Chinatown Riot: A Closer Look

by Woody LaBounty

Seventy-five years ago today, an incident of what the San Francisco Chief of Police Charles Dullea called “hoodlumism” broke out on the streets of Chinatown. In the OpenSFHistory collection we have a series of newspaper negatives bearing witness to the police response.

Teddy Morales and Joseph Bravo, who both lived in the Italian-American-dominated North Beach neighborhood, had an ongoing feud with Chinese youth from the south side of Broadway. Morales claimed he had been knifed in the back six months earlier. On September 30, 1943, two carloads of teenagers attacked the two at the intersection of Broadway and Stockton Street.

Ted Morales and Joseph Bravo, with cuts and bruises, at Hall of Justice, or perhaps Juvenile Hall, September 30, 1943. (wnp14.11582; S.N. Snow photograph, San Francisco Examiner, courtesy of a private collector.)

For their trouble of being attacked and receiving scratches and bruises, Morales and Bravo ended up in police custody. Bravo, an eighteen-year-old seaman, was held for investigation, while Morales, who worked in a warehouse and just seventeen years old, was booked as a ward of the juvenile court.

View to west side of Stockton Street near Broadway. National Sandwich Shop (1247 Stockton), with Samarkand Ice Cream sign; Kids scatter as cops approach, September 30, 1943. (wnp14.11578; S.N. Snow photograph, San Francisco Examiner, courtesy of a private collector.)

The response by the police, in suits and snappy fedoras, was quick. Six teens found circling the area in cars were arrested and charged with vagrancy, disturbing the peace, and inciting a riot. A paddy wagon rounded up another nineteen (as a “precautionary measure”) from a crowd of forty that had gathered at Greenwich Street and Columbus Avenue.1

Teen being guided into paddy wagon on Grant Street near Pacific, September 30, 1943. (wnp14.11579; S.N. Snow photograph, San Francisco Examiner, courtesy of a private collector.)

This followed a mass brawl two days earlier around Broadway and Stockton, described in newspapers as “a sudden riot that sent 200 Italian, Mexican and Chinese school children into a block-long melee.” Four riot squads from the Central Police Station had to be dispatched to break it up.2

In the middle of World War II, with US Marines dying on the Solomon Islands, and the Allies fighting their way up Italy, a brawl of 200 teenagers, although reported up and down the state, didn’t strike reporters as that big a deal. The Sacramento Bee called it a school yard squabble and the San Diego Union noted the “[g]reatest damage, according to members of the Big Brother detail of the police department, was to eyes and noses of the combatants.”3

Teens in paddy wagon on Grant Street near Pacific Street, September 30, 1943. (wnp14.11580; S.N. Snow photograph, San Francisco Examiner, courtesy of a private collector.)

Notes:

1. “Two Attacked on S.F. Street,” San Francisco Examiner, October 1, 1943, pg. 3.

2. “School Children Battle in Streets of Bay City,” Sacramento Bee, September 30, 1943, pg. 16.

3. “School Children Stage Riot in San Francisco,” San Diego Union, September 30, 1943, pg. 9.

Pacific Telephone Buildings, Part 1: A Closer Look

Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company Buildings,
Part 1: Albert J. Steiss, engineer

by William Kostura

OpenSFHistory has recently posted numerous photographs of the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company’s office buildings and switching stations. There were many of them because during the 19th century and the first half (or longer) of the 20th century telephone technology was such as to require buildings in many parts of the city. This is the first of a series of articles intended to make sense of it all for anyone interested in these buildings. I probably won’t be trying to explain how switching stations worked or how the operators who staffed them did their jobs; that’s all beyond me. Because I’m interested in the architecture, the focus of each article will be the engineers and architects who designed these buildings: Albert J. Steiss, A. A. Cantin, E. V. Cobby, and Bliss and Faville (plus a brief but spectacular appearance by Miller and Pflueger). Besides profiling these designers, this format will put the history into roughly chronological order. I hope readers find these articles of interest.

Albert J. Steiss (1867-1909) was born in Pennsylvania and began working as a chain man for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He worked his way up, becoming the railroad’s assistant chief engineer for its lines in the far western part of the state. He next went to work for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, which ran from Denver over the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake City. It was the highest-altitude major railroad in the country, and its motto was “Through the Rockies, not around them.” He caught typhoid fever there, and this caused heart trouble that remained with him for the rest of his life and was thought to ultimately cause his death.

In 1891 he moved to San Francisco to become a draftsman for the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, the city’s dominant phone company; and became its engineer in 1896. (PT&T was reorganized as the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1900, and became known as Pacific Telephone and Telegraph again in 1907. It managed the west coast operations of the national AT&T, or Bell system.) After a decade with the company Steiss was described as Pacific States’ “engineer in charge of all construction, lines, and buildings,” not only in San Francisco, but apparently in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles as well. He was considered to possess “the highest order of ability.” In 1901, when Pacific States’ president, John I. Sabin, left to become the president of the Chicago Telephone Company, he took Steiss with him. Steiss remained in Chicago for two years, then returned to Pacific States T&T in 1903. This time it was not as a designer or engineer, but as the company’s assistant general manager.

It appears that Steiss was in charge of the design of the phone company’s San Francisco offices and switching exchanges during 1891-1901. Whether he designed all of the decorative details of these buildings or left that chore to a junior draftsman is unknown, but he probably supervised the entire work. The first building that can be (cautiously) attributed to him is PT&T’s West Office, at 2001 Steiner Street. It was built in 1891, the same year Steiss came to the company. At only one story in height, its several large Romanesque arches seemed unnecessarily powerful; the roofline was only a few inches above the apex of each arch and so they didn’t have to hold up much. It was visually arresting, however.

PT&T West Office, 2001 Steiner Street, built in 1891 and possibly designed by A. J. Steiss. It was replaced in 1905-1906 by a larger telephone exchange that still stands. (wnp26.1817.jpg; courtesy of a private collector.)

The company’s Mission Office at 2139 Mission Street (1897) was a blend of Romanesque and Classical Revival and was more delicately ornamented. Here, three arches spanned the width of the facade; above was an expanse of brick spandrels and an entablature, most likely of terra cotta. The Park Exchange, still standing at 871 Page Street (1899), is Spanish Colonial Revival in style, but the detailing in and around the column caps is not pure Spanish; it is unconventional, inventive, and pretty. This is the oldest building in San Francisco built for a telephone company.

PT&T’s Mission Office, 2139 Mission Street, built 1897.(wnp26.1671.jpg; courtesy of a private collector.)

PT&T’s Park Office, 871 Page Street, built 1899, and extant in 2018. (wnp26.1709.jpg; courtesy of a private collector.)

Although Steiss must have designed the structural aspects of these buildings, it is possible that their facades were designed by PT&T’s new draftsman, Alexander A. Cantin, who joined the company in 1897 or early 1898. This is not certain; they are a bit fussy by comparison with the stately Classical Revival buildings that Cantin designed for PT&T a few years later. It is known that PT&T also had other draftsmen besides Cantin at the time. Nevertheless, Cantin is a prime candidate as the author of their fronts. He certainly emerged as PT&T’s main designer soon after these were built.

At the turn of the century PT&T purchased a large lot along New Montgomery Street, from Minna to Natoma, where it would eventually, in the 1920s, build its famous sky-scraping headquarters. Here, in 1901, PT&T commenced the planning of a complex of three buildings that would include their office headquarters along New Montgomery, a two-story factory, woodworking shop, and warehouse at 141 Minna, and a five story showroom, warehouse, and factory behind it, at 147-151 Minna. For these, Steiss was the engineer and Cantin was the architect. All three of them stretched the full 160 feet from Minna to Natoma. The two-story building was built first, and it is the only one for which a photograph exists. Because it was to be mostly hidden from view by the other two buildings it was restrained in style, with ornament limited to the rusticated entrance, a profiled cornice, and Mission Revival parapets. Despite the restraint, it nevertheless had a certain power. Of course, all three had but a short existence, for they were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906.

PST&T’s factory at 141 Minna, built 1901. Albert J. Steiss, engineer, and A. A. Cantin, architect. (wnp26.1783.jpg; courtesy of a private collector.)

When Steiss returned to Pacific States T&T from Chicago in 1903, he did only administrative work, and the design of the company’s next round of buildings was left to Cantin. (These will be discussed in a forthcoming “A Closer Look.”) Steiss left the company in about 1905 or 1906, believing it to be mismanaged, and because he was offended when he was not made the manager, as he felt he had been promised. In the city’s graft trials of 1906-1907, he testified against the company’s vice-president, Louis Glass, who was convicted. Steiss died two years later at the baths at Nauheim, Germany, where he sought relief from his heart trouble.

The author would like to thank architectural historian Gary A. Goss for his insights regarding A. A. Cantin.

Victorian to Spanish: A Closer Look

by Woody LaBounty

A few weeks ago we took a closer look at restorations of Victorian buildings, in which Judith Lynch had documented 1970s reversals of façade “modernizations.” Mostly taking place in the middle of the twentieth century, the stripping or covering of millwork details in favor of slathered on stucco, tacked-on asbestos shingles, or glued-on fake stone was about both upkeep and fashion. “Never paint again,” was the promise of these weather-resistant coverings, while contractors offered transformative conversions of old houses to match new popular period revival styles.

937 and 939 Valencia Street. The Italianate Slanted Bay building at left started in the style of its neighbor before being “modernized.” Restored by 2018. (wnp25.10883.jpg; Judith Lynch photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

2970 Pine Street with a fresh facade of stucco and “permastone” in 1951. (wnp58.284.jpg; San Francisco Assessors Office photograph.)

Art Siegel, one of our great volunteers, noticed in the OpenSFHistory collection an example of this practice in action, and earlier than is usually assumed. Here is the west side of Church Street viewed from Liberty Street in April 1914. The Department of Public Works is documenting the street, perhaps with plans to pave the dirt road. Note the Italiante cottage second from the right, situated a little below the street grade.

West side of Church Street between Liberty and 20th Streets, April 8, 1914. (wnp36.00440.jpg; Horace Chaffee photograph, San Francisco Department of Public Works book 8, image 1811.)

Here is the same view in December 1914. The street still hasn’t been paved, but our cottage has been transformed over the intervening eight months. It’s raised, with entry stairs now inset, the whole building encased in siding and stucco with a new parapet.

West side of Church Street between Liberty and 20th Streets, December 30, 1914. (wnp36.00647.jpg; Horace Chaffee photograph, San Francisco Department of Public Works book 10, image 2169.)

The end result would be a mash-up costume of Spanish Colonial and Classical Revival for our old Italianate, one that has stuck and can be seen today: red clay tile, a couple of pinnacles on the new parapet, a window with a surrounding arch molding at the old entryway. The ram’s head likely is a more recent addition. While many of us would pine for the original Victorian, all in all, it’s a fairly handsome and well-kept house with a grand view downtown over Dolores Park.

West side of Church Street between Liberty and 20th Streets, 2018. 824 Church Street at center.

Three of the four buildings in our original photograph are still standing in 2018. The houses on each end had garages installed, along with some smaller changes, and the old barn is gone, replaced in 1930 by a very exuberant residence of mottled stucco and Spanish-inspired balconies. And perhaps most importantly, the street did finally get paved.

The San Franciscans: David and Jefferson Peyser

by Nicole Meldahl

Amateur photographs are my favorite subgenre of the OpenSFHistory archive. Commercial photography does well to paint the scene, provide context, but photographs taken by everyday San Franciscans uncover the soul of our picturesque city. We may never identify some of our OpenSFHistory residents, but that’s not the case with one group of charming images connected by a consistent “D. Peyser” mark and the recurring appearance of a fashionable young boy. So who was this D. Peyser and why did he take these photographs?

3rd and Market Streets decorated for the Knights Templar convention in 1904, as captured by David Peyser. Note the cameras on tripods to the left. (wnp14.0966.jpg; David Peyser photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

As it turns out, the D stands for David. He was the son of a native German, a Susanville mercantile trader named Samuel, who also ran a hotel. Family and business were always synonymous for the Peysers. David and his brother Abraham ran haberdasheries in Reno in the 1880s before finding their way to the Bay Area in the 1890s, first in Oakland and then in San Francisco proper. They both did well for themselves; David became a ladies’ tailor and Abraham partnered with three members of the Wood family—Samuel N., Meyer, and Benjamin, to establish the incredibly successful department store called S. N. Wood & Co. It was beautiful, it was high-end, and the San Francisco Call thought the company’s new store in the Flood Building, opened just before the 1906 earthquake and fire, would launch “a new era in mercantile lines.”1

Abraham married a Wood relative named Annie and had two daughters, Dorothy and Ruth, and David married Gussie Baer on August 14, 1898 in a small ceremony attended only by immediate relatives; just over a year later they welcomed the birth of a son, Jefferson Edwin Peyser, in Oakland on November 14, 1899. By the time Jefferson was grade school age, the family had relocated to San Francisco and were active members of Temple Emanu-El.

Jefferson Peyser with cousins Dorothy and Ruth (we think), possibly on the back deck of the Abe Peyser residence at 1458 Page or the David Peyser residence on Baker Street. (wnp14.0899.jpg; David Peyser photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

David, a successful tailor and purveyor of cigars, took up photography as a hobby and captured pre- and post-1906 earthquake San Francisco with an amateur’s curiosity. He shot with nitrate and glass negatives, which was neither cheap nor easy, and played with advanced techniques like double exposures.

David Peyser became an avid amateur photographer, playing with illusionary double exposures seen here and using his son, Jefferson, as a primary subject. (wnp15.229.jpg; David Peyser photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

The Peyser family archive on OpenSFHistory speaks volumes about turn-of-the century San Francisco, but it’s also a window into David Peyser: who he was and what was important to him. First and foremost, he seems to have been a proud father and a family man. Jefferson appears in many of his photographs, sharply dressed as was befitting the son of a tailor and nephew of a department store president. One wonders if these weren’t used as publicity for S. N. Wood & Co. goods?

Abraham Peyser’s S.N. Wood & Co. department store in Oakland, 1907. (wnp15.230.jpg; David Peyser photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

In fact, S.N. & Wood Co. advertisements and department store windows around the city are a recurring photographic subject for David, as he, perhaps, chronicled his brother’s success while scoping out his own competition.

Jefferson grows older in front of our eyes on OpenSFHistory. He graduated from Lowell High School, narrowly avoided service in World War I, and then went to U. C. Berkeley where he received his B.A. in 1921, thereafter entering Boalt Hall law school and earning his Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1923. Admitted to the state bar that same year, he began a successful general practice in San Francisco, dedicating his free time at Temple Emanu-El, where he was a religious schoolteacher as early as 1925. He met and married Marguerite Kutner on June 17, 1928, and became the youngest candidate ever to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (at the time) on November 5, 1929. Jefferson was building a name for himself. “In his profession, in civic and social affairs, he is generally considered as one typical of the modern progressive citizenship of the San Francisco of today.”2

Modern and progressive, indeed. Jefferson, went onto become a prominent ambassador for the Jewish community at a very complex time in world history. In September 1933, six months after his father David had passed away, Jefferson was the first San Francisco politician to openly oppose Adolph Hitler. He withdrew from the United German Societies’ celebration of German Day, which commemorated the 150th anniversary of the first German’s arrival to the United States, and in explanation, wrote a public letter:

“I will not be present to sit upon a platform with Adolf Hitler’s German Nazi swastika [because it] was my understanding that the celebration was purely nationalistic. Now they tell me the pageant will depict Nazi events and the swastika will be displayed. In spite of my respect for American-born Germans, I cannot participate. My sentiments toward Hitlerism are too well known to bear repetition.”3

To put this in perspective, Hitler had only been appointed Chancellor that January and much of the U.S. was still ignorant to the atrocities just gaining momentum abroad. World War II would not begin until 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, and the United States would not be officially involved until attacked by Japan in 1941. Jefferson’s conscience was far ahead of his nation. It’s remarkable that the dashing little boy we see grow up through the lens of his father became the first San Franciscan to openly oppose an evil dictator.

The Peyser family lived at 736 Baker Street (which still stands), where David Peyser died following a protracted illness on March 1, 1933. (wnp15.1480.jpg; David Peyser photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

Jefferson’s career continued to climb throughout the 1930s. He became one of three Jewish republicans to represent San Francisco in the State Assembly. In 1934, he was elected to the first of two terms in the state senate while simultaneously filing incorporation papers for the California Wine Institute, an organization for which he would serve as general counsel for the next 43 years. In 1936, along with Leon Adams, he crafted California’s first wine quality standards (a code of practices and wine type specifications) and saw them enacted into state law. He then quit the state legislature in 1938 and became a lobbyist for many organizations, including the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

Jefferson Peyser remained deeply committed to human rights, the Jewish community, and civic culture throughout his life. He was the national vice chairman of B’nai B’rith’s anti-defamation league in the 1950s, and later the organization’s international vice president in 1965. To this day, the Jefferson Peyser Estate endows a position at U.C. Berkeley’s school of law and continues to support the San Francisco Opera.

The Peyser family out for a row on Stow Lake, 1903. (wnp14.0911.jpg; David Peyser photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

We look at old photographs all day, but the Peyser family archive and the stories it holds, have blown us away. It’s incredible that someone let go of this wonderful collection of prominent family images, that our private collector saved them out of an antique store, and that we were able to pull its stories back together through formatting and facial recognition, photographer’s marks, digitization, and research.

In November 1989, Herb Caen reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that Peyser was postponing his 90th birthday gala because of a hairline hip fracture. After all, “what good are a fine orchestra and beautiful women when you are unable to dance?”4 Jefferson Peyser died the next month in his Nob Hill home on December 30th. When asked to remember his friend and colleague, Norman Simon, executive director of B’nai B’rith, said: “He was a fiercely independent and outspoken individual. He believed in telling it like it was.”5

Jefferson Peyser in a mohair coat posing in Hamilton Square. (wnp15.1537.jpg; David Peyser photograph, courtesy of a private collector.)

Notes:

1. “S.N. Wood & Co.’s New Clothing Store Open for Business To-Morrow,” San Francisco Call, April 14, 1905.

2. The History of San Francisco, California (S. J. Clark Publishing Company: Chicago-San Francisco, 1931).

3. “Peyser Won’t Serve With Nazi Sign,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 26, 1933.

4. Herb Caen, “The Monday Washout,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 1989.

5. “Jefferson Peyser—S.F. Jewish Leader and Wine Lawyer,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 6, 1990.

Dead Shot’s One Shot: A Closer Look

by Woody LaBounty

OpenSFHistory has many, many promotional automobile negatives that we believe originated with Christopher Helin, photographer and automotive editor for the San Francisco Examiner from 1915 to 1935. The images ended up in the hands of collector Wyland Stanley and, from him, have been disseminated to be found in libraries, eBay auctions, private collections, and at OpenSFHistory. The one below definitely requires a closer look.

John P. D. Chadwick receives check from Chandler-Cleveland sales manager Charles Bowman for “apprehending” traveling lecturer Col. King Stanley and his wife Grace Raymond Stanley (in car). Claus Spreckels mansion in background at Van Ness Avenue at Clay Street, September 8, 1924. (wnp4.1452.jpg; courtesy of a private collector.)

Taken 94 years ago this month, the image shows a stereotypical western character with a couple of dudes in suits. A stylishly-dressed woman listens from inside an automobile with illustrations and sign lettering on its side. Behind the group, on the corner of Clay Street and Van Ness Avenue, is the Claus Spreckels mansion, restored after being gutted in the 1906 earthquake and fire, only to later fall to “progress.”

Colonel King Stanley, who already had a pretty good name, was also known as “Old Dead Shot.” It was an honorific nickname given to him, he claimed, by “Indians of the frontier,” and sometimes his story specifically mentions he received it after shooting his way out of the Battle of Wounded Knee.1

Stanley had become a traveling entertainer, crisscrossing the country in different automobiles, always with his likeness and colorful descriptive text painted on the side:

Col. King Stanley, Old Dead Shot
Traveler
Trailblazer
Explorer
Lecturer
En Route from Here to There.

The Macon Telegraph described Stanley’s typical attire: “…heavy boots that lace to the knee, a red and black hunting jacket and other typical Western apparel, and all that topped by a huge sombrero.” A rattlesnake skin cravat also had a prominent place in the colonel’s wardrobe.2

In 1924, the Chandler-Cleveland Motor Car Company decided to hire Stanley to promote its new model, which featured a “One-Shot” lubrication system. The company gave him a 1925 Cleveland Six, and added their own message to his usual artwork: “Old Dead Shot and his ‘One Shot.’” What better way to advertise the reliability of an automobile than have a droopy-mustachioed, suspender-and-boot-wearing trick-shot western scout drive it around the country?

Stanley, 71 years old at the time, visited dealerships from South Carolina to San Diego. This wasn’t his former lonely life as a scout. He had his wife of two years with him, and a mechanic, “Nebraska Bill” Spohn, riding along to keep the Cleveland running like a top.3

In some ways, the little details we learn about Col. Stanley’s spouse are more interesting than his blowhard Indian-fighting tales. The former Grace Raymond was a lawyer and “newspaper woman,” often called Stanley’s “radio wife” because the couple married in a broadcasting station, supposedly the first marriage ever conducted on live radio. One suspects she might be the mastermind behind Stanley getting the “one-shot” gig.

The couple’s loop around the United States was touted as their million-mile honeymoon. At every stop the Stanleys were appropriately enraptured and complimentary of the town or city. After a nice remark on local climate or hospitality—Macon, Georgia was “the City of Chivalry,” and Phoenix, Arizona the “City of Smiles”—Stanley had a handy quote on how he was equally impressed with his automobile’s one-shot technology: “If I am not badly mistaken, the new lubrication system will materially lengthen the life and serviceability of the Cleveland motor car.”4

For a tale-telling cowboy scout, the colonel stayed on script for the motor company, no doubt with help from the newspaper automobile editors and the dealership representatives. Instead of tales of the Wild West, we mostly get “Col. Stanley claims his car is so easy riding that he has never even broken a tube in the five-tube radio set installed in his car.”5

Sometimes the newspapers weren’t sure what the story should be. Was Stanley famous? The car unique? Perhaps the honeymoon angle? The durability of the tires on a long-distance trip? Muddying the marketing even more, some dealerships came up with a gimmick to offer $100 credit on a new car to citizens who spotted Stanley, making it a human scavenger hunt story.

But the promotion was a success from a visibility angle. Stanley’s trip with the Cleveland Six appeared in newspapers across the country. During his San Francisco visit, after being spotted by John P. D. Chadwick in one of the scavenger hunt promotions, the old scout led a caravan of fourteen Cleveland cars through the streets of the city and received a key to the city.6

Notes:

1. “Col. Stanley Here in his Famous Car,” Rockford Republic, April 17, 1925, pg. 6.

2. “King Stanley, Indian Fighter, Comes Home to ‘Chivalry City,’” Macon Telegraph, February 24, 1926, pg. 10.

3. “Colonel Stanley Columbia Visitor,” The State (Columbia, South Carolina), January 20, 1925, pg. 10.

4. “Indian Scout Talks of Trip,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 21, 1924, pg. 36.

5. “‘Dead-Shot’ Stanley Uses ‘One-Shot,'” San Diego Evening Tribune, December 12, 1925, pg. 30.

6. “Old Pioneer ‘Apprehended,'” San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1924, pg. 21. James H. Lackey, The Chandler Automobile: A History including the Cleveland and Chandler-Cleveland Marques, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Books, 2018) pg. 190.