The Comstock Lode bonanza, followed by the rise of the Southern Pacific Railroad and the fantasmagoric mansions of the capitalists on Nob Hill dominated the period from the 1860s through the 1870s.

However, toward the end of the 1880s a reaction sets in, led by a number of the young architects associated with the A. Page Brown office and influenced by Chicago architect and urban planner, Daniel H. Burnham, proponent of the precepts of the City Beautiful Movement. In effect, the 1906 earthquake and fire is but a momentary inturruption that ushers in the Progressive era and the First Phase of the Bay Tradition.

Carpenter's Gothic (1860-1906)

1860s-1880s: Italianate mansions and row houses, such as the Parsonage at the corner of Laguna and Haight, were popular from the 1860s to the 1880s. Built on narrow lots, these homes with their high-ceilinged rooms lit by slant-sided bay windows emphasized verticality and elaborate exterior ornamentation, such as brackets under the cornice, pediments atop the windows, and the pipestem colonettes on either side of them (Wiley 2000: 129).

1860s-70s: New housing to accomodate the rapid increases in population during the 1860s and, particularly, the 1870s sprang up along streetcar lines in the Mission District and the Western Addition. Thus began the era of Victorian cottages, row houses, and detached homes that are among the most appealing features of today's San Francisco. The new Victorians held out the promise of modern, lavishly decorated homes for a large portion of the population. Historian Theodore Hittell wrote in 1878 that the city "at the same time [had] fewer paupers, more land-owners, and more comfort in the homes of the multitude." Ronald Delahanty, author of In the Victorian Style, noted that "the San Francisco Victorian was essentially modern. The key to understanding it lies not in its obvious façade but in its invisible plumbing. It was born of a fascination with two things: new technologies and the architectural styles of the past. In how it was built, sold, financed, and served (by streetcars, municipal sewers, running water, gas, electricity, even telephones), the San Francisco Victorian row house was radically new, not old-fashioned." The contractors installed "up-to-date bathrooms with reliable utilities and porcelain fixtures. These advances made possible tremendous improvements in health, hygiene, and individual privacy"¹⁰ (Wiley 2000: 38).

1860-65: One authority estimated that between 1860 and 1865 legal fees aggregated nine million dollars, one-fifth the total output of the [Comstock] lode in those years (Lewis 1959: 35).

Western addition filled with Italian row houses and Laurel Hill Cemetery was twice reduced for new building sites.

1860s: The idea of Golden Gate Park first came up in the 1860s. Frederick Law Olmsted, creator of New York's Central Park, was invited by the Outside Lands Commission to give his advice. He pronounced the prospective site hopeless. Happily his advice was ignored. The informal grassy plot, then the heart of a residential district, acquired the name of "Union Square" when pro-Union rallies were held there. Rincon Hill was the prime residential neighborhood.

Lone Mountain Cemetery was so successful that during the 1860's three other cemeteries were developed to the south, on the slopes adjacent to Lone Mountain. The Chinese Cemetery (next to the Laurel Hill Cemetery, at California, Geary, Arguello and Parker Streets) was open.

1860: The Chinese moved back to the city from the mines; they constituted 5% of the population and took over the manufacturing of footwear, clothing, and cigars.

Catholics established the Calvary Cemetery to the east of Lone Mountain Cemetery.

1861: Interested in determining what ships were arriving through the Golden Gate (and more important, what cargoes they carried), for their arrival could often dramatically affect the price of commodities, David Jobson sought to head off the competition from the Merchants Exchange's system of semaphores, telegraph stations and observatories at Land's End and Telegraph Hill by constructing his own 50-foot-high commercial observatory located on the block bounded by Jones, Green, Taylor and Vallejo Streets at the Summit of Russian Hill in 1861. When it was not under use for commercial purposes, Jobson allowed residents to scale the tower on Sundays for two bits a piece. A major storm in 1869 weakened the tower, and it was then torn down (Christopher VerPlanck).

07.04.1861: ...Julia Bulette, long the darling of the fiction-writers, won the gratitude of her contemporaries mainly because she helped relieve the boredom in the early camp, where diversions were few... Julia, who, in the words of one writer, "caressed Sun Mountain with a gentle touch of splendor," reached Virginia City when that chaotic cluster of shacks was making a rapid transition from camp to town; and for two years she was close to the center of every happening. Of her early history little is known. One account states that she was born in Liverpool and that her real name was Smith; but whatever her background, her Comstock period was surely her most triumphant. Except for bands of Piute squaws and a few gaunt frontier women, she was the miners' only symbol of the genle and civilizing sex. They made the most of her, and she of them. Her establishment was an oasis of elegance in a community of tents, cabins, bars, and cheerless rooming-houses. She occupied a place of honor in the Fourth of July parade of 1861; she was patron and mascot of one of the volunteer fire companies; she addressed a mass meeting in suppoort of the Sanitary Fund (designed to ease the lot of wounded Union soldiers) and, like others of the town's leaders, bid in the fund's historic sack of flour and turned it back to be auctioned off again. The boom of 1863 raised her to affluence; thereafter she daily drove through the streets in a handsome carriage, the doors of which bore the Bulette crest: four aces surmounted by a lion couchant. Then, at the height of her notoriety, she was found strangled one morning in her widely known bed, with her jewels missing. The entire lode went into mourning; mills shut down and miners remained above ground the day of her funeral. Thousands followed the Virginia City band and uniformed fire companies to the cemetery, saw her buried with pomp and dignity, and marched back to town to the tune of The Girl I left Behind Me. Nearly a year later her murderer incautiously tried to peddle some of his loot, and Julia posthumously provided the lode with a second holiday. Again mines and business houses were closed while John Millian was ceremoniously hanged from a gallows set up in the natural amphitheater north of town (Lewis 1959: 28-30).

Late 1861: Self-taught English clockmaker John Harrison's fourth chronometer (H4) made its sea trial in late 1761 on an Atlantic crossing from England to Jamaica. During the two months at sea it lost nine seconds, or just over two minutes of longitude, which was well within the 30-minute requirement set by the British Longitude Act of 1714, which promised a prize of 20,000 pounds for anyone who could provide a solution to the longitude problem with an accuracy of half a degree.

1862: Mark Twain, who worked as a reporter for The Territorial Enterprise, wrote that Virginia City

09.11.1862: San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board organized. It consisted of fifty members, and included the names of the most substantial Californians. It lformally listed all the Comstock stocks (Lyman 1937: 3).

1864: California's gold rush had ended.

Masonic Cemetery established in 1864 to the South of Lone Mountain Cemetery. Remains later moved to Woodlawn Cemetery, Colma, and the tombstones used as fill on approaches to Golden Gate Bridge.

[William] Ralston continued his extravagant ways despite signs of a possible downturn when in 1864 Virginia City miners hit 500 feet and paused, owing to the problems caused by hot water in the mines (Wiley 2000: 34).

At this juncture a potent new force began to make itself felt. In San Francisco, William Chapman Ralston, most resourceful and daring of the Coast's financiers, had organized the Bank of California and was casting about for a qualified man to manage the branch he planned to establish at Virginia City. His choice fell on William Sharon, a precise, dandified little man of forty-four, whose surface geniality concealed a devious and crafty nature. Arriving in the fall of 1864, when the affairs of the lode had reached a hopeless impasse, with its residents "sitting helplessly on a third of a billion dollars' worth of treasure," Sharon was shrewd enough to realize that here was an opportunity such as gamblers dream of. Through the door of the agency's new office at C and Taylor streets came the harassed managers of virtually every mine on the lode, of most of the mills, besides hard-pressed merchants, sawmill-owners, and trucking contractors. Each in turn was admitted behind the rail and ushered into the manager's office. A small but smiling Santa Claus, Sharon passed out the bank's funds with an amiable unconcern that delighted the needy borrowers. San Francisco, queen city of the Coast, had graciously come to the rescue of the impoverished villages below Mount Davidson. The money she supplied, through genial Mr. Sharon--not at the former usurious interest rate but at a conservative five per cent a month--broke the log-jam of inaction, speeded litigation, put idle crews back to work above and below ground, rehabilitated mills, and caused the welcome clatter of stamps once more to echo against the mountainside (Lewis 1959: 38-39).

09.06.1864: In the quarters lately occupied by Arnold and Blauvelt, on the corner of C and Taylor Street, Virginia City, a branch of the Bank of California was founded. The wily William Sharon was put in charge (Lyman 1937: 42).

1865: But now the small figure behind the manager's desk bore less resemblance to Santa Claus; he greeted visitors with the formality of a conscientious employee concerned for the safety of the bank's investments. Each loan was closely scrutinized; it was renewed only if additional security was forthcoming. Notes that failed to meet the suddenly rigid requirements were called; if they were not paid promptly, foreclosure proceedings began. During the first months of 1865 Sharon's brief season of popularity vanished; his office became "Sharon's sweat room" as the bank one by one took over many of the lode's most desirable properties (Lewis 1959: 39-40).

The École's approach to the academic training of architects had been the primary influence at American architectural schools from the founding of the first program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1865.

Odd Fellows Cemetery established to the west of Lone Mountain Cemetery. Remains later moved to Greenlawn Cemetery, Colma, and the tombstones used to construct the Aquatic Park seawall. Lone Mountain Cemetery was surrounded on all sides by burial grounds that were called the Big Four. Jews moved their bodies from Cow Hollow to two cemeteries near Mission Dolores. John Beasley's water works were absorbed by Spring Valley Water Company; and Spring Valley in turn was purchased by the municipality.

The ablest of the Comstock senators was William M. Stewart, whose long service at Washington began when Nevada entered the Union in 1865 and lasted, with one or two breaks, until after the turn of the century. Stewart, one of the legal lights who had hurried to the lode soon after its discovery, was a huge blond giant, so austere in his manner and bearing that he was said to "move like a cathedral." Innumerable stories were told of him. In the early sixties, while the lode was enmeshed in a snarl of boundary disputes, his fees averaged $125,000 a year (Lewis 1959: 34-35).

03.01.1865: Ralston indited a personal appeal which was destined to reach every mining company then operating on the Comstock Lode. In it he thoroughly endorsed the Sutro Tunnel project and asked every company to give Sutro such assistance as lay in its power. On the heels of these entreaties, Sutro went to work (Lyman 1937: 50).

1866: But in good times or bad the Comstocker lived well. As early as 1866 the miners had organized, and fixed the minimum wage below ground at four dollars for an eight-hour shift--compared to five dollars a week paid for similar work in England, and $1.65 in Saxony. Moreover, they managed to maintain that scale as long as the lode remained active, succcessfully defeating periodical drives of the owners to reduce payrolls in slack times (Lewis 1959: 24-25).

05.1866: Robert Woodward, who had made his fortune as proprietor of the "What Cheer House", opened his estate located at Duboce and Mission Sts. to visitors for a small admission charge. Known as "Woodward's Gardens", it became the most popular of the Mission District resorts. It included fountains, waterfalls, grottos, and an artificial lake stocked with ducks and swans. Tame ostriches, deer and small barnyard animals roamed the grounds; a tame bear would perform for a bag of peanuts. Caged animals included California grizzlies, Oregon and Mexican panthers, South American jaguars, Bengal tigers, wolves, foxes, raccoons, weasels, camels and monkeys. A salt-water aquarium--the first in America--consisted of huge glass tanks that lined both sides of a forty-foot hallway made of stone. There were camel rides for the children, and a wonderful bandstand where the adults could dance and listen to band concerts every afternoon and evening (Alexander and Heig 2002: 79).

05.04.1866: Sutro made a final visit to Ralston's office. At that time Ralston furnished him with letters of introduction to Leese and Waller, the Bank's correspondents in New York, and to other banks there and in London. In every one of these letters, Ralston stressed the fact that so far as the Comstock Lode was concerned, the Sutro Tunnel was practicable. Therefore it could not fail to be profitable (Lyman 1937: 51).

07.25.1866: A law of congress had been approved granting Adolph Sutro a right of way through the earth, from the foothills of the Carson River, direct to the Comstock Lode, a distance of 20,489 feet. Besides, Congress had confirmed his title to 1280 acres of land at the mouth of the tunnel, which he already owned by location, and the right of claim to such veins of ore as he might cut in driving his tunnel towards its goal. Most important of all, the Government had confirmed the two-dollar royalty rate, to be paid by the mining companies, on every ton of ore transmitted through the finished tunnel (Lyman 1937: 67-68).

09.01.1866: Ralston began building a gigantic dry dock at Hunter's Point. One so enormous that it would be able to accommodate any hull then afloat on the Pacific. He commenced work on this project by giving employment to a hundred men who had been growing poor grubbing for gold. By the labor of these workers, an enormous graving dock was excavated out of solid rock. So large that the British ironclad Zealous could be handled without effort. But not large enough to handle some of the hulls that were coming through the Gate. Ralston used the earth from this enormous excavation to reclaim the land adjacent to the dock. These lots he proposed selling to the workmen. (Lyman 1937: 83).

01.15.1867: The following letter fell into Sutro's hands while he was in Washington, D.C. Virginia, Nevada, Jan. 15, 1867. To Hon. Wm. M. Stewart and James W. Nye: We are opposed to the Sutro Tunnel project, and desire it defeated, if possible. (Signed) William Sharon, Charles Bonner, Supt. Savage Co., John P. Jones, Supt. Kentuck Co., J. W. Mackay, Supt. Bullion Co., Isaac L. Requa, Supt. Chollar-Potosi Co.(Lyman 1937: 95).

04.12.1867: To avoid confusion, it made sense that Lone Mountain Cemetery, which was not located on Lone Mountain, changed its name to Laurel Hill. "LAUREL HILL CEMETERY. - Lone Mountain Cemetery has ceased to exist, at least in name, as articles of incorporation were filed yesterday by several prominent citizens by which a certain portion of Lone Mountain Cemetery has become legally into possession of the name of Laurel Hill Cemetery. The latter is a much prettier name, but it will be a long time before this generation will consent to the change. Many of the incorporators have built expensive tombs in these grounds, under the impression that the Cemetery would forever remain sacred to the dead. The change in management will no doubt be very acceptable to the present lot holders, and small parcels of ground will probably not be held at exorbitant prices. This spot is capable of being highly ornamented and beautified, and there is no doubt but the gentlemen having control of the Cemetery will make it an appropriate resting place for the departed. The names of the incorporators are John Parrott, Nicolas Luning, H. H. Haight, H. M. Newhall, James Otis, A. Hayward, W. C. Ralston, and F.C. Butler."

06.27.1867: While Sutro was journeying eastward in search of tunnel funds, and Sharon was plundering the Lode of bonanza after bonanza for his patron, Ralston moved his bank into a palatial new structure on the corner of California and Sansome streets (Lyman 1937: 77).

1868: The city purchased 200 acres for a new cemetery on the bluffs above Land's End and Golden Gate Cemetery (aka the City Cemetery, and later as Potter's Field) was established. It began at 33rd Ave. and Clement and ran west on Clement to 48th Ave., totaling some 200 acres. It included a number of cemeteries: Beth Olam, Caledonian, Chinese, Colored Masons, French, German, Grand Army of the Republic, Greco-Russian, Italian, Japanese, Knights of Pythias, Master Mariners, Old Friends, Potter's Field, [Independent Order of] Red Men, Russian, Salem, Scandinavian, Seamen's, Slavonic-Illyric, and St. Andrew's. After the fire and earthquake it was turned into Lincoln Park Golf Course in 1906, and the stones dumped at Ocean Beach.

01.10.1868: Twenty-five miners imprisoned on the 900-foot level of the "Hale and Norcross" mine were released. When the newspapers had announced shortly before that blankets, food, and drink were being sent down the shaft to the imprisoned men, John Mackay and James Fair understood that Ralston's crowd had either discovered the bonanza on the East hanging wall or were again about to milk the public. Consequently, they were not surprised when it was voiced about the San Francisco Stock Exchange that rich ore had been discovered and the Hale and Norcross stock skyrocketed from $1300 per share on January 8 to $2200. Mackay and Fair were certain of the mine's value and hurried off to San Francisco to enlist the help of Flood and O'Brien, proprietors of the Auction Lunch Saloon on Washington Street. Not only Fair, Mackay, Flood and O'Brien, but also Charles L. Low, attempted to control "Hale and Norcross" shares, forcing Ralston to pay as much as $7100 for the shares that decided the contest (Lyman 1937: 132).

03.1868: With much caution Sharon set about picking up [Hale and Norcross] shares, aiming at securing a majority of the stock and so of electing his own trustees at the forthcoming annual meeting, in March 1868. But such stealthy raids had by then been so often carried out that speculators at both Virginia City and San Francisco had grown adept at smelling them out. For all Sharon's cunning, suspicions were aroused that someone was planning a corner in Hale and Norcross. The consequence was that those who owned shares not yet gathered in made the most of their position. Hale and Norcross shares rose from below $300 at the beginning of January to $2,925 a month later. But that was only the beginning. With both [Charles L.] Low and Sharon bidding for the crucial few shares that would swing the election, the offering price approached astronomical heights: $4,100 on February 11, $7,100 four days later....The "Hale and Norcross corner" kept the Coast in turmnoil for weeks, with both sides buying recklessly without regard to the intrinsic worth of the stocks. As the election approached, bids of $10,000 a share were made, with no takers. Sharon eventually won, but only after a very heavy outlay. The exploit proved costly, for although he assumed control in March, the mine's ore body pinched out soon afterward. During the remainder of the year production fell off sharply and the value of the stock declined steadily, reaching $41.50 by September (Lewis 1959: 40-42).

1869-71: In 1869 Sharon began the construction of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad; when it was completed three years later, his ambition to make himself complete master of the Comstock seemed on the point of being realized (Lewis 1959: 40).

1869: In 1869 recession set in, intensified by the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Long sought by San Franciscans as the key to their economic independence, the railroad in fact brought a flood of cheap goods into the city, undermining the local economy. Businesses failed, unemployment grew, and a general sense of malaise and ill will, much of it directed at the Chinese who competed for jobs, settled over the city (Wiley 2000: 34).

The Sutro Tunnel, designed to drain the mines and to simplify the problem of removing the ore from the deeper levels, was begun in 1869. While it was building, not alone the men but the normally docile Washoe canaries [i.e. mules] were subjected to the ordeal of extreme heat and foul air. As the four-mile bore neared completion, conditions became no less severe than in the mines themselves. The face of the tunnel was then more than two miles from the nearest ventilating shaft, and the wiry little mules that pulled the work trains were with difficulty forced into its far reaches (Lewis 1959: 18-19).

1869-73: Quietly [James] Flood set to work, operating with such skill that for weeks the San Francisco brokers, usually alert for signs of abnormal trading, were unaware that anything unusual was going on. Not until February 1869, less than a month before the stockholders' meeting, did word of the raid reach the public: the Gold Hill News on February 27, printed a paragraph stating that "as J. G. Fair and J. W. Mackay, of Virginia City, own over four hundred shares of Hale and Norcross stock, they will be likely to control the election of officers in March." The prediction proved correct. Sharon for once had been caught napping; when he awoke to his danger and entered the market, the battle was already lost. Firmly in control, the Fair-Mackay-Flood-O'Brien group voted out Sharon's trustees and installed their own...

What happened next did not contribute to Sharon's peace of mind. Flood became president (succeeding Sharon) and O'Brien and Mackay were elected trustees. The new board dismissed the former superintendent and installed Fair in his place. An $80,000 assessment had been leveled by the old management; this was canceled and the funds already collected were returned to the stockholders. More gratifying still was the next development. Hardly had the Mackay-Fair group taken charge when promising new ore-bodies were uncovered; these, with rigid economy in operation, speedily put the mine on a paying basis. During the rest of 1869, dividends of almost $200,000 were paid; the next year, Fair having located another and richer deposit, they passed the $500,000 mark. Thereafter production fell off as the high grade ore was exhausted; by 1872, dividends had fallen to a mere $80,000, and the next year assessments were resumed (Lewis 1959: 43-44).

01.18.1869: Ralston's California Theatre (444 Bush Street) was opened with a great fanfare of trumpets, and a composed-for-the-occasion overture was played. Francis Bret Harte had composed a poem for the occasion, which Lawrence Barrett delivered with telling effect. Bulwer's comedy "Money" was performed by the newly founded California Stock Company headed by Lawrence Barrett and John McCullough, the nation's finest Shakespearean exponents at the time. Some 2000 San Franciscans attended the performance. In the entre-acts, when the drop-curtain was lowered it was found that Ralston had provided a tremendous surprise for his fellow citizens. On it, in resplendent greens and blues, was depicted a scene dear to the Ralston heart: a marine view of the Golden Gate with several stately clippers sailing through on their way to the great sea beyond. It depicted the great tossing gulf of blue water separating the rocky headlands of Fort Point from the precipitate cliffs of the Marin hills. In the foreground sparkled the opalescent waters of the bay; beyond the Golden Gate swept an infinite stretch of sea. In planning for the theatre, Ralston dispatched an able architect to New Orleans to see the Galliers French Opera House as well as other great theatrical centers of the East. In the course of time this resulted in a French Renaissance structure, featuring Corinthian columns (Lyman 1937: 121-22).

02.27.1869: When nothing developed in the "Hale and Norcross" mine and no dividends declared, the stock fell to $11.50 in the spring and summer of 1868. When the stock struck that unprecedented figure the Irishmen (Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien) pounced upon the market and gobbled up all available shares. They bought stealthily and steadily until the following item in the Gold Hill News horrified Ralston and Sharon on February 27, 1869: "As J. G. Fair and John W. Mackay of Virginia City own over 400 shares of the stock, they will be very liable to exercise their controlling interest in influencing the choice of officers for the ensuing year." (Lyman 1937: 133-34).

04.07.1869: On the morning of April 7, 1869, fire broke out in the "Yellow Jacket" [mine]. John P. Jones was the superintendent. In the gallery where Ralston's streak of pay ore had been discovered, the fire blazed on for days, weeks, months. One day there was a cave-in. The gallery collapsed and had to be abandoned and block-headed off from the rest of the mine (Lyman 1937: 135-37).

08.25.1869: At a joint meeting, the Virginia and Gold Hill Miners' Union resolved in joint convention that "as an earnest of our faith in the results to spring from the construction of the Sutro Tunnel, as a great national work, and as a financial operation, we do hereby agree to subscribe to the stock of the Sutro Tunnel Co. the sum of $50,000 in United States gold coin, as a first installment payable immediately and for the purpose of starting work upon the tunnel itself without delay." (Lyman 1937: 149-50).

1870s-early 1900s: The West Mission district filled up with a variety of single and multi-family dwellings, many of which are still extant.

1870s-1890s: Classical marble tombs and elaborate monuments glorified the affluent departed [in Lone Mountain (later, Laurel Hill) cemetery] while a more humble section was reserved for the poor. A vault in the cemetery was devoted to the Chinese, but when "the Chinese must go!" movement gathered steam in 1870's, it was "bespattered with mud and filth, battered with stones and sometimes defaced in a most irreverent manner. Until Golden Gate Park came of age [in the 1890s], Lone Mountain Cemetery served as a park where families would picnic and young couples would promenade among the dead. A "who's who" of early San Francisco occupied the guest list of the "silent city" including: Andrew Halladie, the inventor of the cable car; David Broderick, the popular US senator, who was killed in a duel at Lake Merced by the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court; James King of William, whose assassination resurrected the Vigilantes in 1856; Senators Latham, Baker, Sharon, Fair and even Napoleon's son.

1870s-1880s: The Bush and Pine Sts. corridor was developed in the 1870s and 1880s when the cable and streetcar lines were extended westward. The residences were built on typically long narrow lots (25 by 100 feet), were financed by the enterprising building societies of the building and loan associations. Some of the lots were sold by lottery.

1870s: The Sierra granite wall surrounding the block (California to Pine Sts. and Mason to Powell Sts.) on which the mansions of Mark Hopkins and Leland Stanford stood was erected by the engineers of the Central Pacific Railroad in the mid-1870s

The hollow north of the ridge in Pacific Heights was called "Golden Gate Valley". It was dotted by vegetable and dairy farms. The Laguna Pequeña by the bay shore provided fresh water and allowed the establishment of laundries and dairy farms, which gave rise to the name "Cow Hollow".

"The Chinese must go!" movement gathered steam.

Mid 1870s: From the middle seventies onward he [John Mackay] made the Palace Hotel his headquarters when he was in San Francisco. One day a stranger stopped at the desk and asked to see the mining man. "Mr. Mackay? He just stepped into the bar with some other other gentlemen," said the clerk. "But how will I recognize him?" asked the visitor. "He'll be the one who says nothing and pays the bill." The stranger went in, regarded the group at the bar for a few moments, then stepped forward and unerringly tapped Mackay on the shoulder (Lewis 1959: 51).

1870: By 1870, San Francisco's population had reached 150,000. According to one newspaper account, there were 122 San Franciscans who controlled approximately $146 million in local capital. At the top of the list with $10 million was Leland Stanford, who would head the Southern Pacific for 28 years and serve as both governor and a United States senator (Wiley 2000: 35).

01.1870: David P. Marshall purchased the site of Jobson's Observatory located on the northernmost block of Russian Hill's Summit bounded by Jones, Green, Taylor and Vallejo Streets (Christopher VerPlanck).

S.F. Board of Supervisors chose the Yerba Buena Cemetery as the new site for the new City Hall. Remains from Yerba Buena Cemetery began to be transferred to Golden Gate cemetery, allowing for the construction of the new City Hall. Three thousand bodies were removed from Yerba Buena Cemetery to the new Golden Gate Cemetery.

1871-75: William Hammond Hall, an ex-Army engineer, was appointed the first superintendent of Golden Gate Park in 1871. In five years, in spite of inadequate support, he designed the park, discovered how to anchor the sand dunes by planting imported sand grass, and how to make the trees grow. By 1875 he had initiated the landscaping of the eastern end of the barren waste. But, not being a politician, he resigned in disgust after struggling vainly against budget cuts.

1871: San Francisco Art Association founded. Within a few years its membership counted over six hundred names, and it was able to lease rooms on Pine Street over the California Market, on the same floor as the Bohemian Club; in fact, the Art Association was a sub-tenant of the Club, which held a lease of the entire floor. Later the Art Association occupied the Mark Hopkins sumptuous residence. For a number of years Virgil Macey Williams, portrait painter, landscape artist, was director of the Art Association, and to his untiring efforts may be attributed to the success of its School of Design, now grown to be one of the institutions of the art world. Gutzon Borglum, Robert I. Atken, Harrison Fisher, Jules Pages, and many other notable artists studied there.

04.04.1871: The President signed the bill introduced and passed by both Houses to send a commission to Nevada and examine the mines and determine the utility of Sutro's tunnel, its necessity to the Ledge, the cost, possibility, practicability, etc. (Lyman 1937: 181).

1872-73: William Sharon and John P. Jones fought tooth and nail for the prize [of Senator] in 1873; both were owners of bonanza mines and the spending was prodigious. Sharon was defeated; but four years later he returned to the lists, and this time the "overmastering weight of his sock" permitted him to carry off the plum. Part of the contents of his sock went to buy the Enterprise, the politics of which thereupon made a complete about-face. "You have fastened yourself upon the vitals of the state like a hyena," it had saluted Sharon at the opening of his campaign in 1872. Four years later it was telling its subscribers: "The present prosperity of Western Nevada is more due to Mr. Sharon than to any ten men..." (Lewis 1959: 34).

1872: Mayor Tom Hayes' 160-acre estate burned down in Hayes Valley. The tract lay between Alamo and Duboce parks on the western edge of the city. It included a pleasure garden with an art gallery and a concert hall, and was fore runner to the Civic Center.

Construction of the new City Hall began.

05.07.1872: Comstock mining stocks were at their zenith for the year. Their value on the San Francisco stock market was estimated at $81 million. The supposed bonanza Jones had uncovered in the "Savage" mine had inflated them more than ever. Hayward and Jones had "bulled" the stock up to $700 a share. As soon as prices had reached the highest peak Sharon threw a large block of his own "Savage" stock upon the market. The impact was terrific. Listed stocks shrank more than $48,834,000. Between the 6th and 8th of May, "Belcher" dropped from $1525 to $850; "Crown Point" fell off 200 points; "Savage" lost 260 points. Over night, millionaires with paper fortunes became paupers. Business was crushed. Thousands were thrown out of employment. Jones and Hayward were crippled: the one lost a cool million dollars, the other twice that amount. While the great "bear" Sharon, salvaged $5 million from the debacle. He had thrown enough stock on the market to break every margin operator (Lyman 1937: 215-16).

05.08.1872: There appeared, in The San Francisco Chronicle, an article accusing Jones of incendiarism, alledging that he had been privy to the act of firing the "Yellow Jacket" mine. Isaac J. Hubbell, the underground foreman of the "Crown Point" mine had first voiced these accusations on the night of the disaster. Sharon brought Hubbell to San Francisco, paid his railroad fare and all attendant expenses and set him up at the Occidental Hotel. Sharon interviewed Hubbell with several witnesses present and promised to pay him $50,000 if he would swear to an affidavit charging John P. Jones with the crime. Sharon was counting on the fact that "a charge preferred is a charge half-proven." Not all, but at least part of the mud slung was bound to stick. Forever Jones would be besmirched. Some men would always remember that Jones had been accused of the crime. In the reaction Jones would be defeated in the Nevada elections and Sharon would be swept into the Senate.

The publication of this story found its repercussions in the stock market. Before three weeks had elapsed, shrinkage in stock values amounted to $61 million. But the story that Sharon had hatched to destroy his rival acted like a boomerang. As an upshot, the Storey County Grand Jury indicted Sharon for conspiracy and exonerated Jones of all complicity. This ended Sharon's bid for the U. S. Senate. That was not all. Sharon's accusations had injured the Bank of California and had shaken public confidence in their management of the Comstock mines. As a result, Eastern and European capitalists had withdrawn large quantities of capital from the stock market. Ralston feared if the same state of affairs continued it would result in a disastrous financial crisis (Lyman 1937: 216-18).

05.18.1872: The "Sargent's Mining Bill," was passed. It included the following passage, purposely to cover the field of precious stones: "Including all forms of deposit, except veins of quartz or other rock then in place. This was achieved as a result of Ralston's effort to get a law passed that would allow him to procure title to the diamond fields allegedly discovered by Philip Arnold and John Slack, who perpetrated the Great Diamond Hoax. Ralston capitalized "The San Francisco and New York Mining and Commercial Company" at $10 million. The subscribers included twenty-five of the cream of San Francisco's financial element and included A. Gansl, the Rothschilds' California representative, along with William M. Lent, Thomas Selby, Milton S. Latham, Louis Sloss, Maurice Dore, W. F. Babcock, William C. Ralston, and William Willis. Handsome offices were engaged in San Francisco and the interests of Arnold and Slack were bought at $660,000.

At this juncture, however, Clarence King, head of the Fortieth Parallel Survey, telegraphed from Wyoming: "The alleged diamond fields are fraudulent. Plainly they are salted. The discovery is a gigantic fraud." When Arnold's picture was eventually displayed in London newspapers, he was recognized as a buyer of low-grade diamonds and other jewels in the big centers of London and Amsterdam, thus exposing beyond doubt the fraudulent nature of the jewel fields. Ralston restored dollar for dollar the money subscribed and assumed the loss for incidental lobbying and experting fees. He had the receipts-in-full (some half million dollars) framed and hung them on his office wall, where he might have a continual reminder alike of the faith and the duplicity of man. Subsequently Wm. C. Lent and Capt. I. W. Leese went to Hardin County, Kentucky, and forced Arnold to disgorge about $150,000 of the sum Lent himself had invested (Lyman 1937: 196; 200-201; 348).

1872: Mahlon Loomis received a patent on a device using aerials (in the form of kites) and a ground connection to transmit messages over long distances. Loomis also successfully introduced the "Loomis Aerial Telegraphy Bill" before the U.S. Congress. In 1886, Loomis sent wireless messages fourteen miles between two mountains in Virginia, and a few years later, he also sent messages between ships two miles apart in Chesapeake Bay (Seifer 1996: 107).

1873: The English engineer, Andrew Hallidie, invented the cable car and ran the first line up Clay Street. Shortly thereafter The California St. line was installed and Nob Hill received its name, perhaps because of its shape, or because its first inhabitants were referred to as "Nabobs". They included the Big Four, who controlled the all-powerful railroads, the Comstock Bonanza kings, and others.

The uncovering of the big bonanza in 1873 had fired the imagination of the whole country, and during the next half-dozen years a steady stream of visitors arrived [in Virginia City], all eager to see the fabulous treasure-trove (Lewis 1959: 22).

Ultimately [William] Ralston was outflanked by James Flood, William O'Brien, James Fair, and John McKay, the so-called Bonanza Kings. Flood and O'Brien were saloonkeepers and sometime stockbrokers; Fair and McKay their mine superintendents. After accumulating stock in two Virginia City mines, in 1873 they hit the Big Bonanza, an enormous pocket of silver ore that produced $100 million in its first five years (Wiley 2000: 34).

03.01.1873: By March 1, 1873, the main ore vein discovered by James Fair in the hard, barren rock on the 1167-foot level of the "Gould and Curry" mine had widened to twelve feet and was assayed $60 to the ton (Lyman 1937: 227).

07.01.1873: With a loan of $650,000 from McCalmont's bank, Sutro returned to Nevada. Overnight a mushroom town, named "Sutro" after himself, sprang up about the mouth of the tunnel. Grouped about "Sutro's mansion," (a colossal white Victorian structure, lashed to San Mountain's hardrock by iron cables) were smithies, foundries, numerous machine shops, a church, a hotel, cheerful bar-rooms, a newspaper, a dance-hall, and every accommodation to promote the driving of a tunnel in a big way. Work progressed night and day. Three to four hundred men divided into eight-hour shifts carried on the responsibilities of driving the face of the header toward the Lode.

Before winter, Shaft No. 1, 4915 from the mouth, was begun. By July 1, 1873, it had reached the level of the header; Shaft No. 2 was located 9065 feet from the tunnel entrance; its depth to the tunnel grade was set at 1041 feet; Shaft No. 3 was located 13,545 feet from the tunnel entrance and its depth to the tunnel level was 1361 feet; Shaft No. 4 was located 17,695 feet from the entrance with a depth of 1485 feet. During the year work was going on in all four shafts and the tunnel had reached a point 2665 feet from its mouth. A good half mile and only three and a half more to bore.

Ralston and Sharon were paralyzed with surprise at McCalmont's loan. They were dumbfounded at the speed Sutro was making toward their Lode. Every day brought him appreciably closer to those two-dollar royalties. At first Sutro had been a joke, then a threat, now he was a positive menace (Lyman 1937: 184-85).

12.31.1873: Cross-cuts showed the center of the "Consolidated Virginia" bonanza was richer than its outlying surfaces. The mind refused to grasp so much wealth. The fancy of the coolest brain ran wild. The bonanza was known to extend into "Consolidated California." A few there were in the secret, who prophesied that it would extend far into "Ophir." No such wealth had ever been known on the Comstock or in the world, before.

It was December 31, 1873, yet no one grasped the situation but Mackay and Fair, Flood and O'Brien. It was the spring, then the summer of 1874. Still, no one was privy to their secret. Their eyes were dazzled by the sight of so much gold and silver but their brains were cool. Why let other people know what they could see for themselves? Why brag when they could enjoy? They were miners not speculators. They didn't care anything about reaping the stock market or exciting envy (Lyman 1937: 233-34).

1874: Many of the earliest buildings in the city, such as the United States Mint, designed by Alfred Mullett in 1874, were in the Classical Revival style. San Francisco Public Library. (Wiley 2000: 127).

02.1874: The California School of Design (CSD) is founded by the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) and opens in February 1874 in the SFAA offices at 313 Pine Street. Virgil Macey Williams, a landscape painter, is the first director; students are required to be at least 14 years old. About 40 students are enrolled, most of them women.

1875: Challenged for control of the Comstock, [William] Ralston continued to spend recklessly on various enterprises, including work on the Palace Hotel, which became the largest building west of the Mississippi. In August 1875 the battle between the Bonanza Kings [James Flood, William O'Brien, James Fair, John McKay] and Ralston triggered a run on the Bank of California, which led to the closing of the bank and a near riot. Ralston, forced by his board of directors to resign and turn over all his assets to pay his debts, mysteriously drowned while taking his daily swim in the bay (Wiley 2000: 34).

A city that wielded an influence overshadowing that of places ten times its size was naturally much in the public eye. Leading journals regularly sent correspondents to observe and descrivbe the fantastic happenings on the lode. One of the most observant arrived in 1875, charged with explaining the phenomenon to readers of Mr. Greeley's Tribune. The New Yorker found the region totally unlike anythiing he had seen on his world-wide travels. He explained that the great ore bodies lay beneath the shoulder of a large and undecorative mountain and that the mountain itself loomed above as scarred and desolate a region as he ever hoped to see. It was a spot where few men would willingly have chosen to live, yet the journalist found there a modern, solidly built city, from which arose, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a continuous humming roar of activity. He presently identified the roar: it came from hundreds of stamps in the mills of the lower town, ceaselessly rising and falling as they reduced to powder the famous Comstock ore. Overlaying this monotone was a medley of other sounds, the concerted scrape of miner's boots over the plank sidewalks as shifts changed, the blasts of scores of whistles, all pitched to different keys and all active, the periodical jolting blasts in the undergound stopes. Until they had become habituated to this clatter, strangers found sleep impossible. For the first three nights the Tribune's man lay awake until dawn.

It was not alone Virginia's lack of nocturnal quiet that stirred the visitor's interest. He walked the length of C Street, passing block after block of brick-and-stone business houses. Like others before him, he wondered why the residents had built so substantially on so insecure an economic foundation. The lode's ore deposits were of course of unknown depth and might at any time yield up the last of their millable quartz. By their nature mining towns were ephemeral places, thrown up to serve a temporary need and to be casually abandoned when their usefulness ended; yet here was one that had clearly been designed to last a century.

The place abounded in other paradoxes. With rare exceptions all male citizens wore the rough garb of day-laborers; all patronized the same bars, ate at the same restaurants, and speculated in the same stocks at the same brokerage offices. Impossible to tell who were the four-dollar-a-day miners and who the owners of bonanzas currently paying their million a month in dividends. In most mine or mill towns of the seventies the typical resident lived in a squalid shack, ate coarse food in inadequate quantities, and existed on the ragged edge of want. Not so his Virginia City compatriot. Close observation convinced the Tribune reporter that to the last man (and woman) Virginia's citizens had the tastes of Sybarites. The town's merchants catered exclusively to a luxury trade. Stores were piled high with quality merchandise, all in brisk demand; only inferior goods remained on the shelves (Lewis 1959: 4-6).

In 1875 so large a volume of water was encountered in the Hale and Norcross and Savage [mines] that their powerful pumps were unable to cope with it and the lower workings were flooded to a depth of 450 feet (Lewis 1959: 19-20).

08.25.1875: Ralston ordered the superintendent of the Louis and Garnett refinery to take just about two million dollars' worth of gold bullion to the United States Mint and have it struck into twenty-dollar pieces (Lyman 1937: 284).

08.26.1875: The run on Ralston's Bank of California occured. About ten o'clock that night, Ralston called his staff about him and made the following statement: "The rumors that have been in circulation about Mssrs. Flood and O'Brien crowding the bank are utterly false, and I desire that each and every one of you will flatly contradict them whenever you hear them uttered. On the contrary, the most cordial feeling exists between Messrs. Flood and O'Brien and the bank, and so far from crowding us they have granted us sundry favors. The truth is, the money is not in the State, and unfortunately we had too many depositors; so when the crisis came we could not supply all. As to yourselves, ou need have no misgivings about the future, for I this night enter into a contract to provide each and every one of you with a first-class position." (Lyman 1937: 298).

08.27.1875: Ralston surrendered all his property, his villa at Belmont, and his town house on Pine Street. He executed a deed of trust, conveying everything, real and personal, to William Sharon, for the benefit of his creditors.

In the report to the directors of the bank, Ralston showed himself debtor to the bank for over four million dollars, to Sharon two millions, to others about three and a half millions, a total of nine and one-half million dollars.

Ralston left the bank and walked to North Beach, where he donned a pair of trunks at the Neptune Bath House. He left his suit with the attendant, Clarance Richards; something he had never done before. Once in the water, Ralston was accompanied for a time by a boy named Alfred Fanley, who turned back. Ralston continued out into the bay. When his body was recoved, the autopsy revealed no water in his lungs; his brain was congested. The New York Life Insurance Company paid $65,000 due his widow without question (Lyman 1937: 299-313; 366-67).

10.1875: He [John Mackay] imposed one condition on recipients of his bounty: his donations must always be anonymous. Sam Davis recalled that once on his reporter's round at Virginia he examined an account book at the Sisters' Hospital, thinking it was open for inspection. There he found that Mackay's name was down for a monthly contribution of five hundred dollars, but when he proposed making a public announcement of the gift, the sisters urged him to say nothing: Mr. Mackay had made it clear that if the news got out, the monthly payments would stop. Similarly during one of the slack periods on the Comstock, when most of the mines were shut down, Mackay secretly authorized a Virginia City grocer to supply provisions to any customer who was unable to pay. That winter Mackay's grocery bill averaged three thousand dollars a month. The great fire of October 1875, which wiped out the entire central part of the town [Virginia City], made even heavier demands on his purse. While the fire was at its height, one of Father Manogue's parishioners lamented that Virginia's beautiful little church, St. Mary's of the Mountains, was in ruins. Mackay was furiously busy directing efforts to heap sand and rock over the mouth of the great Consolidated Virginia shaft. He paused long enough to assure the speaker that if the fire could be kept from the mine's lower workings he would gladly rebuild "twenty churches." St. Mary's of the Mountains was duly rebuilt, largely with Mackay's help; it remains today the chief ornament of the decaying town (Lewis 1959: 59-60).

1876: After 1876, visitors [to Virginia City] were put up in style at the new International, five stories high and boasting the only hydraulic elevator between Chicago and the Coast, and boasting too a cuisine and wine cellar equal to Delmonico's in New York (Lewis 1959: 22-23).

1877: The temporary closure of the Bank of California in 1875 was followed by recession. Two years later the campaign against the Chinese led once again to violence. During an anti-Chinese rally shots were fired into a crowd of several thousand gathered at the sandlots. Part of the mob set out to burn Chinatown, attacking Chinese along the way. Another group headed for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company docks at Steamboat Point, the principal disembarkation point for newly arriving Chinese. A three-day battle ensued as the mob tried to burn the Pacific Mail facility (Wiley 2000: 36).

Reverend Joseph Worcester's first house was a spacious dwelling in Piedmont, which he built himself in 1877. Later the abode of Jack London, Worcester's Piedmont house was very possibly the first rustic Shingle Style dwelling in California (Christopher VerPlanck).

The California School of Design (CSD) and the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) move to new quarters above the California Market at 430 Pine Street, next to the Bohemian Club.

03.25.1877: The first number of the San Francisco Argonaut appeared.

07.1877: In July 1877, miners sinking a shaft in the Savage encountered water so hot (157 degrees) that they worked in clouds of stifling vapor, their pick handles so hot they were obliged to use gloves; cloths repeatedly dipped in ice-water were wrapped about the drills (Lewis 1959: 18).

1878: Railroad baron Mark Hopkins's house on top of Nob Hill, built in 1878 with its towers, high-peaked gables, and gingerbread trimmings, came to epitomize Victorian excess in a private residence (Wiley 2000: 130).

Irishman Denis Kearney, drayman and fiery orator, assumed leadership of the anti-Chinese agitators. His message, couched in violent language, was a simple one: Smash the monopolies controlled by the Nob Hill millionairs and run the Chinese out of town. In 1878, Kearney and his associates formed the Workingmen's Party of California and catapulted to power at the state and local levels. San Francisco seemed to teeter on the brink. Some business leaders, eager to revive the vigilance committee, saw anarchy stalking in the wings (Wiley 2000: 37).

A number of charitable organizations applied for plots of land for their deceased members in the Golden Gate cemetery.

The Sutro Tunnel was broken through in 1878, after thirteen years of Herculean effort, and only then was the water brought under control. The tunnel, with its lateral extensions north and south, tapped the lode at the 1,650-foot level and it was necessary only to pump from the bottoms of the shafts to that point. But the long delay in completing the project had rendered it comparatively useless. By then the last of the great ore bodies had been worked out and--no others of comparable size having been discovered--operations began the decline that was to end a few years later in an almost complete stoppage (Lewis 1959: 20).

In San Francisco in the summer of '78 Mackay learned that a fellow guest at the Palace Hotel, an actor named Henry Montague (who had played opposite Adelaide Neilson) was desperately ill with consumption. Mackay unobtrusively paid his hotel and doctor's bills and, after he died, shipped his body to his family in the East (Lewis 1959: 54).

1879: Each visitor received a welcome befitting his importance. Generals Sherman and Sheridan, James G. Blaine, Hennry Ward Beecher, Presidents Harrison and Hayes and a dozen others were met at the depot, paraded through the streets behind uniformed drill teams, serenaded by the combined Virginia City and Gold Hill bands, taken on a tour of the mines, and tendered a banquet in the marble-floored dining room of the International. These celebrations reached their climax during General Grant's visit in 1879. He and his party were taken on a two-hour tour of the bonanza mines; when they reached the surface the usually taciturn general remarked: "That's as close to hell as I ever want to get!"

An instructive half day could be spent following the course of the ore from the time it issued from the shafts until the refined metal, cast in heavy ingots, was wheeled into the bullion room and stacked like cordwood to await shipment to Carson City or San Francisco. The huge California mill, completed in 1879, with its eighty stamps, its batteries of amalgamating pans, agitators, and settlers, was hailed as the most complete and efficient ore-reducing plant in mining history; it was but one of a score of mills whose tall stacks day and night poured plumes of wood-smoke into the desert air (Lewis 1959: 23-24).

1880s: With the Stick Style (i.e. the Westerfeld House, a Stick mansion in Alamo Square) and a variation known as Eastlake, which were popular in the 1880s, architects squared off bay windows and added more ornamentation (Wiley 2000: 129).

The Haas-Lilienthal House at 2007 Franklin, a Queen Anne--a style also popular beginning in the 1880s. Architects emphasized irregular massing and added turrets and towers while experimenting with a variety of ornamental schemes. The Foundation for San Francisco's Architectural Heritage (Wiley 2000: 130).

Public outcry was heard for land used up by cemeteries.

1880: The boundaries of Chinatown were California to Broadway, Kearny to Stockton. The street runing through the heart of the district originally called Calle de la Fundacion ("Foundation Street"), subsequently called Dupont, was renamed yet again as Grant Ave to honor the General of the same name.

Edward Muybridge presents a lecture at the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) demonstrating his new invention, the Zoopraxiscope. It is the first public showing of a moving picture.

City prohibited further burials in the Mission Dolores and Jewish Cementeries.

1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed.

1883: The Southern Pacific Railroad ran the first cable car line out Haight from Market to Stanyan. This led to rapid development of the sparsely populated Haight-Ashbury district where one of the so-called Big Four of the Southern Pacific, William Crocker, owned large tracts of land. Previously this area served as the site of dairy farms and ranches.

1885: Samuel and Joseph C. Newsom designed the George Philips Flats at 1039-43 Green in the Paris Block on the south side of Green Street on Russian Hill. Other important buildings in the Paris Block include the O'Brien House at 1045 Green, the David Atkins House at 1055 Green Street (redesigned by architect Julia Morgan in 1915) and Engine House No. 31 (designed by city Architect, Newton J. Tharp in 1908) (Christopher VerPlanck).

1884: In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C., the Greenwich Meridian was adopted as the baseline for measuring longitude. The 25 participating countries put the matter to the vote and 22 of them voted for Greenwich (France and Brazil abstained). From 1884 until 1911, the French continued to use the Paris Observatory as their zero-degree meridian and Paris Mean Time retarded by nine minutes 21 seconds.

1885: A group of women artists including several graduates of the California School of Design (CSD)--in response to the men-only Spring Shows sponsored annually by the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA)--holds the first women-only exhibition.

1886-1943: W. H. Hall was convinced to again take up the Golden Gate Park project. He accepted only long enough to hire his successor, the famous "Uncle John" McLaren, who went on to be the superintendent from 1886 to 1943, when he died in office at the age of 96. During that time, he completed the park, landscaped the Panama Pacific International Exposition, planted Dolores street's parks, and generally dominated the city's landscaping for some 60 years.

1887: Willis Jefferson Polk's skills as a designer could not be overlooked for long and in 1887, not yet the age of 20, Polk signed on as a draftsman in the Kansas City offices of Howe and Van Brunt, formerly of Boston. Van Brunt had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and was well versed in its practices (Christopher VerPlanck).

Residents finally convinced the Board to appoint a committee to investigate the desirability of closing the Golden Gate Cemetery. The committee recommended its closure and gave the following details of burials:

The Committee also recommended that a plot of land of 174 acres be purchased in San Mateo County at $160 an acre. The proposal met with hostile criticism and was abandoned, burials continuing. Catholics established Holy Cross as the first cemetery in Colma, south of the city line.

1888: The Financial District began to expand vertically with the advent of earthquake-resistant steel framed buildings over 10 stories high; California and Montgomery Sts. become the heart of the district.

In January 1870, David P. Marshall purchased the site of Jobson's Observatory. He left the site vacant for eighteen years until 1888, when his wife, Emilie, asked her pastor, Swedenborgian minister Reverend Joseph Worcester, to design three houses for her husband's property. Worcester, one of the most influential cultural figures in late nineteenth-century San Francisco, was an amateur architect as well as a man of the cloth, and he willingly obliged Mrs. Marshall. In the process, he designed three of the most influential houses ever constructed in the Bay Area. Two of these houses at 1034 and 1036 Vallejo still exist. Although to the average passerby these houses do not appear to be that special, their impact in the 1880s was tremendous. Their simple shingled walls, minimal ornament and straightforward arrangement of openings contrasted violently with the gingerbread excess of Victorian row houses then being built by the dozen by contractors in the Victorian suburbs of the Western Addition and Mission Districts. Generally held to be the earliest surviving examples of the "woodsy" Bay Region Tradition, 1034 and 1036 Vallejo Street have influenced generations of later architects in search of the naturalistic and minimalist aesthetic espoused by Reverend Joseph Worcester (Christopher VerPlanck).

Following the construction of 1034 and 1036 Vallejo, Worcester built his own cottage immediately to the east, at 1030 Vallejo Street, also on Marshall's land. After Worcester moved in, several prominent painters and writers who were close to him began to visit the shingle cottage at 1030 Vallejo, including the portrait painter Mary Curtis Richardson, Worcester's close friend and painter William Keith, naturalist John Muir, aesthete and writer Charles Keeler and architect Willis Polk. Richardson lived in one of Worcester's cottages at 1038 Vallejo Street (now demolished) until her death in 1931 (Christopher VerPlanck).

Gelette Burgess worked as a topographer and surveyor for the Southern Pacific Railroad in California before moving to San Francisco in 1888 (Christopher VerPlanck).

1889: Ernest Ransome designed the Alford Lake Bridge (the first reinforced concrete bridge in the U.S.) in Golden Gate Park.

The Jews followed the Catholics and established Home of Peace [later renamed Dolores Park] in Colma to receive bodies from their old cemetery in the Mission.

1890s: The numerous Queen Anne style apartments and flats in the Haight-Ashbury district testifies to the peak of the development boom occurring at the end of the 19th century.

Reverend Joseph Worcester was not the only cultural figure of prominence to attract a group of artistic and literary followers. Worcester's neighbor, Kate Atkinson, still lived at 1032 Broadway in the house her father had built in 1853. During the 1890s, a group of aesthetes who called themselves Les Jeunes, began meeting at Atkinson's house for late-night reveries and wine-fueled discussions. The group, which consisted at various times of Willis Polk, Gelett Burgess, Bruce Porter, Florence Lundborg and Porter Garnett, worked together to produce a literary journal called The Lark (Christopher VerPlanck).

Starting in the 1890s, San Francisco's architects became infatuated with neoclassicism as taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (Wiley 2000: 131).

1890: Canadian Emily Carr moves to San Francisco to begin three years of study at the California School of Design (CSD). In 1978 the Vancouver School of Art is renamed the Emily Carr College of Art.

1891: Displeased by the barnyard aromas wafting up from Cow Hollow below, the owners of the prestigious homes along the ridge of Pacific Heights convinced the city to shut down the dairy industry and assign prisoners the task of filling the lagoon with sand from the nearby dunes.

After meeting local business magnate and Russian Hill property owner Horatio P. Livermore, Willis Polk moved to leased quarters in Livermore's vacant residence at 1023 Vallejo Street (now 40 Florence Street) in 1891. Polk quickly set to work remodeling the interior of the already much altered house originally built in 1854 by contractor David Morrison. Polk's remodel of the first floor soon attracted the attention of San Francisco's high society for its grace and avoidance of cheap Victorian frippery. Polk soon began to attract a social circle to events at 1023 Vallejo, including other rising architects such as Ernest Coxhead and John Galen Howard (Christopher VerPlanck).

The U.S. government filed a condemnation suit against the City to acquire a portion of the [Golden Gate] cemetery, 54 acres, for coastal defense purposes. The City challenged the suit in court, but lost receiving $75,000 in compensation.

1892: In 1892, Polk's family joined him in San Francisco. Willis Jr., his father Willis W. Polk and Willis Jr.'s brother Dan reconstituted the design-build firm they had operated in Kansas City. One of the most notable commissions executed by Polk and Polk in San Francisco, and a landmark on the Summit of Russian Hill to this day, is the Polk-Williams House at 1013-19 Vallejo Street. The large shingled house was built as a duplex, with the eastern 20 feet of frontage on Vallejo Street belonging to the Polks and the western 40 feet belonging to Dora Williams. With its steeply pitched gable roofs, shingled exteriors and small casement windows, the almost mediaeval effects of Polk's residential masterpiece recalled the cottages designed by the Reverend Joseph Worcester three years earlier at 1034-36 Vallejo Street. The Polk-Williams house was ingeniously placed on the steep rocky site to take advantage of both the sun and the dramatic views of downtown San Francisco. While the Vallejo Street elevation was only two stories in height, the steep grade to the rear meant that the back of the house was nearly six stories in height, with a profusion of balconies taking advantage of the dramatic site. When the house was completed in 1893, Willis Polk had a plaque made for the front door with an inscription that read: "Was Kummerts Den Mond das de Hunde Bellen," which translated from German means, "What does the moon care that the hound howls below?" (Christopher VerPlanck)

Led by Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick Riordan, San Franciscans sought to create a new necropolis in a fault-carved valley five miles to the south. When Riordan walked out and blessed a potato field as the new site of the Catholic [Holy Cross] Cemetery in 1892, he started a movement which culminated in the establishment of the world's only incorporated city where the dead outnumber the living. Prominent San Francisco businessmen established a nondenominational cemetery Cypress Lawn in Colma between the Catholic Holy Cross and Jewish Home of Peace cemetaries.

06.02.1892: "THE GOLDEN GATE CEMETERY. A jury in the Circuit Court Hearing Evidence in a Condemnation Suite. The trial of the United States against the City and County of San Francisco for the purpose of a condemnation and valuation of 54 acres of land, now being known as the Golden Gate Cemetery, was commenced yesterday in the United State Circuit Court before Judge McKenna and jury. The Secretary of War some time ago recommended that the land be condemned so as to be available for fortification purposes. The city disputes the Government's claim that the intended fortifications are of greater public need than the cemetery now occupying the tract. United States District Attorney Garter represents the Government at the trial, and John H. Durst, the City and County Attorney, assisted by John J. Stevens conduct the opposition. Two expert real estate men have been selected to value the land in controversy. These are, for the Government, Thomas Magee, and for the city and county, R.P. Hammond, Jr. Among the other witnesses subponaed are J.J. O'Farrell, George Toy and C.D. Carter, all dealers in real estate." (Source: San Francisco Morning Call, 2 June 1892).

1893: The San Francisco Art Association and the California School of Design move to the former mansion of Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill; the school is renamed the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, and is eventually moved to the remodeled stables.

In 1893, under the leadership of Chicago's Daniel Burnham, a group of distinguished architects, many of them trained at the École [des Beaux-Arts], designed the buildings for Chicago's Columbian Exposition. This was a pivotal moment in American architecture, the beginning of the ascendancy of the neoclassical style and the inspiration for what was known as the City Beautiful movement...it was Burnham, first with a plan for completion of the nation's capital, then with a plan for San Francisco, who was at the forefront of this movement (Wiley 2000: 132).

01.16.1893: Westinghouse came out with an announcement touting the Tesla multiphase, or polyphase, system which was circulated to the electrical magazines and major competitors. Having "secured exclusive right to manufacture and sell apparatus covered by [Tesla's] patents" the Westinghouse company promised to use such apparatus to economically harness the many waterfalls which were wasting so much energy (Seifer 1996: 101).

Willis Polk...described the city's Victorian Western Addition neighborhood in 1893 as an architectural nightmare conceived in a reign of terror and produced by artistic anarchists. The proudest boast of our modern householder," he continued, "is that he has all the latest conveniences and he particularly calls attention to the fact that his gables, turrets, bay-windows, and filigree work are entirely original, and that no one has anything like them." (in Wiley 2000: 128).

John Mackay's cabin was brought down from the vicinity of Downieville for exhibition at San Francisco's Midwinter Fair (Lewis 1959: 50).

05.01.1893: Columbian Exposition opened in Chicago. It covered almost seven hundred acres, had sixty thousand exhibitors and cost $25 million. With 28 million attendees, the Chicago Fair boasted a $2.25 million profit. Whereas the Paris Exposition of 1889 had the stupendous 984-foot tall Eiffel Tower, the Chicago Fair boasted the Ferris wheel. Revolving on the largest one-piece axle ever forged, the wheel stood 264 feet high and had a seating capacity of over two thousand....

The chief architect, Chicagoan Daniel Hudson Burnham, along with the other planners, based their design on a city of waterways, much like Venice, with a "Court of Honor" centrally placed to house the major "palaces." With wooden facades made to resemble marble, the buildings rivaled even the great stone achievements of the ancient Romans and Greeks. The Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Pavilion, more than twice the size of the others, was "by far, the largest building in the world." Nearly a third of a mile long and well over two football fields wide, the structure covered 30.5 acres and had a seating capacity of seventy-five thousand....

The Electricity Pavilion, adorned with a dozen elegant minarets, four of which rose 169 feet above the hall, was over two football fields in length and nearly half that measure in width. Covering three and one-half acres, this "spacious and stately" structure "befit[ted] the seat of the most novel and brilliant exhibit of the Columbian Exposition."

Foremost among the exhibitors were the megalithic corporations, such as Westinghouse and GE, from America, and the more modest sized AEG, from Germany. Whereas AEG reproduced some of the AC equipment Brown and Dobrowolsky used in their "epoch-making" 108-mile Lauffen-to-Frankfurt transmission, GE presented its own AC system. Westinghouse, have won the bid to light the fair with the only bona fide patents, was in an odd situation. Legally, it should have been able to block the competitors from advertising pirated apparatus, but pragmatically, considering time limitations and other factors, such a tactical action was out of the question. In fact, in some ways, they owed AEG gratitude for pointing the way. Their course was to make it clear that there was only one inventor. And so they erected a forty-five-foot high monument in the center aisle of Electricity Hall which proclaimed the truth to the world. The testimonial read in big bold letters: Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. Tesla Polyphase System. And with this method, from an annex of Macinery Hall, Westinghouse illuminated the entire World's Fair. Having manufactured a quarter of a million Sawyer-Mann stopper lamps for the occasion, Westinghouse generated three times more electrical energy than was then being utilized in the entire city of Chicago.

Other features within Electricity Hall ... [were] displays by the most prominent inventors of the day. Elihu Thomson ... unleashed a high-frequency coil that created sparks five feet long; Alexander Graham Bell unveiled a telephone that could transmit voice via light beams; and Elish Gray presented his teleautography machine, a precursor of today's fax machine....

Tom Edison presented ... the multiplex telegraph, the fantastic talking machine known as the phonograph, and his kinetescope, which for the first time in a public forum displayed "the varying labile movements" of a human being in motion.

Tesla's exhibit, which occupied part of the Westinghouse space, featured a number of his early AC devices, including motors, armatures, and generators, phosphorescent signs of noted electricians, such as Helmholtz, Faraday, Maxwell, Henry, and Franklin, and a sign for his favorite Serbian poet Jovan Zmaj Jovanovich. Tesla also displayed vacuum tubes illuminated by means of wireless transmission, his rotating egg of Columbus, sheets of crackling light created by high-frequency discharges between two insulated plates, and other neon signs reading Westinghouse, and Welcome Electricians. These last two displays "produc[ed] the effect of a modified lightning discharge...accompanied by a similar deafening noise. This was probably one of the most novel attractions in a sensational way seen in the building, as the noise could be heard anywhere within Electicity Building and the flash of the miniature lightning was very brilliant and startling (Seifer 1996: 117-120).

03.04.1894: S. L. Clemens ... came to the [Tesla] laboratory on March 4, 1894, and again on April 26.... Twain had been aware of Tesla from the very first moment that the inventor had gone public with his creation of the AC polyphase system. Back in November 1888, Twain had written: "I have just seen the drawings and description of an electrical machine lately patented by a Mr. Tesla, and sold to the Westinghouse Company, which will revolutionize the whole electric business of the world. It is the most valuable patent since the telephone.... The Twain pictures ... were the first ever taken with phosphorescent lights (Seifer 1996: 127-29).

1894: The Japanese Tea Garden, designed by George Turner Marsh, was built for the 1894 Mid-Winter Fair, the first major event held in Golden Gate Park. The Tea Garden proved so popular that it was preserved and remains to this day. From 1907 to 1942 the concession was run by the Hagiwaras family, who invented fortune cookies along the way. The family was deported in 1942, victims of the WW II xenophobia.

Gelett Burgess, the primary contributor to The Lark, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1866. Burgess worked as a topographer and surveyor for the Southern Pacific Railroad in California before moving to San Francisco in 1888. Tiring of his job, Burgess found a job teaching cartography and civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. During his free time, he established the Harrison Street Boys Club for working-class boys in South of Market. After moving to a ramshackle cottage at 1031 Vallejo in 1894, Burgess with his friend Bruce Porter began publishing The Lark. The journal appears to have been inspired in part by European journals of fin-de-siecle Vienna, with artwork reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley and the Austrian Secessionists. Burgess, known for his mischievous poems and drawings, is best known to this day for the following illustrated verse:

Although The Lark only ran for two years (folding in April 1897), the undertaking won Burgess a modicum of national notoriety (Christopher VerPlanck).

01.1895: The year 1895 was a peculiar one. The U.S. government was nearing bankruptcy. In the Panic of 1893 bondholders had wished to secure gold instead of paper money, and the mint had made good by depleting its reserves. Byt January 1895 the United States was within days of being unable to meet its debts. Quietly, President Cleveland had asked August Belmont, a wealthy Jewish businessman (and backer of the Westinghouse Company), to meet with the European Rothschilds to secure replacement gold reserves. The reality of the day, however, included an unfortunate worldwide wave of anti-Semitism. Only the year before, in a famous trial in France, the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted on a "trumped up charge of treason." The Rothschilds were Jewish. How would it look to have Jewish financiers bail out an entire nation: It was for this reason, according to Morgan biographer George Wheeler, that J. Pierpont Morgan, an upstanding Episcopalian, was brought into the picture. Morgan, with Belmont's help, was able to secure $60 million in foreign gold reserves, and the country was saved from insolvency. The incident also marked the anointment of Morgan as King of Wall Street Seifer 1996: 161).

03.13.1895: Tesla's laboratory [on South Fifth Avenue, New YorK] burned to the ground. The "whole floor collapsed and equipment dropped to [the] second floor." ... Fortunately, Tesla was not injured, for he was asleep in his hotel at the time. "Two tottering brick walls and the yawning jaws of a somber cavity aswim with black water and oil were all that could be seen [that fateful] morning ...of a laboratory which to all who had visited it was one of the most interesting spots on earth (Note 5. T. C. Martin, "The Burning of Tesla's Laboratory," Engineering Magazine, April 1895, pp. 101-4)(Seifer 1996: 146).

1896: A. Page Brown, who planned San Francisco's ferry clock-tower, modeled on the beautiful Giralda Tower at Seville, Spain, dies.

1898: Admiral Dewey defeated the Spanish at Manila Bay.

1899: In 1899 James Phelan conceived the plan of erecting in Union Square a monument commemorating Dewey's victory at Manila Bay. Mackay happened to be in town and Phelan called at his Nevada Block office, hoping for a modest contribution; within five minutes he was outside again with a check for five thousand dollars in his pocket (Lewis 1959: 58).

1901: Robert Aitken, sculptor, and Newton Tharp, architect, designed the 95-foot high column in honor of Dewey's victory.

City supervisors outlawed further burials in city limits.

1902-08: At the beginning of 1902 two men, Jack Neville and Vincent Whitney, approached John McLaren, San Francisco's steward of public parks in the early century, about the prospect of constructing a municipal golf course. Jack Neville at the time was a member of the recently formed Claremont Country Club in Oakland and was considered one of the finest amateur golfers in the country in the early part of the century. Vincent Whitney was a member of the Olympic Club and owned the Whitney Building, which stood for years on lower Geary Street. Both of these men were wealthy members of private clubs but were very instrumental in starting San Francisco's first municipal golf course. John McLaren suggested that the Potter's Field site would be a good place for the city and for Neville and Whitney to try their hand at constructing some golf holes. At the time golf was still considered a game to be played on links land as near to the ocean as possible, and Potter's Field, despite it being an existing cemetery, was considered a good site. By the end of 1902 a three hole layout was completed on the hilly, wind swept, and almost treeless land. These three holes occupied what is presently the first, twelve and thirteenth holes of the modern day course. The new links proved to be very popular and for six years it remained a three hole layout, which was free to the public. During this time Tom McHugh became the first City greens keeper maintaining the grounds that made up the three hole loop.

1902: Concerns about the public health, crime, and the need for space forced the City and County Board of Supervisors to outlaw further burials inside the City limits. The larger cemeteries such as Laurel Hill and Calvary Cemetery were told to remove their interments. Golf was fast gaining popularity, and many private golf and country clubs were starting. The general public, who did not have access or were unable to afford the country club setting for golfing recreation, began to press the City to set aside some public land to be groomed as a public golf course. The parcel of land now referred to as Lincoln Park was a cemetery (Golden Gate Cemetery), which was named Potter's Field. Like many cemeteries of that era, it was ethnically divided into various sections. What is presently the eighteenth fairway of the golf course was a burial ground, primarily for the city's Italian community. The area that now constitutes the first and thirteenth fairway was the Chinese section of the cemetery and the high terrain at the fifteen fairway and thirteenth tee was a Serbian resting place.

1904: The Chicago architect, Daniel H. Burnham, completed a plan for the city that embodied the precepts of the City Beautiful Movement

1906: San Francisco extended to Divisadero St. in the West, the Bay on the north and east, and 30th St. to the south, mainly with closely packed two and three-story wooden houses.

Shopping was concentrated near Union Square. Finance and business was conducted along Montgomery St. The business buildings were four to eight stories with cast-iron columns, heavy timbers, and brick walls, sometimes clad with stone but mostly with iron cast to imitate stone.

Chinatown consisted of undistinguished prefabricated wooden buildings. Alleys such as Waverly, Ross, and Spofford were notorious for gambling, opium, and prostitution dens, and were linked to the infamous Barbary Coast nearby.

04.18-20.1906: The earthquake leveled San Francisco's first commercial buildings

The fire and earthquake--which left the Dewey Monument in Union Square unscathed--leveled the mansions on Nob Hill, excepting only that of James C. Flood (now the Pacific-Union Club) made of Connecticut brownstone, and the Fairmont Hotel, under construction at the time. The Army Corps of Engineers dynamited various homes along Van Ness Ave. to prevent the fires from spreading west into Pacific Heights and the Western Addition.

A bohemian aristocracy inhabited Russian Hill, where the Livermore family had a farm and orchard. Writers such as Ina Coolbrith (the first state poet laureate), Bret Harte, and Charles Warren Stoddard, who were known as the Golden Gate Trinity, resided on the hill, along with the pastor of the Swedenborgian Church, Rev. Joseph Worcester, the architect, Willis Polk, and the writer Helen Hunt Jackson. Because the houses on Russian Hill were built one next to the other, and owing to the existence of cisterns and wells, several enclaves escaped the fire. Examples include four houses along the south side of Green St. between Jones and Leavenworth Sts., as well as the woodsy block bounded by Green, Taylor, Broadway, and Jones.

Fire following the earthquake destroys both the Hopkins Mansion and the San Francisco Art Association and the California School of Design. A number of faculty leave for extended visits to Paris.

Golden Gate Cemetery turned into Lincoln Park Golf Course. Stones dumped at Ocean Beach.