SF Board of Education invoice ledgers contain purchasing records from 1909 - 1917

Purchasing records from the San Francisco Board of Education dating from 1909 to 1917 were recently uncovered after being carefully hidden for over thirty years in a San Bruno residence. Five ledgers measuring about 18 by 12 inches were saved from destruction in the late 1970s by a history- conscious employee of the San Francisco Unified School District and reposited in a secret room beneath his home.

The ledgers were originally shown to me in the early 1980s by the father of a high school friend of mine named Theresa Hall. Theresa’s father had saved them from the trash in the course of his work as a mover for the school district.

At the time, my father owned a stationery store and I thought that the ledgers, still something we sold at the time, would make a great window display. But Theresa’s dad was very protective of his collection, going so far as to tell his daughter to “never let David have the ledgers.”

Fast-forward thirty-plus years.

Theresa’s father dies suddenly, and she faces the monumental task of emptying his storage rooms. Our collector had worked for the San Francisco Unified School District starting in the late 1970s, a time when things were changing in the city. His job took him to various locations, and when he came across discarded materials that he liked, he would bring them home and squirrel them away. He didn’t want things he felt had meaning to be lost. The result was a San Bruno basement full of papers, photos, and furniture.

Theresa called me about the ledgers, which no one which no one had seen since her father had shown them to me decades before. “They must be here somewhere,” she said. “He would not have given them away.”

We didn’t actually know what the large ledgers contained, but in curiosity, we searched, room after room, pile after pile, cabinet after cabinet, box after box, and came up empty. Yes, there were old school clocks, oak student chairs, a 1930 class panorama of the San Francisco Janitors Engineers School (which has been donated to the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library), but we couldn’t find the ledgers.

Then Theresa’s mother said, “Well, you know, there is a secret room.” [Here's where a movie cues suspense music: "Dum, dum, dum!"]

Invoice of the 1909 vaccinations of 1250 San Francisco school children

Theresa’s father had been an artist, and a collector, and some might say a hoarder of sorts. He had an eye toward historyand maybe just a touch of paranoia. Of course he had a secret room.

After pulling away boxes and furniture, we exposed the basement’s back wall by removing stained glass artwork and hanging clothes. Once we had everything clear, we discovered the “wall,” complete with 2×4 studs, was actually a door that swung outward on hinges. Within, another door opened the opposite direction.

Inside, we saw more of what we had gone through earlier: stacks of boxes, rolls of carpet, scrap wood. Emptying the room took some time, but along the way we came across two remarkable artifacts, one with a distinctly west side focus: a large silk banner for the Laguna Honda School’s Parent Teacher Association, circa 1915, and another banner for Garfield Primary School on Telegraph Hill, which was presented to the school in 1912 by the Native Sons and Native Daughters of the Golden West.

Garfield Primary School Banner 1912

Finally, at the back of the secret room, we found what we were originally looking for, the ledgers, wrapped in plastic for protection and stacked on top of a 1920 Western Electric portable audiometer (a large walnut box that looks as if it might be filled with pirate booty.)

“We found the treasure!”

And a treasure they are. The five large ledgers document from 1909 to 1917 the bills paid by the then Board of Education to individual suppliers of goods.

Actual itemized invoices are pasted in, detailing school supplies, construction material for the building of Polytechnic High School, groceries, books, coal, fuel oil, water consumption, teamster bills, car fare for employees, and a host of other costs, including the 1909 vaccination of 1,250 school children by the College of Physicians and Surgeons at a cost of 10c per child.

What happens next to the treasure trove? The San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library already has a lot of the school district’s historical records, and seems a likely new home.

Window washing for Lowell High School 1913

Also likely is that these books and assorted artifacts, hidden for years, would have been lost forever if it were not for one man and his secret room.

Images and video of the fascinating roadhouse moldings and decorations recently discovered between floors of a nondescript Ocean Beach apartment building will be part of the presentation by David Gallagher and Woody LaBounty.

In the 1890s and early 1900s, Ocean Beach had a series of large entertainment venues that offered music, liquor, food, and dancing. These roadhouses stretched along the length of the Great Highway from the Cliff House down to Tait’s at the Beach. With the exception of the Cliff House, all succumbed to residential development in the twentieth century.

Since 1999, the Western Neighborhoods Project’s mission has been to share the history of San Francisco’s west side. 3 Fish Studios was formed in 2007 by painters and printmakers, Annie Galvin and Eric Rewitzer, and in July 2012 they relocated and remade an old grocery store at 4541 Irving Street (at 47th Avenue) as a store, studio, and class space. We’re very excited to partner with them on this event.

What: Ocean Beach Roadhouse History (and maybe some snacks and drink)

Where: 3 Fish Studios at 4541 Irving Street (at 47th Avenue)

When: 7:00 p.m.

How much: Free, although we will take donations, of course

See you there!

Fleishhacker Pool Building Fire

The real tragedy probably isn’t last week’s fire, or even the interior destruction done by vandals, graffiti artists, and the homeless—damage which escalated significantly in the last five years or so. This fight to save the last piece of a unique urban recreational center was lost slowly over decades.

I have sympathy for the people working at the San Francisco Zoo and the Recreation and Park Department. Over the past ten years both agencies have had to tackle great public debates and debacles—tigers escaping, elephants ailing, coyotes in the parks, beach and road erosion, questions and scrutiny over native plants, sewage treatment plants, recycling center evictions, artificial turf soccer fields, rowdy concertgoers, and privatization of parkland—while wrestling over budgets and trying to sell bond ballot measures. But while over the years there may have been pitches to restaurateurs, gym owners, and even the people responsible for Burning Man to take over the pool building, the city failed to safeguard and adequately plan a future for a historic structure in its care.

So now, once again, we’re in a familiar place. Questions of preservation and our architectural heritage have to be wrestled over in crisis, when there are apparently no good options. Shoulders are shrugged, a once beautiful structure is deemed beyond repair as the wrecking ball arrives, and the public gaze again moves towards “revitalization” (building new complexes, museums, office towers, and LEED certified glass and steel boxes) rather than restoration.

As it seems too late for the Fleishhacker Pool House, we need to salvage what we can. Physically, that might mean what’s left of the decorative dolphin moldings over the doorway lintels, but more broadly, we now need to put the city’s feet to the fire on the other major historic building on zoo property—the Mother’s Building.

Mothers Building mosaic

Built in 1925, the Mothers Building is officially named the Delia Fleishhacker Memorial Building in honor of Herbert and Mortimer Fleishhacker’s mother. Designed by architect George W. Kelham, the building was intended as a place of respite for the mothers of children enjoying the Fleishhacker playfield and pool. For many years, the sandy-colored building stood welcome for zoo goers when the entrance wound down sloping paths from Sloat Boulevard. Beautiful WPA-commissioned Noah’s Ark themed murals by Helen Forbes and Dorothy Pucinelli decorate the interior while mosaics by Helen Bruton are set in the entry.

The building has needed restoration for decades and has been closed to the public since 2000. Unfortunately, a leaking roof, since repaired, damaged parts of the murals a few years ago.

Like the Fleishhacker pool building, the Mothers Building also finds itself a ward of several guardians: the San Francisco Zoo, the Recreation and Park Department, and the San Francisco Art Commission. At the very least, studies have to be conducted to determine the current state of the building and the repairs needed to make it again a vital part of the city’s cultural landscape, especially now as a new playground is planned nearby.

Let’s move this project up on the agenda now, while attention is temporarily focused on this part of town. E-mail Tanya Peterson, Executive Director and President of the Zoological Society (tanya@sfzoo.org) and Philip Ginsburg, Executive Director of Rec and Park (Philip.Ginsburg@sfgov.org) and tell them that the Mothers Building and its art work – murals and mosaics – need to be restored.

Peggy now lives in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but she’s discovered that she can’t escape Laffing Sal, having stumbled upon a “sister” at the Loco Luna restaurant in Little Rock.

Peggy Vincent on right, with her friends Mary Lou and "Laffing Sal."

Based on her wardrobe, this Sal is obviously vacationing in Arkansas.

The Philadelphia Toboggan Company created lots of Laffing Sals (and Laffing Sams) for amusement parks across the United States, and Wikipedia has at least 20 known locations where one of the 6’10″ robotic women scared generations of children with her laugh and odd rocking motion.

You can see the Musée’s Laffing Sal in action in one of our SF West History Minutes.

Here’s a great article by Bill Luca at Laff in the Dark on the history of Laffing Sals: My Gal Sal. I should warn you that there are some photos of Sal in a state of undress, exposing some camshafts!

If you know where there are other Laffing Sals (definitely one at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk) let us know!

San Francisco Bulletins from the 1890s

When I read Nicholson Baker’s book “Double Fold” in 2001, a similarly righteous anger and energy spark inside me. Mr. Baker, a novelist, detailed in the book how libraries “modernized” (and saved shelf space) by microfilming and then destroying original copies of books and historical newspapers. The colorful artwork of the New York World’s Sunday supplements were reduced to fuzzy black and gray on microfilm reels, while the originals were pulped or sold to be cut up by dealers of “What the front page was on your birthday” curios. David Gates, in a New York Times review, had similar feelings as me in reading the book: “I’d repeatedly scrawled ‘Whew!,’ ‘Yikes!’ and ‘Jesus!’ in the margins, sometimes two and three times a page.” Baker went so far as to purchase tons of bound newspapers when the British Library put them up for sale, having to rent a warehouse in New Hampshire for $26,000 a month to store them. (Finally, Duke University took them off his hands.)

Cover of "The World on Sunday" by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano

So when I was at the San Francisco History Expo in March of this year I was jarred and delighted to see my good friends Ron Filion and Pamela Storm had on display a bound set of the San Francisco Call from the 1890s. The couple told me they had not just the one bound book of old newsprint—which was an impressive thirty inches long by twenty-three inches wide by two inches deep—but twenty-two equally massive volumes back at home, salvaged from a culling at the San Francisco Public Library years before.

San Francisco Call, September 1899

There’s great wonder in seeing original versions of these old newspapers, having the tactile experience of feeling and seeing paper, of being able to easily turn and riffle through an edition, scan quickly over a page to pick out items, drink in the color washes on Sunday art pages. I found an 1899 article I had used in writing my book on Carville-by-the-Sea, but instead of the murky shades that I had viewed on microfilm—almost unidentifiable as illustrations—now I could see real photographs and pick out specific houses.

Carville photograph from 1899 SF Call article

Ron and Pamela, who have over the years created one of the region’s great genealogy sites at sfgenealogy.com, obviously felt the same way about these old marvels as I did. Seeing my enthusiasm, they asked if the Western Neighborhoods Project would be interested in being the new caretakers of these ephemeral beauties. The collection took up a lot of space in their home, and both were willing to let it go to new guardians.

Nicholson Baker had been one of my heroes, and if he could take on several thousand volumes, we could take twenty-three. As I try to write grant applications, plan the next member walk, update our Facebook page, and transition our nonprofit’s government-assigned DUNS number to a new online system (don’t ask), the dusty tomes tempt me daily to immerse myself in the news of San Francisco from the nineteenth century. It requires clearing off a lot of desk space to open one pulpy volume of the Call or the San Francisco Bulletin (which has fewer graphics, but is much more manageable in size.)

They do take up a lot of room, fill the air with dust when browsed, need extremely delicate handling (book repair classes in my future?), and are perhaps fairly useless as other copies are digitized in full resolution for the Web (browse and search the Call up to the 1910s on the Library of Congress site). But they are such a great delight.

Our great thanks to Ron and Pamela for their generosity, and to everyone else out there who still loves paper.

Tombstone Exposed on Ocean Beach near Rivera Street David Gallagher Photo/Western Neighborhoods Project

There’s been a lot of buzz around town since the MissionMission blog posted photos they received from a beachcomber of a recently  exposed  headstone on Ocean Beach near Rivera Street. (http://www.missionmission.org/2012/06/04/122-year-old-gravestone-washes-up-on-ocean-beach/) Readers there used the power of the Internet to research the  life  (and a bit of the genealogy) of Delia Presby Oliver who died  in our City in April 1890.

There’s been a lot of speculation about how Delia’s headstone got from Laurel Hill Cemetery, where she was laid to rest,  to Ocean Beach, where she became famous. Here’s the short answer:  the headstone was dumped there by the San Francisco Department of Public Works in the 1940′s.

here’s the longer answer:

In 1901, San Francisco’s Cemeteries were barred from burying any more people within the city limits ( cremated remains are still allowed and welcomed at The Columbarium).  This essentially doomed San Francisco’s Cemeteries, without adding “residents’ the cemeteries lacked the finances (and the incentive) for upkeep and over the next 30 years, fell into disrepair.

Laurel Hill 1938 - Harrison Ryker/SFPL/David Rumsey Map Collection

(footage of Laurel Hill Cemetery near the end, courtesy of Rick Prelinger) They were seen as dangerous eyesores and nuisances, impeding the progress of the burgeoning growth of the Richmond District.

By the late 1930′s, popular opinion had swayed in favor of the removal of the cemeteries. The Masonic and Odd Fellows Cemeteries were the first to go, with removals going to Colma’s Woodlawn and Greenlawn cemeteries, respectively.  The Catholic Calvary Cemetery was closed in 1937 and moved to Woodlawn. Laurel Hill was the last to go,  the dead being moved to Cypress lawn in 1939 and 40. Many of the Laurel Hill monuments remain on the site up until at least 1946.   Descendents of the dead were contacted for removal of their loved ones, but these efforts were not always successful. When there was no one to contact, the dead were moved to mass graves at the new locations.  ( Some of  which are now faced with their own encroaching development : http://www.flickr.com/photos/anythreewords/4370777884/) .

So, how did this particular headstone get to Ocean Beach?

The story is revealed in the April 4th 1944 edition of the San Francisco News, a daily newspaper of the time: the headline reads “Cemetery Stones Save Beach”.

"Cemetery Stones Save Beach" - SF News April 4, 1944

“An 800 foot washout along the beach opposite Rivera St which has kept the West drive of the Great Highway closed for a month has been filled in and the drive will be reopened by the end of this week, Asst City Engineer S. P. Duckel said today” …

“Because of the war it is impossible to get the interlocking sheet lagging mae of steel which, when coated with concrete, makes an ideal sea wall for protecting weak sections of the beach. … the city engineering department was hard pressed to find material for immediate use. However a call to Laurel Hill Cemetery brought assurance that the city was welcometo remove some old headstones, pieces of mausoleums and brick and stone piers left when the cemetery was moved several years ago.”

“‘It will be some time before we can restore that stretch to the way it used to be’… In the meantime youngsters are having a fine time, practically standing on their heads in some instances, in attempts to read the names and inscriptions on the old gravestones.”

So, now the question isn’t how or when did Delia Presby’s headstone get to Ocean Beach, but what happened to all the others?

More Cemetery Links

Streetwise: Dearly Departed – http://www.outsidelands.org/sw10.php

SF West History Minute – Tombstone Search – http://outsidelands.org/historyminute/1264725774/TombstoneSearch

1938 Aerial San Francisco Photographs from the SFPL and David Rumsey Collection

Trina Lopez’ Documentary “A Second Final Rest”  available at the San Francisco Public Library 

Trina Lopez’ film website

Laurel Hill Cemetery  in the San Francisco Public Library Historical Photo Collection (SFPL History Room)

From the 1950s to the early 1990s, three different retired Navy jets served as playground equipment. In 1993, the last, an F-8 Crusader, graffitti-covered and leaking lead, was removed for restoration at the Pacific Coast Air Museum (a continuing effort).

San Francisco Chronicle writer Peter Hartlaub has recently done a very nice piece on the jets.

Now after 20 jet-less years at Larsen Park, a small community group is working to bring a new jet for the climbing pleasure of future generations of Parkside kids (and those traveling through who convince their parents to pull over).

Getting a real Navy jet, and making it playground-safe, is impractical in these more complicated days, so a new structure in the form of a jet with netting fanning out behind like exhaust has been designed. (I declare it pretty cool.) Grants are being found, money still needs to be raised, but Supervisor Carmen Chu and her staff are working hard to get this done.

Join me at a informational meeting Tuesday, May 22, 2012 from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at the Wawona Clubhouse, 901 Wawona Street at 20th Avenue. We’ll hear more about the plan, see the sketches, and maybe I will bring some old photos of the previous planes (anyone have some to share?).