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!