Grab Bag #019
The Spreckels legacy in San Francisco: sugar factory, skyscraper, museum, my nephew's band name...
My nephew’s band is named “Clavs Spreckels.” Dustin knows that the “v” in Clavs is really a “u,” despite how it is inscribed on the Golden Gate Park music stand, which provided the inspiration.
Well, he knows that now.
For a band name it’s not terrible. Perhaps “Santa Clavs Spreckels” is better? I’ve never been a great brander, with OpenSFHistory perhaps the best I’ve done and even that gets mangled all the time. Dustin’s band is good though. Original stuff, but you old-timers might like this snippet of them playing around with a classic Scorpions rocker. (Dustin’s the drummer.)
He asked me what I knew about the Spreckels clan and I told him he couldn’t have picked a better gilded age San Francisco family for anecdotes. One could make a fairly robust Grab Bag email just on where to find signs of Spreckelses. Or is it Spreckeli?
The Golden Gate Park bandstand, formally known as the Spreckels Temple of Music, was built with a donation from Claus Spreckels in 1900. When he retired in the early 20th century, the man was one of the richest Americans of all time, worth $1.7 billion dollars adjusted for inflation.
A German immigrant, Spreckels started with groceries on the East Coast before coming to California and making real money as a founder of the first big brewery in San Francisco. In the 1860s he pivoted to sugar refining and by getting in good early with King Kalakaua of Hawaii (through loans, gifts, and old-fashioned corruption) dominated the industry by the 1880s.
