Flashback: October 1909 at the Park Branch

MNC Blog Editor Note: Please enjoy this guest post by Doreen Horstin, SFPL Park Branch Manager

Park Branch Library, located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, recently celebrated 115 years of service to the community at their annual Open House. Placed near the front door was an October 1909 bound volume of the San Francisco Call, a local newspaper that ran, under various names, from 1859 to 1959 and that was published by Charles M. Shortridge and John D. Spreckels. 

A bound volume of the San Francisco Call containing issues from 1909 invites browsing at the Park Branch Library Open House

 

What was happening in 1909? Theodore Roosevelt was President, followed by William Howard Taft in March of that year, the NAACP was founded on February 12th, the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Sigmund Freud arrived in New York City to deliver a series of lectures on psychoanalysis, and in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, San Francisco Public Library Branch Number 5 – the Park Branch – opened to the public on October 29th. The Park Branch has operated continuously in the same building ever since.

This year, during the Park Branch Open House, patrons carefully flipped through the pages of the October 1909 San Francisco Call. Many news items are recognizable even today:

President Taft toured San Francisco's post-earthquake recovery, laying the cornerstone for the YMCA building at Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth, amongst other activities; Secretary of the Interior R. A. Ballinger visited Sacramento to weigh in on the Hetch Hetchy dam project, assuring the public that they would continue to have public access rights to Lake Tahoe; In Berkeley, local members of the SPCA met to discuss the treatment of animals held in shelters; in Manila, a local man was arrested for his role in smuggling opium; pickpockets continued to torment passengers on streetcars; and in baseball, the Philadelphia Athletics headed to San Francisco for a match against the Seals.

Many more eye-catching items are contained within the pages of the San Francisco Call and other archived newspapers. One can easily spend hours marveling at ads for shoes and clothes (such low prices!), chuckling at remedies for dandruff, eczema and varicose veins and gazing at the society pages. To see more, visit the friendly staff at the Magazine and Newspaper Center at the Main Library where this newspaper is available on microfilm. 

An advertisement for Sterling Furniture, $1 per yard of carpet and lace curtains for $0.35 each. October 2, 1909, the Morning Call

 

A political cartoon of President Taft on the eve of his visit to California, Daily Morning Call, October 2, 1909.

Page from October 5, 1909 Daily Morning Call reporting on the activities of Taft during his visit to California, including laying the cornerstone for the YMCA building at Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth in San Francisco.

100th Anniversary of the Legion of Honor

"It's art that keeps us thinking" - Virginia Ernster (San Francisco Fine Art Museums Docent) 

Rodin's Thinker, a crown jewel of the Legion of Honor

Happy 100 year anniversary to a fine art museum of San Francisco, the Legion of Honor, an edifice fashioned after the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris—one that stands at a Californian's edge of the world, Land's End at the Golden Gate rather than on the Seine—on the Western coast of the United States, looking out on the Marin Headlands and the Pacific Ocean. 

View from the Legion of Honor toward the Marin Headlands on a rainy April day

 

The museum was the passion project of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, nicknamed "the great grandmother of San Francisco" for the impact her philanthropy had on the development of the City's culture and environmental form. Her vision took hold when she beheld the French Pavilion at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, which was fashioned as a replica of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris at 3/4ths scale, and conceived of the plan to bring a building in that form to San Francisco permanently as an art museum. 

The French Pavilion at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, 1915

 

After a delay caused by the Great War, the museum went on to come to fruition and was dedicated on November 11, 1924, Armistice Day. Spreckels populated the museum with art from her own collection, and visited France many times over the years to further collect art, drawing on her friendship with Loie Fuller to meet new artists. It was Fuller who introduced Spreckels to the sculptor Rodin and encouraged her to purchase the famous piece the Thinker, which presides over the courtyard of the Legion of Honor to this day (although it did moonlight in Golden Gate Park for a spell, before the Museum opened). 

"Whatever cenotaph was unveiled or tribute paid yesterday to the heroic dead..."

"...no Armistice Day observance the world over was more impressive than that which attended the dedication of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor," according to the San Francisco Examiner, reporting on November 12, 1924 of the previous day's ceremony (page 17). The paper devoted most of the front page of a special section to covering the grand opening and other Armistice Day ceremonies throughout the City. It included a photograph of the courtyard of the Legion of Honor filled with attendees as well as a portrait of M. Alfred Tirman, Counsellor of the State of France [sic], Mrs. Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, donor, and San Francisco Mayor James Rolph. 

View the November 12, 1924 issue of the San Francisco Examiner (SFPL card required) 

"The Monument... is dedicated to honor and country in memory of the heroes of the World war"

On November 12, the San Francisco Chronicle devoted about a half-page to covering the dedication of the new museum, reporting on the attendance of prominent people, the genesis of the idea for the museum from the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, the features of the building (like the Theater), and the attributes of the art collection. The article includes a composite portrait of William F. Humphrey, John D. Spreckels, Senator Samuel M. Shortridge, and Mrs. Alma De Bretteville Spreckels.   

View the November 12, 1924 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle (SFPL card required)

Find out more about the history of our "palace that will endure for centuries" by visiting the FAMSF's webpage, "Legion of Honor history," and check out the calendar of special events and free openings the museum will be running for the coming year. 

Additionally, SFPL will be hosting several upcoming programs related to the Legion of Honor at 100, talks delivered by the museum's wonderful docents.

Remember, here in the Magazines and Newspapers Center, we are able to offer the entire backfile of both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, so the historic research doesn't end with the centennial of the Legion of Honor!
 

What We're Reading October 2024

Of note this October is what we're not reading rather than what we are reading. What we've been deprived of is a presidential endorsement from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which has kicked up a lot of criticism in the form of resignations and a major backlash of subscription cancellations. Thankfully our hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is planning on running an endorsement, although it makes us wonder if Nov 3 is too late for such things. Regardless, we're continuously grazing on pieces of periodically produced media, so here's our October Four. 

__________________________________ 

New York Magazine, October 21, 2024 issue 

The front cover dares to state Media Elites Tell All! But inside the covers, awash in catchy, bold graphic design, New York magazine's new issue is devoted to the inquiry of "Can the Media Survive?" and they interviewed "57 of the Most Powerful People in Media" for it, including the editors of some big legacy print magazines. They further tackle questions that preoccupy us around these parts, like "What's the Point of Print?" and "Why Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong Hasn't Turned Around the L.A. Times." 

You can read New York magazine on the digital magazine platform PressReader.

 

 __________________________________ 

Joy Boy: Mychal the Librarian reminds us there is so much good in the world

Curl Magazine, Fall 2024

Celebrity librarian Mychal Threets is out here reppin' us librarians on our bad days (see the NYT piece "Librarians Face a Crisis of Violence and Abuse"), on our good days (see his celebration The Library Afro Revolution), and every day in between. So we were tickled to see his hair spa treatment in the new issue of Curl magazine, where he also chatted with the mag about inclusivity and hair pride at the library. He's on the cover and in a feature article where stylist Gina Marie Rodriguez helps him reach his "big Afro goals."

You can read Curl Magazine on the digital magazine platform Flipster.

 __________________________________ 

Of Note: Cats in Clara’s Correspondence 

Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, October 24, 2024

While this one isn't from any type of periodical you would need SFPL for, who doesn't love connecting with cat lovers both past and present? This Library of Congress blog explores evidence of cat affection in the Clara Barton Papers, especially in context with Barton's relief efforts in Europe with Antoinette Margot following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the resulting relationship between the two women. 

 __________________________________ 

Walk-off Slam Was Product of Work with Dad

Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2024

As we know now, the Dodgers won the 2024 World Series by locking up game 4 last night, but spectators were left breathless at the end of the first game of the series when Freddie Freeman scored a walk-off grand slam with the bases loaded. The Athletic's Andy McCullough did poetic justice to the night in his write-up, but the LA Times' Jack Harris went straight to the heart-strings with his retelling of Freeman's long afternoons spent practicing with his dad in SoCal sandlots. Whether or not you're celebrating for the Dodgers, ruing their win, or are completely indifferent, take a peak at this article for some good sports writing.

Share Your Thoughts on “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain

Read the short story “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain about a young Blackfeet man who turns eighteen and comes into money due to him from a claim check. Leave a comment on this blog post in response to the suggested discussion questions below.

In the beginning of HolyWhiteMountain’s story from the March 20, 2023 issue of the New Yorker, the narrator explains: “As far back as I could remember, I had heard discussion of claim checks. There was something elemental about it: the talk circled round in a seasonal way. People joked about being claim-check rich and then later laughed about being claim-check broke. They bought claim-check cars, got claim-check drunk, and some got claim-check married. That’s how it was for us for a long time, until the money ran out. The Feds are never more careful with limits and end dates on their moral awakenings than they are with us, such is the concern that we might steal the whole country right out from under them. Then we were back to where we were before, a bunch of broke skins way out on the Northern Plains, teasing one another. So this is a story about how I got my part of the money, how I spent it, and the people in my life at that time, such as Big Man, who raised me, and of course June, who I loved before any other, and who has been gone now longer than any of us had the chance to know her when she was alive.” 

Read the story in Flipster, a platform that offers access to hundreds of digital magazines, and click "Post a comment" or "comment," below, to share your thoughts on these discussion questions. 

• Have you ever come into a windfall of a large sum of money like the narrator in the story? What did you spend it on?  
• In “False Star,” the narrator ultimately buys a black Bronco which transforms him into "look[ing] rich or at least like a real fancy guy” (53). Later he describes having a car as the equivalent of an Indian having a good warhorse. What was your first car and how did getting it transform the way you saw yourself?  
• In many ways, this is a story about the Blackfeet and their land—the claim check that is the catalyst for the story stems from the tribe selling the Sweet Grass Hills to the U.S. Federal Government during a period of duress. How does the environment play a role in this story? Feel free to quote sections of text that describe the land. What effect do these descriptions have on the overall narrative?

Resources  

• “False Star” by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, The New Yorker, March 20, 2023 (text)
• Sterling HolyWhiteMountain Reads “False Star” on the New Yorker's Writer's Voice podcast (audio)
  
• Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, New Yorker Interview with Willing Davidson, March 13, 2023 (text)
  

Digital Newspapers In Spanish on PressReader

Read newspapers from all over the world in Spanish by using the platform PressReader. There you can find US newspapers in Spanish, newspapers from countries where Spanish is an official language, and newspapers in Spanish from countries you wouldn't expect (like Switzerland and China!). 

Don't know what PressReader is? It's a website and an app available through SFPL that provides digital versions of thousands of popular magazines and newspapers exactly the way the print publication appears. See more:

FAQ:  Q. How do I access newspapers and magazines on PressReader? 

Blog post: Tutorial: PressReader and The Economist

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to read Spanish-language newspapers in PressReader. These instructions are for a desktop/laptop experience in a web browser. Following them on the app will be similar, but may be different. 

1. Navigate to PressReader

You can do this in a variety of ways, including through the Articles & Databases menu on the SFPL website, the eMagazines and eNews menu, the SFPL FAQ knowledge base, or through this direct link. 

2. Select Newspapers

After closing the initial "hot spot" page menu, go down the page until you see the Newspapers section. Click Newspapers. 

3. Find the Language Menu

Look on the right side of the PressReader screen for a menu that says All Languages. Click that to expand the language options. Choose Spanish and click done. 

Screenshot showing location of the language menu on the right of the screen. Click to enlarge.

4. Find the Country/Region Menu

Further refine the selection of Spanish language newspapers in front of you by clicking the menu next to the language menu, All Countries/Regions. Here you can pick a country, including most countries in Central and South America, some in the Caribbean, as well as countries in Europe. 

Screenshot showing location of the Country/Region menu on the right of the screen. Click to enlarge.

5. Bonus: Create an Account

Bonus step - create an account to "heart" a publication and add it to your favorites. If you do this, next time you bring up PressReader, your favorite Spanish-language newspaper will be at the top of the list. This is an optional step that is not necessary, but if you want to do it, just look for the green "Sign-Up" button on the top right of the screen in PressReader. 

Screenshot showing location of green heart to "add to my publications" on a newspaper landing page. Click to enlarge.

6. Going Further: Advanced Features

Captivated by PressReader now? It offers additional language features. Check out the short article Translating Titles & Articles. You can also change the interface display language by going to the top right corner of the screen, clicking on the three dots, and changing the language from English to your preference. For power users who are logged into their account, it is possible to Set Up Topics in your saved searches, and indicate Spanish or any other language as your preference there. 

Screenshot showing location of preferences menu, which includes the interface language option. Click to enlarge.

Thursday! PressReader and Flipster Tutorial

Visit the Main Library for Tech Week, October 5-12, and catch the Magazines and Newspapers Center tutorial about reading periodicals on two popular platforms, PressReader and Flipster. Nearly any popular magazine you can think of is available on one of these apps, and you can get newspapers in dozens of languages from all over the world on PressReader! 

Tutorial: PressReader and Flipster

Thursday, 10/10/2024
12:00 - 1:00

Computer Training Center - 5th Fl

Main Library

Address

100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA94102

Learn about the two eMagazines platforms available to library card holders via sfpl.org/enews. Each has a collection of publications the other doesn’t and apps that allow you to download magazines for offline reading.  

Presented by a Magazines & Newspapers Center librarian. 

Find out more ahead of the tutorial:

PressReader FAQ entry: https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/167356

Flipster FAQ entry: https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/167139

See event listing on the SFPL master calendar.