Early Television Marionettes of Ralph Chessé

The San Francisco Public Library has been pleased to present Ralph Chessé: A San Francisco Century from May 16 through August 18, 2024 in the Jewett Gallery. As the exhibit shows, Chessé was a man of many talents who achieved success as a painter, lithographer, actor, director, playwright and marionettist.

He was also a pioneer of children's television programming most famous for his nationally distributed puppet show, The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz, that was on the air from 1952 to 1973. A year before, he had already stepped into the world of children's television a program called Willie and the Baron.

source: San Francisco Chronicle July 10, 1951

Alternating with Chris [Cut Cartoons] at 6 p.m. each Monday and Wednesday is WILLI AND THE BARON, a new program straight from the world of fable and fancy, featuring marionette Baron Woodly.

This 15 minute program aired live on KGO twice a week for six months. 

Willie and The Baron (image source: The Marionette Actor)

The show was sometimes also called Willie and the Baron or Baron Woodley and Friends. (The Baron's name was also spelled Woodly at times).

In his short memoir, The Marionette Actor, Chessé writes about the creative conditions in early television. Programming was scarce and its content difficult to pay for. He noted that the interview format became popular owing to its production simplicity. He auditioned a television program idea that would be a "marionette spoof" of the standard news interview, but his idea was not well-received. He tweaked it a bit using the interview format to change the subjects to characters from familiar nursery rhymes and folk stories. Thus, Willie and the Baron was conceived.

Chessé voiced Baron Woodley. His son Dion voice Willie who Chessé described as a "stooge office boy." Lettie Connell played all the women's voice. Even within that limitation the possibilities were vast. He described the challenge preparing a new set of marionettes for each show. He also had to conceive and write two scripts a week for the show presented live. When it first aired it was listed on the daily schedule as "Impossible Interview" or "Impossible Interviews."

Dwight Newton, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, was very enthusiastic about the show.

The "Baron" is a quaint, old world, pixie-like character with a big nose and horn rimmed glasses. He conducts "impossible interviews" with famed figures of history and fiction, assisted by "Willi," a wide-eyed busybody with bushy hair and big ears.

Into their mouths Chesse puts delightful dialogue. Into their movements he injects a sprightly and fascinating charm. But thin, no wonder! Mr. Chesse, who has been making and manipulating marionettes here for more than a quarter of a century, has a national reputation.

Recent "impossible interviews" have been with Rip Van Winkle, Ali Baba, the Long Stanger and his horse Chigger, and Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp.

Newton concludes by exclaiming that "Willie and Baron" is "conducted with charm and sincerity and high, good humor and good taste--a welcome and worthwhile contribution to local television."

While the intrinsic value of the show was evident, it did not contribute enough value to the bottom line for KGO and they cancelled the program after 6 months.

Musical Bear from Willie and the Baron (image source: Chessé Arts Limited website in Archive.org)

The Mad Hatter from Willie and the Baron (image source: Chessé Arts Limited website in Archive.org)

During this time, Chessé also created television commercials employing his marionettes for beer and Calso Water. He did soon find a reliable sponsor for his next marionette program, The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz, that allowed it to thrive for several years.

"Impossible Interview" at 6 PM, KGO-TV, Channel 7

Television Listing, July 11, 1951 (source: San Francisco Examiner)

Bibliography:

Chessé, Ralph, The Marionette Actor (George Mason University Press, 1987).

Franklin, Bob, "Show Time," San Francisco Chronicle July 10, 1951.

McPharlin, Paul and Marjorie Batcheler McPharlin, The Puppet Theatre in America: A History, 1524-1948, with a Supplement: Puppets in America since 1948 (Plays, Inc., 1969).

Newton, Dwight, "Day and Night with Radio and Television," San Francisco Chronicle August 4, 1951

Make Music Day, June 21, 2024

We are pleased to again celebrate Make Music Day once again with musicians from the San Francisco Symphony. 

This year we'll present a violin / string bass duo with David Chernyavsky and Daniel G. Smith. Come to the Main Library Atrium at 4 PM on Friday, June 21, 2024 to enjoy this informal concert.

Make Music Day is a global event celebrated annually at the Summer Solstice. Launched in 1982 in France as the Fête de la Musique, it is now held on the same day in more than 1,000 cities in 120 countries.

A Sequence of Smiles

Lee S. Roberts and J. Will Callahan's "Smiles" has been recorded by dozens of artists performing in many different styles. Rust's Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942) lists sixteen versions. The online database of 78 rpm discs, the Discography of American Historical Recordings, lists 21 recorded performances. There are many other versions beyond these.

Lee S. Roberts was a San Francisco songwriter who made it big with this song. Here is a less than exhaustive lists of renditions of "Smiles" over the years.
 

It was covered by the pioneering African-American group, Dan and Harvey's Jazz Band, in England in 1919.

The disc Columbia 737 labelled as "jazz music" is described as a string band with an instrumentation of piano (Dan Kildare), percussion (Harvey White), banjo, violin, and cello (all uncredited).

Around the same time James Reese Europe's legendary band recorded "Smiles" as part of a "Broadway 'Hit' Medley."

The Versatile Three - an African-American trio - made a recording in London in 1919.
Willard Robison and his Orchestra recorded "Smiles" in 1928. Taking advantage of the then new electric recording technology this is a gentler recording with sweet vocals by Ann Hanshaw.
Red Nichols and his Five Pennies (featuring Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Jimmy Dorsey and Rube Bloom) recorded a jazzy version in 1929.
Jimmy Yates' Boll Weevils - Alabama based country group / Hawaiian guitar
Jimmy Revard and his Oklahoma Playboys - Western Swing
Charlie Barnet and his Orchestra (big band 1938)
Vocal version by Chick Bullock

A swinging live version Larry Clinton and his orchestra
The Benny Goodman Quartet featuring Teddy Wilosn, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton recorded it in 1937
Coleman Hawkins and The Ramblers recorded it in 1935
Boyd Senter and his Senterpedes jazzed it up 1930
A mellow rendition by Claude Thornhill and his Orchestra in 1942
Jo Stafford performs it swingingly with Dave Lambert and His Vocal Choir
Eddie Duchin performs "Smiles" as a piano solo with rhythm section accompaniment in 1947
Buddy Clark accompanies his vocals with some schmaltzy organ.

Lawrence Welk's Hotsy Totsy Boys present "Smiles" in a silly ragtime revival arrangement.

Andy Bey and The Bey Sisters peovide a wildly soulful version.

From Germany we get a rendition for honky tonk piano and rhythm section by Crazy Otto.

The great pianist / arranger Bill Evans also gave "Smiles" whirl.

The Ted Wilson Trio give a small combo version.

The Lamarotte Jazz Band from The Netherlands give a punchy Dixieland version.

"Smiles" gets the West Coast jazz treatment by Stan Getz.

Oscar Peterson gives a harmonically expansive rendition on piano with a rhythm section.

Finally, there is a satisfy mariachi rendition "Sonrisa" by Los Charros de Ameca de Roman Palomar.

Bibliography:

Brooks, Tim. Lost sounds: Blacks and the birth of the recording industry, 1890-1919 (University of Illinois Press, 2004).

Rust, Brian. Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942). (Mainspring Press, 2002).

Song Title Index to Brian Rust's Jazz and Ragtime Records (1897-1942)null. (Mainspring Press, 2002).

Smiles, "The Cyclonic Song Hit"

(source: Jerome H. Remick & Co. ad. in Variety September 27, 1918)

Here is a song that bring joy to a weary heart--that fills to o'erflowing the bosom burdened with war-time anxiety. A song that hits on all six cylinders of musical success-for here is music with a captial E--the singingest, smilingest song sensation in a month of Sundays. A success? Well-you should smile. The greatest fox trot ever written.

Although Lee S. Roberts (1885-1949) lived all but around 15 years of his life in the San Francisco Bay AreaLee S. Roberts (1885-1949) lived all but around 15 years of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, he achieved his greatest fame during 1910s when he lived and worked in Chicago for the QRS Company.

Roberts was already a prolific composer when he came upon the inspiration for the song "Smiles." He attended a business convention where he heard an inspirational speaker describe the importance of smiling. That brought to Robert's mind the lyrics that would become the chorus of "Smiles"

There are smiles that make us happy, and smiles that make us blue.

This phrase became the kernel for a melody that he jotted down on a borrowed piece of paper in 20 minutes. The following day he mailed the melody and a couple of sentences of lyrics to J. Will Callahan, a frequent collaborator. Callahan, who lived in Bay City, Michigan, had been a lawyer but turned to writing song lyrics because his eyesight was failing. He asked his wife to repeatedly play the melody on the piano, then after four hours he dictated the finished lyrics to her.

Roberts first self-published the song in 1917 and unsuccessfully tried to promote it. He then sold it to the Jerome H. Remick company - a major music publisher of that time. Initially, they also had trouble getting dance and hotel orchestras to perform it. The song's fortunes changed when legendary song plugger Jack Robbins found the published song sitting on the stockroom shelves at the Remick offices. He saw potential in the song and successfully promoted it leading to his own first great success.

Placement in the Broadway musical The Passing Show of 1918 was probably the decisive step leading to the success of "Smiles." This production was a variety show in eight scenes produced by the legendary J. J. Shubert at the Winter Garden. The show opened on July 25, 1918 and ran through November 9, 1918. It was a three hour whirlwind of comedic skits, songs and dance numbers and featured the brother and sister team of Fred and Adele Astaire. The music was credited to Sigmund Romberg and Jean Schwartz, but a number of other songs were interpolated into the show. "Smiles" was sung in the fifth act in the middle of the show by Nell Carrington with a girls chorus.

Cover to "Smiles" by Lee S. Roberts and J. Will Callahan (source: Dorothy Starr Collection)

It's hard to gauge the immediate impact of the song within the larger production. The song was not mentioned in the reviews of the show in the New York Times and Variety. That may have been because it was not included the production at the show's opening. It was only mentioned in passing in the Billboard review.

image source: Talkmachine Talk / New Victor Records August 1918

It was a released by Victor Records in August 1918 and according to Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories it was the best selling record of the week of September 9, 1918. This recording by Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra featured vocals by Harry MacDonough. Gracyk believes that this was the first dance recording to feature vocals.

The Joseph C. Smith Orchestra, Harry MacDonough, vocals, performing "Smiles" (Victor 18473)

"Smiles" was also a 1918 hit for vaudevillians Albert Campbell and Henry Burr and operatic tenor Lambert Murphy.

Albert Campbell Henry Burr singing "Smiles" (Columbia A2616)

Lambert Murphy singing "Smiles" (Victor 45155) 

Prince's Band (not that Prince!) played an instrumental arrangement of "Smiles" the same year.

Prince's Band performing "Smiles" (Columbia A6077)

All four of these recordings are from the acoustic era of sound recording -- the period before the use of microphones and amplification.

Lee S. Roberts and Max Kortlander also teamed up to create a piano roll version of "Smiles"

By 1920 "Smiles" had earned its writers $60,000 - equivalent to a million and a half dollars today.

"Smiles" also had a rich afterlife. It was used from the 1920s as the theme song for the Ipana Troubadours' radio program. It was sung by Helen Morgan playing a burlesque singer in the early talking film Applause (1929). Judy Garland sang it in the vaudeville themed film For Me and My Gal (MGM 1942) and Betty Hutton sang it in Somebody Loves Me (1952). It was also used as a recurring theme in the film Ice Palace (Warner Bros., 1960). It also made appearances in Stella Dallas (1934), The Dolly Sisters (1945), What Price Glory (1952), Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie (1952), Elmer Gantry (1960), and Ice Palace (1960).

In addition to being a hit song of Tin Pan Alley, "Smiles" became a standard to be interpreted by many artists over the years (to be explored in the next blog entry).

Bibliography:

Bloom, Ken. American Song: The complete musical theatre companion, 2nd ed., 1877-1995 (Schirmer Books, 1996.

Ewen, David. American Popular Songs from The Revolutionary War to The Present (Random House, 1966).

Ewen, David. All The Years of American Popular Music (Prentice-Hall, 1977).

Gracyk, Tim. Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925 (Haworth Press, 2000).

Green, Abel, "Top Songs for 20 Years," Variety August 21, 1935.

"Jack Robbins Dies; Music Publisher," New York Times December 17, 1959

Jasen, David A. A Century of American Popular Music (1899-1999): 2000 best-loved and remembered songs (Routledge, 2002)

The New York Times Theater Reviews, v.5 1912-1919 (New York Times, 1975.

Norton, Richard C. A Chronology of American Musical Theater (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Popular Music, 1900-1919: An Annotated Guide to American Popular Songs, Including Introductory Essay, Lyricists and Composers Index, Important Performances Index, Chronological Index, and List of Publishers, Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, editor (Gale Research Inc., 1988).

Wickes, E.M., "The Doughboy Has Put Dough in Ragtime," Melody: A Magazine for Lovers of Popular Music August 1920.

Wickes, E.M., "It Pays to Be Different," Billboard June 25, 1921

Tin Pan Alley era songwriter Lee S. Roberts

Born in Oakland, California, there are two different birth dates given for Leland Stanford Roberts given by Ancestry.com, either November 12, 1884 or 1885. His father worked at a variety of skilled manual jobs and brought up his family in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood on Oak Grove Street and where Roberts attended San Francisco public schools before his family moved to San Mateo County.

Lee S. Robert's family returned to San Francisco where he worked as a music store clerk from 1900 for the Benjamin Curtaz and Son store. Although I cannot find any information abut his musical education, he must have been a very proficient pianist. After the 1906 Earthquake and Fire he moved to Spokane, Washington where worked as a salesman for the Simon Piano Company between 1907 and 1909. While living there he doubled as a church organist and professional musician.

He had already begun writing music when he was still in San Francisco. His song "Good-bye Blue Eyes" was published in 1905 by The Alturas Music Publishing Company, a small local publisher. From 1912 onward, his compositions steadily made their way into print. While he frequently self-published, he also had works accepted by major music publishers like M. Witmark, Joseph W. Stern, Sam Fox and Leo Feist. 

Roberts achieved greater prominence as a performer of player piano rolls. The 1910 census lists him as a piano salesman in Chicago. He went to work for the Melville Clark Piano Company there and quickly joined their subsidiary, the QRS Company - a manufacturer of player pianos and the rolls they played. 

A piano roll created by Lee S. Roberts (image source: Made In Chicago Museum)

These were paper rolls with perforations that activated the piano keys creating a performance without a performer. Roberts toured throughout the country as a salesman for this technology. He returned to San Francisco in 1912 to demonstrate the Melville Clark product. It's hard to imagine today the sensation that these automatic instruments made at the time. 

A 1914 news account tells of a demonstration made by Roberts at the Rotary Club in Cincinnati. The story describes him as a "composer and interpreter of the work of old masters ... who has interpreted probably three-fourths of the piano-player selections now on the market." He wowed the audience by showing the fidelity of the recordings. Disc and cylinder recorders of the time contained surface noise and had  a limited frequency range, however, the player piano had the full acoustic richness of the instrument itself.

Lee S. Roberts, Vice-President Q. R. S. Music Co. and World's Leading Authority on Player Rolls

image source: Roehl, Player Piano Treasury.

He worked his way up the company, became Vice-President of the Company and worked for a time in New York City. A 1919 article in Music Trades noted his executive position and prominence as a recording artist. They also remarked that "He started writing songs when young and worked his way up from obscurity at San Francisco to his present position as vice-president of the company and as composer of some of the most successful songs ever presented in the country."

The 1920s were the boom time for player pianos - the instruments hit their high point in sales in 1923 while sales of the piano rolls continued to grow until 1926 when nearly 10 million were sold. A 1919 article marked the QRS Music Company as the largest piano roll company in the world with 500 employees.

An advertisement for topical piano rolls performed by Lee S. Roberts (source: Asia December 24, 1924)

He modestly said in a 1921 interview that: “I had no intention of becoming a pianist or composer... I owe all my achievement and success in that direction to the influence of the player [piano] and the extensive amount of musical literature with which it surrounded me.” 

He achieved a number one hit song in 1918 with "Smiles," co-written with lyricist J. Will Callahan. This song that became a popular standard will be the subject of a later blog entry. A 1923 article in The Dominant announced that he had signed an exclusive contract with Forster Music Publisher of Chicago. By the 1930s his style of songwriter had come and gone - a 1936 Variety described an unsuccessful trip he took to New York to try to find publishers for 200 new songs.

Roberts was a prolific composer of both songs and instrumental music and no attempt has been made to date to inventory his musical corpus. Our library catalog has seventeen listings for him, while the Dorothy Starr Collection has another thirty. Some of his music has been listed online in the Lester S. Levy Collection and Johns Hopkins University and in the Digital Commons at the University of Main.

In 1925 he returned to San Francisco where he opened a store to sell Chickering pianos. He soon became active in the nascent Bay Area radio scene. In 1927 he presented the Chickering Hour on KPO radio (the San Francisco Chronicle's station).  In 1929 he presented the Zenith Hour on KFRC. He returned to KPO 1930 presenting the Shell Happytime show sponsored by Shell Oil. Sperry Flour took over sponsorship of his program renaming it the Sperry Smiles program, eventually moving to over to KGO and NCB's West Coast network. In 1933 he presented a Folgers Coffee sponsored radio program on KGO.

Advertisement for His Old Memory Box, KGO and KFI (San Francisco Chronicle April 2, 1933).

Roberts' His Old Memory Box program ran from 1933 through 1935 on KGO (and on KFI Los Angeles). In 1935 he was appointed the program manager of the Hearst-owned radio station KYA.

Lee S. Robert's death in San Francisco on September 10, 1949 received relatively little attention in the San Francisco media or in the music trade journals. This is surprising for the creator of a hit song ("Smiles") whose music was presented by major publishers and who was a pioneer of early San Francisco radio.

Bibliography:

The Billboard and Variety articles were located in the Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive. 

Clayman, Andrew, "QRS Music Company est. ca. 1900," Made In Chicago Museum [website]

"Device Records Music," Spokane Spokesman-Review October 16, 1912

History of Westchester County, New York, Alvah P French and Will L Clark, editors. (Lewis Historical Pub. Co., 1925).

"KFRC Offers Song Writer," San Francisco Chronicle September 25, 1929.

"Lee Roberts," The Dominant March 1923.

"Lee S. Roberts, Composer to Join KYA Staff," San Francisco Examiner December 29, 1935.

"Lee S. Roberts, Musician, Dies," San Francisco Examiner September 13, 1949

"Music Lovers Enjoy Concert," Cincinnati Commercial Tribune December 10, 1914.

"Q R S Company," The Economist April 19, 1919

"Q R S Recording, Editing and Master Recording Sections Come to New York with Lee S. Roberts," Music Trades September 13, 1919.

"Radio Reports," Variety December 8, 1931.

Roehl, Harvey N. Player Piano Treasury; The scrapbook history of the mechanical piano in America as told in story, pictures, trade journal articles and advertising (Vestal Press, 1973).

"Second Week of The Pacific Grand Opera," San Francisco Examiner September 29, 1912

"Snappy Shots," San Francisco Examiner June 13, 1925.

"200 Tunes Seek Pub," Variety August 12, 1936.

"Today's Air Doings to Be of Interest to All Fans," San Francisco Chronicle January 5, 1927.

"West Coast News; More Symphonies," Billboard April 8, 1933

Whitburn, Joel. Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories, 1890-1954: The history of American popular music : compiled from America's popular music charts 1890-1954 (Record Research, 1986).

John Carl Warnecke and Associates Buildings in San Francisco (early 1970s)

One of the John Carl Warnecke and Associations first projects of the 1970s was the addition of a tower to the Hilton Hotel at 201 Mason Street.

photo source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

At 46 stories, this brutalist structure dwarfed (and continues to dwarf) the surrounding structures in the neighborhood.

"Model of the New Hilton Tower, John Carl Warnecke and Henri Lewin display replica"

(image source: San Francisco Examiner December 23, 1968)

Work commenced on the tower in January 1969 and wrapped up by 1971. This addition brought the total number of rooms to 1800, making it the largest hotel west of Chicago.  The stark and windowless north and south faces of the building are made out of silvery-white hued aluminum, which Schwarzer has described as "sensuous." 

The Hilton's special features included a glassed-in restaurant at the top and an outdoor bridge across to the swimming pool atop the original hotel. Herb Caen quoted a rival architect from the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill firm who remarked dismissively of Warnecke's tower: "I don't think of it as a building, I think of it as a convention machine." Warnecke's firm designed a second 19 floor tower in 1987 for the Hilton and also added a domed clock tower. A more recent appraisal by John King, the San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic, described the Hilton as a "high-rise [that] stands its ground with a quiet sheen."

Around this time John Warnecke and Associates, in collaboration with Clement Chen, worked on a second high rise hotel -- the Holiday Inn at 750 Kearny Street (now also a Hilton).

An early sketch for the Redevelopment Agency's Chinese Cultural and Trade Center by Clement Chen and Associates and Dartmond Cherk, ca. 1965-6

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency spearheaded this project which was to be a joint Chinese Cultural and Trade Center and hotel. The agency treated this as a follow up to the culture and trade center they had built as part of the Japantown redevelopment in Western Addition. They set up an arrangement where the private developers of the hotel would pay for the construction of the cultural center who would only pay a $1 annual rent for decades to follow. Despite this community benefit, there were protests that this City-owned plot of land, that had been the site of the Hall of Justice, was being designated for a business and not public housing. 

The original design is credited to Clement Chen & Associates and Dartmond Cherk. The latter was hired by John Carl Warnecke and Associates giving their firm partial credit for the design. Not long after the hotel's completion, Allen Temko, the Chronicle's architecture critic, arguing against a remodel plan for the City of Paris store by Warnecke's firm, used his article to excoriate all of the architect's tall structures. 

San Francisco Hall of Justice viewed from Portsmouth Square (source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection).

Temko lamented the demolition of the Hall of Justice which he extolled as a "neo-classical palazzo." He complained that the adjacent "Portsmouth Plaza, where the American flag was first raised in San Francisco" had "suffered irreparable harm" from this destruction. He complained that Chen and Warnecke and "erected an odd concoction called the 'Chinese Cultural Center,' which is nothing more than the Redevelopment Agency's euphemism for a Holiday Inn with a spare room for Chinese artifacts."

Holiday Inn and pedestrian bridge at Portsmouth Square, 1973 (San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Temko's rebuke continued:

This bulbous slab, from whose roof non-structural ventilating ducts emerge like tumors, exhibits just about every mistake that can be committed in civic design. It arrogantly turns a narrow side to the square, squirting a very mistaken bridge across Kearny street into its center, depriving the tiny playground of light, and almost incidentally, ruining the Kearney street vista toward Telegraph Hill... If this were not enough, the Holiday Inn has also ripped open a hole in the eastern flank of the square...

Clement Chen defended the structure in a letter to the editor: "The Holiday Inn on Kearney is a large structure and therefore monumental, as it should be. If it appears arrogant to Temko, so be it. What great architecture in the past appears otherwise?" Although Chen took sole responsibility for the design, Temko claimed that Warnecke had shown him sketches that demonstrated the contribution of his firm to the design.

Whether or not the design is Chen's or Warnecke's (or Cherk's), the building's geometric regularity and lack of ornament is consistent with the brutalist style of other buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke and Associates.

Gebhard, et al, dismiss it as "a hotel with token culture in the base." Schwarzer is a little kinder, describing it as a "concrete behemoth" but admitting that it's in "the best of the brutalism style." 

In 1986, Examiner columnist Bill Mandel held an "edifice contest"--an invitation to readers to submit their choices of the most beautiful and the ugliest buildings in San Francisco. John Carl Warnecke and Associates rated two ugly "beasts": the Hilton Hotel discussed above at number 6, and the Tishman Building at 525 Market Street close behind at number 7.

525 Market Street, photographed by Philip Oldfield (image source: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat)

Later known as First Market Tower and now simply as 525 Market Street, at the time it was completed it was the second tallest building in  San Francisco. (It's presently ranked #20 in height). 

Allen Temko took an even harsher view of this building which he describes as "an insensate skyscraper" that "is about as clumsy an essay in concrete-covered shell as we have in the city." Splendid Survivors, a survey of downtown San Francisco architecture from 1979 describes it as "an immense blockbuster without scale clues, without any gesture beyond a perfunctory little sliver of a plaza. The worst of the 'new Market Street' buildings."

image source: Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects Inc.

525 Market Street shows the seem geometric regularity as many of the Warnecke firm's other structures. The building is 38 floors tall.  35 of the stories have floor-to-ceiling windows with twelve banks of three windows on the north and south faces and ten banks of three windows each on the east and west faces.  Its start regularity and lack of ornamentation may have made it an unattractive outlier when it was built, but since then it has been joined by many other brutalist companions and holds its own as a structure.

Bibliography:

"At Last, A New Look for the Hilton," San Francisco Chronicle August 26, 1985.

Caen, Herb, "Have a Weird Day," San Francisco Chronicle September 7, 1971.

Canter, Donald, "Chinese Culture Finds a Home-Finally Project Begins; Center to House Auditorium, Galleries," San Francisco Chronicle January 28, 1973.

Canter, Donald, "Giant Market St. Skyscraper Job Will Start Soon," San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle January 17, 1971

Chen, Clement, Jr., "He Doesn't Agree" [Letters to the Editor], San Francisco Chronicle September 3, 1974.

"Chinese Center Gets Go Ahead," Engineers News December 1967.

"A Chinese Center Planned on Coast," New York Times December 3, 1967.

"Chinese Projects Blossom in California Cities," AIA Journal February 1968.

Chinese Cultural and Trade Center: Development Proposals (San Francisco Redevelopment Agency,| [1965 or 1966].

Corbett, Michael R., Splendid Survivors: San Francisco's Downtown Architectural Heritage (California Living Books, 1979).

"43 Story Tower at S.F. Hotel," San Francisco Chronicle December 24, 1968.

Gebhard, David, et al., The Guide to Architecture in San Francisco and Northern California, Rev. ed. (Gibbs M. Smith, 1985).

Grieg, Michael, "Pomp And Protest At a New Hotel," San Francisco Chronicle January 14, 1971.

"High at The Hilton: Cocktail Bar on Top," San Francisco Examiner December 23, 1968.

King, John, "Clean And Cool Above The Fray," San Francisco Chronicle April 4, 2010.

Mandel, Bill, "The Beauties and the Beasts," San Francisco Examiner April 6, 1986.

"'New Look' Hilton Tower Approved," San Francisco Chronicle April 13, 1984.

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, The Decade Past And The Decade to Come ([San Francisco Redevelopment Agency], 1969).

Schwarzer, Mitchell, San Francisco: Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: A History & Guide (William Stout Publishers, 2007).

Temko, Allan, "After the City of Paris...," San Francisco Chronicle August 15, 1974.

Temko, Allan, "Dr. Fu Manchu's Plastic Pagoda," San Francisco Magazine May 1971.

Temko, Allan, No Way to Build a Ballpark: And Other Irreverent Essays on Architecture (Chronicle Books, 1993).

St. James Press Reference Dictionaries

Over the past 50 years, St. James Press has published dozens of excellent reference encyclopedias and dictionaries. Several of these heavy tomes are biographical encyclopedias of figures in the arts from the late twentieth century.

Contemporary Architects (1987, 1994 editions)

Contemporary Artists (1977, 1983, 1989, 1996, 2002 editions)
Contemporary Composers (1992)

Contemporary Designers (1984, 1990, 1997)

Contemporary Fashion (1995)

Contemporary Masterworks (1991)

Contemporary Photographers (1982, 1987. 1995)

Contemporary Women Artists (1997)

The Contemporary Arts Series includes a resume-like biography, exhibition history, list of works, list of publications (bibliography), and an introductory essay or personal statement. Because newer editions add and subtract entries on different artists, the earlier editions continue to have value for the researcher. 

Contemporary Masterworks is unique in focusing on individual works of visual art from the 20th century (including art, architecture, photography and design. It devotes one page to a black and white reproduction of the artwork and another page to a descriptive essay and bibliography.

The International Dictionaries published by St. James Press focus on a wider span of history and also provide listings of creative works and a bibliography.  The dictionaries for ballet, modern dance intersperse entries about performers, choreographers and works for the dance. Likewise the International Dictionary of Opera includes entries on individual operas, opera singers and composers.

The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, published across three editions, has separate volumes for films, directors, actors and actresses and writer and production artists.

The International Dictionary of Theatre is published in two volumes, one for plays and the other for playwrights. The International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture is divided into two volumes - one for architects, the other for works of architecture.

International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture (1993)

International Dictionary of Art and Artists (1993)

International Dictionary of Ballet (1993)

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers (1984, 1990, 1997)

International Dictionary of Modern Dance, 1998

International Dictionary of Opera, 1993

International Dictionary of Theatre, 1992

The more recently published St. James Guide to Black Artists shares the same format as the Contemporary Arts Series volumes listed above, but is focused upon artists of Africa and of the African diaspora. Similarly the St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists profiles artists from Latin America or were active there. The St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture is unlike the other reference works discussed here in that it also discusses style and genre in addition to notable performing artists and producers.

St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture (2012)

St. James Guide to Black Artists (1997)

St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists: Profiles of Latino and Latin American Artists (2002)