Part 3

Survivals of the Past

Stand at the Ferry Building, looking up Market street, and imagine the beginning of the city that spreads before you. First of all you must realize that this point of observation would, in those days, have been offshore, on the shallow water of Yerba Buena Cove. To the right is the scarp of Telegraph Hill, from which ships coming through the Golden Gate were sighted, and to the left is the lesser Rincon Hill, which is being cut away to provide a light manufacturing district. These marked the headlands of the cove, and the waterfront curved inland as far as what is now the site of the Donahue monument to mechanics at Market and Battery streets.

Seeking survivals of the past, you must realize that San Francisco is one of the most modern of the comparatively old American cities. Most of the area that saw its beginning and early history has been wiped clean by fire. The San Francisco of today may be said to date from its rebuilding following 1906, since which time something like a half billion dollars' worth of new construction has been done. Yet something of early San Francisco remains, either beyond the reach of the devastation of eighteen years ago or in miraculous islands of safety in that sea of fire.

The Presidio, beside the Golden Gate, is several miles from the area that burned. It is one of the largest military posts in the United States, 1,500 acres of forested hills between the inner and the outer harbor. The adobe building in which Rezanov, envoy of the Czar, wooed Senorita Arguello, daughter of the commandante of the Presidio, is preserved in the center of the reservation. You can read about this sad romance in Bret Harte or in Gertrude Atherton.

Over the hills southward from the Presidio, in a sheltered valley, where it was spared from the fire, stands Mission Dolores, with its ancient churchyard and headstones. The old mission, whose adobe walls are four feet thick, stands beside a new church of Spanish architecture. Near the entrance to Mission Dolores, set in red tiles on the floor, is a marble slab marking the tomb of the Noe family, Spanish grandees. Interesting relics are in evidence. Early mission bells hang in the facade of the old building. The tomb of Don Luis Arguello, first governor of California under the Mexican regime, is in the churchyard. Inscriptions on many of the stones in this burial place are footnotes to San Francisco's early history.

Within the burned area of 1906, above the original waterfront of the days when the water came up to Montgomery street, there are several blocks of buildings which were spared by freaks of fate. These buildings stand near the original Plaza now called Portsmouth Square. It was here Commodore John Montgomery landed from the "Portsmouth" and raised the Stars and Stripes on July 4, 1846, almost the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the Spanish Presidio. The site of his landing, at what is now Clay and Montgomery streets, has been marked by one of the bronze tablets on which the order of the Native Sons of the Golden West has graven many of the historic episodes of California. Not far away, on the south side of Sacramento street, between Davis and Front, there is a brick building marked by a tablet as the site of Fort Gunnybags, headquarters of the Vigilance Committee, which in 1856 hanged Casey and Cora, two enemies of law and order, from its windows. In Portsmouth Square itself, token of a gentler spirit, there stands a drinking fountain in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. That prince of idlers and of prose spent many an hour on the sunny benches of this square. The streets nearby, where stand the few buildings that escaped the fire, echo the footsteps of Stevenson, of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. The Hall of justice faces the square.

The Parrott building, erected in 1853 by Chinese labor with stone brought from China, remains standing at California and Montgomery streets.

Around the Plaza centered the life of the pueblo and of the early city of San Francisco, but now on three sides of it is Chinatown, the fashionable homes having long been gone from this section.

In Golden Gate Park, beside a lake reflecting their outline, stand marble columns that once flanked a doorway on Nob Hill, which rises above the Oriental quarter. This relic has been named "Portal of the Past." It symbolizes the old San Francisco that is gone save for a few traces, for this is, after all, a new city.

It is in the San Francisco of today, with a historic background that survives in spirit instead of in material reminders, that interest is dominant.

Cafes and Bright Lights

"There's a diabolical mystery to your San Francisco!" Enrico Caruso once exclaimed. "Why isn't everyone fat in this city of such excellent cafes?"

The Argonauts who came to California in quest of the Golden Fleece were hearty, eaters, and they laid the foundation for a tradition of abundant table fare that has been handed down since the days of the bonanza kings.

Good things to eat have been provided by successive generations of chefs who have achieved virtuosity. By and large, the moderation of prices has been a matter of bewilderment to visitors. The cheapness of savory food was one of the outstanding traits of San Francisco, in the opinion of the army of newspaper correspondents attracted to the Democratic national convention in 1920. Maurice Baring, the British author and globetrotter, goes into raptures over the cooking he discovered in a Pine street restaurant. Read his Round the World in Any Number of Days and satisfy yourself that a sophisticated observer from London town can become as ecstatic as a Gaul in the presence of soup a l'oignon. There's a diversity to the restaurants of San Francisco that makes it difficult to single out any one type. French and Italian restaurants appear to predominate, but the number of other places, including Spanish, Greek, Mexican, Hungarian and Slavonic--not to mention Chinese--makes the array a long and polyglot one. In the vicinity of Broadway, Kearny and Columbus avenue, streets that penetrate the heart of the Latin Quarter, and along upper Montgomery street, there are sufficient individual cafes to keep any explorer after atmospheric epicurism busy for many days. Neither Soho nor Montmartre is plagiarized in these places. They are foreign in tone, but they belong very much to San Francisco. What affectation and posturing there may be in Greenwich Village are not in evidence here. Joy was at times given boisterous expression in the days before the great drought came upon the land. But the eighteenth amendment and its restrictions have not deprived any of these places of their inherent buoyancy, even though they may not be as noisy as Coffee Dan's.

Table d'hote courses are customary not only in the French restaurants but in most of the Italian as well. Some of these places combine or interchange the menus of French, Italian and Swiss chefs, a piquant entree, or shellfish served bordelaise, being followed by a paste like lasagne, spaghetti or tagliarini, or by those geometric ravioli whose delights are in inverse ratio to their square. If you want fare of the realm the dining rooms and grills of the hotels are at your service, as are the restaurants along Market, Powell and other streets. The cafeteria has come northward and the tea-room and the Southern inn westward by way of New York. The typical San Francisco restaurant, however, is an institution as firmly imbedded in the life of the people as is Mile Rock in the current of the Golden Gate.

The sea glamour is upon the dining places of San Francisco. Any impression of them would be lacking without some reference to sea food. Every variety of fish is sold fresh in the markets daily. A number of so-called fish grottos specialize in fish caught the same morning, keeping them swimming in illuminated window-tanks. Crabs, shrimps, oysters, clams and other varieties of shell fish, including the abalone with its rainbow-tinted shell, together with sanddabs, pompano and rex sole, serve to remind one that San Francisco is washed on three sides by tides of the Pacific.

Perhaps when Bret Harte referred to San Francisco as "serene, indifferent of Fate," he was thinking of Sidney Smith's declaration:

"Fate cannot harm me--I have dined today!"

When you think of eating in San Francisco you think of bright lights and dancing. In addition to the hotels, you may dance at innumerable cafes. Influences of Old Spain dowered San Francisco with an infatuation for the fiesta. The city has always been dance-minded. Art Hickman, virtuoso of jazz orchestration, was called to New York to have the Follies on The Roof dance to the exuberant strains he had evolved in San Francisco. Patterns of new dance forms were derived by Pavlowa from the wild rhythms she found on the old Barbary Coast.

The Palais Royal, Marquard's, Tait's-at-the-Beach, the Cliff House--but where is one to stop when he starts to name the San Francisco cafes that attract dance crowds? Let's leave it to the classified lists in the telephone directories.

Hotels

Wives and daughters of the men who awoke to find themselves millionaires in the days of the Argonauts came to San Francisco to explore the social thrills of the newly rich. It is easy to understand why the hotels became the scenes of elaborate gaiety unmatched even in New York, Boston or the older communities. Haunts of the battling giants of the Comstock mines and the railroad magnates, the old Palace, Occidental, Lick and Baldwin hotels reflected their effulgent period.

The Palace, built by William C. Ralston, has survived as a landmark of San Francisco. Like Shepheard's in Cairo, the Palace is one of the gathering places of the traveling world. The present hotel, at Market and New Montgomery streets, occupies the site of the old Palace, whose outer walls remained standing after the fire of 1906 and had to be blasted with dynamite to make room for the new structure--a tribute to the original builders. The Palace retains the outstanding aspects of the old hotel, with added modern appointments. The Palm Court, which has decorative columns and a glass-domed roof, is the social center of the hotel. It is also the rendezvous of the political and business stalwarts of the city, the Palace being a clearing-house for diversified activities. The Rose Bowl, which has Maxfield Parrish's Pied Piper of Hamelin, attracts the set that dances when it dines.

Perched like a Parthenon on Nob Hill, the acropolis of San Francisco, is the Fairmont Hotel commanding a view of the Bay and the Contra Costa hills. Its Venetian Room, its Terrace and its Ball Room are among the features of the Fairmont in keeping with its individual environment. Expansive lawns frame the Renaissance architecture of the building, which seen from the Bay looks like a citadel inside the Golden Gate.

The Hotel St. Francis, fronting Union Square on Powell street, has a thousand rooms and is one of the distinctive institutions of San Francisco. The fire of 1906 damaged the building but left its steel frame and granite sheath intact, and a banquet of business men was held there to celebrate the beginning of reconstruction. When you think of the St. Francis you think of beautiful wall arrangements. Its Garden Court and Fable Room, where La Fontaine's diverting inventions serve as the motifs for murals, attract the younger set for dancing and tea. The Tapestry Room is a distinguished example of decorative treatment.

San Francisco is the greatest hotel city in the world in proportion to population. These pages necessarily skim only the surface of this aspect of the city's life. There are some 2,000 hotels, records of the Hospitality Bureau of the Chamber of Commerce show, each having rates scaled to meet the guests to whom it caters. Representatives of the Hospitality Bureau copy the names of arrivals at the hotels from the registers. These names are classified according to interests and given to a Hospitality Committee made up of business men who personally greet arrivals, bring them to the clubs, and dispense other courtesies.

Shops

It was O. Henry, caliph of phrases, who called San Francisco the Bagdad of the West. In doing so he must have had in mind its profusion of shops which stretch through the city like an endless bazaar.