IGNATZ AND SIGMUND STEINHART
Sigmund Steinhart was born in Bavaria in 1833. Arriving in San Francisco as a teenager in 1850, he became a dry goods wholesaler and, later, a stockbroker. Never married, Sigmund lived with his banker brother Ignatz and his family, and both brothers donated large sums to charity. In his 1910 obituary, it was noted that Sigmund “was known for his magnificence to the poor.” One of his charities was the Pacific Hebrew Orphanage and Home Society, which later established the Homewood Orphanage on Ocean Avenue in the Ingleside neighborhood. Ignatz and his family also donated large sums to charity, including a gift of $250,000 to the California Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1916 to build the Steinhart Aquarium in Golden Gate Park, which offered free admission for decades.
ROSALIE MEYER STERN
In 1931, Rosalie Meyer Stern wished to create an appropriate memorial for her late husband, Sigmund, who happened to be a nephew of clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss. Based on a recommendation from park superintendent John McLaren, she was shown a eucalyptus grove located in a natural amphitheater near 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard. Paying $50,000 to the owner for some thirty-three acres, Mrs. Stern then donated the land to San Francisco to be used “solely and exclusively for recreational purposes.” Free summer concerts, established in 1938 and funded by her family’s descendants, continue to draw up to twenty thousand attendees on Sunday afternoons.
ADOLPH SUTRO
Born in Germany in 1830, Sutro came to San Francisco as a young man and soon became a successful silver miner. He encouraged public recreation by opening the grounds of his home to visitors and later constructing the nearby Sutro Baths and rebuilding the Cliff House. Sutro kept the admission price low and even subsidized a new transit system, the Ferries and Cliff House Railroad, to bring tens of thousands of visitors to the Lands End area each week from downtown. Sutro’s nearby home was donated to the city upon his death but was torn down in 1939, though the grounds remain a public park. His vast library collection, which survived the 1906 fire because of his mansion’s remote location, now forms the Sutro Library, which is housed on the fifth floor of the SFSU library, having been located in a stand-alone building near Stonestown and a ground-floor location at the USF library for many decades prior. A home built by his grandson on property near Mount Davidson marked the first permanent home of broadcast television in San Francisco, and it was demolished for construction of a regional transmission facility, Sutro Tower, which was completed in 1972.
BEN SWIG
Born in Massachusetts in 1893, Swig and his family settled in San Francisco after World War II, and he expanded his real estate operations to include the Fairmont Hotel, the Mills building and other San Francisco commercial properties. Before his death in 1980, he donated much of his wealth to various Jewish, Catholic and secular colleges and universities—Swig Residence Hall at Santa Clara University is named for him—as well as funding many Girls’ and Boys’ Club operations.
ZELLERBACH FAMILY
From a small family charity founded by matriarch Jennie Zellerbach in 1956, the fund has grown from sound investments and a further contribution from Mrs. Zellerbach’s trust following her death in 1965. In addition to a $1 million gift to the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s (for which Zellerbach Hall is named), the foundation has distributed over $70 million in charitable support to many local nonprofits.
Those who have benefited from recent wealth seem to be following in the steps of their predecessors in helping the local community. Bill and Melinda Gates of Microsoft fame have established a foundation with an asset endowment of more than $40 billion to provide worldwide support organizations that work to improve the health and education of children, with much of the funding going to UC Medical Center on Parnassus Avenue. Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com, and his wife, Lynne, made two separate $100 million donations in 2014 to support childhood healthcare at UC-Med—the largest of the hospital’s donations to date.
Finally, among the youngest of the recent crop of techies are Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who have pledged $1.1 billion to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation over the next five years. The recent announcement included the stipulation that the first $5 million will go directly to financially needy school districts in San Francisco and East Palo Alto—all of this over and above a 2015 donation of $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital.
Of course, philanthropy isn’t always easy. The long-widowed Mrs. Spreckels and the daughters of Michael H. de Young traveled in the same social circles but were not known to be particularly friendly toward each other. When questioned about this, one of the de Young daughters stated politely that things had never been cordial between them “ever since her husband shot my Daddy.” Indeed, history records the fact that Adolph Spreckels fired a nonfatal gunshot at Michael de Young in 1884 because of an unflattering newspaper article about Spreckels’s business dealings that was published in the de Young–owned San Francisco Chronicle. The fact that the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor Museum merged many years ago into a single entity—now known as the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco—is yet another small irony in the long history of our unique hometown.
Then and now, it is good to see that many people have the right idea about appropriate uses of immense wealth. In the words of an ancient Chinese proverb:
The family that perseveres in good works will surely have an abundance of blessings.
8
FUN AND GAMES
Prior to the electronics age—say, the era before transistor radios—young and old alike had dozens of activities to occupy their leisure hours. It was a time of simple pleasures, and in the immortal words spoken by the mother of some of my cousins, “If you can swim, sing, dance and play cards, you’ll always have fun.” Here are just a few of the frequent activities enjoyed by many of us in the past:
BACKYARD ADVENTURES. Most San Francisco homes used to have at least a small patch of lush, green outdoor space. In the past, it was always a place for kids to explore, grown-ups to putter or relax and a safe haven for the family pet. Sadly, too many of these spots have long since been cemented over and are about as hospitable as the average prison cell.
BASEBALL. Once the San Francisco Giants made Candlestick Park their home in 1960, local kids knew the routes and schedules of MUNI’s “Ballpark Express” buses. A crosstown adventure with a friend was a bargain outing on a Saturday, and most parents had no concerns—“just be home before the streetlights come on.”
BOARD GAMES. Every family had a well-worn Monopoly game (the author’s version is now fifty-seven years old). Some also had Scrabble, Bingo or one of the newer 1960s boxed games: Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders, Mouse Trap, LIFE, Lie Detector and many others. In a well-stocked neighborhood, rainy days were never a problem for kids of any age.
Excitement hit a peak in 1962 when the San Francisco Giants went to the World Series for the first time. Author’s collection.
BOWLING. San Francisco once had a bowling alley in virtually every neighborhood, but this activity has declined to just a handful of spots in recent times.
CARDS. Whether it was solitaire or Go Fish as youngsters, Hearts as teens, a men’s poker or pinochle group, a ladies’ bridge party, Grandma’s canasta club or marathon gin rummy games, we were much more of a card-playing society in the past.
COLLEGE SPORTS. City College, San Francisco State and USF all had loyal followers attending their games. News accounts confirm that the public’s exuberance for the victorious 1949–50 USF basketball team rivaled today’s enthusiasm for a World Series or a Super Bowl championship.
Rene Herrerias, right, from 18th Avenue in the Parkside District, was a member of the USF Championship basketball team in 1949–50. Author’s collection.
CRAFT PROJECTS. Construction paper, blunt-end scissors, cellophane tape, Elmer’s glue, a hole punch, pinking shears, glitter and sequins were generally kept in an old shoebox in the linen closet as every family’s kit
for “rainy day projects.” It is a rare child who did not make paper daisy chains from old gum wrappers, decorate pinecones that had been picked up in Golden Gate Park or cut up old Christmas cards to make new gift tags.
DOWNTOWN SHOPPING. It was a real rite of passage when parents would allow a youngster to ride public transit all the way downtown alone—usually by age eleven or twelve—though any parent permitting such a thing today would likely be answering to Child Protective Services. The standard destinations were usually the Emporium, with its vast toy department at the back of the fourth floor, or Woolworth’s just across the street. Armed with a MUNI “car ticket” and a spare quarter for a slice of Woolworth pizza and a Coke, this was often a full Saturday adventure.
EATING OUT. Dining out is one activity from the past that remains popular among San Franciscans today. As the retiree community grows ever larger with an influx of baby boomers, many local restaurants find themselves crowded even at lunchtime.
HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS. Whether as participants or spectators, high school sports teams used to be a much bigger draw when the city had a larger school-age population. It was a rare Thanksgiving Day that did not see Kezar Stadium filled to capacity by young and old alike for the city’s high school football championship game—frequently pitting Lowell and Polytechnic against one another.
Market Street presented a blaze of lights from theatres, stores and restaurants for decades until various ordinances began to restrict commercial neon signage and theatres began to experience a decline in patrons. Jack Tillmany Collection.
Retirees have long gathered for lunch on a regular basis, such as this trio of baby boomer historians in 2011. Their restaurant of choice opened when all three were mere lads. Photograph by John Byrne.
Polytechnic High School was a presence on Frederick Street as well as on the football field in nearby Kezar Stadium for decades prior to its closure in 1972. Courtesy of Bob and Carolyn Ross.
ICE FOLLIES. The Shipstad and Johnson’s show booked a summer-long engagement at Winterland each year from the 1930s through the late 1960s. This was an activity favored by moms, grandmas and maiden aunts, while many dads took a different approach: “Why don’t I just drop all of you off in front of Winterland and then just pick you up in a couple of hours when it’s over?”
LIBRARIES. Not just places for homework research, neighborhood libraries were also meeting sites for the entire neighborhood. Checking out books, sitting in the large reading rooms (some, like the Parkside Branch, with a large operating fireplace to ward off the chill on foggy summer days) or bumping into friends were all regular activities in San Francisco. With more people in the workforce for much of the day, plus restricted hours (most San Francisco branch libraries used to be open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.), this is a forgotten activity for many people today.
Until the late 1960s, Shipstad and Johnson’s Ice Follies was booked for an annual summer-long engagement at Winterland Auditorium. Courtesy of a private collector.
MARIN TOWN & COUNTRY CLUB. Warm weather and recreational pursuits of all kinds lay just thirty minutes north of foggy San Francisco in the Marin County town of Fairfax. Day-rate admission was fifty cents for years, and even carless city kids could hop on a Greyhound bus at 7th and Market Streets (less than one dollar for a round-trip ticket) and be dropped off a block or so from the entrance. Sadly, the resort closed after the 1972 season, and the future of the parcel, nearly a half century later, remains the subject of contentious local debate.
MOVIE THEATRES. When San Francisco had a movie theatre in virtually every single neighborhood—plus a huge cluster of them on both Market and Mission Streets—spending a weekend or summer afternoon “at the show” was a standard feature when growing up. Bargain matinee tickets could often be purchased in advance for fifteen cents, and with an extra quarter for snacks, most kids were happily out of their mothers’ hair for several hours.
The Richmond Branch library on 9th Avenue near Clement Street is one of several branches now open seven days a week. Photograph by Alvis Hendley.
A series of colorful billboards once graced the San Francisco landscape, reminding residents that during the foggy summer months of summer, sun and fun were just thirty minutes north in the town of Fairfax. Photograph by John A. Martini.
The marquee of one of San Francisco’s largest movie palaces, Mission Street’s El Capitan, went dark for the last time in 1957. Jack Tillmany Collection.
The interior of a classic MUNI streetcar with green-and-cream exterior. The image of the dark green leather seats with metal backs is a memorable sight to thousands of former passengers. Author’s collection.
MUNI. Riding MUNI just for recreation was a great activity at a time when a fifty-cent “car ticket” entitled the bearer to ten rides. As early as 1962, when a friend of mine was taking Bar Mitzvah lessons after school at Temple Sherith Israel at California and Webster, he and I could get to his appointment, riding all over town for a single punch, while taking in the sights and sounds of San Francisco along the way.
MUSEUMS. In an era when admittance was free, places like the Steinhart Aquarium, the Morrison Planetarium, the de Young Museum and the Palace of the Legion of Honor were all great places to spend time and learn some new things.
OUTDOOR PLAY. Everyone knew that playing on the sidewalk or the asphalt on your own street was the best form of instantly available fun. Growing up on 18th Avenue near Vicente in the 1950s, there were nearly forty kids on that one block (including a few slightly older siblings) who were on the lookout every day for the first one of us to wander out of the house, thus getting some sort of playtime activity underway.
PLAYLAND-AT-THE-BEACH. Until its demise in 1972, Playland was a great place for all. Strangely, photographs from earlier times show mostly an adult crowd, with the women in dresses, men in suits and everyone wearing hats. By the 1960s, though, kids were there in droves on weekends and during school breaks. Getting there was easy, with several MUNI lines terminating nearby, including the ever-popular “5-McAllister—Playland.” A handful of dimes and a group of friends—each one with a block of pink popcorn and a paper tube of cotton candy—formed lasting memories for thousands of us for decades.
The last nighttime run of the B-Geary streetcar line at Playland, December 1956. Motor coaches were about to replace the rails in order to provide better service. Today, urban planners are once again trying to improve transit service along Geary by…bringing back the streetcars. Jack Tillmany Collection.
Scouting was once a popular activity for young people, such as this group marching along Clement Street near 9th Avenue in the 1950s. Courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
SCOUTING. Whether Cub Scouts, Brownies, Camp Fire Girls, Girl or Boy Scouts, young people had plenty of opportunities for organized afterschool activities. These programs also promoted good citizenship and were well attended for decades. Other than at a Girl Scout cookie sales event, when was the last time you saw a girl in the traditional green uniform—or a Boy Scout in the traditional navy blue uniform with yellow trim?
SWIMMING. The granddaddy of them all was Fleishhacker Pool on Sloat Boulevard, where one thin dime would purchase access to dressing rooms, a fresh towel and an afternoon of fun and frolic in six million gallons of somewhat heated seawater. After years of underfunding and deferred maintenance, the pool was showing deterioration when a storm damaged the piping system in January 1971. With prohibitive repair costs, the city converted it to fresh water, but there were serious problems and the pool was closed by the end of that year. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the City and County of San Francisco was also building many neighborhood pools throughout the community.
Mother and son visiting the WPA-built Pachyderm House at the Zoo, circa 1960. Richard Lim photo.
ZOO. Until 1970, the zoo was a completely free public amenity, thanks to the generosity of the Fleishhacker family. That year, a modest admission charge was instituted—now a ni
neteen-dollar adult admission price with a three-dollar discount with proof of current San Francisco residency—for a form of recreation that had been free for generations.
9
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
The summer of 2011 marked the fiftieth anniversary of our family’s one (and only) lengthy car trip—to Disneyland, where else? So in honor of that momentous occasion, which was replicated by every one of our San Francisco neighbors at one time or another, let’s take a look back at just what it was like.
For most 1960s families with kids, there was never a question of if we were going to go south to visit Disneyland, but just a question of when. I probably began lobbying my parents in earnest in late 1959 when I was in the second grade, and those efforts finally paid off eighteen months later, in July 1961. This was the first of only two times throughout the 1950s and 1960s that Mom and Dad decided to alter our usual summer vacation and go somewhere other than Marin Town & Country Club.
For that first trip, Dad decided to drive, taking our family’s new Dodge Dart down Highway 101. Armed with AAA maps that the auto club highlighted with a yellow marker (the folks at AAA then bound the narrow pages into a spiral booklet about four inches wide by eleven inches long), it was easy to follow directions. Along with thousands of other families, these low-tech navigational aids assisted the driver (generally a dad), the navigator (generally a mom) and the bunch of restless kids in the backseats of all those cars to understand just where they were and how far there was to go.
Growing Up in San Francisco Page 6