‘Through ‘Frisco’s’ Furnace’

   

Now, I know that this slang for San Francisco is offensive to some people; Herb Caen wrote a book in the 1950’s titled ‘Don’t Call It Frisco’, and recently, I watched a 1968 episode of ‘ I Spy’ called ‘Tag, You’re it’ where Bill Cosby refers to San Francisco as “Frisco” and when his Secret Service boss says “What?” Cosby politely changes it to “San Francisco”. However, Herb Caen mellowed later in life, and admitted that it wasn’t a bad expression, and it’s better than what some people call San Francisco now. At any rate, it’s in the title of the publication I’m posting about today that was printed five months after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire as a testament to the steel construction in buildings that survived the disaster. Yesterday, I visited some of the “splendid survivors” pictured in the book. Some of the old photos aren’t the clearest, and it’s impossible to get a perfect line up with some of the vintage pictures, but they can still be seen. The vintage pictures are from the UC Berkeley  Library Archives (Thumbnail images)

I started at the Flood Building at Market and Powell Streets; I understand that it’s still owned by the Family that had it built. I’ll include the descriptions of the buildings from the book.

I headed down Market Street to Grant Avenue and doubled back along Geary Street to where the steel frame of the Whittell Building is, the only thing on the building completed when the earthquake struck. The Whittell Building is behind the Britex Fabrics sign in my picture.

I headed back along Geary to Kearny Street and another one of my favorites, the Gothic Mutual Savings Building. The east side of the building is covered up now by an addition, which was probably very practical, but destroyed the aesthetics of the structure. The old Chronicle Building is on the right in both photos.

I looped around the Palace Hotel to New Montgomery, and headed to Mission and 2^nd Streets. The old Wells Fargo Building on the northeast corner of the intersection survived, was rebuilt and extended.

 

My next destination was at Montgomery and California Streets. If I was Carl Nolte, I would have walked to California and Montgomery, but although I’m younger than he is, I have half the energy he does. I headed back to Mission and 3^rd Streets, and caught the Muni #8, heading north along Kearny Street, to the Kohl Building on the northeast corner of the intersection. This was the best shot I could get of this wonderful relic.