The Face of San Francisco

By Harold Gilliam and Phil Palmer

This is a love poem in prose—a shining ode to the most beautiful, sophisticated, decadent, provincial, elusive, and utterly paradoxical city in America. It is also a romantic portrait—a masterwork that captures the incredible loveliness of the city’s face even as it reveals a dark secret or two of its inconstant heart.

This is THE FACE OF SAN FRANCISCO, from the Bay Bridge to the back alleys, from the dazzling mansions of Pacific Heights to the down-at-the-heels pads of North Beach—captured in words by the author of San Francisco Bay, and columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, Harold Gilliam, and caught in nearly 200 revealing faces by the camera of Phil Palmer (1911-1992).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789123098

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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE FACE OF SAN FRANCISCO

BY

HAROLD GILLIAM

Photographs by Phil Palmer

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

ILLUSTRATIONS 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9

CHAPTER I—City of Paradox 15

CHAPTER II—The Skyline 22

CHAPTER III—The Neighborhoods 54

CHAPTER IV—Some San Franciscans 88

CHAPTER V—Centers of Power 126

CHAPTER VI—Breathing Spaces 157

CHAPTER VII—The Arts 182

CHAPTER VIII—The City of the Future 206

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 231

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writer could not have produced his part of this book without the generous help and advice of experts in various fields—none of whom is to be held responsible for any of the writers statements of fact or opinion. Special thanks are due to James W. Keilty, senior city planner of the San Francisco Department of City Planning, whose intimate knowledge of contemporary San Francisco was of inestimable help in the preparation of several sections of the manuscript. Among others whose assistance was invaluable were William Wilson Wurster, dean of the College of Architecture at the University of California in Berkeley; Clifford E. Paine, builder of the Golden Gate Bridge; Edward Howden, chief of the California Fair Employment Practices Division; Earl Raab, associate director of the Jewish Community Relations Council; Rev. Hamilton Boswell, pastor of the Jones Methodist Church; Henry S. Tom, executive secretary of the Chinese Branch of the Y.M.C.A.; Rose Chew, staff consultant of the International Institute; H. K. Wong, publicity director of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce; Carmelo Zito, publisher of Il Corriere del Popolo; Masao W. Satow, national director of the Japanese American Citizens League; Alice Slater, director of the Information Bureau, and Roy L. Hudson, supervisor of maintenance, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department; David Nelson, assistant to the director, San Francisco Maritime Museum; Polly Mansfield, expert on present-day San Francisco; John Reber, pioneer in regional planning for the Bay Area; Alfred Frankenstein, music and art critic, Stanleigh Arnold, Sunday editor, and Thelma Weber, librarian—all of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Above all, the writer is indebted beyond measure for the continuous assistance and inspiration of Ann Lawrence Gilliam, who collaborated on all sections of this book and, with minor exceptions, wrote Chapter IV in its entirety.

For further reading on some of the subjects discussed in this book the reader is referred to Golden Gate, Park of a Thousand Vistas, by Katherine Wilson, Around the World in San Francisco, by Leonard Austin (a guide to ethnic groups), and San Francisco, the Bay and Its Cities, a W.P.A. guide-book.

For his part of this book the writer would make a double dedication:

To RODNEY GILLIAM, 1893–1959

and

GREGORY GILLIAM, 1959–

North Beach; Columbus Avenue

Listen to the wind that blows from the west, lifting banners of spindrift from the crests of waves off the Cliff House, bending the limbs of the oaks in Golden Gate Park, tightening the strings of kites flown by boys on the Marina Green. Listen to the wind, for it brings to the imagination the sounds of the past....

It brings the sounds that were here before the coming of man—the pounding of the waves of the rocky headlands of the Golden Gate, the primeval roar of the sea lions on Seal Rocks, the honking of long flocks of wild geese high over the white sand of Ocean Beach, the chants of aborigines around ancient campfires, the sharp explosions of the muskets of Drake as Ids crew hunts seals on the Farallones, the first clear note of the bell at Mission Dolores ringing out across the grassy valley by the lagoon.

Listen to the wind that comes over the hills, whipping the waters of the bay into white caps, flapping shirts on clotheslines in the Sunset District, knocking off the hats of the tourists on the cable cars at Union Square. Listen to the wind, for you will hear the sounds of history—the roll of drums and the call of the bugle as Lt. Montgomery raises the Stars and Stripes in Portsmouth Plaza, the bellow of Sam Brannan shouting, Gold! the trample of feet, the splash of anchors, the sound of ten thousand voices talking bonanza, the sudden bursts of pistol fire, the quick, decisive snap of the Vigilantes’ noose. Listen and hear the labored chug of the first locomotive arriving from across the continent, the sharp crackling of canvas on windjammers standing into the Golden Gate, the churning of a hundred paddle wheels on steamboats and ferries plying the bay.

Listen to the wind that blows into spray the geysers of whales spouting off Point Lobos, ripples the grasses and the lupine on the slopes of Twin Peaks, rattles the windows in the houses of Telegraph Hill. Listen and you will hear the sudden thunder of collapsing walls as the earth shudders, the sickening roar of a holocaust, and then the ancient rhythmic sound of the pounding hammer. Listen to the rattle of riveters and the clang of steel during the building of the world’s biggest bridges, the crack of gunfire on the docks in the Great Strike, the blare of the bands in the fair at Treasure Island, the wail of the Ferry Building siren as the lights of the city go out after Pearl Harbor the rap of the gavel on the podium of the Opera House at the founding of the United Nations.

Listen to the wind, for the past is prelude, and the sounds rising from the city this moment will become the sounds of history.

CHAPTER I—City of Paradox

Define the city at your peril.

Call it sophisticated and cosmopolitan—which it is—and you find it smug and provincial—which it also is. Call it beautiful and you discover blatant ugliness. Call it ugly and you are confronted with surpassing beauty.

With infinite elusiveness San Francisco escapes definition, evades all at-tempts to pin it down, contradicts whatever generalizations you may make about it.

See it from the Bay Bridge early in the day, when the ships are moving into the docks at its base; the morning light blazes from its windows; the flags on its towers fly like banners in the cool salt breeze from the Golden Gate. The skyscrapers on its hills seem almost geologic—as if some sudden upheaval of earth had raised this peninsula and then, bursting the limitations of rock, had thrust into the sky these towers of light.

At such a moment it seems to be a city in a vision. It is a symbol of the perennial human dream—the legendary City of Man, goal of the long west-ward migrations, rising above the waters here at the ultimate shore of the New World, full of secret promise and unknown fulfillment.

But enter the city and the vision fades; a thousand conflicting impressions crowd the senses—the brilliance of sunlight and the misty dimness of fogs, the fragrance of the sea winds and the acrid smells of industry, the clamor of the commercial districts and the quiet serenity of the hilltops. You look up from the frenetic traffic of the downtown streets to the soaring towers of a bridge across the sky. You look out from a dark, cluttered alley to the brilliant aquamarine expanse of the great bay shining in the sun. You are possessed by the continual anticipation that some new revelation is always just around the corner or over the next hill, tantalizing and unnameable.

Go into the city and climb its heights, explore its hidden lanes and cellar cafés, roam the green avenues of its parks, watch the floods of fog pour over the hills and through the streets, listen to the solemn chorus of great horns from the bay. Study its buildings: the skyscrapers of the financial district, the saloons and flophouses of skid row, the intricately scrolled Victorian houses, the long rows of bay-windowed flats undulating over the hills, the white mansions of Pacific Heights, the red brick pagoda-roofed buildings of Chinatown. Talk with its people: its bankers and longshoremen and socialites and cable-car conductors, its residents whose ancestors came from the banks of the Arno, the Seine, the Congo, the Si-kiang.

Go into the city and seek its identity, and you will find only contradictions and conflicts that defy attempts to fit them into a consistent pattern of meaning.

You will find a city that cultivates to a high degree the fine arts and the graces of living—and a city that is exceeded by few others in its appalling rates of alcoholism and suicide. Its art museums, its symphony orchestra, its opera company are among the finest in the nation; its library, its city hospital, its home for the aged are perennially inadequate and recurrently in need of financial transfusions.

It venerates such symbols of the past as its cable-car lines but persistently curtails them. It is proud of its classic Civic Center but fails to expand it as the city grows. It cherishes its historic buildings but allows them to be demolished one by one.

It maintains racially segregated neighborhoods, but its people are usually willing to accept a man as friend without regard to his color or his religion. It looks back with nostalgia on its historic bohemians but disapproves of its contemporary bohemians. Its greatest tourist attraction is a near slum; its greatest park is a superlative example of creative ingenuity.

It is an old city, bemused by contemplation of its own history, looking forever backward to its legendary Golden Age. It is a young city, born little more than a century ago. With its superb natural harbor, its tall buildings rising in terraces on its hills, its great swinging bridges, its imperial position above the bay and ocean, it is a symbol of youth and vigor and aspiration. Facing across the Pacific the awakening lands of Asia, it confronts a future of illimitable promise.

Simultaneously old and young, decadent and creative, prejudiced and tolerant, ugly and beautiful, it is a city of eternal paradox, baffling comprehension with its irreconcilable conflicts and its infinite diversity. No one has been able finally to name the essence of this city. Every person must seek its identity for himself, must look for its manifold meaning wherever they may be found—along its skyline, on its hills and in its neighborhoods, among its diverse peoples, in its centers of commerce and culture, through its parks, along its beaches, down its boulevards, and in its thousand by-ways.

For in truth this is the City of Man at the western edge of the world, always on the