Month: February 2018

by Woody LaBounty

This weekend, March 3-4, 2018, San Francisco History Days will once more fill the Old Mint at 5th and Mission Streets. While the main draw for the free event is the gathering of history groups, authors, presenters, museums, libraries, and interpreters of the city’s past, a close second for many is an opportunity to walk around inside the massive historic landmark itself.

Looking north on 5th Street across Mission at the Old Mint in May 1875, shortly after it opened. (wnp37.01599, copy negative from Marilyn Blaisdell Collection, courtesy of a private collector.)

Opened in 1874, the classical Greek Revival temple to coinage survived the 1906 earthquake and firestorm thanks to heroic efforts by the employees under the supervision of Frank Leach. Minting operations ended onsite in 1937 as the Treasury Department moved west to a new building at Hermann and Buchanan streets. The Old Mint building was unused and forlorn-looking for years—many of us remember going inside as school children in the 1970s and 1980s, when a small museum operated out of part of the cavernous complex.

View north to men sitting on Mission St., holding champagne bottles amid earthquake ruins behind the U.S. Mint, 1906. (wnp27.5527, Western Photographic Co., print courtesy of a private collector.)

The steep entry steps to the portico entry, elegant public counting rooms, and massive smokestacks rising behind the center courtyard are impressive in a way the new overcompensating Salesforce Tower can’t quite capture. The curving bannisters, inscribed doorknobs, and vault brickwork speak to an era when “craftsmanship” and “government building” could keep company in the same sentence.

Horse car passing the intersection of 5th and Mission Streets with U.S. Mint behind, circa 1883. (wnp26.338, courtesy of a private collector.)

The Old Mint’s future has been up in the air for decades. The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society tried to turn it into a city history museum, but the 2008 economic crash killed initial fundraising efforts and the group could never really get out of the hole. A new effort spearheaded by the California Historical Society has gained some traction (and funding) to restore and revive the national landmark. Specific plans are still in development, but historical interpretation and public accessibility are almost certainly two main starting points.

Here are a few of our historical images of the Old Mint to whet your appetite, but make sure you come out to see the real thing this weekend. Western Neighborhoods Project will be there as we are every year. Drop by our table and say hello!

Front steps and portico entrance to U.S. Mint, circa 1875, showing in detail the sandstone facade and original chimneys. (wnp27.6093, print courtesy of a private collector.)

Massive pulley wheel, part of the engine works that powered the creation of millions of coins. (wnp37.01600, Eadweard Muybridge photograph. Copy negative from Marilyn Blaisdell Collection, courtesy of a private collector.)

The roofline and cornice work of the building had significantly deteriorated by the 1960s. Intersection of 5th and Mission taken from parking garage. (wnp147.1670, John Harder photograph. Print courtesy of a private collector.)

by Woody LaBounty

The group is a dour looking one. A minister with clergical collar, a grim man standing beside him, and a collection of stern women and children in their dress-up clothes pose in a weedy courtyard for the photographer. One woman in the back is too shy to lift her head for the photo. Only the boy on the far right really goes for a smile and the reward for his cheerfulness is to become a blur on the negative.

The serious attitude of this congregation or Sunday school class is not so odd, but the group’s backdrop is truly strange. The wall behind the group is surmounted not by religious iconography, sacred symbols, or biblical scripture, but by the worn side of a North Beach and Mission Street horse car from the Market Street Railway.

St. Andrew by the Sea Protestant Episcopal Church group in courtyard of 1338 47th Avenue, circa 1908. (wnp37.02760, copy negative from Marilyn Blaisdell Collection, courtesy of a private collector.)

When many of the city’s old horse-pulled rail lines were converted to electric streetcars in the 1890s the Market Street Railway Company offloaded the sturdy but incompatible cars for sale to the public for $10-$20. Transit cars that for thirty years had ferried thousands of San Franciscans from the Financial District to the Mission now became garden sheds, small shoe repair shops, real estate offices, summer cottages, and artist studios.

Carville homes along Great Highway between Irving and Judah Street, circa 1905. (wnp4.1664a, print courtesy of a private collector.)

Along the beach south of Golden Gate Park a quirky community of converted horse cars started with bohemian clubhouses, weekend rentals, and coffee saloons. The grandest structure in this Carville-by-the Sea was the nineteenth century version of a bed-and-breakfast named “Vista del Mar,” run by Charles and Abbie Patriarche. He was a purchasing agent and the couple’s primary residence was a fine home on Pacific Avenue. Made up of ten old cars with destination signs used as fencing, Vista del Mar proudly displayed the open sides of car on the second story where the rows of windows offered superb ocean views. The main structure formed a U with an open courtyard sheltered from the westerly breezes in the center. It is in this courtyard that our church group posed.

Carville’s heyday lasted about a decade on either side of the turning of the twentieth century. Refugees dispossessed by the 1906 earthquake and fire moved out to the open beach lots and began building a more conventional neighborhood in today’s Outer Sunset District. The newcomers tempered the old party atmosphere of Carville with more conventional businesses, serious booster clubs, and new churches. St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church opened where it still stands today on the corner of Judah Street and 43rd Avenue. The old Vista Del Mar was taken over to become the St. Andrew by the Sea Protestant Episcopal Church at 1338 47th Avenue. Sunday School was taught in a shed up on the sand hill behind.

St. Andrew by the Sea Church at 1338 47th Avenue, circa 1908. Sunday school building on sand at far right. (wnp4.1667, print courtesy of a private collector.)

St. Andrew was San Francisco’s far western outpost of religion from 1908 until it closed about 1911. In 1912, a beach-dwelling Episcopalian had to trudge over the dunes to the Church of Incarnation at 11th Avenue and Irving Street.

The old Vista del Mar structure hung on another twenty years, with the Patriarches moving in from their Pacific Avenue home to spend their sunset years in the Sunset District. Today, two stucco single-family homes, built in 1938, occupy the lot.