Fascinating San Francisco Part 3

The Chamber Music Society has toured the United States and added to the musical prestige of the city.

The Concerts of the Bohemian Club, the Pacific Musical Society, the San Francisco Musical Society and the Loring Club have definite places in the musical life of the community.

Organ literature attracts many people to the recitals at the Civic Auditorium. The pipe organ here was built for the Panama-Pacific Exposition. It was subsequently rebuilt and presented to the city.

The theatres of San Francisco that were famous in an earlier era are now names packed away in the lavender of remembrance. Today the city has new theatres of imposing appearance and large seating capacity. The old stage personalities, however, troop through the writings of contemporary theatrical critics like deified shades.

The first managers of the old California theatre were Lawrence Barrett and John McCullough. The foremost actors were drawn to the city, including Charles Kean and Edwin Forrest. The Bush street theatre was conducted for fifteen years by M. B. Leavitt. It is difficult to be brief with the list of famous names. David Belasco, born in San Francisco, was stage manager of the Baldwin before he made theatrical history in New York. David Warfield made his first professional appearance at the old Wigwam. William A. Brady began his theatrical career in the city, and so did Al Hayman. Holbrook Blinn was a boy star in amateur theatricals.

At the Alcazar, San Francisco's stock house, many familiar players made their debuts, including Blanche Bates, Frank Bacon, Frances Starr, Bert Lytell and Evelyn Vaughn.

The Orpheum theatre of San Francisco is the mother house of the vaudeville circuit of that name, which supplies entertainment to cities throughout the United States and has overseas affiliations. The Orpheum developed from a music hall conducted by Gustav Walter and the first building on the present site in O'Farrell street, off Powell, was erected in 1887.

Universities

Like a tower of enlightenment the campanile of the University of California, in Berkeley, is seen by visitors to San Francisco whether they come through the Golden Gate from Asia or approach the city by ferry from the terminals of the transcontinental railroads on the East Bay sh.o.r.e. It is likewise visible from the hills of San Francisco.

This white shaft is symbolic of the opportunity offered to the world to educate its youth in San Francisco. Within short motor rides from the city are three big universities. In addition to the University of California at Berkeley, which has one of the largest enrollments of any inst.i.tution of its kind in the United States, there is Stanford University at Palo Alto, a privately endowed seat of learning with notably high standards of scholars.h.i.+p and a rigid limit on the number of its students, and the University of Santa Clara, which has trained many of California's public men and members of the bench and bar. California and Stanford are co-educational.

The University of California maintains in San Francisco the Hastings College of Law, the Medical School, the California School of Fine Arts, the George William Hooper Foundation for Medical Research, the California College of Pharmacy and the Museum of Anthropology, the latter being one of the buildings of the Affiliated Colleges, overlooking Golden Gate Park. The Hearst Greek Theatre at Berkeley has done much to make the name of the University familiar abroad. Sarah Bernhardt, Maude Adams, Ben Greet and Margaret Anglin have been among the notables to appear on its open air stage.

Stanford University, which numbers Herbert Hoover and many other famous men among its alumni, maintains in San Francisco the Medical School and Stanford and Lane hospitals. The campus in the Santa Clara Valley is well worth seeing. The sandstone quadrangles, arcades and red tile roofs, which reproduce the feeling of the early Mission buildings, are finely achieved examples of period motifs applied to collegiate architecture. The Stanford Memorial Church is especially interesting for its richly carved stone and colored Italian mosaics, on the exterior as well as within.

The University of Santa Clara, conducted by the Jesuits, is located on the site of one of the Missions established by the Franciscans under Junipero Serra, and its modern buildings incorporate the ancient structure.

In addition to these universities is Mills College in Oakland, an inst.i.tution for women of the type of Wellesley, Va.s.sar and Bryn Mawr.

The list of private schools and academies offering specialized instruction is a long one.

Building bridges of understanding across the seas, students attending the universities and other inst.i.tutions in the San Francis...o...b..y region are playing roles in international relations that are just beginning to be realized. H. G. Wells should study them in drafting his outlines for world amity.

Cliffs and Beaches

From Fort Scott west to Fort Miley and south to Fort Funston, a distance of something over eight miles, there is a line of cliffs and beach that is the ocean front of San Francisco. Driving up from the eucalyptus-lined avenues of the Presidio along a road that reveals perspectives of bay and hills, you come out upon the cliffs that form the southern post of the Golden Gate and extend above the eastern and southern sh.o.r.e of the outer harbor, with yellow beaches at their feet and with homes, gardens and parks set along their edge.

From these cliffs is spread a vista of coast line and ocean with a sweep that extends as far north as Point Arena and as far west as the Farallon Islands, rugged points of rock reaching out of the ocean depths twenty-three miles off sh.o.r.e, and as far south as the azure thrust of Point Pedro.

Drifting along the cliff highway, which runs back of the fortifications that defend the port of San Francisco, you drop down past the dirigible hangar of the United States Army Flying Corps. You rise through Sea Cliff, a residence section like a hanging garden over the ocean, and come to Lincoln Park, where the flagstaff that marks the terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the end of a transcontinental trail, is set.

Following now a detour through city streets, instead of the highway that will soon traverse the cliffs, to the Cliff House, a resort foremost in the written and pictured annals of San Francisco, you glimpse three miles of sandy beach stretching southward to the jutting headlands of Point Pedro and you drop down to the boulevard that flanks the Esplanade, which the city is building as part of its playground plan.

Here is San Francisco's Little Coney Island, where the mult.i.tude comes on Sundays by motor car and trolley, with lunch baskets and children, to frolic or rest on the sands that front the sea.

Gay booths and kiosks skirt the Esplanade, where vendors are kept busy supplying their wares and where everyone appears as carefree as the gulls wheeling above the white breakers.

As you continue south along the beach you pa.s.s the chalet of the Olympic Club, whose members sally forth on New Year's Day for their dip in the surf. Presently you reach the Great Highway, which traverses the d.y.k.es of sand raised by wind and water as barriers against the ocean. Ahead of you are Sloat Boulevard and the Skyline Boulevard, which, skirting Lake Merced, stretches south through the sh.o.r.e mountains, its objective Santa Cruz, on the blue bay of Monterey.

This expanse of three miles of glistening sandy beach is a playground where the people may watch the ever-s.h.i.+fting panorama of sea and sky and hills. Seals can be seen sunning themselves on the rocks. Beyond them, riding the swells, are fis.h.i.+ng boats, and still farther out cargo carriers and pa.s.senger liners make for distant points or come seeking haven in the Port of Adventure--San Francisco.

Clubs

Club life in San Francisco has won the admiration of many men of letters and other visitors. Kipling says appreciative things about the Bohemian Club in his American Notes that exceed anything written by its own historians. Julian Street, in his Abroad at Home, says that with her hills San Francisco is Rome; with her harbor she is Naples; with her hotels she is New York.

"But with her clubs and her people she is San Francisco, which to my mind comes near being the apotheosis of praise," he adds.

The Bohemian Club's devotion to music and drama finds expression beyond the plays and concerts at its town clubhouse. In addition it owns a grove of redwoods in Sonoma county, where "highjinks" are staged every midsummer. A grove play, the book and music of which are written by members, is the feature of the annual gathering which has spread the name of the Bohemian Club to many distant places. This distinctive type of country annex is likewise enjoyed by The Family, a club which has in addition to its city quarters a redwood grove in San Mateo county known as "the Farm," where original drama and music are produced.

A bronze tablet in memory of Bret Harte is on the Post street facade of the Bohemian Club, near Taylor. Characters from the prose and verse of the author are shown in bas-relief, including Salomy Jane, Yuba Bill, Tennessee's Partner, John Oakhurst and the Heathen Chinee. The Olympic Club, the Pacific Union Club on n.o.b Hill, the University Club, the Commonwealth, the Union League Club, the Commercial, the Transportation, the Concordia, the Argonaut, the Engineers, the Army and Navy, the Old Colony and the Press Clubs are among the other organizations with well appointed quarters. The Knights of Columbus, Masons, Elks and other fraternal orders have their own clubs. The Olympic Club also maintains the Lakeside Country Club with a golf course and trapshooting facilities. The Olympic is one of the oldest and largest athletic clubs in the country, having over 5000 members.

Women's organizations owning or now building their own club houses include the Francisca, Woman's Athletic, the California, Sequoia, Century, Sorosis, Town and Country, National League for Woman's Service, City and County Federation of Women's Clubs and the Y. W. C. A.

San Francisco is a paradise for golfers, and the courses of the various clubs have settings of exceptional natural beauty. Among them are those of the Presidio Golf Club, the California Golf Club, the San Francisco Golf and the Lake Merced Golf and Country Club on the Rancho Laguna de la Merced. The munic.i.p.ality maintains two golf courses, one at--Lincoln Park and one at Lake Merced.

Across the Bay, in Alameda and Marin counties, and down the peninsula are any number of country clubs. The San Francisco Yacht Club and the Corinthian Yacht Club have club houses on the Marin sh.o.r.e.

Homes and Gardens

Surface impressions of San Francisco a.s.sail the visitor like colors in a gypsy's scarf l.u.s.trous and salient. There is so much vivacity in the streets downtown, so much to see in the haunts talked about, that one is apt to overlook in a brief sojourn an outstanding characteristic of the city--its many distinctive homes.

Hardly a month pa.s.ses that is not marked by pages of appreciation in national architectural journals about the creative originality shown in the landscape gardening and in the structural conceptions achieved in the residence parks of San Francisco. In versatility of treatment the architects who have specialized in home building in the San Francis...o...b..y region have had their designs of contoured streets, parterres, terraces and plantings published more widely than those of their professional brethren in any other section of the country.

Tour leisurely by motor car or afoot through the city if you would convince yourself how lovely the homes of San Francisco are. Leave the traveled boulevards and journey out into the districts that lie along the hills north of Was.h.i.+ngton street and west of Van Ness avenue as far as the Presidio wall. Skirting that dividing line, wander through the area between Geary street and the military reservation.

Pacific avenue, Broadway, Vallejo and the cross streets leading into them are built up with splendid homes, outlined against inviting lawns and gardens. There are noteworthy residence tracts in this section-- Presidio Terrace, West Clay Park and Sea Cliff, where homes that look like villas and chateaux perch on heights that afford a sweeping range of ocean, hills and harbor entrance.

The district west of Twin Peaks, which may be reached either by the Munic.i.p.al street cars that go out Market street or by automobile, has restricted residential areas that are reminiscent of the ill.u.s.trations on the satiny pages of de luxe architectural folios.

Rapid transit has brought country life to city dwellers in San Francisco, Third and Market streets being only twenty minutes away from St. Francis Wood and its fountains and trees; Ingleside Terraces; Westwood Park, lying along the lower slopes of Mt. Davidson; Forest Hill and other verdant home areas, the tunnel through Twin Peaks making all this possible.

Coming back downtown over the shoulder of Twin Peaks your eyes are bewildered in trying to chart the sea of roofs and gables that stretch over the Mission district. Where once a few tiled adobes cl.u.s.tered around Mission Dolores, founded by Padre Junipero Serra, now spread homes flooding the level places and gradually climbing up toward the tops of the hills that are like watchtowers over the Golden Gate.

San Francisco Outlines and Insights

Area: 42 square miles.

Climate: Cool summers and mild winters. Average summer temperature, 59 degrees. Average winter temperature, 51 degrees.

Population: 687,000 in city; 1,200,000 in metropolitan area.

Tax Rate: $3.47 per $100 a.s.sessed value, rate of a.s.sessment to market value of property being 50 per cent.