Alcazar was opened on O'Farrell street between Stockton and Powell,
Distinguished Artists Visit City
Amusement Center Moves Westward
Theaters in the Eighties
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opposite the present Orpheum, which as late as 1892 was not considered of suf- ficient consequence to be embraced in a list of places of amusement published by a hotel for the information of its guests. It included only the California, the Grand opera house, the Baldwin, the Bush street, the Tivoli opera house, the Powell street theater, the Alcazar and a panorama and skating rink. The Or- pheum was already in existence at that time, and had been for several years, dating back to 1887, but vaudeville had not obtained the strong hold on the amusement seeker which it has since maintained. Among the changes in popular taste after the opening of the Eighties must be included the growing appreciation of the varied attractions which the vaudeville stage presents. It cannot be said that the develop- ment was peculiar to San Francisco. In San Francisco, however, it was the product of an evolutionary process. From the time of the introduction of cafés chantant in pioneer days the people of the City had manifested a strong inclination for combining feasting and acting. The Russ Garden in the Fifties, and other places in the City appealed to the pleasure seeker by offering singing, acro- batic feats and other diversions as a stimulant to digestion; and later the Bella Union, on whose stage Edward Harrigan, Eddie Foy and other well known come- dians at one time displayed their peculiar talents, provided entertainments whose scope did not differ greatly from that of the up-to-date twentieth century home of vaudeville. There were other places in San Francisco such as the Palace Va- rieties where the acrobat, the singer, the performer on the banjo and other musical instruments and the monologuist met on the same boards, but they did not have the stamp of fashionable approval, and were places which the prudent shunned for a variety of reasons, chief among which was the indiscriminate character of the audiences which laid no claims to selectness.
Minstrelsy lingered throughout the Eighties, but had to be helped out by burlesque. The jokes of the end men, and the ballads of the tenor, whose voice was usually a falsetto, and the clog and statuesque dances of the Fifties and Sixties began to pall on the public taste towards the end of the decade. The conservatism of the people, and the disposition to continue support of a favorite caused the burnt-cork artists to survive longer in San Francisco than in some of the Eastern cities. But Emerson's troupe, which occupied the Standard theater on Bush street for several years, began to find it difficult towards the Eighties to compete with the attractions of light opera presented at the place across the way, even when the clever sketches of Charlie Reed were presented, in which the works of Gilbert and Sullivan were interpreted after a manner of his own, and the high spots in Italian opera were hit off. When Billy Emerson retired from the business the minstrel show, like the circus, ceased to be a regular source of entertainment in San Fran- cisco, and its inhabitants were content to put up with periodical visitations from troupes like those of Haverly, which were largely recruited from the ranks of old time favorites who always received a hearty welcome when they returned to the scenes of their earlier successes.
San Francisco Audiences
But while the interest in the sort of music afforded by minstrels sensibly abated during the Eighties there was no diminution of the taste for the kind dispensed by other artists. It would probably be difficult to establish the claim that the standard of taste had measurably improved over the days when opera was produced with great regularity by numerous companies, as related in a previous chapter, but there is no doubt that San Franciscans, perhaps by insisting that they had the req-
The Last Lay of the Minstrel
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uisite qualifications, had managed to convey the impression to artists that the City could furnish a critical audience. This was true alike of singer and actor, and whether the implied compliment was deserved or not, fresh candidates for favor were disposed to regard a first appearance in San Francisco as an ordeal, and to rejoice if they passed it successfully. At no time was there any disposition to ac- cept outside estimates. Actors and plays were judged on their merits, and in some cases there was a pronounced inclination to reverse the verdict of the East. When this occurred the artist usually retorted by branding San Francisco as a "jay town," a sort of criticism which was sometimes repaid on better acquaintance with appreciation, but rarely resented by the people.
The claim was frequently made for the Tivoli that it was the first place of amusement in America wholly devoted to the presentation of opera. It may have been without a substantial basis, but when made in the Eighties it was not dis- proved. At the time the question was raised the Tivoli had been running many years, and was constantly growing in favor with the people who through the energy of its managers became acquainted with musical productions often before they became familiar to Eastern audiences. The management was rarely abashed by difficulties, and its enterprise took a wide range. There was a decided prefer- ence for English opera, or to put it more correctly, works rendered into English; but at frequent intervals "Grand Italian Opera" was essayed, occasionally by troupes from the Latin American republics to the south of San Francisco. This region was a source of supply somewhat intermittent in character, and the ability of San Francisco to draw upon it was in a measure dependent upon the degree of pecuniary appreciation shown to visiting troupes, particularly by our Mexican neighbors. When from any cause an opera company made a failure in the sister republic it found its way to San Francisco to repair its fortunes. The deficiencies of the artists were not always responsible for their want of success in Latin America. On more than one occasion singers of exceptional merit, stranded below the border, were relieved of their troubles by enterprising San Francisco managers and brought to this City and given an opportunity to mend their fortunes. In the first part of the decade 1880 an organization of this character, after many vicis- situdes in Mexico and the Central American states, opened in the California theater, and its performances proved so acceptable to the people that they were repeated during several months. The principal tenor of the troupe, Gianini, had a voice of exceptional quality, and the remainder of the company, while not up to the standard of the best organizations, proved very satisfactory. In like manner a company which counted Tetrazzini as its principal attraction was brought to the City by the Tivoli management. Her voice and ability received instant recognition by the audiences of that place of amusement, who voted her a star of the first magnitude, and the world later accepted their judgment.
The known partiality of San Francisco for opera sufficed in the early Eighties to break down the managerial terror of taking costly organizations thousands of miles to perform in a single city. The impressario Mapleson made a venture of the sort and introduced to San Francisco Marie Roze. The engagement began at the Baldwin but proved so successful that it was continued in the more spacious Grand opera house. Emboldened by his success Mapleson in 1884 brought to the City Adeline Patti and Etelka Gerster, who were supported by excellent companies. The season proved to be a most brilliant one, and the box office receipts were
Italian Opera Companies From Latin America
A Crank Who Envied Patti's Prosperity
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large enough to attract the wondering attention of the country. This engagement developed the fact that the love of music was so general in the City at the time that it was possible for factions to arise who warred over the merits of the singers. The supremacy of Patti had been universally recognized prior to her appearance in San Francisco, and there was no disposition to question it in the City, but there was a large section of the community who advocated the claims of Gerster to the great joy of the impressario who had the dread of off nights lifted from his mind by the favor shown to the rival artist. Patti appeared on several occasions after her first triumph in San Francisco. In 1887 while giving one of her famous concerts at the Grand opera house a crank in the gallery was detected as he was about to throw a bomb on the stage. His arrest was effected so quietly that little or no interest was excited by the slight commotion, the people in the audience assum- ing that some disorderly person was being removed. When questioned concern- ing his motive he exhibited signs of derangement; but he assigned as a reason for his act that Patti was receiving $5,000 for singing an hour or so while he and his kind obtained only a couple of dollars for eight or ten hours of hard work. Patti's last farewell concert in San Francisco was given in January, 1904, at the Grand opera house.
Less successful in some particulars than the Patti engagements was the season of opera in 1887 given by the company for which Mrs. Jeanette Thurber of New York provided the pecuniary backing. The lady referred to was desirous of making the American public familiar with the best compositions by rendering them in English. She was also under the domination of the German idea that a perfect ensemble was preferable to the method of laying undue stress upon the part played by the star. To that end great attention was paid to scenic and other effects, and all the operas produced became spectacles. Mrs. Thurber re- garded the orchestra as of prime importance, and the National Opera Company in consequence enjoyed the distinction of having its instrumental music provided by Theodore Thomas and his selected musicians numbering sixty. The ballet was also an important feature and it, together with the chorus, closely approached the two hundred advertised as being on the stage at one time. The entire organization comprised nearly three hundred persons. During the course of the season Lohen- grin was introduced to the San Francisco public, and it is worth noting that the musical critics were agreed that there was something in Wagner's music and that it would live. Among the novelties and revivals presented were Rubenstein's Nero and Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice. Gounod's Faust was produced with features rarely seen outside of Paris and the great European capitals. Mrs. Thurber's venture proved a failure, but it is claimed that had her efforts been met elsewhere as they were in San Francisco there would have been a different story to tell.
Although grand opera held its own during the entire period between 1883 and 1906 in San Francisco, and never degenerated into a mere society function, the lighter forms of music were unquestionably gaining a strong hold on the popular taste. It has already been related that during the Seventies French Opera Bouffe had proved extremely attractive, and that long engagements filled by artists from Paris were common. This form of entertainment lent itself more readily to the vernacular and during the Eighties the operas of Offenbach, Lecocq and others done into English, were produced by different companies, and frequently essayed by the Tivoli organization. The works of German composers in the lighter vein
Light Opera Gains in Popularity
The Nationai Opera Company's Success
RUINS BETWEEN THE FAIRMONT HOTEL AND TELEGRAPH HILL
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SAN FRANCISCO
also became very popular and the music of Strauss was almost as familiar to San Franciscans as to the Viennese. The early vogue of Gilbert and Sullivan's produc- tions was maintained, and in 1887 we find the Mikado simultaneously produced in two houses in the City. This growing predilection for light music by no means operated to exclude the higher forms, and if it were desirable to do so a long list of great artists who appeared before San Francisco audiences repeatedly, and who had reason to be satisfied with their reception could be printed. Before Thomas' orchestra became a fixture in Chicago their tours always embraced San Francisco, and the same may be said of other important musical organizations, and of the best pianists, violinists and concert singers. One of the events ineffaceably impressed on the minds of those who witnessed the disaster of April 18, 1906, was the fact that the Monday preceding had been signalized by the opening of a season of opera in which Caruso and other artists of distinction figured, and which promised to be exceptionally brilliant. It was fitting that the last performance in the Grand opera house should have been worthy its fame as a temple of music and that it did not pass into history as the home of lurid melodrama.
The shifting of the amusement center of a city is a phenomenon more peculiar to the United States than to European communities in many of which circumstances, and the disposition of the people cause it to remain fixed. In San Francisco it was accomplished with exceeding slowness and the movement was not a very marked one up to the time of the fire in 1906. There had been a flitting to Powell street, and there was a promise that at some future time the down town houses would be com- pletely deserted for the neighborhood within a block or two of the Baldwin hotel, but few persons had any confidence that the erection of the Majestic theater on the south side of Market, near Ninth, would be speedily followed by like enterprises. In 1905 when the idea of a civic center in the vicinity of the city hall began to engage attention it was thought that the locality might offer inducements, but the early impression regarding the unsuitability of any place "south of the slot" for business or amusement purposes was hard to remove. It was conceded that sec- ond class theaters might succeed, but there was a fixed belief that the restaurants and the theaters would keep close together, and as the eating places which catered for the patrons of amusements were chiefly established in the vicinity of the Bald- win that seemed to settle the matter.
The night-life of San Francisco has been much commented upon. There is probably more activity on the streets of the Pacific coast metropolis after nightfall than in any other American city excepting New York. It was a feature which at- tracted the attention of strangers before the fire, and by most of them was regarded as an ingredient of the much talked about "atmosphere." The unusually large number of restaurants of all classes on the traveled thoroughfares helped to create the impression that San Francisco was unduly developed on its gastronomic side, a belief which was strengthened by the presence of large numbers of people who resorted to them after the theater for a late supper, and a bit more of enter- tainment in the shape of good music dispensed by small but select orchestras. There were several places of that character during the Nineties, and they were all flourishing. Proximity to places of amusement was essential to success, but it was soon found out that a capricious public demand something more than mere accessibil- ity, and proprietors acting upon the discovery that the appetite grows with what it feeds upon began to supplement the shows which their patrons had seen with
Amusement Center in 1905
Restaurants and Night Life in San Francisco
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still other shows and the late vaudeville multiplied. A discriminating Los Angeles critic writing of this feature of San Francisco life was impelled to institute a com- parison between the peculiarities of the two cities. He declared that in his home town the people went to the theater and enjoyed the play, and then caught the first street car and hastened home to bed. In San Francisco, he said, when the theatrical performance ended the night was just beginning for the pleasure loving citizen, who insisted on seeing his friends, and enjoying their company, and some more music and life before retiring to his couch.
Places Worth Visiting in 1892
The amusements of a great city are necessarily varied, and there are some which those who participate in its life relegate almost wholly to the enjoyment of the stranger. It is said that a vast number of Parisians have never set foot inside the Louvre, and that an equally large number is unacquainted with the beauties of Versailles. This indifference to local attractions, however, never had the effect in San Francisco of blinding those interested in its progress to the desirability of acquainting visitors to the City by means of guides and other devices with just what is to be seen within its precincts. In 1892, the California hotel, which was then one of the leading hostelries of San Francisco, for the information of its guests issued a small leaflet which enumerated the following as places worth visiting and objects that should be seen: Golden Gate Park, Cliff House, Sutro Heights, Sutro Aquarium, the Presidio, the Union Iron Works, State Board of Horticulture, State Viticultural Commission, State Mining Bureau, Academy of Sciences, Mechanics Institute Building, United States Mint, Alcatraz Island, Harbor View, the New City Hall, Spring Valley Water Works, Chinatown, the Crocker Building, the Mills Building, the Donohue Building, the Stock Exchanges, San Francisco Produce Ex- change, Merchants Exchange, Stanford Residence, Charles Crocker Residence, Hopkins Residence, J. C. Flood Residence, the Colton Residence, the Towne Residence, Henry J. Crocker Residence, the Mercantile Library, the Bohemian Club, the Pacific Union Club, the Manhattan Club, La Cercle Francais, B. P. O. Elks, the Harmonia Club, the Thalia, the German Verein, the Olympic Club, the California Club, the Concordia Club, the Masonic Temple, Odd Fellows Hall and the California State Board of Trade. Its make up suggests that the person who prepared the list was careful to include every object which by any stretch of thought could be deemed interesting to the stranger, therefore it, together with the places of amusement quoted above from the same source, constitutes a standard for comparison with the present, and will help illustrate the growth of twenty years.
During this period San Franciscans rose to an appreciation of the fact that their climate was regarded as a valuable asset by the sporting world. The discovery was not an unmixed blessing for it resulted in an attempt on the part of those interested in the turf to ignore the possibility of all play being as bad or worse for Jack than all work. For many years San Franciscans had taken a keen interest in horse racing, and the most ardent devotees of the sport were firmly convinced that it was doing much for the development of the horse. There were some who considered betting as indispensable, and thought it should be condoned if not approved, because they reasoned the benefits conferred were an offset to the vices of the turf. There was much said and written about the efforts made to improve the breed of horses and important results in that direction were accomplished on Stan- ford's stock farm at Palo Alto. This interest had a result apart from horse breed-
Origin of Moving Picture Shows
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ing worth noting as it suggests that a San Francisco photographer deserves the credit of originating the idea which has since developed into the most popular amusement of modern times. In the early Eighties a man named Muybridge en- listed the interest of Stanford in his experiment of picturing the horse in motion by the use of the camera. At considerable expense photographic apparatus was ar- ranged around the Palo Alto track, and negatives were made in as quick succession as possible, which showed the various movements of horses while rapidly trotting or running. These were subsequently assembled, and the prints were reproduced lithographically and published in a volume de luxe. The principal object seemed to be the demonstration that the horse when in motion did not act as the artist and the ordinary beholder supposed he did, but the disclosures of the camera had little effect, as the trotting or running horse is still pictured as he appears to run or trot, and not as he really performs these movements. Investigation would prob- ably show that the publication of Muybridge's pictures, which were singularly like reproductions of the moving picture films, suggested to Edison the possibility of a motion picture.
The iteration of the climatic claims of California, whether urged by the horse- men or "boosting" editors, had far reaching results. To the considerable thought given to the subject by San Franciscans may fairly be attributed the wide exten- sion of the benefits to be derived from the study of meteorological conditions. Un- der the auspices of the United States Signal Service the practice of issuing weather warnings, chiefly for the benefit of the seafarer had been in vogue for many years, but in 1887 the "Chronicle" conceived the idea of making the service help the California agriculturist, and especially the viticulturist and the fruit grower. To that end the "Chronicle" telegraphed to General Greeley, in the year named, that it would furnish an observer and meet all expenses connected with the installa- tion of a number of stations in California, and would pay the tolls for daily tele- graphic reports if the signal service would supply the necessary instruments, record books and give the experiment official sanction by supervising it. The general ac- cepted the offer and a number of stations were established and provided with bul- letin boards in which the daily warnings were exposed in properly protected frames. The demonstration was continued long enough to thoroughly satisfy General Greeley concerning its value, and in subsequent reports he urged upon congress the desirability of including the warning system in the work of the signal service, and that appropriations should be made for that purpose. It took some time to persuade congress that the system could be made to greatly serve the agricultural interest; but it finally acted and in time the successor of the signal service, the weather bureau, developed it so greatly that it is now recognized as of enormous benefit, and has to its credit the saving of large sums of money to the fruit grower who is its chief beneficiary.
San Francisco, unlike other cities of the state which have considered the promul- gation of meteorological data as of prime importance, has never shown a great desire to profit by its climatic conditions, but has taken a lively interest in the study of the weather in its relation to production. The vast valley, for which the port is the natural distributor, has for a long time depended on the vagaries of the rain- fall, and the people of the City in consequence learned to watch with an anxious eye the signs which pressaged good or bad years. It became very early the one big city in the country in which the weather man was taken seriously, because the popular Vol. II-21
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