• Moulinie Building
• Golden Era Building
• Melodeon Theatre
• Solari Building East
• Solari Building West
• Daniel Gibb & Company Warehouse No. 1
• Joseph Genella Building
• Lucas Turner and Co. bank
• Daniel Gibb & Company Warehouse No. 2
• Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory

Return east on Jackson Street; note the distinct difference between the buildings on the north and south sides of the street, reflecting the movement to more elaborte exteriors on later buildings. In photographs dating from the 1850s, numerous downtown streets had a similar appearance. The early buildings on the north, such as the Moulinie Building (10) at 458-60 Jackson, are simple two-story brick structures, elegant, unadorned and almost modern in appearance. The Moulinie Building from the early 1850s was owned by the same French family for a century (Wiley 2000: 150).

The Golden Era Building at 732 Montgomery Street also appears to date from the 1850s. The cast iron pillars in the front bear the marking "Vulcan Iron Works 1892"; as the building is obviously much older than this, it seems likely that the front was remodeled to provide wider openings for warehouse use. The Golden Era was the most substantial literary periodical published in San Francisco during the 1850's and 1860's. Bret Harte, Mark Twain and Thomas Starr King were among its celebrated contributors (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 55).

The Golden Era, one of the best of the early publications, was founded in 1852 by 21-year-old J. Macdonough Foard and 19-year-old Rollin Daggett. Daggett sold subscriptions to miners, traveling from one camp to another. Later, under "Colonel" Joe Lawrence in the 1860s, the Golden Era office on Montgomery Street (see page 149) became San Francisco's literary headquarters, home to Harte, Twain, Ina Coolbrith, Charles Warren Stoddard, Prentice Mulford, Ned Buntline--the master of the dime Western novel--and lesser lights. The Era's office was "the most grandly carpeted and gorgeously furnished that I have ever seen."¹² Another virtue: It was less than a block away from the Montgomery Block with its cheap restaurants and popular saloons (Wiley 2000: 40).

Around the corner on Montgomery Street between Jackson and Washington Streets is a row of buildings of the same ancient vintage as those of Jackson Square. The most striking of this set of four adjacent buildings is the two-story brick structure now identified as the Belli Building, 722-724 Montgomery Street. According to its owner, attorney Melvin Belli, there is reason to believe that at least part of the brick shell of the building dates from before the disastrous fires of 1851; certainly, there seems little doubt that the building is one of the earliest still standing in the downtown district. In December of 1857 the Melodeon a resort of variety entertainment, opened for business on these premises.

The building had long since fallen into neglect when it attracted the attention of Belli in 1958. Since then he has lovingly rejuvenated this relic of Gold Rush days. The ornamentation is enhanced by window boxes and vines, a handsome wrought-iron gate, and colorful gas-lamps. The effect is highly nostalgic, but old Montgomery Street was never quite like this! (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 55).

The Belli Building (5), 722 Montgomery, was built in 1851 to serve as a tobacco warehouse and then became the Melodeon Theatre. Dancer, singer, and actress Lotta Crabtree, California's first child star, performed here. Melvin Belli, famed local lawyer known as the "King of Torts," bought and restored the building as his law office, which was damaged in the 1989 earthquake and is deteriorating while Belli's heirs sue each other. Belli fired a cannon from the roof and raised a "jolly roger" flag every time he won a major lawsuit. This building was constructed on a foundation of redwood logs and fill. You are over the original mud flats, and the tide is said to rise and fall in the elevator shaft (Wiley 2000: 150)

The Solari Building East (13) at 468-70 Jackson was built by Italian merchant Nicholas Larco in 1852 and later housed the Spanish (1856-1857), French (1860), and Chilean (1861-1865) consulates, the Italian Benevolent Society, and La Parola, an Italian newspaper. Ina Coolbrith, the poet laureate of California and much admired by Mark Twain and Bret Harte, taught school in this building. She was born Josephine Smith, the niece of the founder of the Mormon church, and arrived in California riding on the same horse with famed African-American mountain man James P. Beckwourth. After an early marriage to an abusive husband, she divorced and moved to San Francisco to write (Wiley 2000: 150-51).

470 Jackson (1866). A wide variety of businesses has occupied this attractive brick building--a Chinese printing firm, a liquor warehouse and now decorators' shops (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 274-75)

Solari Building, East-Larco's Building, 1866, 470 Jackson St. (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47)

The Solari Building West (12) (1852) at 472 Jackson was built by a French wine merchant. It served as the French Consulate from 1864 to 1876 (Wiley 2000: 150).

On the verge of the original San Francisco waterfront, at Vallejo and Front Streets, stand two brick warehouses which were built in the early 1850's, partially destroyed in 1906, but rebuilt almost precisely on the original plans. Reconstruction centered around the still-standing portions of the above-ground brick, incorporating the corner-structure. Also followed were the old window pattern (omitting a few of the original piercings,) and the existing foundation and basement layout.

These twin warehouses of Gold Rush times today bear the colorful designations, Pelican Paper Company and Trinidad Bean and Elevator Company, and are distinctive examples of waterfront building of 1854, with their sandstone-framed doorways and handsome arched basement ceilings (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 65).

Start at the Daniel Gibb & Company Warehouses (1) on the southwest and northwest corners of Vallejo and Front. Before the gold rush there was nothing along the eastern foot of Telegraph Hill but a narrow beach covered at high tide until William Squire Clark built the city's first pier at the foot of Broadway. This warehouse and a second one across the street were built on the Broadway pier in 1852 and 1855. Gibb and his brother were Scots commission merchants, whose first office was in the Niantic, a ship turned warehouse. They imported a wide variety of goods--liquor, blasting powder, coal, iron and iron products including corrugated siding, oatmeal, and bicarbonate of soda. Most of the buildings along the waterfront up to a line one to two blocks north of the Gibb warehouses were burned in 1906. The Gibb warehouses were gutted, partially destroyed, and rebuilt.

These warehouses mark the beginning of the city's second concentration of restored and repurposed warehouses and a significant shift in the city's architectural destiny. In the 1960s Telegraph Hill residents initiated the campaign against downtown high rises and were adamantly opposed to the construction of similar buildings blocking their views. Their opposition created an incentive to reuse the old warehouses in the area (Wiley 2000: 242)

More characteristic of early Montgomery Street is the next door building, 726-728 Montgomery Street, also restored by Belli. This three-story, unadorned brick building looks very much like many San Francisco business buildings of the very early '50's. It was built by Joseph Genella about 1853-54 for his chinaware business. As in the case of the Belli Building, the foundation is constructed of heavy, criss-crossed planking which "floats" in the sand of what originally was the beach of Yerba Buena Cove (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 55).

Next door at 728-30 [Montgomery St.] is the Genella Building (6), built in 1853-1854 for a glass and chinaware business. The city's first Masonic Lodge was organized in the original 1849 building that stood on the site (Wiley 2000: 150; Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47).

To view the J. Genella makers' mark, cf. Maker's Mark Type Collection Photo Gallery of the California State Parks.

Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47).

A final Jackson Square building that should be noted is the one that originally housed the bank of Lucas, Turner & Co. at 498 Jackson Street. Built in 1854, this Italianate structure was originally three stories high. The first-floor Montgomery Street facade is of white stone, the remainder of the building being plain red brick. This Montgomery Street face, with its elegant flattened arches and central doorway surmounted by a chaste classical pediment, has a substantial air well befitting a bank (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 53).

The Lucas Turner Bank Building (8) at 800 Montgomery was built under Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman's supervision. All that remained of this building after 1906 was the granite façade on the west side of the first floor. William K. Stout Architectural Books, one of the two fine architectural bookstores in the city, is located on the ground floor. Stout is a practicing architect (Wiley 2000: 150).

Three of the better known members of the military living on Rincon Hill were Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry Wager Halleck, and Albert Sidney Johnston. These West Point graduates had all been stationed in California as junior officers during the years of American occupation which preceded statehood. Sherman had retired from the army to become director of the Lucas Turner Bank. (That fine old brick structure, minus its third story, still stands on the northeast corner of Jackson and Montgomery Streets.) Sherman, never dreaming he was to lead the march across Georgia in the most decisive campaign of the Civil War, lived in a two-story gabled cottage on Beale Street at Harrison (Alexander and Heig 2002: 152).

On the verge of the original San Francisco waterfront, at Vallejo and Front Streets, stand two brick warehouses which were built in the early 1850's, partially destroyed in 1906, but rebuilt almost precisely on the original plans. Reconstruction centered around the still-standing portions of the above-ground brick, incorporating the corner-structure. Also followed were the old window pattern (omitting a few of the original piercings,) and the existing foundation and basement layout.

These twin warehouses of Gold Rush times today bear the colorful designations, Pelican Paper Company and Trinidad Bean and Elevator Company, and are distinctive examples of waterfront building of 1854, with their sandstone-framed doorways and handsome arched basement ceilings (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 65).

Start at the Daniel Gibb & Company Warehouses (1) on the southwest and northwest corners of Vallejo and Front. Before the gold rush there was nothing along the eastern foot of Telegraph Hill but a narrow beach covered at high tide until William Squire Clark built the city's first pier at the foot of Broadway. This warehouse and a second one across the street were built on the Broadway pier in 1852 and 1855. Gibb and his brother were Scots commission merchants, whose first office was in the Niantic, a ship turned warehouse. They imported a wide variety of goods--liquor, blasting powder, coal, iron and iron products including corrugated siding, oatmeal, and bicarbonate of soda. Most of the buildings along the waterfront up to a line one to two blocks north of the Gibb warehouses were burned in 1906. The Gibb warehouses were gutted, partially destroyed, and rebuilt.

These warehouses mark the beginning of the city's second concentration of restored and repurposed warehouses and a significant shift in the city's architectural destiny. In the 1960s Telegraph Hill residents initiated the campaign against downtown high rises and were adamantly opposed to the construction of similar buildings blocking their views. Their opposition created an incentive to reuse the old warehouses in the area (Wiley 2000: 242)

What was once the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory stands at 415 Jackson Street. Domingo Ghirardelli moved his burgeoning chocolate business into this building in 1857. He also moved his wife and family into the spacious second story quarters: which illustrates an important characteristic associated with the handsome commercial architecture of old San Francisco--that the upper floors of business, or even light industrial premises, very frequently were used as flats by the owners or other prosperous citizens. The combination of business and residential use in the downtown area is one that is only now being revived as one of the answers to the problems of urban living and of fulltime use of scarce and expensive "core city" lands (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 53).

On the south side, Domingo Ghiradelli started his chocolate factory at 415-31 Jackson (15) in 1853 and then constructed a second building at 407 Jackson (16) in 1860 (Wiley 2000: 151).

Domenico Ghirardelli, Sr. was born in Rapallo Italy in 1817, the son and apprentice of a chocolateteer. In 1837, he moved to Uruguay and from there to Lima, Peru, and established a confectionery in 1838. While in Lima, Ghirardelli met James Lick, who took 600 pounds of Ghirardelli's chocolate with him when he moved to San Francisco in 1848. Upon Lick's advice, Ghirardelli moved to California himself in 1849. Ghirardelli spent a few months in the gold fields near Sonora and Jamestown, before deciding to become a merchant in Stockton. From Stockton, he moved to San Francisco, taking up residence and setting up his factory on Jackson Street. It was in San Francisco, around the year 1865, that Ghiradelli discovered what is known as the Broma process, which consists of hanging a bag of chocolate in a warm room, allowing the cocoa butter to run off, and grinding the residue to produce ground chocolate, which is still the most common method for the production of chocolate. (cf. Domingo Ghirardelli, Wikipedia)