Two Ladies on the Loose in San Francisco: Part 3
In Pursuit of Exuberance
A house that survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
September 2019 (4 min read)
“San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories”, wrote Jack London on April 18, 1906. The author of Wild Fang and Call of the Wild was born in the city in 1876, and experienced the earthquake that struck at 5.12am on Wednesday. Of the subsequent fire, he noted: “There was no opposing the flames….surrender was complete” Eighty per cent of San Francisco was destroyed and up to 3,000 were killed.
Funnily enough, two of the few magnificent old Victorian houses to survive that conflagration are visible from our window of the Holiday Inn. “Gosh, those are lovely”, I say to Linda the Loquacious (LL). I take a picture and find when we get home that one of them, No 1818 California Street, was a wedding gift to Estelle Sloss when she married Ernest Lilienthal in 1876. That's one heck of a present. The Jewish clans of 19th Century San Fran had money to burn and elegant tastes. It is too late, alas, for me to visit the Haas-Lilienthal House of 1886, which is one of the 34 Living Treasures of America, and “an exuberant example of Queen Anne-style architecture”.
To the untrained eye, the city seems to be full of exuberance. I’m astonished by the eyebrow window heads, gingerbread trims, cupolas, dentils, spindle work, gables, eaves, turrets, towers and oriel windows. And that’s just on the stroll from California to Fillmore. Walking along Geary to Union Square we’re two ladies with our mouths agape. The buildings and murals of San Francisco are mind-blowing.
In a few short blocks, we come across a wall of brilliant peacock feathers, the cream and gold stucco of Hotel StayPineapple and its 6-storey-high mural of brain-flowers rendered in metallic bronze. The lavender façade of the Hotel Adagio, built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, is wonderfully ornate.
Then we reach the temple of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, inspired by the Alhambra of Spain and embossed with camels. Built in 1917, in the Exotic Revival style, it was a Shriner’s (aka Freemasons) Temple until 1970. Rather creepily, the anagram of the long title is A MASON. Today it’s the Alcazar Theatre and has been accorded the status of San Francisco Landmark #195. To see a show here would be a treat.
Just before we stumble in to Union Square, I spot an intriguing pair of doors and we gate crash the lobby of the Marker hotel, built in 1910 as the Bellevue in the Beaux Arts style. It has been described as “French-neoclassic with a dash of Gothic and Renaissance”, which seems about right. The nice doorman tells us that the smart black-flecked marble staircase is original. In which case local writer and sometime private detective Dashiell Hammett may have trodden on these very steps. The author of The Maltese Falcon incorporated various San Fran landmarks in to his famous detective story. Humphrey Bogart made the best hardboiled detective Sam Spade in the movie version of 1941.
Made peckish by all this startling architecture, we wander in to Macy’s hoping to grab a slice of something at the Egyptian-style Cheesecake Store on Level 7. But the Oreo dream extreme cheesecake is 1620 cals a slice, 300 more than Adam’s peanut butter cup fudge ripple, and even looking at them makes us feel full. We beat a retreat, past the Christmas decorations (already in September), to the Burger Bar where we share a serve of fish sliders and watch the tourists in Union Square. All the cafes we passed on Geary would have been more interesting, particularly the Tratto in the Marker, but we’ve run out of steam.
Lucky then that Union Square has a taxi rank. In no time at all, we are alighting at Mission Dolores, the literal birthplace of San Francisco. Here, in 1776, “The City of Saint Francis had its official beginning five days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence”. Built in 1791 with adobe walls 4 feet thick and a roof supported by “redwood logs lashed together with rawhide”, this lovely church is the only one of its kind to survive the 1906 earthquake. It’s worth seeing for the ceiling alone, which is an Ohlone Indian design in vegetable dyes, and reminds us of the indigenous owners who numbered 300,000 when the Spanish colonizers arrived. In the cemetery garden a traditional Ohlone reed house stands in honour of the 5,700 Indians who are buried there.
From the historic Mission Dolores, LL and I wend our way to the modern drama of Clarion Alley, where a paramedic team are carrying out an elderly homeless man and his shopping trolley of possessions. The three buddies he leaves behind, one in the red and gold jacket of a marching band, soon resume their hoarse busking while we snap photos of the wall-to-wall murals. These are mostly angry works of social protest.
The Mission District, once a working-class neighbourhood of Latinos, is slowly being gentrified as the cost of houses and rents skyrockets in smarter inner-city areas. The Tartine Bakery is a sure sign of this. Nothing fancy inside, this bakery produces an expensive range of delicious sweet and savouries. At day’s end, they’re running low, but the ham and cheese croissant and apple and walnut muffin are superb.
With only 3 hours left to go before Qantas call time, we leg it all the way back to the Holiday Inn, passing the last of the pretty Victorian row houses and the Grand Civic buildings on lower Van Ness, including the Conservatory of Music and the Opera House, vowing to return one day. San Francisco burned down just over 100 years ago, but Jack London would be astounded by the glories of today.
EXTRA
All visits to the Haas-Lilienthal house on Franklin St must be guided. Tours are on Wednesday, Saturday and Sundays.
https://www.haas-lilienthalhouse.org
These two great websites will help you explore San Francisco landmarks
https://sf.curbed.com/2018/10/9/17926198/san-francisco-architecture-style-guide-revival
READ
Jack London’s San Francisco Stories include a riveting account of the 1906 Earthquake. You can read it on Wired here https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2017/09/story-eyewitness-san-francisco-earthquake-jack-london/