Grab Bag #36

Last week my San Francisco history friends admired a set of glass-plate negatives that were posted for sale on eBay. The unknown photographer who took the images at the fin de siècle of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th captured some classic views, including the “Victorian” Cliff House and Ocean Beach below:

The gentleman who won the set on eBay, Shaun DeBow, generously allowed Gary Stark to post scans of the images on his Cliff House Project website.

For the general public who hasn’t spent hundreds of hours looking at old photos of the city there are some satisfying views of familiar sites, such as the Ferry Building and Childrens Playground:

For those of us more interested in the rare and obscure slices of city history, the best of the dozen was this shot of Deer Glen in Golden Gate Park: 

This glen, a natural depression in the dune landscape which was molded into the lush park we have today, is now the site of the National AIDS Memorial Grove just west of the tennis court complex:

In the early days of the park, this enclosure was the catch-all space for donated animals, an impromptu zoo first fenced off in 1888. In the newly found old photo are Tule Elk. The glen was also home at different times to llama, donkeys, antelopes, moose, and even some kangaroo:

Below is another great photo of the glen from the collection of Dennis O’Rorke. Based on the fair buildings near the Music Concourse at upper right, the shot seems to have been taken during the 1894 Midwinter Fair. 

As I wrote in a Grab Bag late last year, the park also had a flock of sheep which was recruited for use in Christmas pageantry. Over at the Music Concourse, we had, at different times, bears and even sea lions:

The San Francisco Zoo, created in the 1920s, took over most of the city’s exotic animal management duties. Random donations of wild creatures, much less their acceptance, aren’t what they were in the 19th century. (Although our current mayor is trying to nab us some pandas.)

The sea lions and sheep hung around into the 1950s and 1960s and the park still has its herd of American Bison. Oh, by the way, the park’s animals were always getting loose and having to be tracked down, even the bison.

Parkitecture

I am a fan of the fanciful rustic style, where structures and furniture appear to be pieced together by found sticks or stones or even bones. It used to be all over Golden Gate Park and is still an aesthetic found in National Parks. There once was a series of park shelters—picnic and card playing sites—made to appear as fairy tale shepherds’ huts:

The restoration of Middle Lake at the park’s western Chain of Lakes is close to complete, which is great, but I wish someone had thought to bring back the rustic bridges that used to span parts of the three lakes:

Despite the verisimilitude, the style was about feeling rather than any reality. The branchy bridges were cast concrete.

Farms… in the Richmond?

(For you younger folks, that subtitle is a reference to an old local advertising slogan.)

While tracking down some information for researcher Peter Field, I stumbled on a clipping I forgot I had in my files from the Daily Evening Bulletin of March 7, 1884: 

“Mr. Patten has started a six-roomed house on Twenty-first avenue, between Point Lobos [Geary] and Clement. This makes the third building erected on this block within a year, and indicates a more general building movement in outside properties just as soon as decent car facilities are furnished to those districts.” 

Mr. Patten was Theophilus Paton, a former molder at the Risdon Iron Works, who moved from the Western Addition to the wild, sandy “Outside Lands.” Along with his six-roomed house, he started a dairy on the corner of Clement and 21st Avenue in the Richmond District:

For my money, this has always been one of the best historic photos of the Richmond District. The two residences I put a red box around are still standing today.

Despite the optimism from the Bulletin about the 21st Avenue building boom, 20 years after the third house was built on the block there were a grand total of four. And streetcar service was no boon to Paton’s cows:

“Monday of last week [August 1906] F. Paton of 1620 Clement street lost two valuable cows. There were twenty-five cows crossing the street to the barn, when an approaching Sutro car was warned to stop but the motor man seemed to have lost control of the brake and could not stop the car. One of the finest cows was struck and thrown in the air about fifteen feet and then run over as it reached the ground. The other cow was badly injured and had to be killed.”

Paton’s dairy was on the southwest corner of 21st and Clement, but by 1906 the dairyman lived a couple of blocks away from the cows (and likely their smells). One can barely see his set-backed house with steep roof on the corner of 17th Avenue and Clement in this detail from a 1913 SFMTA photo:

The 1906 earthquake and fire, after displacing more than 200,000 people downtown, the Mission, and North Beach, finally brought the people west. Between 1905 and 1913, the block of 21st Avenue between Clement and Geary went from having just four buildings to being a crowded avenue of 27.

Bye Bye Say Hey

Willie Mays was a story to me as a kid. He was off to the Mets by the time I was old enough to go to Giants games. 

But the story had details.

Whenever we’d catch a fly ball at our waist instead of the proper way over our heads, we’d yell we were just imitating Willie Mays, the amazing major leaguer we never saw do it.

We heard Willie gave kids rides in his Thunderbird. (And apparently did.)

We knew Willie Mays was the greatest player ever.

When I was a kid going to Candlestick Park, my Dad said Bobby Bonds (Barry’s dad) was the “next” Willie Mays. I paid attention and figured the elder Bonds’ combo of speed and power was an approximation of what I missed with Willie.

Hey, I was 7. Bobby Bonds was good, but no Willie Mays. And he soon was off to New York as well.

Over decades, I saw Willie Mays many times as a retired ballplayer. He was the old guy who made reading glasses on the forehead look cool. There wasn’t anyone on the planet important enough that Willie would need to take his cap off for.

24 (!) years ago, I wrote a short piece on the racism Mays experienced in trying to buy a house in San Francisco. When he passed away last week, a couple of reporters reached out wanting to talk to me about it.

It’s an important story, but I turned them down. For now, I’d like to imagine Willie as I never saw him: playing the game. His work-of-art swing, his 24 facing everyone else on the diamond while he sprints back to rob Vic Wertz one more time… pictures from a story that will be told forever.

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund

Thanks to Mike P. (F.O.W.), Christina V. (F.O.W.), and Leslie L. (F.O.W.) for their generous contributions to the Woody Beer and Coffee Fund. I might splurge today and buy someone a mocha! Is it your turn to encourage Extrovert Woody to get out and socialize? Is it your turn to have a drink with me? Let me know when you are free.

Sources

“Real Estate,” Daily Evening Bulletin, March 7, 1884, pg. 1.

Richmond Banner, August 24, 1906.