Grab Bag #45
Super-sized San Francisco history hash of huckster cowboys, old cars, old bars, ruined mansions, hitching posts, and Lotta's fountain.
The first Grab Bag of 2025 is more of a history hash. Lots of odds and ends that have been bopping around in my head, so stream-of-consciousness here we come.
Warning: there may not be any actual historical facts shared this week. Let’s find out…
Plumber Art
We’ll get to the history stuff in a sec, but here’s a quick report on our times for posterity: to compete as a San Francisco plumber in the 21st Century you need to be cartoon-ified.
No other field has more fully embraced art-wraps on panel trucks. Why don’t gardeners put googly-eyed cartoons on the side of their trucks? Is it something to do with making sewage fun?
Not that I’m against it. I always enjoy spotting the top-hatted man with his hidden hammer on the back of the Western Exterminator pest-control trucks.
More cartoons are fine with me. Let’s give the artists and vehicle-wrap folks some work. It is just strange that being a plumber requires a whole mood board now.
Dead Shot and his One Shot
Speaking of art on the sides of motorized vehicles…
Automobile companies used to be pretty hokey with their ad campaigns. The above photo was taken just over 100 years ago and shows 71-year-old Colonel King Stanley in front of his old Cleveland Six on Van Ness Avenue and Clay Street.
Stanley and his wife drove around the country in a scavenger-hunt promotion for the Chandler-Cleveland company. He told rip-roaring tales of the Old West (Indian-fighting stuff that wouldn’t and shouldn’t fly nowadays—I will spare you) and praised the new Cleveland autos like a good company flack.
I wrote something about “Dead Shot Stanley” a few years ago, but you might just skip it and stay with me as I ruminate on the building behind the colonel...
Mansion to Apartments
That handsome residence was once the home of Claus Spreckels… We talked about Spreckelseses (Spreckeli?) back in Grab Bag #19 and how evidence of their work and beneficence litter the city in monuments big and small.
Claus built his house when Van Ness Avenue was the boulevard of the rich and ostentatious. Here are his neighbors along the west side of the street:
James B. Stetson lived across the street during the April 18, 1906 earthquake:
“As soon as it was over, I got up and went to the window, and saw the air in the street filled with a white dust, which was caused by the falling of masonry from St. Luke’s Church on the diagonal corner from my room. I waited for the dust to settle, and I then saw the damage which had been done to Claus Spreckels’s house and the church. The chimneys of the Spreckels mansion were gone, the stone balustrade and carved work wrecked. The roof and the points of the gables and ornamental stonework of the church had fallen, covering the sidewalk and lying piled up against the sides of the building to the depth of eight or ten feet.”
Some of the big houses were dynamited to help create a fire break after the earthquake. Claus’s house was not blown up, but it was gutted by fire after it seemed the main maelstrom had been stopped.
Stories have been passed down that vindictive city boss Abe Ruef (not happy about Claus’s son bank-rolling anti-corruption campaigns) was Johnny-on-the-spot and had it purposely set ablaze.
Seems unlikely.
Despite the gut job, the house was restored and looked in pretty good shape in the 1924 Dead-Shot photo. It was Progress, not disaster that eventually did the manse in once auto dealerships began moving in as neighbors.
Large apartment buildings were erected on the site after the mansion demolition in 1927.
This is not the worst outcome: a lot of relatively affordable housing that I’d say is a credit to the street-scape. (You all know my fondness for 1920s-1930s apartment buildings from past Grab Bags.)
My friend Gary G. has lived in one of the Spreckels units (rent-controlled) for decades. The Spreckelian legacy is represented on a plaque:
Excelsior Saloon
What else is Woody fond of? That’s right, old bars. Here’s a great shot of one on Outer Mission Street.
Beverly Hammond’s ancestor Charlie Luttinger ran the Excelsior on the southwest corner of Mission and Harrington Street. Old-timers might remember it as the later location of the second largest Woolworth’s store in the city. (A “dollar store” operates out of that building now.)
Beverly sent this photo around to the local history-folk community a couple of years ago looking for any more information on the bar.
It is a small world.
Mr. Luttinger was a member in good standing of the “Society of Old Friends,” which my great-great-grandfather, J. E. Slinkey, ran as secretary for decades.
The society’s “bull’s head breakfasts” (exactly what they sounds like, ick) were held both at the Excelsior and my ancestor’s El Monte Hotel in Sausalito.
Here’s the whole gang at the hotel in 1889. Slinkey is the one doffing his hat behind the dog in front.
I love that watering trough for horses in front of the Excelsior, and speaking of horses…
Hitching Post Found
Back in April 2023, my search for cast-iron Atlas figures that once ornamented the entryway of a bank at California and Leidesdorff Streets led me to trying to figure out what happened to the old hitching post in front.
The Atlas twins were removed decades ago, but the handsome hitching post made by the same foundry disappeared only in the last four years.
When I had reporter Aldo Toledo on the phone about another matter (how the Samuels’ Clock on Market Street needed some love), I tempted him to investigate if the Wells Fargo folks still had the big cylinder.
Turns out they did!
If you can’t access Aldo’s article because of paywall issues, the short story is some random person pushed the thing over during the total-zombie-apocalypse-days of downtown during the pandemic.
Heroic maintenance folks dragged it into the building loading dock, and the company says it will put it out front once more as part of a streetscape improvement plan.
As Wells Fargo is trying to sell its 12-story building on California Street, the future of the hitching post still feels uncertain. Our job is not done yet. Nudging and encouragement and nagging will continue...
What’s a Thomasson?
Greg Quist, President of the San Francisco Tour Guide Guild (SFTGG), points out that the old hitching post could possibly be categorized as a “Thomasson.”
Never heard of such a thing? I hadn’t before either. Here’s the scoop.
Thomassons are public artifacts or elements—usually infrastructural—whose original purposes are now obsolete, blocked, or disconnected, but they continue to be maintained, tolerated, even celebrated.
Think of random urban oddities like balconies whose doors have been sealed and stuccoed over, old railroad tracks that now run into brick walls, orphaned neon signs… Maybe Doggie Diner heads in a world without Doggie Diners count? Thomassons are a type of public art originally created without artistic intent.
An easy example in San Francisco: this handsome brick staircase in Presidio Terrace that used to lead to the Presidio golf club building, but now runs up to…a hedge?
Finding and sharing Thomassons—hailed as a form of “hyperart”—became a fad in Japan.
But here’s the cool and bizarre San Francisco connection with Thomassons: the name, which originated in Japan, honors a former San Francisco Giant.
Gary Thomasson signed a record contract to play for Japan’s Yomiuri Giants in 1981–1982. He played absolutely terrible in his second year and was relegated to the bench despite still drawing his big salary.
On the team because of his contract, but basically ornamental and useless, he inspired a group of art students looking to name urban objects possessing the same qualities. We keep Thomassons around even though they don’t do what they used to do.
I hope Gary has a sense of humor about this...
You can read more in this good post!
The Classic Turns 150 in September
When you talk about public monuments and art in San Francisco you have to start with Lotta’s Fountain at Kearny, Market, and Geary Streets. Given to the city by the actress Lotta Crabtree, it was formally dedicated on September 9, 1875.
It was 150 years ago this week that Lotta’s gift was announced. The San Francisco Chronicle printed plans, which were kind of close to what San Franciscans got in real life:
Lotta’s Fountain has hung in through 150 years of volatility and change at one of the city’s most active corners. It’s been added to, tinkered with, covered up, cordoned off, gussied up, climbed upon, leaned on, festooned, be-garlanded, forgotten, and revered.
Between the mighty traffic rivers of Market, Geary, and Kearny, the fountain has been the outdoor office for traffic cops, newspaper boys, and flower sellers and the centerpiece of remembrance for earthquake anniversaries.
We have to start planning the birthday party now. Someone tell the new mayor.
Me? OK, I’ll see what I can get started. Stay tuned.
Woody Coffee and... Coffee? Fund
The Surgeon General is saying alcohol is more-bad for you. And beer apparently has alcohol in it...??? Oh well, better double down on the coffee before new research kicks that off the list.
When are you free for any beverage? (I may still have a beer...)
Sources
“The Lotta Fountain,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 24, 1875, pg. 5.