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.
Like all aspiring monopolists, Spreckels was big on vertical integration. He created or gained control of many sectors: steamship lines, railroads, and utility networks. There were real estate deals and developments too. He spent a million dollars constructing the Claus Spreckels Building, more familiarly known as the Call Building, at the southwest corner of 3rd and Market Streets.
It was the tallest building west of Chicago when it went up in 1897. Gutted by fire following the 1906 earthquake, the Call Building got an unsympathetic modernization (and a few more stories) in the 1930s and is now known as the Central Tower. But there are still doorknobs in the building with the stylized initials of old man Claus.
Some other Spreckels initials can be found at the former home of Adolph B. Spreckels, a son who followed in his father’s capitalist footsteps. In a crest above a garage door on the Jackson Street side of 2080 Washington Street is an entwined “A. B. S.”
Writer Danielle Steele owns the place now, but it formerly was the seat of power for Adolph Speckels’ wife. The magisterial Alma de Bretteville Spreckels ruled San Francisco society for years after her husband’s death. Her pre-Adolph days were interesting: a successful lawsuit for losing her virginity without getting a wedding ring, a bit of nude modeling, and a false rumor—which she didn't discourage—that she was the inspiration for the lithe figure at the top of Union Square’s Dewey Monument.
Adolph had his own notoriety. On November 19, 1884, he tried to murder newspaper publisher Michael de Young in the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle.
De Young and the Chronicle, known for sharp-elbowed journalism, criticized the Spreckels’ Hawaiian doings and got a bit personal. An offended Adolph visited the publisher without an appointment and shot him twice. For his trouble, he took some return fire from a clerk who had his own gun. Both men survived. Adolph ended up on trial. By entering a plea only a privileged man could get away with—a mix of “impulsive insanity” and self-defense—he escaped doing any time.
In later years Adolph Spreckels and Michael de Young served together on the park commission and somehow refrained from shooting up McLaren Lodge at the biweekly meetings. Recognizing Adolph’s service, the park commission named the new model boat lake after him in 1904.
Not far away, Adolph and Alma’s names are inscribed at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. This was their major gift to the city of San Francisco, a museum built on the land formerly occupied by the City Cemetery (which you can read all about in last year’s San Francisco Story Annual), and an excellent showcase for Alma’s collection of Auguste Rodin sculptures.
Eponymous monuments of the Spreckelses and de Youngs were neighbors during their lives and their legacies entangled after their deaths. The Claus Spreckels building looked down its nose at the Chronicle’s de Young building across 3rd and Market Streets. The Spreckels music stand and the de Young Museum share the Music Concourse. In 1972, the Legion of Honor and de Young merged to become the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
All right, Dustin. That should be enough material to write a few songs.
More from the Corner Store
Last week’s post on corner stores sparked a lot of mail and comments, for which I am grateful. I particularly liked getting a photo from my old friend Don Andreini of a store his family ran at 1700 Filbert Street (corner of Gough Street):
That's Don’s dad on the left standing next to a stack of Ali d’Italia (Wings of Italy) peanut oil cans. The Marina and Cow Hollow used to have an Italian culture spillover from North Beach. Don remembers that there were two more Italian-owned stores a block away—one at Filbert and Octavia and one at Gough and Greenwich. His Dad’s old corner store is going strong as Rutily’s Market and Deli:
Any other family shots of corner stores? I can’t get enough of them.
The Quigley Campaign
You may have heard there’s a movement to rename Golden Gate Park’s Stow Lake. Stow was antisemitic, so he’s on the way out. The city has started the sloggy process to pick a new name and suggestions have ranged from the nostalgic (Herb Caen) to the karmic (somebody else Jewish) to the natural (Blue Herons, anyone?).
A dark horse candidate has emerged with honest park dirt under his fingernails. Here’s a nice overview by Susan Freinkel of the campaign by Angus Macfarlane (F.O.W.) for a Quigley Lake :
Susan Freinkel
Woody Beer and/or Coffee Fund
Speak of the devil, this week I had a couple of beers with Angus and David Gallagher (F.O.W. #1) at the Little Shamrock. As the oldest continually open bar in the city of San Francisco, the Wee Shammy is a very appropriate place to spend generous donations to the Woody Beer and Coffee Fund. Thanks to Margaret O. and Gabe E., both stalwart F.O.W.s, for standing us our pints!
Sources
If you're doing any kind of research into city history you won't be able to avoid the Spreckels family. Its members had an interest in just about everything in San Francisco from the 1860s to the 1950s. They figure prominently in the history of Hawaii and San Diego and many other places as well.
I didn’t even talk about their interests in the Ingleside Racetrack (which I wrote a book about) or the Geneva Car Barn (which I am currently writing a book about). I have lots and lots of old newspaper clippings, my friends...
I do want to call out some great Spreckeliana in two books privately published by descendant Adolph S. Rosekrans: The Claus Spreckels Building, San Francisco by Michael R. Corbett and Life of A. B. Spreckels by Clay M. Greene. My thanks to Mr. Rosekrans for saving and sharing his family’s history. Not everyone does so.