Woody Grab Bag #003

One hundred and seven years ago this month, San Francisco mayor James Rolph gave some remarks at the dedication of the city’s newest fire station at Commercial and Drumm Streets. The city photographer memorialized the fairly mundane event with a strange composition.

The mayor is standing on a chair, his feet inside a wadded-up rug to protect the seat or perhaps provide some traction for the mayor’s balance. The group of dignitaries close to the dais look uncomfortable, even a little fearful to me, as if they had all gathered as part of a plot from which they weren’t sure they’d escape with their necks. Perhaps I get that sense less from their expressions than from the swastika flower arrangement propped on top of the desk to the left.

In 2020, US Senator Dianne Feinstein almost had her name removed from a public school in San Francisco's Parkside District when a committee assigned by the school board dinged her for flying a Confederate flag in Civic Center while mayor in the 1980s. A swastika prominently displayed in a city building seems far worse.

But this fire station dedication was almost two decades before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazi appropriation of an ancient symbol. The “broken cross” swastika appeared in cultures from India to the Americas for thousands of years before the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Late 19th century archaeological digs helped make ancient symbology fashionable and by the early 1900s the swastika had become a design element widely interpreted as conveying good luck.

The San Francisco Chronicle noted its popularity in 1907: “The mystical ‘Swastika’ design of four points—about which every one is talking in the East—has now reached the craze point in this city. […T]his curious sign has been worked out in the form of brooches, watch fobs, match boxes, cuff buttons, pins, bracelets and belt buckles…”

Here are a couple of swastikas in 1917 on the outside of the Parkside school, which decades later, with a new building, was renamed for Senator Feinstein:

Swastikas still appear today on the bases of light standards at the Old US Mint on 5th Street:

There have been attempts to reclaim the swastika image from the Nazis. But extremist groups continue to use it. And the swastika will always be connected to the atrocities of the never-to-be-forgotten Holocaust. So pretty much, no, the swastika isn’t going to go back to being a sign of good luck, at least not in my lifetime. A couple of pre-Nazi swastikas decorating tiles at a Los Altos Hills farm building caused a controversy this summer and contributed to the cancellation of a popular summer camp.

My own involuntary cringe at seeing the swastika in old San Francisco photos brings to mind my cohort of boys at Star of the Sea elementary school in the early 1970s. World War II fascinated us. Mostly this came out of our love for reruns of “Hogan’s Heroes,” a sitcom set at Stalag 13 in Nazi Germany. Yes, young person, you read that right: a television comedy about a prisoner-of-war camp.

The fast-talking, sly Colonel Hogan always got the best of the cowardly, sycophantic Colonel Klink, who was perpetually frightened of reassignment to the Russian front. World War II seemed like a jolly lot of fun: secret compartments, tunnels, disguises, no girls, and a laugh track.

I wrote a Hogan’s Heroes fan letter to Channel 44, the local station that showed the syndicated reruns. I got a Bob Crane publicity photo back in the mail. Army surplus stores were still in business downtown on Mission Street and some of the boys (not me, although I was jealous) picked up machine-gun ammo boxes in which to keep their comic books. There was an antique store on California Street and 10th Avenue that displayed and sold Nazi memorabilia. We ogled at the helmets through the window on our lazy walks home from school.

Through popular culture, we Richmond District Catholic school kids inherited a mellowed pride around World War II way before being subjected to any history class. Without care, we drew swastikas on our Pee-Chee folders, usually decorating the side of a Luftwaffe Messerschmitt under fire from a P-40 Warhawk fighter (the kind with a “shark-mouth” paint job). The Vietnam War raged on. My uncle walked in protest marches on Geary Boulevard while my father bought me commemorative dog tags to support prisoners-of-war and those missing-in-action.

Nazis Protest S.F. “Insult”

From the San Francisco Examiner in 1937:

“BERLIN, May 26, 1937.—The entire German press demanded tonight that the United States Government take 'drastic action' against the persons who tore down a Nazi swastika flag in San Francisco. […] The incident, on the eve of San Francisco's jubilant fiesta marking the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, occurred Tuesday night in the heart of the downtown district, at Market street and Grant avenue. A band of unidentified men carrying long poles attempted to tear down a Swastika banner suspended among flags of other nations in the street decoration. They succeeded in ripping away a portion of the flag before police frightened them away.

“Meanwhile, a group of anti-Nazi leaders, including a member of the International Longshoremen’s Association; a representative of the League Against War and Fascism; the State chairman of the Communist party and various others had called on Mayor Rossi demanding removal of the Swastika banners.

“The protests were accompanied by threats that waterfront unions might refuse to march in the Fiesta parades on streets where the Nazi symbol was flown. Rossi refused to remove the flags, insisting the bridge fiesta was open to all nations and that street decorations would continue to reflect that policy.”

Here's some more flag-ripping action remembered by the San Francisco Chronicle:

When Navy sailors in SF ripped a Nazi flag off the German consulate

Months before Pearl Harbor, two US sailors tore down a Nazi flag flying outside the...

San Francisco ChronicleBill Van Niekerken

American Nazis in San Francisco

If the Nazi memorabilia for sale at the antiques shop on California Street was bad, the Rudolf Hess bookstore which opened in 1977 at 3608 Taraval Street in the Sunset District—basically across the street from a Jewish congregation—was far worse.

In clips from a 1977 news story (I think labeled mistakenly as 1978) archived at the Bay Area Television Archive, you can see some shots of the short-lived bookstore (now the hip White Cap cocktail bar), plus a Nazi march on Market Street and in North Beach, and a repulsive American Nazis meeting at the Wawona clubhouse in the Parkside District. (Scroll down on the linked page and you can watch all the segments.) The Wawona clubhouse is coincidentally a few blocks from where the Parkside school had innocently sported swastikas in the 1910s.

I had a great time returning to the Outside Lands San Francisco podcast last week, chatting with Executive Director Nicole Meldahl. You may not be up for an hour of me talking about local history, land use politics, and city landmark designations, but about the 37-minute mark I give a very salient three-minute discourse on what makes for a good San Francisco burrito. Listen at outsidelands.org

Back to Engine 12...

The station that Mayor Rolph dedicated in 1915 was trumpeted as the “Best Firehouse in the World”—an important distinction in a city that had basically burned down nine years earlier. All the apparatus was motor-driven (no horses) and state-of-the-art. The fire fighters housed at the station enjoyed the use of a reading-room, library, and “one of the most complete tile and marble bathrooms to be found in the city.” At the dedication, to illustrate the great progress in fire-fighting, a hand-pumped engine of early days was carted out alongside the new trucks.

Forty years later, one of those state-of-the-art vehicles housed at Engine Company 12, a 1916 motorized fuel rig, was the oldest in service and ready for sale to the public as “practically a collector’s item.” Fire Chief William Murray called the old Kissel “a menace to navigation.”

By the 1950s, the modern station of 1915 was no longer modern. With support from a bond measure, it was replace by a new building which opened on February 22, 1957. The new, new station didn’t even survive twenty years before being torn down for the Embarcadero Center in the 1970s. Engine Company 12 was reassigned to 1175 Stanyan Street in Cole Valley.

More Christmas in July

From 1948 to 1950, the city's fire stations held a Christmas-season decorating contest. As you can see above, Engine Company 12 made a good effort, but I'll save the best of the best for a San Francisco Story in December. Stay tuned.

Sources

“Best Firehouse in World Here,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 29, 1915, pg. 8.

William Shirer, “Nazis Protest S. F. ‘Insult,’” San Francisco Examiner, May 27, 1937, pg. 1; “Reich Consul Satisfied by Rossi’s Stand,” San Francisco Examiner, May 27, 1937, pg. 3.

“Fire Chief Seeking Buyer for 1916 Truck,” San Francisco Examiner, October 18, 1957, pg. 24.