What's on the 6th floor?

12th Annual Valentine’s Day Broadside Printing Event

2024-02-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

The 12th Annual Valentine’s Day Broadside Printing event was supercharged with over 100 people printing their very own broadside on our 1909 Albion Press. Thanks to our superhero printers (Li and Alan), APHA NorCal Chapter volunteers (Joe and José); our calligrapher Maria; volunteers Mimi and Madeleine, and all of our fabulous library staff (with Samantha leading the way).

Valentine's Keepsake, 2024

Our source material for this year's Valentine was a poem by Laurence Binyon

called "Dream come true," printed at the Eragny Press in London, 1905.

Here are all of our previous Valentine's Day Keepsakes.

1st annual Valentine's Keepsake, 2012

Valentine's Keepsake, 2013

Valentine's Keepsake, 2014

Valentine's Keepsake, 2015

Valentine's Keepsake, 2016

Valentine's Keepsake, 2017

Valentine's Keepsake, 2018

Valentine's Keepsake, 2020

Valentine's Keepsake, 2022

Valentine's Keepsake, 2023

PICK UP YOUR PEN!

2024-01-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

Cursive handwriting makes a return in 2024 to classrooms in California schools, and since the Richard Harrison Collection is all about beautiful writing we thought we would introduce readers to some of the most beautiful handwriting in our collection.

Here's a delightfully illustrated letter from the English calligrapher Marie Angel to Richard Harrison, the founder of our collection. Marie Angel was known for her lovely calligraphy and her endearing illustrations of the animal kingdom, many of which were commissioned for publication (My Cat Has Eyes of Sapphire Blue is just one of her books for which we have the original leaves on vellum). In this letter she features two of her Siamese cats.

Marie Angel, letter to Richard Harrison 28 December 1960
Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering

Richard Harrison receives a letter from the American calligrapher James Hayes, who answers an invitation to submit his calligraphy to the collection. Shall it be a quotation of Harrison's choosing or something selected by Hayes himself? We'll have to take a look at the James Hayes portfolio to find out.

James Hayes, letter to Richard Harrison, 27 March 1977
Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering

Study notes from a long ago Library Study Group here in Book Arts & Special Collections have been written out in Susie Taylor's impressive Italic handwriting. For several years, a group of library patrons --calligraphers, printers, book artists, and fellow travelers--met about once a month in our Rare Book Room to explore, view, and talk about the treasures in the collections. For the April 1999 meeting Susie Taylor, Curator of the Harrison Collection prepared a selection of incunables for the group: these are books printed within the first fifty years of the invention of printing (from about 1455 to the end of 1500). Incunabula is Latin for "swaddling clothes." Here we can read Susie's notes about two of the books that were enjoyed on that Saturday in April.

Library Study Group, notes by Susie Taylor, Curator
Susie Taylor Collection, Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering,

We are great admirers of the art of the decorated envelope; one of our favorite designers is Alan Blackman, whose "Letters to Myself" were sent to his young son Stephen (with one for himself). The ensuing years brought hundreds of decorated envelopes in the mail. Here's one that may be found in the Harrison Collection. In 2015 the Library invited Alan to exhibit 200 of his decorated envelopes and working tools in what has to be one of our all-time favorite exhibitions.

Alan Blackman, decorated envelope
Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering

So, Pick Up Your Pen and learn the art of beautiful handwriting; or practice to improve your handwriting skills. Everyone is welcome to visit the Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering. No appointment necessary.

HAPPY NATIONAL HANDWRITING DAY!

You Have Our Heart: The Calligraphy of Hunter Saxony III

2023-12-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

Hunter Saxony III
Preliminary design for Blanket III (2022)
Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center is the happy recipient of original calligraphy from the hand of San Francisco-based Hunter Saxony III. Selections include the preliminary design for Blanket III and the final broadside which was printed by Arion Press. Past & Anchor, another original calligraphic piece uses sentiments hearkening back to his early life in Rhode Island and that state’s Native American history. These acquisitions were made for the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering. Saxony's work may also be seen at the Letterform Archive, 2325 Third Street, and Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 1275 Minnesota Street.

A self-taught lettering artist, Hunter Saxony III brings a wealth of artistry from long sought-after experiences in the rare book rooms of libraries. His in-person talk at San Francisco Public Library on November 1, 2022, was sponsored by Book Arts & Special Collections and the Letterform Archive. The talk was recorded and may be viewed on YouTube .

More recently, the Book Arts & Special Collections Center commissioned Saxony to design our annual holiday card, something that brings us pure joy!

Visit the Book Arts & Special Collections Center where the calligraphy of more than 500 calligraphers and lettering artists may be viewed in the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering.

Hunter Saxony III’s calligraphy is on display on the Sixth Floor, Main Library through January 10, 2024.

Holiday card design by Hunter Saxony III
for Book Arts & Special Collections

Guest Blogger: Frightwig , feminism, and the riot grrrl movement of the 1990's

2022-06-04T13:09:00.024-07:00

The Cecilia Kuhn Frightwig Collection is completed and available to researchers! A big thanks to Mac, our spring intern, who was a huge help getting this collection processed. Here are Mac's thoughts on Frightwig, feminism, and riot grrrls.

Taken from poster from the Cecilia Kuhn Frightwig Collection, SFH 668

If the way the Frightwig women were expressing themselves confused some people, then they must have been doing something right.

Frightwig is an all-women punk band from San Francisco that formed in 1982 with members Deanna Mitchell and Mia d’Bruzzi. Their feminist morals and their energetic live performances did not win the hearts of everyone, but the people who were fans were quite dedicated. Some people thought they were awful and not talented, while others understood their expression and why it was important. The Frightwig girls expressed feelings and emotions through their music that most women could relate to. Ideas of sexuality and femininity were challenged through their music and their performance. It comes as no surprise that Frightwig is credited with being a big inspiration for the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s.

Cecilia Kuhn, Mia d'Bruzzi, and Deanna Mitchell.

Frightwig toured Europe with D.O.A. and played shows all over the U.S. and in Canada. Although they are a band made up of women, calling them a girl group would not be fitting stylistically. Frightwig is noisy, unrefined, and intense. They often got compared to Flipper in terms of sound. In terms of performance, they are incredibly unique and do not have anyone they can really be compared to. At their shows, it is a tradition of theirs to have a man come up on stage during “A Man’s Got to Do What A Man’s Got to Do” and do a striptease for them. Their lyrics about being angry towards men, but also being attracted to them is something that people can relate to. A piece by Yvette Cadeux for Band Age describes them as “hetero-feminists”, and an article from L.A. Weekly describes them as “ghastly nymphets”. Frightwig sometimes got called “unstable” or other insults used for women who do not conform to certain roles and expectations, despite their male counterparts doing the same thing. Regardless of the criticism, Frightwig demanded that their presence be felt in a male-dominated music scene and there were a lot of men who were fans of Frightwig, like the Dead Milkmen and journalist Don Baird.

Cecilia Kuhn

During their European tour with D.O.A., drummer Cecilia Kuhn kept a journal. She tells lots of great stories about people they met, getting lost and being late to shows, the effects a lack of sleep had, and trying to speak German. One of my favorite stories is about her getting into an altercation with an intoxicated man and jabbing him with a broom while he called her a stupid cow, an insult that she embraced and asked why he was hanging around her if she was a stupid cow. She also goes on to talk about the guys of D.O.A. and how much she misses home. It is interesting to read an untouched version of a person’s life on tour without it being paraphrased by an author in a biography or potentially fabricated by other people’s recollections. Also, from reading the journal, I learned that Cecilia had a great sense of humor.

The riot grrrl movement in the 1990s channeled the same feminist anger through their music that Frightwig did. Courtney Love has mentioned Frightwig as being a big inspiration to her and her music. One article says that Frightwig “in a single show, inspired the formation of Hole, Babes in Toyland, and L7”. Women face issues by simply existing and their presence in music is no exception. Punk is a genre in which artists often express their anger with politics and being treated differently, so women deserve to have a place in the scene. Penelope Houston of the Avengers and Jennifer Miro of the Nuns set the stage for Frightwig to come and leave their mark as women in the punk scene. If the way the Frightwig women were expressing themselves confused some people, then they must have been doing something right.

All photographs by Bobby Castro. From the Cecilia Kuhn Frightwig Collection, SFH 668

Guest Blogger: An Intern's Look at the Early San Francisco Punk Scene through the San Francisco Punk Archive

2022-03-31T11:37:00.001-07:00

We are thrilled to report that processing has begun on the San Francisco Punk Archive! Mac, our Spring intern from Cal State East Bay, has been working with the punk fliers and helping describe the Cecilia Kuhn Frightwig Collection. We will keep you posted as collections are available. Here is Mac's guest post on early San Francisco punk!

"Local punk history is worth learning about because it is a group of people’s reactions to what was going on politically, musically, and culturally, and how it paved the way for the punk/hardcore scene that still thrives in the Bay today."

San Francisco punk came about in the late 1970s and rebelled against the hippie culture that was so prominent and embraced throughout the city. The punks in the city played their music in places like the Mabuhay Gardens, the On Broadway, and the Tool & Die. The Mabuhay Gardens, formerly located at 443 Broadway in San Francisco, was a Filipino restaurant and music venue owned by Ness Aquino. Local punk acts needed places to perform, and many spots around the city were not very welcoming towards them when the genre first started emerging. The Mabuhay, however, was willing to give them a chance. Soon, the place would be synonymous with punk rock and would host the most influential bands of the local and national scene. The Mab is significant because it provided a space for San Francisco and Bay Area punk to exist and establish its influence. It is a good thing places like the Mabuhay and the On Broadway were willing to host punk acts, because punks received very little support for their unique way of expression. Without the Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco punk would not have flourished quite like it did.

[Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys performing at the Mabuhay Gardens, 1982]

The unique political climate of San Francisco and the city’s location on the West Coast allowed the San Francisco punk scene to be distinct from that of New York, LA, and the UK. Another thing that made San Francisco punk unique is its existence in the same city where the Summer of Love and the Grateful Dead took place. The hippie aesthetic is earthy, natural, and laidback. The punk aesthetic is quite literally the opposite. While hippies wore fringe, beads, long hair, and Birkenstocks, punks wore leather, safety pins, tattered clothing, piercings, and unnatural hair colors. This opposite choice of expression helped them attract even more attention, and typically it was not positive. An example of the hippie’s disdain for punks is Bill Graham’s refusal to promote punk bands. This refusal is also due to the presence of Nazi imagery in punk, and Graham was Jewish. The Sex Pistols at Winterland in 1978 is an exception.

SFPL Punk Archive

DIY ethics are crucial to punk. Flyers were the main way that shows were promoted because it was cheap and easy. These flyers were self-made, included collage-art, and hand-written information stating where and when the show was. The sometimes vulgar images and language used on these flyers were not appreciated by all.

SFPL Punk Archive

Punks everywhere received poor representation in the media for being violent and disturbing. Mayor Feinstein was one of the main enemies of San Francisco punk. Since these venues were in the same part of town as a lot of bars and strip clubs, San Francisco punk received bitterness from Feinstein because she saw it as being bad for tourism, which the city relies heavily on, and the sexual deviancy and punk cultures that were occurring simultaneously throughout the city were seen as bad.

Punks and queer people in San Francisco were largely ignored and not supported because of negative media portrayals making them out to be something that needed to be contained, otherwise they would taint the lives of “normal” citizens. The hippies were also negatively portrayed in the media at times, but their exploitation and the capitalization of tours of the Haight-Ashbury is what makes them able to be remembered and embraced, not swept under the rug like other groups.

“Punk Rock Jail Bait” in Cecilia of Frightwig’s journal

The politics in punk can be a bit strange because although bands played at Rock Against Racism and were very vocal about their opinions on conservative politics, there was still the presence of sexism and Nazi imagery. That being said, it is up for people to decide what is true punk and what is taking things too far. Punk bands would write songs and put on performances that displayed their anger and whatever else they were feeling. The Dead Kennedys have lyrics about police violence, hostility towards landlords, and the morality of war. The all-women band Frightwig has songs called “My Crotch Does Not Say Go”, “Punk Rock Jail Bait”, and “A Man’s Gotta Do What a Man’s Gotta Do”, in which they would pick a dude from the crowd to come on stage and strip for them when they performed it live. Frightwig was doing things that were no different from their male counterparts, but of course they were seen as slutty and unstable because they were women. This criticism of Frightwig gives insight on gender roles in punk and rock music and, in a larger sense, music in general. 924 Gilman opened in Berkeley in 1986 and still provides a safe place for people to enjoy live music. This venue is intolerant of any racism, sexism, homophobia, and fighting, and do not book any bands who are openly discriminatory in their music and performance.

Recently, I went to visit the location of the old Mabuhay. I stopped in front of the building and looked at the pictures of Blondie, Penelope Houston, and Jello Biafra in the window. It is now a rentable venue called “Fame”. The alleyway next to the building had a street sign that said, “Dirk Dirksen Pl”, which I thought was a nice touch (Dirk Dirksen was the promoter at the Mab). What I noticed was that I was the only one around that was checking the building out showing my respects. This experience was very different from the time I went and walked past 710 Ashbury (the Grateful Dead house), people were standing outside smoking joints and singing Dead tunes. The pictures in the window, Dirk Dirksen alley, and the old punk I saw walking down the street were the only remnants of the Mab’s influence that I saw in the neighborhood. When it comes to San Francisco punk, nostalgia for it seems hard to find. I would love to meet more people who can tell stories about catching an early Flipper show or recalling the time Jello Biafra ran for mayor. My grandparents’ stories about the Summer of Love and their times in Marin County are getting tiresome. Being a more underground scene is a part of punk morality, but the history of Bay Area punk deserves just as much recognition and respect as the hippies.

The Punk Archive at the San Francisco Public Library was organized by Penelope Houston in 2015 and has received many contributions since then. One can look through hundreds of flyers, read the Search and Destroy zines, and open books with the coolest photography. This archive is notable because it holds information on bands native to the area and was brought about by the lead singer of one of the most iconic local bands. Local punk history is worth learning about because it is a group of people’s reactions to what was going on politically, musically, and culturally, and how it paved the way for the punk/hardcore scene that still thrives in the Bay today. I encourage everyone to take the time to learn something new, get inspired by the stories of artists, and utilize resources that are available to you.

SFPL Punk Archive

Researching a San Francisco Building: Online Resources

2020-03-13T12:48:00.002-07:00

Want to learn more about your home or apartment building? Do you walk down the street and wonder what businesses were there 100 years ago? Researching a San Francisco building is one of our more frequent queries in the San Francisco History Center. Our savvy archivists crafted this online guide to get building researchers started: How to Research a San Francisco Building. For this post, we culled through the guide to share pro-tips on what you can do online with our digitized content (as in how you can be a researcher from home). These resources include how to find built date, property owners, occupancy information and aerial photographs. Some digitized resources are open access and others require a San Francisco Public Library card and PIN.

These are the highlights to get you started from home.

1. San Francisco Property Information Map (open access)
The San Francisco Planning Department's Property Information Map provides a single access point for a variety of useful property data, zoning and permitting information. Among the useful information available for each property:

General Property Information, including Assessor's Reports, 1990s historical Sanborn Map and the official address and zip code of the property.
Zoning Information of the Property, including Zoning Districts and other Applicable Regulations.
Historic Preservation Records of the Property, including the 1976 Department of City Planning Architectural Survey (with a photo).
Building permit history of the property.

2. San Francisco Spring Valley Water Company Tap Records (open access)

Contains the date a water connection was first made for a structure and the name of the applicant (owner/contractor/developer). Dates may reflect the beginning of construction, the beginning of occupancy, or the date water was provided to an existing structure. Connections are recorded alphabetically by street name. Use the index at the beginning of each volume to find the street name and starting page.

3. Sanborn Map Company Fire Insurance Maps
Published to help assess fire risk for buildings, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps show the footprint for every building in the city. These maps also indicate type of construction, use of structures, addresses, and, sometimes, the names of businesses.
Databases: Digital Sanborn Maps of California or FIMO Fire Insurance Maps Online (San Francisco Public Library card and PIN required)
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1905 (open access)

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, San Francisco, June 1905. Courtesy of San Francisco History Center.

4. San Francisco Block Books (open access)
Indicates lot sizes and the names of property owners. Check the index at the beginning of each volume to see if your neighborhood is included. 1894, 1901, January 1906, October 1906, 1907 (Homesteads only), 1909/1910.

5. San Francisco Chronicle Historical (1865-2017) and San Francisco Examiner Historical (1902-2007) (San Francisco Public Library card and PIN required)
Search the digitized newspapers by address. You may also search with past building owner name, occupant name or business name.

6. San Francisco City Directories, 1850-1982 (open access)
Use the name of the possible owner or occupant of your property to check the city directories backward and forward from the water date to determine whether that person lived at that address, the length of occupancy of that person, as well as his or her occupation. "Reverse directories," which list the owner or occupant by street address, appear in the directories beginning in 1953.

7. San Francisco Aerial Views, 1938 (open access)
A complete aerial survey of San Francisco digitized. The index indicates which sheet to locate for property or neighborhood. For those who want to go down digitizing memory lane with us: our story of when these were digitized in 2011.

San Francisco Aerial View, Sheet 16, 1938. Courtesy of San Francisco History Center.

Greatest Hits of 2019: Most Popular Digital Content from the Archives

2020-01-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

Last week (and last year already), we shared our most popular archival collections in 2019. We are switching from analog to digital this week. To be on the upside for the highlights of 2019, we ran a popularity contest of the digital content digitized from the archives in the San Francisco History Center and the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection. Currently, the San Francisco Public Library has digitized content spread across a number of platforms (but we'll have a new Digital Asset Management System aka DAMS in 2020) so we have pulled it all together for you here.

Most watched digitized audiovisual items from our content in California Light and Sound in 2019:

First place = Skyline Hike Over the Muir Trail, 1947, 16mm film
Second place = Giant Trees of California, 1912, 22mm film
Third place from our I. Magnin & Co. Records = I. Magnin Palm Stores Opening Fashion Show, 1985, 3/4 inch videotape

Most viewed digitized books from the San Francisco History Center in 2019:

First place = San Francisco Numerical Numerical Directory, 1939-1940
Second place = Numerical Telephone Directory, 1935-1936
Third place = Who's Who in California, 1942-1943

First and second place resources are helpful resources for those doing San Francisco building research - you can look up an address to see who the occupant was in that year.

Top nine most-viewed photos on Calisphere:

Nancy Pelosi, circa 1987

In order to spread the joy and expand the re-usability of our digitized images, we have been sharing our images on Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and Calisphere.

4055 Irving Street, Portola Market, 1951
Demolition of Arch of the Rising Sun, 1916
Demolition of Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1916
Cliff House burning as spectators watch, 1907
Supervisor Ron Pelosi and family, circa 1979
Tic Tock Burgers - Store No. 3, 1958
Visitacion Valley, 19--
Dudley Stone School on Haight Street, 1929
Nancy Pelosi, circa 1987

Top 3 Requested Digital Scans from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection in 2019

Buildings being demolished in Western Addition for Redevelopment, 1953
Construction at Geary and Fillmore for Redevelopment, 1960
Victor Arnautoff painting mural in George Washington High School, 1936

Buildings being demolished in Western Addition for Redevelopment, 1953

Popularity Contest: Most Requested and Researched Archival Collections in 2019

2019-12-31T16:21:00.001-08:00

Librarians and archivists like data. With over 7,000 cartons of archival materials, there's something gratifying about closing out the year with statistics which document our work in providing access to archival collections - and the history of San Francisco. In the San Francisco History Center, we gather data on which collections are used the most. This assists the archivists with decision-making on which collection to process next, handling space issues (we'll be moving to a new offsite storage facility in 2020), what to digitize...and running an annual contest on which collections were the most popular in 2019! Below are the top nine archival collections most requested in 2019 from the San Francisco History Center and the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection.

San Francisco History Center's top 9 requested archival collections in 2019 --

San Francisco Police Department Records: Captain's orders and mug books are some of the more requested items from the records. Building researchers delve into the records based on the 12,000+ acetate negatives from the Bureau of Accident Prevention. With the focal point of each shot being the automobile accident, the majority of the shots include businesses and residences in the background. This part of the collection has made it the number one requested archive for the last 4 years.
San Francisco General Hospital AIDS Ward 5B/5A Archives: In 1983, this was the first dedicated AIDS hospital ward in the United States. The collection includes scrapbooks, communication books, head nurses' files, correspondence, videotapes, publications, and memorabilia collected by the nursing staff of AIDS Ward 5B/5A at San Francisco General Hospital.
San Francisco Unified School District Records: Want to know the history of a San Francisco public school? Here's your starting point. While there are materials from the early years of the district, the bulk of the collection is from 1874 to 1978. Major areas include administrative documents, curriculum titles, reports produced by the school district, and newspaper clippings.
San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Records: The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency

Western Addition park groundbreaking, 1969. SFRA Records.

(SFRA) was incorporated in 1948 under the California Community Redevelopment Law and in response to the United States Housing Act. Its purpose was to improve urban living conditions by removing what they called "blight" through the redesign, redevelopment, and rehabilitation of affected areas of the city. Our most frequent users of the collection are historians (from PhD to neighborhood enthusiasts) and artists.
Alcatraz Indian Occupation Records: 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Occupation of Alcatraz Island. The records include correspondence, minutes, legal files, promotional materials, publications, petitions, and a few objects and photographs documenting the activities of Indians of All Tribes, its governing council, and individuals involved in the occupation of Alcatraz from Nov. 1969 - June 1971.

Mock-up for Alcatraz Newsletter, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1969,
Alcatraz Indian Occupation Records
Paul Radin Papers: The bulk of the collection consists of surveys from Radin's supervision of over 200 workers who interviewed ethnic groups in the San Francisco Bay Area for the State Emergency Relief Administration of California (SERA) over a period of nine months in 1934-1935
Joseph L. Alioto Papers: This collection documents the two-term administration of Mayor Joseph L. Alioto during the years of 1967 to 1976, with the bulk of the collection covering the years 1968 to 1974. The papers provide a broad, policy-level view of the Alioto years. The collection is rich in housing and redevelopment files (see #4 on this list)
I. Magnin & Co. Records: The story of I. Magnin department store, with its ascension from a simple notion store of modest investment to a multi-million dollar Pacific coast store chain, as well as its financial decline in its last decades, signifies one of the great romances of the retail trade world.
San Francisco Department of City Planning: The Planning Department plays a central role in guiding the city's growth and development, including enforcing the Planning Code. The Planning Commission maintains the city's General Plan and advises the department on long-range goals, policies and programs, on issues related to land use, transportation, and current planning. The Planning Commission sponsored the construction of the San Francisco Scale Model - which we had pieces of at our branches this year.

San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection's top 9 requested archival collections in 2019 --

San Francisco Office of Assessor-Recorder Photographs: this is step #1 when searching for a photo of a building. This collection took us off the charts on requests when 94,000 more photographs were transferred to the Library and added to the existing 75,000 frames of negatives in May 2019. Great press on the transfer boosted new users of the collection.
Robert Durden Color Slide Collection: After one has searched the online database and the San Francisco Office of Assessor-Recorder Photographs, the next step in building research is this color slide collection. The collection consists of over 65,000 color slides documenting San Francisco buildings, events and locations between 1950 and early 1990s, with the bulk from the 1980s-1990s.
San Francisco Department of Public Works Photograph Collection: This collection of photographs and glass plate negatives documents the projects of DPW's Bureau of Engineering. There are 95 photograph albums and the first photograph album begins with 1907. An amazing way to see the reconstruction of San Francisco after the Earthquake and Fire of 1906.
San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue: Over 1 million photographs in 1,200 cartons, this collection receives a steady amount of requests. If you like 20th century celebrities, athletes as well as political, social and cultural leaders, make a request. The photo morgue is our go-to for quirky blog posts!
Marilyn Blaisdell Photograph Collection: With over 700 photographers and photo studios represented, this compilation is one of the greatest private collections of historical San Francisco photographs.
San Francisco Postcard Collection: This collection consists of approximately 5,000 photo-mechanical postcards and 1,000 photo-postcards of San Francisco views, hotels, restaurants, streets and other popular locations.

Frank Sinatra at Kennedy rally, Mark Hopkins Hotel, 1960
by VM Hanks Jr.
V.M. Hanks, Jr. Photograph Collection: Virgil McKnight Hanks, Jr. was one of San Francisco's leading photographers in the 1950s and 1960s. Hanks was photographer of record for many of San Francisco's major hotels and his work appeared frequently in local magazines and newspapers. The collection contains approximately 1,000 photographic prints and over 17,000 negatives
Album - Estate of Adolph Sutro - appraised by A.S. Baldwin, 1910: The photographs depict properties forming the estate of Adolph Sutro including the Cliff House, the Sutro Baths, Sutro Heights, Ashbury Heights, Parnassus Heights, Rancho San Miguel and Sunset and Richmond districts.
The Tenderloin Times Photograph Archives: collection consists of approximately 6,000 photographs pertaining to the run and publication of The Tenderloin Times, a free monthly newspaper published in the Tenderloin, San Francisco, 1977 – 1994, by the Hospitality House. Photographs document cultural activities, Tenderloin residents, local politicians campaigning, protests, AIDS activism, homelessness and advocacy.

San Francisco Barbershop, 1910s. Scanned from glass plate negative by
Turrill & Miller. Marilyn Blaisdell Photograph Collection.

Pro-tip on research in the archives: we're here to help! Both the San Francisco History Center and the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection receive transferred city records and new collections every month. If you don't see a collection or subject area represented in the archival holdings - ask us! We may have the collection and we're busy behind-the-scenes getting it ready for the public.

A Holiday Gift from Book Arts & Special Collections

2019-12-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center is thrilled to present this holiday gift to San Francisco:

The Juniper Von Phitzer Miniature Books Library

On view through Friday, January 10, 2020

Book Arts & Special Collections and the San Francisco History Center

Sixth Floor, Main Library

In 1967, Marvin R. Hiemstra came to San Francisco where he met Lloyd L. Nielson, who was to become his life partner. The Juniper Von Phitzer Press, a fine arts organization doing letterpress printing, was begun in 1976, fitting neatly into their garage. Lloyd learned to print and Marvin helped with the design and often created a special text. Named after three cats, Juniper, Von, and Phitzer, the first book the press produced was a collection of Marvin's poems, I'd Rather Be a Phoenix, which included the now famous line, "Leaves are forming everywhere, even while we talk."

In 1985 there were several fine miniature book publishers in the Bay Area, inspiring the Juniper Von Phitzer Press to focus their efforts on a Lilliputian library production. The Press eventually produced eighty-nine exquisite books and won three international awards. The books often featured local artists.

In 2002 the Juniper Von Phitzer Press Miniature Books Library was created in an art deco cabinet as part of their dining room. Intriguing examples of miniature art collected by Lloyd and Marvin are displayed with their books in the two-level diminutive great hall.

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center welcomed this delightful Victorian-style miniature library to the department in 2017, with the intention of putting it on display every year during the holiday season. This is our first year: we hope our patrons enjoy this very San Francisco work of art, finding joy and inspiration to make something of their own.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM ALL OF US IN BOOK ARTS & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS!

Guest Blogger: An Intern's Behind-the-Scenes Look at Exhibit Curation and Installation

2019-11-20T17:51:00.001-08:00

With the season of school semesters, the San Francisco History Center has interns in the department working on special projects. What's on the 6th Floor? asked Carolyn, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection intern, to be a guest blogger and highlight one of her projects.

All That Glitters Exhibition and Programs by Carolyn Gruss

Fillmore Roller Rink, 1949. Drawing by Kaytea Petro

The All that Glitters is Not Gold exhibit by San Francisco artist Kaytea Petro opened on November 1st. The exhibit features Petro’s unique hibiscus ink drawings alongside photos from the San Francisco Public Library's photo archives, which she used as inspiration for her work.

Kaytea Petro was born and raised in San Francisco and attended University of California, Santa Cruz, the Sichuan Academy of Art and the Florence Academy of Art. She is a sculptor and illustrator, and shows her work in the United States and China. She’s a member of Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, City Arts Cooperative Gallery and Red Brick Studios.

As the photo archives intern, I had the honor of curating and installing the exhibit (a completely new endeavor for me). Before I could even begin, I had to find all of the photos Petro used as inspiration. While some photos were easier to locate than others (the distinct images of North Beach beatniks on parade in 1958 was unique enough that finding it was pretty simple), I had the privilege of getting to sort through files of (mostly architectural) photos of San Francisco. Through photographs, I saw the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, Sutro Tower and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. I also had a chance to dive into the photos in the Library’s collection from the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 (also depicted by about half of Petro’s drawings on display). We sometimes had to settle on two photos, as the piece in question had synthesized elements of both.

Once all of the photos were located, I brought them down to the Exhibitions team, who taught me how to mount the photos and drawings. With the title tags they printed, I then installed the exhibit, arranging the photos with their corresponding drawings.

I had a very hands-on opportunity to collaborate with Petro and the Mix for an ink-making workshop this past Wednesday (November 13th), which gave me a glimpse into Petro’s process. We had a fun time microwaving hibiscus flowers with water and filtering the resulting mixture to make hibiscus ink (the same ink she used for all of the drawings in the exhibit; the ink changes color over time, making it a unique medium with which to work). Using the same process, we also made turmeric ink and eucalyptus pod ink. The ink-making event was a neat way to see the artistry and effort behind the drawings, and the chemistry/culinary work that allows said artistry.

Different teens were interested in different parts of the process — some favored ink-making, while others preferred to paint with the pre-made inks, and some teens were a little too turned off by the myriad smells in the maker lab to participate (the eucalyptus pods were, admittedly, very fragrant). Watching some of the teens in their artist element, collaborating with Petro, was inspiring and gave me a newfound appreciation of her artistry (and why the library is displaying her art).

Alcatraz, 1969. Drawing by Kaytea Petro

But there’s also a tremendous importance in showcasing Petro’s art in conjunction with the photo archives. It’s easy, especially as someone who spends hours sorting through boxes of old photos (I’m currently working on the extensive Tenderloin Times photo collection), to forget the artistic and aesthetic qualities of photography in favor of its historical significance. As part of the San Francisco History Center, the photo archives (consisting of 2 million photos) has tremendous historical value, as documentation of the city’s history. But, as Petro shows, it also has value as artistic inspiration — and even as art in and of itself. This exhibit illustrates how the photo collection has not only historical relevance, but aesthetic relevance as well.

The exhibit will be on view until January 2nd, 2020. Kaytea Petro will be giving a gallery talk near the exhibit on Thursday, November 21st, at 6:30 p.m.

If you’re interested in more information about the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz, check out the Occupy Alcatraz! and Before the Occupation of Alcatraz exhibits, located in the Skylight Gallery (6th floor) and Government Information Center (5th floor), respectively. Find other events and programming at the library for National American Indian Heritage Month on the San Francisco Public Library calendar.

Fisherman, wife & grandfather, Alcatraz, c. 1970. Photo by John Sheafe.
Alcatraz Indian Occupation Records (SFH 11), SF History Center, SF Public Library.

SYMPOSIUM Price Reduced: “Memory Lives On: Documenting the HIV/AIDS Epidemic”

2019-08-29T13:15:00.001-07:00

Rest Stop, 1989
(Jeannie O'Connor AIDS Self-Portraits Collection)

The San Francisco History Center and the LGBTQIA Center are pleased to announce an interdisciplinary symposium exploring and reflecting on topics related to archives and the practice of documenting the stories of HIV/AIDS. The symposium is presented by UCSF Archives and Special Collections, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco Public Library History Center, and UC Merced Library as part of the NEH grant-funded project “The Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic.”

When: October 4^th -5^th, 2019

Where: UCSF Mission Bay Campus, Byers Auditorium in Genentech Hall, San Francisco

Registration fee reduced to $30 !!
Link updated. Register now

If you have already registered, you will be refunded the difference.

Stencil (Survive AIDS--ACT UP/Golden Gate Records)

Symposium and Program information https://www.library.ucsf.edu/archives/aids/memory-lives-on/
There will be 6 presentation sessions over a day and a half, Keynote talks from Dr. Donald Abrams, Dr. Jay Levy, and Dr. Monica Gandhi, and the pre-conference workshop No More Silence: Opening the Data of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic using Natural Language Processing techniques

Stencil (Survive AIDS--ACT UP/Golden Gate Records)

"Lady Death" Visits the Bay

2019-01-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

Available in print at SFPL
and eAudiobook via Hoopla

In 1941, Lyudmila Pavlichenko joined the Red Army to defend the Fatherland from invading Nazis. She didn't enlist as a secretary or nurse, rather she joined the 54th Rifle Regiment and became the most successful woman sniper of World War II with over 300 official kills. She was a graduate student in History at Kiev University when she left to fight on the front lines. Perhaps because of her academic training, she kept a diary writing whenever she could about the soldiers' situation during battles at Sevastopol and Odessa, her situation as a woman on the front-lines and officer, and later, her publicity tour of England and the United States. In the 1960s Pavlichenko began working on her memoirs using her diaries and military knowledge. Unfortunately, she died before they could be published and it wasn't until 2015 that her memoirs were published in Russia. Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin's Sniper, an English translation of her memoirs, was finally published in the United States in 2018.

In 1942 the Soviet Union sent a delegation of three young people to the United States and England with the hopes that the publicity would encourage the Allies to open a second front. Lyudmila was joined by fellow sniper Vladimir Pchelintsev and Moscow fuel commissioner, Nikolai Krasavchenko. After a brief stay in Washington, D.C., the Young Communist League delegation split up with the men taking a tour of the east coast and Pavlichenko traveling with Eleanor Roosevelt to the west coast.

SF History Center subject card.

While her memoirs only briefly mention San Francisco as one of the stops on her tour, curiosity led to a trip to the San Francisco History Center to see what could be found of her visit.

Excerpt from
S.F. Examiner,
October 7, 1942
[Click to see full article.]

The first step was to take a look at the S.F. subject cards. This resulted in two articles in the San Francisco Chronicle: October 6, 1942 "Russ Girl Sniper: S.F. to Hold Reception" and October 7, 1942 "Soviet's Greatest Woman Hero - In S.F. Lieutenant Pavlichenko Answers a Question: The Second Front? 'You Tell Me'." Lt. Pavlichenko's agenda for her visit was clear in this latter article, at one point asking the audience, "Why didn't America start preparing for war in 1933 when Hitler began his program in Germany? Why didn't America think of the ultimate, inevitable fight?" However, the American press was much more interested in something completely different - they requested her opinions of American fashions, particularly fashions in feminine underclothing. To this she replied, "I am not at all interested in your questions."

"Senior Lieutenant Pavlichenko, girl hero of the Russian Army was a "Stamp Tuesday" guest at the University of California this week. In selling War Stamps to Dean of Students Edwin Voorhies of the University of California, Lieutenant Pavlichenko also sold the Dean a pair of tickets to the Victory Ball slated for Saturday, October 10th in the men's Gymnasium. Proceeds of the ball are to go to a returning Soldiers Scholarship Fund. Described as a modern Joan of Arc, sniper Lieutenant Pavlichenko is credited with killing 309 Nazis." October 28, 1942. Call-Bulletin photograph. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. [P537 PAVL--, PAVZ--,]

More information about Lyudmila Pavlichenko's visit was found at the San Francisco History Center's S.F. News-Call Bulletin photo morgue and the San Francisco Examiner clippings morgue. Along with a Soviet press photo taken in early 1942, there are photos of Lt. Pavlichenko with University of California Dean of Students, Edwin Voorhies, in Berkeley, and with Mayor Angelo Rossi in San Francisco. An Examiner clipping from October 15, 1942 details highlights from Lt. Pavlichenko's visit to Los Angeles revealing that she had been asked to play a role in a feature film titled Mission to Moscow. Perhaps certain that no one could resist the call of the silver screen, the reporter noted, "Interesting how America has changed Lieut. Pavlichenko from a mannish appearing soldier to a really pretty girl." Lyudmila declined the offer.

"Mayor Angelo J. Rossi congratulates smiling Liudmila Pavlichenko, red army sniper, at City Hall today as R.A.F. Wing Commander David Scott Malden looks on. The lieutenant is credited with killing 309 German soldiers in action." Oct. 7, 1942. Call-Bulletin photograph. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. P537 PAVL--, PAVZ--,]

Mission to Moscow was eventually made without Lt. Pavlichenko and it was nominated for an Oscar in 1944. Lyudmila didn't necessarily lose her chance at fame in the United States. She was the subject of a Woody Guthrie song in 1946. Listen here via YouTube:

San Francisco Public Library has Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin's Sniper in hardcover to check out, but you can download the audiobook using your SFPL library card on Hoopla (no waiting on holds!) The library also has copies of the Russian film about Lt. Pavlichenko - Bitva za Sevastopol (Battle for Sevastopol) (2015) on DVD - in Russian without subtitles.

"Arrow in this picture points to Lieutenant Liudmila Pavlichenko in the rotunda of the City Hall, where more than 600 persons gathered to do her honor. Note Russian flag hanging from rotunda." Oct. 7, 1942. Call-Bulletin photograph. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

A New Deal for San Francisco: WPA San Francisco Scale Model

2019-01-05T17:25:00.003-08:00

Pieces of San Francisco Scale Model, 1938.
San Francisco Dept of City Planning Records, San Francisco History Center.

San Francisco is returning to San Francisco! A 1:100 wood model of San Francisco was crafted by the Works Progress Administration and was last on display in City Hall in early 1942. This January 2019, the model is returning to San Francisco and will be exhibited in San Francisco Public Library (SFPL)’s branches and the Main – as well as the Public Knowledge Library at SFMOMA. Each library branch will host its corresponding section of the scale model, which will be an opportunity for public discussion and events under the project Take Part. Take Part is led by the artist team Bik Van der Pol, and it is part of Public Knowledge, an ongoing collaboration between SFMOMA and SFPL. Public Knowledge is a collaboration that focuses on the cultural impact of urban change and how knowledge is transforming in the digital age. It is funded by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In getting ready for Take Part, we created a timeline on the early history of the wood model:

May 6, 1935
Federal Works Agency Works Progress Administration (WPA) formed.

June 1935
In Architect & Engineer, Timothy Pflueger is quoted "A large scale model of the entire city is indispensable in the study of the problem because of our hills and valleys."

February 17, 1936
City and County of San Francisco City Planning Commission submit WPA Project Proposal application. The initial application proposed building two models – one of San Francisco and the second of San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. Noted on the application, “Chief purpose is for planning studies relative to the formation of a New Master Plan of San Francisco, as well as various integral projects such as re-zoning, re-building, new highway development, etc. Will be housed by the City as a permanent public exhibit. Models to be exhibited at the San Francisco Bay Exposition.” The project was proposed with 402 laborers, 396 of whom were men and 6 of whom were women. The roles were classified as unskilled, intermediate, skilled, professional and technical, and superintendence.

January 13, 1938
San Francisco Chronicle* reports: Workers being assigned to a WPA project to make a wooden model of San Francisco to be exhibited at the New York exhibition in 1939.

February – March 1938
Letters sent to San Francisco architects to obtain original blueprints to build city model. Correspondence documentation located in San Francisco Department of Public Works Bureau of Engineering Records (SFH 458)

February - April 1938
Survey of San Francisco blocks with hand drawn documentation of each block with elevation. These block profiles are part of the San Francisco Department of City Planning Records (SFH 465). The key in the records was used in 2018 to reassemble the city model - and to make sense of all of the pieces.

Block Profile, Block 3931, 1938.
San Francisco Dept of Public Works Bureau of Engineering Records, San Francisco History Center.

April 1938
Construction begins on San Francisco Scale Model.

WPA carpenters constructing base of San Francisco Scale Model, April 1938.
San Francisco Dept of City Planning Records, San Francisco History Center.

August 1938
San Francisco Department of Public Works vertical aerials shot. The aerials were used by the model assemblers to place the buildings in the correct locations.

Assemblage of San Francisco Scale Model with SFDPW aerial on wall, 1938.
San Francisco Dept of City Planning Records, San Francisco History Center.

February 18, 1939
A portion of the San Francisco Scale Model on display at the opening of the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in Redwood Empire Building.

One third of San Francisco Scale Model on view at Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939.
San Francisco Dept of City Planning Records, San Francisco History Center.

March 13, 1939
Popularity of model at the Fair is noted in the San Francisco Chronicle* with the need to find a permanent home for the model.

SF Chronicle, Mar 13, 1939

April 16, 1940
San Francisco model dedicated in City Hall. San Francisco model was on display in Room 160, Registration Bureau, in City Hall until beginning of 1942.

Installation of San Francisco Scale Model in City Hall, April 9, 1940.
San Francisco Dept of City Planning Records, San Francisco History Center.

*Use your San Francisco Public Library card to search full-text articles in the San Francisco Chronicle Historical database, 1865 - current to discover the articles on the San Francisco Scale Model as well as other WPA projects.

Images of the construction of the WPA San Francisco Scale Model on our Flickr account.

Here's a contemporary digital peek at the San Francisco Scale Model in its entirety, with thanks to David Rumsey.

Seasons Greetings!

2018-12-29T16:00:00.000-08:00

If anything puts us in the mood for the holidays, it's Edward Bawden's glorious artwork for Fortnum & Mason, purveyors of tea, biscuits, chocolate, gifts, and hampers full of goodies since 1707.
A student of Edward Johnston, the man who revitalized handwriting in the 20th century, Edward Bawden (1903-1989) went on to become one of the most revered and beloved of English artists. After World War II he became the house artist for Fortum's Christmas catalogues, designing covers and insides from 1955-1959.

Original artwork for the Christmas catalogues, and more original art work (including for the Victoria & Albert Museum and Kew Gardens), reproductions, and books may be found in the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering, Book Arts & Special Collections.

A selection of Bawden's Christmas catalogues may be viewed in the Rare Book Room, Book Arts & Special Collections through January 15, 2019.

Happy New Year from all of us!

It Came From the (Photo) Morgue: Where Neptune Struck and Failed

2018-12-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

April 4, 1928
Karl Bersnak, Seaman and mascot aboard storm battered lumber schooner, Nettleton.

The Jane Nettleton, a steamer loaded with lumber entered the San Francisco Bay on April 4, 1928. It had been caught for four days in a wild storm after setting off from Oregon. While the ship's captain refused to comment, the ship's radio operator, Dewey H. Olsen, filled the local papers in with a dramatic tale of damage done to the ship. But the story behind this photo came from another crew member: "The two most scared on the ship were 'Bullets' and 'Buckshot', the ship's cats," said Frank Lundstrom, one of the crew. "All the time the ship was listed they were running about the decks screeching and howling. It's a wonder they didn't go overboard, but they're pretty good sailors and they know how to hang on."

The Jane Nettleton was built at Wilmington, California in 1917.

The photo above is from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue, but here is the headline to an article about the storm battered ship from the San Francisco Chronicle (downloaded from San Francisco Chronicle Current & Historical Newsbank - free with your library card):

San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 1928

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The San Francisco Public Library owns the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, a daily newspaper that covered the time period from the 1920s to 1965. Much of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection comes from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue. However, the morgue also includes statewide, national, and international subjects and people that have not been digitized or cataloged. When researchers order scans from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue,selections are cataloged and added to the online database.

Looking for a historical photograph of San Francisco? Try our online database first. Not there? Come visit us at the Photo Desk of the San Francisco History Center, located on the sixth floor at the Main Library. The Photo Desk hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. You may also request photographs from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue.

VISUAL POETRY: A LYRICAL TWIST

2018-12-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center is pleased to present Visual Poetry: a Lyrical Twist, featuring Thomas Ingmire’s unique modern and expressive calligraphy in the creation of collaborative works with eleven contemporary poets.

Jack Hirschman, Dean Rader, and Tsering Wangmo Dhompa are poets residing in the Bay Area. Li-Young Lee, from Chicago, is a recent recipient of the Levinson prize for his poem, “Changing Places in the Fire.” Robert Bringhurst, from Canada, and David Annwn, Christine Kennedy, Geraldine Monk, Alan Halsey, Allen Fisher, and Robert Sheppard, all from the UK, have been associated with the British Poetry revival. The exhibition features unique artists’ books, and framed wall pieces, including a 35 foot long rendition of Li-Young Lee's poem. The work builds on a long tradition of visual artists and poets being inspired by each other.

Nocturne by Dean Rader
Written out and illustrated by Thomas Ingmire (2017)
On loan courtesy of the artist

In describing the work for this exhibition Ingmire writes, “For over three decades, I have drawn on poetry typically associated with modern calligraphy, including texts by William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas, Denise Levertov, and Wallace Stevens. Traditional characteristics of elegant writing and decoration have been part of my work, but I was also interested in the pictorial possibilities of language itself: the word as image, and the expressive potential of calligraphy to capture the emotion and atmosphere of a text. This involved the creation of new non-traditional letterforms and testing the limits of various techniques including distortion, fragmentation, shifts in placement of text, composition, and color. I am intrigued by the ways these adjustments can influence the reception and meaning of a poem.

“In this exhibit I continue the visual interpretation of poetry, but attempt something additional. Working in collaboration with contemporary poets, I have incorporated their actual voice, concerns, and interests.

“Trying to find a working language for engagement with the poets led to the idea of making music part of the collaboration process. Music not only served as a linking device, but an inspiration for both calligraphy and the poetry. Connecting words to music opened new doors for my thinking about meaning, which in turn led to new images, letterforms, and page compositions. I hope this exhibition—resulting in books, drawings, and broadsides—invites your own broadening experience with the poetry you will read and see here, as well as your involvement with poetry in the future.”

Poetry readings by Jack Hirschman, Dean Rader, and Li-Young Lee opened the show on November 17, 2018. The exhibition is on view through March 31, 2019, in the Jewett Gallery, Main Library. Gallery talks are scheduled for the following Saturdays, 10:30-12noon: December 8, January 19, and February 9.

All programs are free and open to the public.

Changing Places in the Fire by Li-Young Lee
Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire (2017)
On loan courtesy of the artist

Thomas Ingmire: Biography

Photograph of Thomas Ingmire, exhibition catalog

Thomas Ingmire was born in 1942 in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Landscape Architecture and worked in the field in the early 1970s before discovering calligraphy. In 1977 he joined English master calligrapher and illuminator Donald Jackson’s one-year postgraduate study, and subsequently became the first foreign member to be elected as a Fellow of England’s Society of Scribes and Illuminators. In 1980, Ingmire was granted a Newberry Fellowship for the continuing study of calligraphy.

Ingmire’s early work focused on teaching and calligraphic research involving the exploration of calligraphy as a fine arts medium. He has taught workshops throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and several countries in Europe as well as in Japan and Hong Kong.

Ingmire has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. His works can be found in numerous special collections in public and university libraries, and museums throughout the United States, including the San Francisco Public Library; the Library of Congress; The Morgan Library, New York; The New York Public Library; The Newberry Library, Chicago; Stanford University Library; University of California, Los Angeles; Beinecke Library, Yale University; Lorca Foundation, Spain; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Letterform Archive, San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künstem Berlin, Germany, and many other public and private collections.

Since 2002, Ingmire has concentrated on the making of artists’ books. He has embarked on a number of collaborative projects, including a series of artists’ books with poetry by Pablo Neruda and Federico Garcia Lorca and original drawings by Manuel Neri; work as an illuminator on the St. John’s Bible; and two major series of works with a number of contemporary poets. Ingmire currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts and Special Collections Center of the San Francisco Public Library. The center houses highly esteemed collections, including the Robert Grabhorn Collection on the History of Printing and the Development of the Book, the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy and Lettering, and the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor. For more information about the exhibition, please contact the Book Arts & Special Collections Center at (415) 557.4560.

Exhibition catalogues are available in the Friends of the Library Book Store at the Main, and through the artist. Additional information is available from the artist's website.

One Day by Jack Hirschman. Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire [2017]
On loan courtesy of Letterform Archive, San Francisco

Today, We Remember….

2018-11-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

The SFPL Staff would like to acknowledge the November 22nd passing of Mr. Charley Brown, artist, husband and business partner of Mark Evans. While Evans & Brown are known internationally for their acclaimed murals and wall designs, they are beloved in our SFPL family for painting the mural on the ceiling of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the Main Library entitled “Into the Light,” According to Mark, “the mural literally depicts the emergence from a heritage of darkness and ignorance into the light of freedom and knowledge. Books tumble from the heavens. The names of gay and lesbian writers, artists and philosophers through the ages are inscribed around the periphery…The wall is depicted as still under construction, an obvious allegory of the unending building our community has to do.”

Charley and Mark painted the mural as a tribute to the campaign to rebuild the Main Library, and more importantly, to the first-ever dedicated collection to LGBTQIA history in a public building in the United States.

We also remember San Francisco’s own former Supervisor Harvey Milk who was slain, along with Mayor George Moscone, forty years ago today. The tragedy of that day marked a generation and altered San Francisco’s political landscape. Milk’s contributions to the cause of gay rights made him a hero within the 1970s LGBTQIA community, and his heartfelt speeches continue to inspire and resonate people around the globe. The mural detail included here includes the portion of the wall with Harvey Milk’s name. The activism and work of our LGBTQIA fore-bearers provides the solid building blocks so beautifully illustrated by Evans and Brown.

Thank you, Charley, we will miss you. Also, thank you, Harvey, ever in our hearts.

http://evansandbrown.com/into-the-light-hormel-center-mural/

Here’s the history of the mural on the Hormel Center website: https://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000045301

Tonight, the Castro Theatre is presenting a free screening of "The Times of Harvey Milk" at 5 pm and of "Milk" at 7 pm.

Eradication: Second Outbreak of Bubonic Plague in San Francisco

2018-09-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

Eradicating Plague from San Francisco

April 2020 update: scroll down for the timeline and online historical resources.

Until September 15, the San Francisco History Center is hosting an exhibition documenting the bubonic plague in San Francisco. The exhibit, Quarantine & Eradication: Plague in San Francisco, highlights how San Francisco reacted and responded to the bubonic plague outbreaks in 1900 and in 1907. Continuing from the blog post on San Francisco's quarantine on Chinatown during the first outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco, this post will highlight the second outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco. Similar to the first bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco, there were mixed reactions - including denial and calling it the "fake plague."

As Susan Craddock notes in City of Plagues: Disease, Poverty, and Deviance in San Francisco,
“The second epidemic in San Francisco was different for a number of reasons. First, the role of the flea and the rat in plague’s epidemiology was fully understood. Second, the demographics of disease victims were almost mirror-opposite the first epidemic: virtually all cases and fatalities involved whites. Third, the context in which the disease arose and thrived was the Earthquake and Fire of April 1906, after which much of the city burned or lay in rubble. Because the epidemiology of plague was better known in 1907, and because the victims were white, the public health campaign and the discourses informing it were of a different nature. Scientific method was invoked as the fundamental principles in the fight against the disease, and this translated into an unprecedented medical control over space as the macro- and mircorgeographies of the city were combed for infected rodents, and the social and economic practices of individuals were combed for infected rodents, and the social and economic practices of individuals were tightly monitored for their bacillus-breeding potential."

Timeline on San Francisco's Second Bubonic Plague Outbreak:

Apr 18, 1906

Relief Camp 8 Lobos, July 28, 1907

Earthquake and fires roar through San Francisco

May - September, 1907
In May, bubonic plague returned to San Francisco. The first case reported was in the earthquake refugee shacks, Lobos Camp. By September, twenty-four new cases of plague are reported throughout city

September 1907
Over the next eighteen months, 160 cases reported, 78 deaths (primarily all Caucasians - dispelling the myth of the plague’s origin in race, filth and cramped living spaces)

1907 - 1909
A war on the bacillus-carrying rats was declared and elicited a campaign enthusiastically supported. San Francisco women were key leaders in the campaign, specifically in cleaning up the San Francisco Unified School District schools.

Mar 31, 1909
Dr. Rupert Blue is honored for eradicating plague at dinner in Fairmont Hotel

Eradicating Plague from San Francisco

Top archival resources to explore in the San Francisco History Center on the second outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco:

Citizens’ Health Committee Bubonic Plague Scrapbook, Book I, 1908. Compiled by Citizens’ Health Committee. Bubonic Plague, San Francisco Ephemera Collection

Board of Health Minutes, August 1907

San Francisco Unified School District Press Clippings Scrapbook, volume 5, March - September 1908. San Francisco Unified School District Records (SFH 3)

ONLINE San Francisco Municipal Reports, 1907 – 1908. San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Published by Order of the Board of Supervisors

The Campaign against Plague in San Francisco, California, circa 1909 by Rupert Blue, M.D. (SFH 397)

Board of Health Minutes, May 17, 1906-March 24, 1908. San Francisco Board of Health. San Francisco Department of Public Health Records (SFH 63)

ONLINE Eradicating Plague from San Francisco; Report of the Citizens' Health Committee and an Account of Its Work with Brief Descriptions of the Measures Taken, Copies of Ordinances in Aid of Sanitation, Articles by Sanitarians on the Nature of Plague and the Best Means of Getting Rid of It, March 31, 1909. Frank Morton Todd, Citizens' Health Committee, San Francisco: Press of C.A. Murdock & Co

ONLINE Use your San Francisco Public Library card to search full-text articles in the San Francisco Chronicle Historical and San Francisco Examiner Historical databases, 1865 - current. The California Digital Newspaper Collection includes the San Francisco Call (free, open access).

We invite you to visit the exhibit and the San Francisco History Center to learn more about this unforgettable event in San Francisco’s history.

Quarantine & Eradication: Plague in San Francisco runs from July 7 - September 15 at the Main Library, Skylight Gallery on the 6th floor.

This exhibition is occurring in conjunction with the Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic project. This interdisciplinary research project led by social anthropologist, Dr. Christos Lynteris, based at University of Cambridge's Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities (CRASSH), is funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564).

Guest Blogger: Amy Lippert -- Look Closer: Reexamining the Visual Primary Sources of San Francisco

2018-08-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco History Center is pleased to present author and historian Amy Lippert speaking about her new book, Consuming Identities: Visual Culture in 19th Century San Francisco, on Thursday, August 23 at 6:30pm in the Skylight Gallery on the sixth floor of the Main Library.

As a special treat, "What's On the 6th Floor" invited Dr. Lippert to be a guest blogger. More about Dr. Lippert --

Dr. Amy Lippert

Amy Lippert is Assistant Professor of American History and the College at the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching focus on the cultural and social history of the United States in the 19th century, with a special interest in the mass production, consumption, and popular interaction with visual imagery and problems of perception. Her first book, Consuming Identities (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines visual culture and celebrity in nineteenth-century San Francisco. Dr. Lippert was born in San Francisco and received her BA, MA, and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley. She has held fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, the Bancroft Library, and the Huntington Library. One can view several examples of her visual sources, along with hyperlinks to digitized sources from a host of archives around the nation www.consumingidentities.com

Look Closer: Reexamining the Visual Primary Sources of San Francisco by Amy Lippert

Think about your office. Your home. Your phone. What do all three have in common? Aside from the fact that they are where Americans spend most of their time, I’m willing to bet that they are also all adorned with pictures that carry some import for you. Above all, those spaces—whether virtual or literal—are filled with pictures of your loved ones, and probably also yourself. The centrality of images in our daily lives has become the stuff of cliché—the ubiquitous advertising, the pop-up ads, the magazine stands by the grocery checkout counter. Yet these pictures can carry real import, as evinced by the most frequently polled response to the question: what would you rescue if your house was burning down? As too many fire-ravaged Californians have demonstrated in recent weeks, the answer usually has to do with old photo albums and cherished family snapshots or portraits.
This state of affairs may be changing in the digital age, but that’s also interesting from a historical perspective. We may be among the last generations to have physical photograph albums—or at least printed albums that are irreplaceable, as opposed to being stored on photo websites or in the nebulous Cloud.  People nevertheless continue to adorn their walls with pictures of family and friends, not to mention ourselves. If you haven’t gotten around to scanning every old photograph, as I suspect most of us have failed to do, then those images become all the more irreplaceable and valuable.  This sense of pricelessness evokes elements of nostalgia and a deeply individualized sense of worth that is based on personal identity and family ties. Yet its value also yields tangible profit in our capitalist economy: in April 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for one billion dollars, evincing the power of images and their centrality to both companies’ platforms (it is, after all, called Facebook).

How did this cultural fascination with images and identity begin? Some might argue that it evolved along with humans themselves. Berkeley historian Martin Jay has noted that sight became particularly important to homo erectus once we began standing on our hind legs. The sense of sight enabled us “to differentiate and assimilate most external stimuli in a way superior to the other four senses.” Smell, which is so vital to animals on all fours like dogs, was reduced in importance for humans during this fateful transition—indeed, Freud conjectured that this shift was “the very foundation of human civilization.” Vision was “the last of the human senses to develop fully,” and is still “the last of the senses to develop in the fetus.” The eye also possesses far more nerve endings and operates at a much greater speed than any other sense organ, and at the fastest rate of assimilation among the entire sensorium. For all this unparalleled speed, vision entails more than the simple recording and assimilation of sensory data; neurobiologists note that it requires considerable brain function to understand or interpret what we see. A disproportionate amount of the human brain is devoted to visual processing; research indicates that the neurons responsible for sight “number in the hundreds of millions and take up about 30 percent of the cortex, as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing.” Only within the last few generations have scholars in the humanities and social sciences begun grappling with the implications of such an influential and yet subjective framework for human experience and perception.

Consuming Identities book cover

My first book, Consuming Identities, examines a particular chapter in this much larger story: the growth of a commodified image industry in nineteenth-century San Francisco, one of the most diverse and dynamic cities in the United States. I argue that visual images shaped the way that Americans presented themselves, portrayed and related to one another, and framed their world view; thus wielding considerable cultural power in nineteenth-century society. This cultural phenomenon was not simply a matter of perception but of practice and policy: it shaped popular ideas about race and identity, censorship and immigration laws, criminal justice policies, and entire industries such as the transatlantic market for celebrities and fiercely competitive photography and printing businesses in San Francisco, among many other cities around the world. Yet San Francisco was at the forefront of these changes, and it has gone largely overlooked as an epicenter of modern spectacle and visual culture—a culture that was only expanding in a rapidly urbanizing and diversifying country. The most popular genre within the visual medium was the portrait photograph, which played a pivotal role in mediating intimacy, facilitating new modes of identity formation, and creating a public culture of spectatorship amidst the capitalist crucible of the gold rush metropolis. Few places could more dramatically evince these characteristics than San Francisco, a place largely defined by its distance from every other non-indigenous point of origin for its tens of thousands of polyglot nineteenth-century inhabitants.

In my San Francisco Public Library talk, I will showcase examples from the seven thematically organized chapters of Consuming Identities—particularly those I uncovered at the San Francisco History Center and the California Historical Society, with some references to the importance of the Mechanics Institute in the cultural and professional dimensions of San Francisco history. For now, I want to focus on one of the many versions of roughly letter-sized illustrated gold rush stationery—known as letter sheets—that did not make it into my book: “Miners at Work with Long Toms.” This lithograph from San Francisco firm Justh & Quirot (active in San Francisco from 1851-53) was likely published by Cooke and Le Count, and dates to about 1851. It illustrates the posters advertising my upcoming book talk. (A lithograph is a design drawn and inked on stone, and printed with that stone—the technology was developed at the turn of the nineteenth century and proved much more efficient and durable than previous methods of wood or metal engraving.)

In the main image spanning the upper third of the sheet, ten miners work at unearthing their fortunes

Miners at Work with Long Toms Letter Sheet

in a creek, using several iconic implements of the gold rush: shovels, long toms (expanded rockers, with troughs measuring 10-20 feet), and gold pans. Their cabins are visible in the distance, interspersed with the jagged rocks and the conifers of the Sierras. Beneath this vignette is an open space for the correspondent—usually a homesick miner—to pen his letter. The space is framed by two trees on the left and right margins, another long wooden span separating the upper illustration from the lower portion of the sheet (and adorned with serene naturalistic details like two birds perched on one end and a couple of squirrels on the other), and along the bottom there appears to be a Native American spear. Stacked vertically on the left-hand margin are two illustrations: an archetypal miner above an Indian, whose quiver of arrows and shield seem to be hung up above him on the leafy bough that demarcates the left margin. I will have more to say about these figures below, but first I want to contextualize this uniquely Californian version of a much larger visual genre.

Letter sheets communicated various perspectives, but they were usually informational, humorous, nostalgic, or moralizing. Several varieties of letter sheets were destroyed in a series of catastrophic San Francisco fires in the 1840s and 1850s and the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906, but scholars have estimated that between 340 and 750 varieties of sheets were produced—primarily by firms operating in San Francisco and a few smaller ones in Sacramento and the surrounding area. Eastern firms supplemented these sheets, often acquiring their artwork from associates in the Sierra foothills. But as lithograph collector and researcher Harry T. Peters noted in his book (California on Stone) on the subject back in 1935, most eastern letter sheets differed in content, quality, and quantity from their western counterparts: few of them were mass produced, most were printed on low-quality paper, and tellingly, the overwhelming majority depicted serene views rather than caricatures, comics, or historic events. The California letter sheets, as “Miners at Work” exemplifies, evoked exceptional artistic quality, balanced representation of detail, and California artists strove for a distinctive linear perspective that created a three-dimensional effect. They centered on gold rush themes—particularly the archetypal miner—until the mid-to-late 1850s, long after the placer gold deposits had dried up around 1852-53. The sheets nonetheless continued to command a market for decades after the end of the Civil War, by documenting new themes that reflected public interest. German festivals and street scenes from Chinatown highlighted the diversity of the city’s inhabitants while providing viewers on both coasts and beyond with a rare glimpse at the exotic, the spectacular, and the unknown.

The contemporary popularity of these precursors-to-the-postcard is evinced by the fact that they were often pirated, or reproduced with subtle variations. U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library has two other versions of this same letter sheet, with the same illustrations and title. One of those versions lacks the subtitle: “Copied from a Daguerreotyp [sic] sketch by Justh & Quirot Lithographers” (the other includes the subtitle but adds the address of the lithographers, at 28 Jackson St.). The daguerreotype was the first version of the photograph, simultaneously developed by a number of inventors in different countries, but formally introduced to the world in 1839 as the eponymous creation of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. The fact that the term itself is missing the last “e” may have been a simple abbreviation of a widely known term by the gold rush era, or one of the chronic American misspellings of the French word. As I explain in Consuming Identities, this “from a daguerreotype” annotation was a commonly invoked claim, and whether accurate or not (too many original daguerreotypes have been lost to say with any certainty), publishers intended it to enhance the authenticity of their artist-rendered views for audiences wary of inaccurate depictions from the many artists who never actually ventured to California or the gold fields. In an age of false claims known as “humbug” and confidence schemes, daguerreotypes were widely considered beyond reproach as unaltered, frozen moments in time—though I also detail in my book the ambivalence that many nineteenth-century San Franciscans expressed about the extent to which photography could or could not convey deeper, underlying truths.

The main image of “Miners at Work” certainly looks as though it was copied from a daguerreotype: most of its figures appear to be looking directly at the viewer, who would have been in the same position as the photographer, and they are paused in their work. This conscious posing would have been necessary on the part of the photographic subject, because the longer exposure times of early photography did not allow for action shots without considerable blurring. In other words: nineteenth-century subjects knew that they had to hold still if they wanted the camera to capture them for posterity. Thus the man on the far left hunches over his shovel, his arms crossed above the handle, and six men at the center of the image appear to be posing with their shovels in a gesture of the digging that they performed with such frequency that their camps soon acquired the nickname of “diggings.” Two men are in seated or crouched positions, and the one in the right foreground appears to be the only one not looking towards the camera as he carefully studies his pan for gold deposits—or pretends to be doing that work, demonstrating the labor but also the implicitly performative dimensions of the miner archetype.

The miner was inherently performative, as contemporaries well knew and documented by referring to his—and their own—appearance as his (or their) “costume.” Historians like Brian Roberts have estimated that most of the young men who journeyed to California in the late 1840s and 50s were in fact part of the burgeoning middle class, as few proletarians could afford the steep fees for passage, let alone equipment and supplies, that such a long journey entailed. These self-dubbed “Argonauts” (in reference to the Greek legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece) were not necessarily accustomed to hard manual labor, and even those who did arduous work like farming would hardly have been as well prepared for mining as many of their experienced Chilean and Sonoran competitors in the gold fields. They nonetheless reveled in their chance to look and act the part of the phenomenon that the whole world was talking about—and viewing, in the form of the widely distributed illustrations on letter sheets and in a host of publications such as books and magazines, not only across the United States, but in Paris, London, Havana, and many other places.

The “Miners at Work” letter sheet illustrates the archetypal miner—along the left margin of the lower portion—and in its main image, a collection of men who evoke that archetype’s power in their attempts to look and act the part. They all don wrinkled shirts, pants, and several pairs of (doubtless mud-spattered) boots, just like the archetype. Most of them are wearing floppy hats, though one miner at the center of the upper image appears to have retained his top hat in a seemingly comic juxtaposition with his decidedly informal surroundings. At least two of them boast “whiskers,” as the long and unkempt facial hair was often dubbed in boastful letters back home, in which thousands of formerly clean-shaven and perhaps white-collar Americans reveled in their conformity to the decidedly racialized and masculinized miner archetype.

That the miner was racialized as an epitome of white masculinity is literally illustrated on this sheet, with the juxtaposition of the upper and lower figures on the left-hand margin. The Native American man is visibly and spatially separated from the identity and the work of gold rush mining. The difference isn’t just sartorial; he does not carry the iconic implements of the trade, such as the pickaxe, gold pan, or shovel of the miner standing above him. Instead, he reclines on the ground, apparently lost in a moment of contemplation, passive and even relegating his own tools—the arrows and shield—to a place hanging above his head on the tree trunk. There may be a tomahawk or club beside him, but his right hand has relinquished it on the ground. He seems resigned to literally sit out this internationally famous rush for riches, along with all the conquest, industrialization, and modernization (or “civilization”) that Americans proclaimed it would entail. A visual rendering of the then-popular “vanishing savage” myth, he could easily be interpreted as passively receding into the background, temporally and figuratively. He signifies the past, while the archetypal miner stands poised for action, his eyes focused on the horizon. Such seemingly naturalistic depictions masked the real violence and dispossession that lay behind the conquest, as historians of California Indians like Benjamin Madley have amply documented. There is no evident indication of this indigenous man’s tribe, if he was in fact based on a specific individual, but his moccasins, fringed shirt (likely of deerskin) and feather headdress may be reminiscent of the Maidu people of northern California. The larger point here is that most potential customers who purchased this sheet, or the viewers who received it, would not have known or much cared about the particular tribal affiliation and identity of this token representative of California’s indigenous population—a people who were associated with the region’s past.

Every letter that correspondents penned on the letter sheets was unique; yet every letter-sheet illustration was, by definition, mass-produced and identical to hundreds or thousands of others circulating throughout San Francisco and the postal system. Photographic technology did not allow for mass-reproducible portraits in the peak years of the gold rush, but advancements in steam printing and lithography (as detailed in the introduction to Consuming Identities) enabled artist-rendered illustrations to be created in very large numbers. The most popular gold rush letter sheets were printed in runs that stretched well into the tens of thousands, and may have approached one hundred thousand, according to some accounts. They were also extremely affordable, just like their counterparts in the East, and usually sold for mere cents per sheet (one California letter writer noted that he paid five cents for his, though they could easily be between ten and twenty cents). Engravers, printers, and stationers sold them individually or in bulk to resellers such as hotels, for anywhere from $10 to $15 per hundred in the mid-1850s. The genres of lithography and photography captured the period’s tension between uniqueness and homogeneity. For all the individuality that Argonauts expressed through their commissioned photographic portraits and their personal perspectives in letters, their appearances, experiences, and identities were bound up in the mass movement that was the gold rush. Neither of the Bancroft Library versions of this “Miners at Work” sheet contain any visible annotations, but the San Francisco History Center specimen does: along the bottom of the page, in the faded brown ink familiar to any historian of nineteenth-century manuscript correspondence, someone has written “On the other or inside will be found something—.” This tantalizing reference appears to beckon the reader to open up the letter sheet (they were often folded to allow more space for writing inside), or flip it over to the verso side. The Society of California Pioneers possesses an annotated version of this letter sheet, in which someone has penned a letter dated August 26, 1851 (though that dateline has been crossed out, whether by the correspondent or someone else, we don’t know).

Though historians have often utilized the handwritten correspondence of these letter sheets in their chronicles of gold rush life and culture, they have not paid sufficient attention to the distinctive visual medium that the California sheets represented. The correspondents themselves often reacted to the images printed on those pages, whether to reinforce their accuracy or undermine their message with contrary accounts. Some purposefully reserved their remarks for the verso side or for enclosed pages, so as to allow their recipients the chance to display the letter sheets as household decorations. Other purchasers may have adorned their makeshift cabins and tents with the sheets, just as they displayed the photographic portraits of their distant kin on their walls and at their bedside tables. Of all the myriad changes in daily life and culture between our own time and the gold rush, the ubiquity and talismanic power of human images remains as true as it ever was. Pictures still adorn our walls, and they still channel deep emotions. This history has something to tell us about where we came from and how our society came to be, but it also has plenty to teach us about ourselves.

Those interested in conducting their own close readings of these wonderful primary sources, and mining them for their rich details (pun intended), are welcome to do so by clicking on the hyperlinks to the different versions of the sheet provided below. We are all indebted to the hard work that went into scanning and digitizing high-resolution versions of these letter sheets, through fantastic archival websites like the Online Archive of California and Calisphere.

“Miners at Work with Long Toms” [c. 1851]. California Pictorial Lettersheet Collection, San Francisco History Center version:
Bancroft Library version with subtitle and address
Bancroft Library version without subtitle
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco version, courtesy of the Achenbach Foundation

Hysterical? Yes. Comic? Yes. Funny? No.

2018-08-17T17:56:00.000-07:00


The Works: Drugs, Sex & AIDS (Randy Shilts Papers (GLC 43), Box 129 Folder: IV (intravenous) Drug Abuse)

The San Francisco History Center is presenting the exhibition Quarantine and Eradication: Plague In San Francisco about the third plague pandemic (i.e. bubonic plague) and the effects of its presence in San Francisco in the early 1900s. The material on exhibit examines the movement of the disease, how it was popularly viewed, and the many influences that shaped the city's and the country's responses. As early cases were from the Chinatown district, some items highlight the persecution of Chinese and Chinese Americans, and the hysteria that surrounded the plague due to the lack of information about the disease and the lack of understanding of how best to contain and eradicate it.

The Works: Drugs, Sex & AIDS
(Randy Shilts Papers (GLC 43), Box 129
Folder: IV (intravenous) Drug Abuse)

80 years later, San Francisco would be hit hard again with another plague, the AIDS epidemic. In conjunction with the larger exhibition, we've selected a few items to illustrate the same sense of hysteria that accompanied the early years of the AIDS crisis. The selection of the items also brings attention to the library's participation in a digitizing project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities called "The San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic: Digitizing, Reuniting, and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records."

As we look through the archives to answer reference questions or to prepare material for scanning*, we frequently come across items that show the varied approaches taken to promote education and safe(r) practices. Among them is this comic book guide to safe intravenous drug use: The Works: Drugs, Sex & AIDS which was published by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1987. You can find the entire booklet in the Randy Shilts Papers (GLC 43), Box 129, which is available through the San Francisco History Center, 6th floor, Main Library.

*Related collection recently scanned and online: People vs. Owen Bathhouse Closure Litigation Records, 1984-1987 (SFH 31).

Guest Blogger: Jason Ryan -- Race to Hawaii

2018-08-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco History Center is pleased to present Jason Ryan's author talk and book signing for Race to Hawaii: The 1927 Dole Air Derby and the Thrilling First Flights That Opened the Pacific. Ryan will share about his book project on Thursday, August 16* at 6:00pm in the Skylight Gallery on sixth floor of the Main Library.

Kirkus Review on Race to Hawaii:

A page-turning account of “the precarious, pioneering flights to Hawaii” during the late 1920s.

Race to Hawaii book cover

Learning of Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 trans-Atlantic flight, Hawaii pineapple tycoon James Dole immediately offered $25,000 (the same amount won by Lindbergh) for the first nonstop from Oakland, California, to Honolulu. The result was a spectacular story featuring dozens of heroes, not all of whom survived. Journalist Ryan (Hell-Bent: One Man's Crusade to Crush the Hawaiian Mob, 2014) enthusiastically narrates the exciting tale. Though the Dole Derby doesn’t begin until Page 169, few readers will regret the author’s account of earlier attempts. In 1925, a small Navy crew left Oakland in a flying boat but landed 450 miles short when the gas ran out. They spent 10 days drifting slowly toward the islands until they were rescued within sight of land, starving and nearly dead of thirst. In early 1927, two Army fliers carefully prepared a Fokker trimotor and enjoyed a mostly uneventful flight, arriving a month after Dole’s announcement, making the derby an anticlimax. This did not discourage a crowd of eager applicants, and Ryan recounts their biographies, technical efforts, and flights, which include so many malfunctions that readers will conclude that Lindbergh was either a genius or very lucky. Of 15 planes that entered, seven dropped out because of mechanical problems, including several crashes. Eight left the starting line on Aug. 16, 1927; four aborted. Two of the four who continued landed in Honolulu, and two disappeared. One plane that aborted tried again and also disappeared. All told, 10 fliers died during the derby, causing James Dole to harbor “bitterness over his association with so many fliers’ deaths.
A vivid portrait of 1920s American aviation, whose dazzling technical progress could never keep up with the dangerously adventurous fliers who tested the limits of their fragile craft and often died in the process.

In anticipation of his visit to the San Francisco Main Library, Jason Ryan wrote a guest blog post for the San Francisco History Center's blog.

Hawaii or Bust: Conquering the Pacific By Airplane by Jason Ryan

When Charles Lindbergh took off from New York in May 1927, he was an unremarkable American airmail pilot derided as the “Flyin’ Fool,” ridiculed for even thinking of crossing an ocean by himself in his small, single-engine plane. When he landed Spirit of St. Louis in Paris more than 33 hours later, his doubters were revealed as the true fools and Lindbergh was transformed instantly into a worldwide hero. Lindbergh’s nonstop, solo crossing of the Atlantic not only opened the skies, but also the imaginations of a new, and now air-minded, generation. Airplanes, the general public finally comprehended, could take us nearly anywhere!

The excitement over aviation generated by Lindbergh in Paris soon spilled west across the Atlantic and North America and pooled in a perhaps unexpected location: San Francisco and the Bay Area. This carried a certain logic in that if an American pilot just crossed the Atlantic, surely the next challenge was for some brave aviator to cross the Pacific. But while recent innovations in plane and engine design had helped Lindbergh cross a full ocean in one “hop,” crossing the entire Pacific in a single flight was still out out of the question. The Pacific is the world’s largest ocean, covering an entire third of the planet. Any plane loaded down with the massive amounts of fuel needed to cross the Pacific in 1927 would never get off the ground. Yet the right plane could carry enough fuel to reach Hawaii, and that would be crossing at least half the Pacific.

Hawaiian pineapple magnate James Dole was traveling in San Francisco when the news broke of Lindbergh’s flight. Deciding to spur along the conquering of the Pacific by airplane, Dole announced within days $35,000 in cash prizes to the operators of the first two airplanes to reach Hawaii in nonstop flight across (half) the Pacific. To Dole’s surprise, there was an exceptionally strong interest in his offer. So many fliers were itching to fly across the Pacific and claim the prizes, in fact, that Dole decided to organize a formal race to Hawaii in August of 1927 and hand off its administration to a special committee. Naturally, the competitors in the Dole Derby settled on the shortest route between the mainland and Hawaii’s capital – the 2,400 miles over open ocean that separated Honolulu and San Francisco.

This would not be the first attempt to fly across the Pacific. As I detail in my book, Race to Hawaii: The 1927 Dole Derby and the Thrilling First Flights That Opened the Pacific, the U.S. Navy actually attempted to fly nonstop across the Pacific two years before Lindbergh hopped the Atlantic. On August 31, 1925, tens of thousands of people gathered at vantage points around San Francisco Bay to witness the takeoff of two Navy flying boats.“Running parallel with the shore for a mile or more, they rose as gracefully as two birds,” said San Francisco Mayor James Rolph, who made sure to be on hand for the beginnings of the historic flights, each estimated to require 24 hours of flying time.

But while residents of Honolulu stayed awake through the night to await the planes, fate spoiled the fun. One flying boat ended its flight early when an oil line broke, requiring an emergency ocean landing and rescue just off the California coast. The other flying boat, PN-9 No.1, continued onward, only to be stymied by a stiff headwind that exhausted the flying boat’s fuel much sooner than expected, about 500 miles from Hawaii. The flying boat made an ocean landing, expecting to rendezvous and refuel with a nearby Navy ship, but radio mixups thwarted the rendezvous, leading the Navy to mistakenly believe PN-9 No.1 was lost for good. Forced to survive on their own, Commander John Rodgers and his crew of four ripped fabric from their plane and hung makeshift sails between the floating biplane’s wings, turning their flying boat into a slow-moving sailboat. Ten days later, after being followed by a menacing pack of sharks and barracuda, the Navy crew arrived to Kauai thirsty, starving and sunburned, but alive.

This miraculous tale of survival in 1925 seemed a forgotten memory for many of the men and single woman submitting their registration forms for the Dole Derby. All sorts of people across the world and country were intent on making the Hawaiian Hop, including a schoolteacher, a stockbroker, a World War I Ace, a pair of stunt fliers, and more. Nearly all of them dismissed the considerable dangers the trip presented. Beside the chance of running out of fuel, mechanical mishaps were possible during the long flight over open ocean, and pilots would also be prone to falling asleep as they flew through the night. Most of all, navigational challenges threatened the aviators. The wind changed speed and direction often across the wide Pacific, requiring a navigator to measure the gusts carefully and calculate its affect on the flight path. If a plane was off course more than three degrees leaving the long runway at the new Oakland airport, the pilot and navigator inside would never even spot the Hawaiian Islands, dooming them to an emergency ocean landing when the tanks ran dry.


Major Irving's Pabco Flyer and staff, Dole Derby 1927

As the Dole birds prepared for the air race, other aviators moved faster, angling to to reach Hawaii first, even before the contest officially began in August. The Army fielded an attempt, preparing to send a pair of aviators over the Pacific in the “Bird of Paradise,” a tri-motor Fokker C-2. An affable West Coast airmail pilot named Ernie Smith bought a Travel Air 5000 monoplane for the Hawaiian Hop, promising to race the Army fliers. And at the same time in Hawaii, a Hollywood stunt pilot named Dick Grace announced a bid to cross the Pacific but in reverse, flying from Hawaii to California.
These assorted pilots and planes would all take off across the Pacific during the summer of 1927, but not every pilot and plane would reach its destination. Ten people died during the Dole Derby, casting a significant pall over the ambitious and historic air race. But a few fliers did reach the islands and were celebrated as national heroes, just like Lindbergh. The air trail to Hawaii had been blazed, though at a steep cost.

Jason Ryan, author Race to Hawaii

At the end of the book talk, books will be available for purchase and author will do book signings.

San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 1927

*On this day in history: August 16, 1927 is the day the Dole race began. Use your San Francisco Public Library card to search full-text articles in the San Francisco Chronicle Historical database, 1865 - current.

Quarantine & Eradication: Bubonic Plague in San Francisco

2018-08-04T15:54:00.003-07:00

April 2020 update: scroll down for the timeline and online historical resources.

From now through September 15, the San Francisco History Center is hosting an exhibition documenting the bubonic plague in San Francisco. The exhibit, Quarantine & Eradication: Plague in San Francisco, highlights how San Francisco reacted and responded to the bubonic plague outbreaks in 1900 and in 1907.

At the exhibit, one will see a variety of documents, photographs, scrapbooks, and other physical items from the San Francisco History Center’s collections. The sources provide fascinating accounts of the hysteria and racial discrimination surrounding the first plague outbreak in 1900 in Chinatown juxtaposed with the eradication campaign with the second plague outbreak in 1907.

This blog post will focus on the first outbreak in Chinatown. There will be a second post that focuses on the second outbreak in 1907. When the first bubonic plague case was found in San Francisco, there were mixed reactions - including denial and calling it the "fake plague."

Definition of bubonic plague:

Bubonic plague is a disease caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis. It is characterized by painfully swollen lymph nodes or "buboes." In some cases, the bacilli enter the bloodstream, resulting in a condition known as "septicemic plague." A third form, "pneumonic plague," affects the lungs. All three types may produce internal bleeding and the formation of large bruises on the skin, hence another name for the plague, "the black death." All three forms are usually fatal if not properly treated. Septicemic plague usually results in death within 24 hours, while the other two types generally kill those afflicted in 3 to 4 days after infection. The bacillus is carried by fleas that live off the blood of many kinds of rodents. Contagion with bacillus appears to have been a permanent feature of rodent colonies in the Himalayan borderlands between India and China. Similar colonies were also found in central Africa. In these places local people seem to have learned to avoid contact with rodents; consequently, plague did not reach epidemic proportions. This situation began to change in the 13th century, when much of Central Asia was conquered by the Mongols, who then extended their domain westward towards Europe and southward into China. The military and economic expansion of the Mongol Empire was accompanied by the movement of the rat population into new areas. At about this time, the intensification of commercial navigation also opened up new routes for the movement of infected rats into Europe and the Middle East.

In 1894, Yersinia pestis was identified as the cause of plague, and in the 1920s researchers in Manchuria discovered the role of rodents in harboring it. In the 1930s, the recently discovered sulfa drugs finally offered something close to a cure for plague, and from the 1940s onwards, antibiotics provided a complete cure. Even so, the disease has not been eradicated; minor outbreaks of plague still occur in many parts of the world, including the western United States.

Volti, Rudi. “Bubonic Plague.” Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society, Vol. 1, Facts On File, 1999. Science Online.

1013 Dupont Street (now Grant Avenue), circa 1903.
J. D. Williamson Photograph Album

With corrupt politics at play, here is a timeline of events with the quarantine of San Francisco's Chinatown district and eventual elimination of the bubonic plague from the neighborhood.

Timeline on Bubonic Plague in Chinatown, San Francisco:

Report of the Special Health Commissioners Appointed by the Governor
to Confer with the Federal Authorities at Washington Respecting the
Alleged Existence of Bubonic Plague in California: Also
Report of State Board of Health, 1901

Mar 6, 1900

Chinese male (Wing Chut Kang) dies in basement of Globe Hotel, 1001 DuPont Street (Grant San Francisco Examiner reports.
Avenue) with signs of plague. Physicians meet and concur that disease has broken out in San Francisco,

Mar 7, 1900

San Francisco Board of Health orders immediate quarantine of 12 blocks of Chinatown.
San Francisco Police Department removes whites from Chinatown.
Chinatown is cordoned off by 12 noon.
Politicians accuse Board of Health of overreaction for fear of commercial consequences.

Mar 9, 1900

Board of Health lifts quarantine due to protests.
Board of Health conducts house-to-house inspection and fumigation of Chinatown.

Mar 22, 1900

Dr. John Williamson, President of the Board of Health, reports confirmation of plague’s existence.
Local newspapers suppress information.
Board of Health continues to inspect Chinatown for next 6 weeks.
Approximately 50 cases break out and 92% of the cases die.

SF Call, June 15, 1900

May 12, 1900

President McKinley orders Surgeon General to limit travel of “Orientals” on streetcars, trains or ships.
Chinese file suit claiming President exceeded his authority.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors vote to cordon off Chinatown.

Mid-May, 1900
Chinese Benevolent Society meets with health authorities and agrees to cooperate.

May 22, 1900

Board of Health attempts to clean up Chinatown by transferring residents to Angel Island and tearing down Chinese area.
Judge Morrow rules the cordon around Chinatown is illegal and orders Dr. Kinyoun to trial for forbidding Chinese freedom of movement.
California Governor Henry Gage investigates plague with his supporters including big business (railroads), San Francisco Board of Trade, Chamber of Commerce, San Francisco Merchants Association. The conclusion is there is no plague.
Governor forces State Board of Health to change official position and fires members who said there was plague.
Texas and Colorado declare quarantine on California.

Oct 1900

Nineteen more bubonic plague cases are documented.
Mexico, Ecuador, Australia impose quarantine on California.
California State Board of Health continue to deny existence of plague.

Destruction of Chinatown buildings, circa 1903.
J. D. Williamson Photograph Album

1901
Governor Gage condemns city officials of a “plague scare.”

Jan-Apr 1901
Commission is appointed and verifying existence of plague.

Dec 1902
By end of year, 100 bubonic plague cases reported.

Feb 1903

New governor George Pardee, M.D. wants to comply with federal government’s regulations.
Dr. Rupert Blue leads new campaign to cleanse Chinatown.

Mar 14, 1903
Dr. Blue claims danger of outbreak is past.

1905
Plague outbreak ends with 121 known infections, 118 died.

Digital resources for research on San Francisco's bubonic plague history in Chinatown:

Use your San Francisco Public Library card to search full-text articles in the San Francisco Chronicle Historical and San Francisco Examiner Historical databases, 1865 - current. The California Digital Newspaper Collection includes the San Francisco Call (free, open access).
Read accounts straight from the source - the Department of Public Health - including the Report of the Bacteriologist documenting the plague cases reported (and noted in timeline above).

San Francisco Municipal Report 1901 - 1902
San Francisco Municipal Report 1902 - 1903

Take a peek at what Chinatown looked like in 1900 from the digitized glass plate negatives shot by D. H. Wulzen.
Take a peek inside the digital version of San Francisco History Center's J. D. Williamson Photograph Album

We invite you to visit the exhibit and the San Francisco History Center to learn more about this unforgettable event in San Francisco’s history.

Quarantine & Eradication: Plague in San Francisco runs from July 7 - September 15 at the Main Library, Skylight Gallery on the 6th floor.

This exhibition is occurring in conjunction with the Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic project. This interdisciplinary research project led by social anthropologist, Dr. Christos Lynteris, based at University of Cambridge's Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities (CRASSH), is funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564).

Guest Blogger: Cynthia Culver Prescott -- What I Learned by Studying San Francisco's Pioneer Monuments

2018-07-24T17:00:00.005-07:00

The San Francisco History Center is pleased to present Cynthia Culver Prescott's talk Depicting Race in San Francisco’s Pioneer Monuments. Prescott will discuss her pioneer monument project on Saturday, July 28, 2:00pm in the Skylight Gallery on sixth floor of the Main Library.

Dr. Prescott is on faculty in the History Department of University of North Dakota (UND). From the UND History Department:
"Dr. Prescott's work focuses on gender in the American West. She combines social history and material culture methods to study the intersections of gender, social class, and historical memory. Her current research project, Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory will be published by the University of Oklahoma Press in Spring 2019. In it, she traces changing portrayals of race, gender and national identity in pioneer monuments erected from 1890 to the present. She is also building a companion website for this book, pioneermonuments.net, that features interactive maps and timelines, and provides images and information about the 200 monuments included in her study."

In anticipation of her visit to the San Francisco Main Library, Cynthia Culver Prescott has written a guest blog post for the San Francisco History Center's blog.

What I Learned by Studying San Francisco’s Pioneer Monuments by Cynthia Culver Prescott

Pioneer Monument, Golden Gate Park, 1951

My interest in pioneer monuments began with the dozens of statues of pioneer mothers in sunbonnets Pioneer Mother appeared across the United States, including the bronze sculpture by Charles Grafly that now stands in Golden Gate Park. Trained as a western gender historian, I set out to write a book that compared depictions of frontier women in different western states. But the more I researched San Francisco’s Pioneer Mother statue, the more I realized that this story was much bigger than the one that I set out to tell. San Francisco socialite Ella Sterling Mighels was inspired to create a statue honoring San Francisco’s pioneer mothers when she observed earlier frontier-themed monuments such as the 1894 Pioneer Monument and 1897 Admission Day Monument towering over the city’s smoldering ruins in the aftermath of the massive 1906 earthquake. Although no sunbonneted pioneer mothers appear on either of those monuments, I realized that I needed to expand the scope of my research to them.

Pioneer Monument, Hyde & Grove, 1993

Researching San Francisco’s Pioneer Monument forced me to expand my chronological focus. Digging into newspaper accounts looking for public reactions to the monument revealed that attitudes had changed over time. Although it was lauded in San Francisco and across the nation when it was erected in the 1890s, it became highly controversial when the city sought to move it in the 1990s. And then, as controversy erupted around Confederate commemoration in 2015, San Francisco’s Pioneer Monument once again became the subject of public debate. My focused study of pioneer mother monuments from the 1920s ultimately became a sweeping study of pioneer commemoration over more than 125 years from 1890 to the present.

Pioneer Monument, 1908

Delving into WHY the Pioneer Monument became controversial in the 1990s forced me to expand my theoretical focus. Its donor, gold rush migrant-turned-eccentric millionaire James Lick, called for the monument to represent California history from Spanish missions through the growth of American agriculture and commerce. In other words, the monument was to celebrate white American conquest of California. Sculptor Frank Happersberger’s depiction of the mission period has proved most controversial. In “Early Days,” a Spanish missionary towers over a passive American Indian at his feet. In the background, a Mexican vaquero swings a lasso (now missing). Other design elements reinforced the message that Spanish and Mexican settlement had paved the way for the triumph of white American agriculture and commerce.

Pioneer Mother, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915

Understanding the centrality of racial hierarchies depicted in the 1894 Pioneer Monument changed how I thought about pioneer mother monuments, as well. Donors’ objections to depicting San Francisco’s Pioneer Mother wearing a fringed buckskin dress and moccasins took on new meaning as I realized that pioneer mother monuments erected in the early 20th century sought not only to honor settler women’s sacrifices on the frontier, but to celebrate their role in racial conquest of the American West. The variations in gender depictions that I originally set out to study were in fact just a small part of a much larger story about changing race relations in San Francisco and throughout the West.

Quick resources for research on San Francisco's monuments:

Over 300 photographs digitized of San Francisco monuments. Didn't see the monument online? Come visit the Photo Desk to view the photographs that haven't been digitized.

Visit the San Francisco History Center and view the San Francisco Ephemera Collection files on monuments.

Use your San Francisco Public Library card to search full-text articles in the San Francisco Chronicle Historical database, 1865 - current.

It Must Have Been Something I Ate: Gastronomic Adventures with the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor

2018-03-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Foodie alert! This year's wit & humor exhibition features a banquet of book covers, cartoons, and ephemera drawn from the collection (and the San Francisco History Center). Gourmet merry-making is on display with saucy cook books, comic recipes, food cartoons, memoirs, and hilariously peculiar book covers. For this exhibition we believe you can judge a book by its cover. Humorists on view include Ludwig Bemelmans, Virgil Partch (VIP), Ronald Searle, the New Yorker cartoonists, and a smorgasbord of long forgotten and unknown writers and illustrators.

We are pleased to introduce a new collection recently acquired by the Library: hundreds of beautifully preserved “Poisson d’Avril” postcards are on view in several cases around the gallery. A treasure trove of 777 picture postcards celebrating April Fool’s Day in France -- hand-colored photographic postcards from the early 20^th century featuring women, men, couples, and children dressed fashionably or in period costume, holding a fish or two, or more--was acquired by the Library in 2017. The mock fish is often handsomely wrapped in gift ribbons, with the studio or photographer identified on the front of the card, accompanied by a series number, probably for inventory and collecting purposes. Postage was almost always placed topsy-turvy on the front of the postcard, with a message or just the name and address of the recipient on the reverse. The postcards were then sent in time for April Fool’s Day.

Speculation about the origins of “Poisson d’Avril” suggests that fishy pranks and foolishness began with the 16^th century change from the old Julian calendar, with the year beginning April 1 (a time of fasting, and eating fish on Friday prior to Easter) to the new Gregorian calendar, with the year beginning January 1. Those persons reluctant to change, or ignorant of the calendar change, were mocked by those embracing progress, and called “Poisson d’Avril” or "April Fish;" and so a comic tradition was born. “Poisson d’Avril” postcards burst onto the scene during the golden age of postcards in the first decade of the 20^th century; our postcards were printed circa 1905-1920. The craze for collecting picture postcards had caught on in such a big way that it is reported over six hundred million postcards were dispatched in 1903 alone. We can well imagine our collector’s zeal in searching out this very specialized theme. The postcards are alternately romantic, sentimental, saucy, silly, and sometimes, bizarre: in short, “Poisson d’Avril” postcards are a fascinating representation of an old French custom, and an example of one collector’s mania. These display cases show the passionate interest of our "Poisson d'Avril" collector--each case is devoted to a group: women, men, couples, children, and comic and handmade postcards.

“Without humor we are doomed,” noted Nat Schmulowitz, local attorney and former library trustee, who donated his collection of ninety-three jest books to the San Francisco Public Library on April 1, 1947. The collection has grown to over 23,000 volumes, and includes periodicals, audio-visual materials, and ephemera, as well as Mr. Schmulowitz’s personal archive of materials from the twentieth century, including items of a gastronomic nature. The Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor (SCOWAH) is considered the most significant collection of its kind in a public library. Every year, the Book Arts & Special Collections Center presents an exhibition based on materials drawn from SCOWAH -- a tribute to Mr. Schmulowitz’s generosity and lifelong interest in the Library.

7th Annual Valentine Broadside Printing Event

2018-02-14T17:59:00.001-08:00

This is our 2018 Valentine Broadside with text and image by San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck.

The text of the poem, set in Koch Antiqua by Li Jiang of Lemoncheese Press, was pre-printed. The day of the event, February 3rd, patrons printed the images themselves.