San Francisco Bay Area ... Today

The "Today" of the title was the year 1973 when San Francisco was in the midst of a development spree. A later book, Splendid Survivors: San Francisco's Downtown Architectural Heritage, reacted forcefully to the overbuilding of San Francisco's downtown with brutalist high rises. While Splendid Survivors dismissed the aesthetic value of these newcomers, San Francisco Bay Area... Today celebrated them.

The Urban Land Institute, an almost 90 year old nonprofit organization dedicated to real estate and infrastructure development, compiled this book. While Splendid Survivors focused on architectural style and historical context, San Francisco Bay Area ... Today examines those factors as well as the bottom line. The entries look at the construction cost, each project's function and the amenities offered.

The book only dedicates the opening section to San Francisco's downtown. It also looks at the redevelopment projects of that time such as those at the Embarcadero / Golden Gateway, Japantown, Yerba Buena Center, Diamond Heights and the reconstruction of Market Street. 

As the title suggests, San Francisco Bay Area ... Today covers the wider Bay Area, devoting almost sixty percent of its pages to projects outside San Francisco. Many of the projects detailed are suburban shopping malls and housing developments. The book also has an excellent chapter on the development and technology of the nascent BART system. There are black and white photographs throughout, sometimes show the before and after of a project, throughout the book.

An artist's rendering of an unbuilt Sports Arena at Yerba Buena Center

San Francisco Bay Area ... Today / Compiled by Carla C. Sobala, Meetings Division Director, Urban Land Institute, 1973 Fall Meeting. ([Urban Land Institute], 1973).

San Francisco Sheet Music of the Roaring Twenties from the Dorothy Starr Collection featuring local bandleaders

The 1920s were a heyday for live music. Most people went out on the town to enjoy their music -- sound recordings had limited audio fidelity, films were silent and  San Francisco also had a lively music publishing scene. Sherman, Clay & Co. and Villa Moret, Inc. both introduced hit songs of that era. We have collected many imprints of that era in our Dorothy Starr sheet music collection.

Come to the Steve Silver Beach Blanket Babylon Music Center on the Main Library's Fourth Floor to view the display "San Francisco Sheet Music of the Roaring Twenties from the Dorothy Starr Collection featuring local bandleaders." 

We display sheet with photographs of the main bandleaders of that time - Ben Black, Abe Lyman, Herb Meyerinck, Jack Coakley, Anson Weeks, Walt Roesner, Tom Gerun (Gerunovich), Clyde Cooper, Frank Jenks and Paul Ash. The bands performed at motion picture palaces like the California Theater and Granada Theatre, hotels like the Mark Hopkins and the Clift and restaurants like the Cabiria and the Roof Garden Cafe.

Sheet music on display:

Day by Day in Every Way (I love you more and more) / words and music by Art Hickman and Ben Black (Florintine Music Publishing Co., 1923).

Idolizing / words and music by Sam Messenheimer, Irving Abrahamson and Ray West (Sherman, Clay & Co., 1926).

New Moon / words and music by Anson Weeks, George S. Tyner and Herbert B. Marple (Weeks & Winge, Inc., 1926).

Croon A Little Lullaby / music by Chris Schonberg and Clyde Baker (Sherman, Clay & Co., 1925).

Moonlit Waters / music by Nacio Herb Brown (Villa Moret, Inc., 1927).

Count The Stars / words and music by Glenhall Taylor, Henry Santrey, Maurice J. Gunsky and Merton H. Bories (Florintine Music Publishing Co., 1926).

I'm Telling You / music by Vincent Rose (Sherman, Clay & Co., 1929).

Consolation / music by Merton H. Bories (Villa Moret, Inc., 1926).

Nancy (Irish fox trot) / music by Neil Moret (Villa Moret, Inc., 1924).

Dear Little Girl (When I'm with you) / words and music by Otto Cesana (Villa Moret, Inc., 1928).

Maya Angelou and the Purple Onion

Another pioneer offbeat, avant-garde, and/or existential cellar, with a more or less continuous show featuring folk singers, monologists, and comics of the cerebral variety.

That was the legendary Herb Caen's appraisal of the Purple Onion. An off-shoot of of Enrico Banducci's legendary hungry i, the Purple Onion opened in early 1953.

Weep not for the hungry fellows who run the "hungry i" tavern on Columbus avenue. They'll do their own weeping in a branch they're opening across the street to be called "The Purple Onion"... (San Francisco Chronicle December 18, 1952)

According to Phyllis Diller, Keith Rockwell, a co-owner of the hungry i, left his partnership with Banducci to open the Purple Onion as a vehicle for the "chanteuse" Jorie Remes. Diller wrote that Rockwell, who "absolutely adored her," was also a musician who played string bass.

Jorie Remes (Marjorie Remes who was later was known as Jorie Remus) was a native of New York City. She perfected her craft in the early 1950s at La Boite de Sardines [Sardine Tin] along the Paris Champs Elysees. "Jorie Remus was too hip for the room before being too hip for the room was a thing, and almost even before there was a room worth being to hip in." That is the appraisal of Shawn Levey in his book In on The Joke: The Original Queens of Stand-Up Comedy.

source: San Francisco Chronicle May 9, 1953

She was a singer and monologist who sang and wrote her own material that she called "20th Century Laments." Historian and former Chronicle theater critic Gerald Nachman designated her as one of the "foremothers" of stand-up comedy. Phyllis Diller described her as "a willowy, sexy, French chanteuse-type with a husky voice, a droll sense of humor, and haughty, heaving affected manner." By November 1953, a Chronicle columnist remarked that crowds lined up outside the Purple Onion's door to watch her performance. When Variety magazine reviewed her act they noted that she projected "warm cynicism" and that she "has a knowledge of humor in its less blatant forms."

At the same time that Remes was putting the Purple Onion on the map as a destination for the night hawks of San Francisco, Maya Angelou, then going by Marguerite Angelos, was in the process of divorcing her husband. Her savings were dwindling so she went looking for work in San Francisco's International Settlement. This was the entertainment district that supplanted the former Barbary Coast occupying Pacific Avenue between Montgomery and Kearney Streets.

In her memoir, Singin' And Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Angelou remembered how the block had four strip joints. She found work as a showgirl at one of them -- the Garden of Allah. (Angelou may have changed the name of this establishment -- it is not listed in the city directories or phonebooks of that time). Once the management discovered her expressive skill as a dance, they had her perform her artistic routines fully clothed and she started bringing in a different clientele. The audience transitioned from lonely old men to "laughing open faced couples" who came to see her.

One night she noticed a party of four - three men and a woman. Angelou described the latter, Jorie Remes, as a "young Marlene Dietrich-looking woman" with a shock of "sunlight-yellow hair." They were all from the Purple Onion, just a few blocks away. Word had spread about this expressive dancer. Angelou wrote:

These beautiful people and their friends began dropping in each evening and I awaited their arrival. I danced indifferently until I caught a glimpse of their party near the back of the room, then I offered them the best steps I had and as soon as the dance was finished I hurried over.

Jorie Remes (from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Remes had accepted a gig at a New York nightclub for the new year and the club was looking for a new headliner to replace her. They learned that Angelou was being let go by her club and wondered whether she could sing as well as dance. She volunteered that she could and hey found her a vocal coach and helped her work up a repertoire of songs. She and the rest of them even brainstormed her new stage name. Maya (a truncation of Marguerite) was a nickname her brother familiarly called her and Angelou was adapted from her married surname - Angelos.

With Jorie Remes on her way to New York City, the Purple Onion debuted the name and persona Maya Angelou ("The New Singing Sensation") in their advertisement in the Chronicle of January 2, 1954. The Chronicle's nightlife correspondent, who went by "The Owl," excitedly announced on January 9, 1954 that:

The Purple Onion now has a bigger and better show with that young romantic baritone Patrick McVey and that new sensational find Maya Angelou. The Owl predicted she would make you forget Jorie Remes.

He later noted audiences frequently requested her rendition of the Louis Jordan song "Push ka pee she pie." He continued to gush:

The exotic Maya Angelou, now appearing at the Purple Onion, has more expression in her hands than most singers have in their faces. You really have to see Maya's graceful gestures to appreciate her.

Maya Angelou is the spellbinder at the Purple Onion. One moment the passion flower sings quietly and demurely and suddenly, she erupts in strictly spontaneous combustion. An artist with both delicacy and fire, Miss Angelou is certainly the most expressive singer in these parts.

After this auspicious start, her show business career took off. She continued her run at the Purple Onion through the end of August 1954. She then joined a European tour of Porgy and Bess as a dancer. While in Paris she headlined at a nightclub.

Mars-Club presents Maya Angelou (source: New York Herald Tribune October 2, 1954)

She returned to San Francisco in September 1955 where she headlined at a new nightclub called the Hollow Egg. We haven't found any photographs of Maya Angelou performing in San Francisco. Fortunately, the 1957 feature film, Calypso Heat Wave documented her act.

Maya Angelou, still shot from Calypso Heat Wave (1957)

Maya Angelou's show business career continued for several more years. She appeared in clubs in Los Angeles and New York. She also recorded a calypso album for Liberty Records in 1957. But her name and her fame started with the Purple Onion on Columbus Avenue.

The Purple Onion in 1964 (source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Bibliography

"Americans Make Good as Paris Nitery Ops," The Billboard February 3, 1951.

Angelou, Maya, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library, 2004).

"The Bachelor," San Francisco Chronicle November 23, 1953.

Caen, Herb, Herb Caen's Guide to San Francisco (Doubleday, 1957).

De Beix, Maxime, "Paris," Variety October 25, 1950

Diller, Phyllis, Like A Lampshade in A Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy (J.P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005).

Jennings, Dean, "It's News to Me," San Francisco Chronicle December 18, 1952.

Levy, Shawn, In on The Joke: The Original Queens of Stand-up Comedy (Doubleday, 2022).

"Maya Angelou in Calypso Heat Wave (1957)," Youtube.

Nachman, Gerald, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s (Pantheon Books, 2003).

The Owl, "After Night Falls," San Francisco Chronicle January 9, 1954

The Owl, "After Night Falls," San Francisco Chronicle February 27, 1954.

The Owl, "After Night Falls," San Francisco Chronicle April 10, 1954.

"Purple Onion, S.F.," Variety August 12, 1953

Steif, Bill, "San Francisco," Variety July 6, 1955

Databases used:

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive

Gallica
San Francisco Chronicle Historical

The San Francisco of Maya Angelou

The San Francisco Public Library is honored to be the home of “Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman,” Lava Thomas's monument to Maya Angelou. Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928, came to the Bay Area with her family in the 1940s. She documented her eventful life through several autobiographies. We also have clues to her activities in San Francisco through our print and database collections.

The 1950 Census, found in Ancestry.com, shows her living with her mother, Vivian Baxter, her brother, Bailey, and her son, Clyde at 948 Fulton Street in San Francisco. The Census mis-records her first name as Margaret and notes that she worked as a "saleslady" in "retail music" (i.e., a record shop).

She was listed twice in the 1949 San Francisco City Directory.

Her name appears as the misspelled Margrette Johnson, a dancer residing at 948 Fulton Street (her family's address) and as Marguerite Johnson, a clerk for David Rosenbaum (the owner of the Melrose Record Shop).

At the beginning of her memoir Singin' And Swingin' And Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), she described getting hired at the Melrose Record Shop at 1256 Fillmore Street.

San Francisco Chronicle April 29, 1951

The store featured jazz and rhythm and blues music not easily found in other stores. Louise Cox noticed the young Maya Angelou's knowledgeable taste in recordings and hired her as a clerk. 

The Billboard November 5, 1949

Husband and wife Richard and Louise Cox ran the operations of the store. Angelou met her future husband Tosh Angelos working there.

Angelou made an appearance in the November 28, 1951 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle with her married name -- Mrs. Marguerite Angelos. This family event happened at the Booker T. Washington Center and featured art and performances by children. Angelou assisted in putting the program together.

Her autobiography, Gather Together in My Name (1974), tells of her early forays into the performing arts. She told of being tutored by an experienced dancer named R.L. Poole. Angelou recalled her performing with him as the team Poole and Rita (Rita was a diminutive of Marguerite) at the Champagne Supper Club. This nightclub operated at 1849 Post Street between 1952 and 1955. The club frequently advertised in the Chronicle but there is no mention of Poole and Rita there. The dance team may have rated as "others" as shown in this blurb announcing comedy stars Red Foxx and Slappy White.

source: San Francisco Chronicle April 4, 1952

Around this time, Maya Angelou met dancer Alvin Ailey at the dance classes they took with avant-garde choreographers Walland Lathrop and Anna Halprin. Ailey's biographer described them forming a dance team, Al and Rita, that performed at small community events. Ailey, in his autobiography, noted they rehearsed frequently but never danced outside of her apartment.

Pearl Primus, the Trinidadian-American dancer and choreographer, also strongly influenced Angelou as a performer. She described being moved to tears watching Primus perform her dances rooted in African tradition. An awed Angelou auditioned for Primus who exclaimed, "You are a dancer. You are a dancer," and awarded Angelou a scholarship to study with her in New York.

Bibliography

Ailey, Alvin, Revelations: The Autobiography of Alvin Ailey (Carol Pub. Group, 1995).

Angelou, Maya, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library, 2004).

"David Rosenbaum [obituary]," San Francisco Chronicle January 6, 1998.

"Dealer Doings," The Billboard November 5, 1949.

Dunning, Jennifer, Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance (Addison-Wesley, 1996).

"Notes And Addenda," San Francisco Chronicle November 28, 1951.

Polk's Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R.L. Polk & Co.,1949)

Schwartz, Peggy, The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus, with Murray Schwartz (Yale University Press, 2011).

Databases used:

Ancestry.com
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive

San Francisco Chronicle Historical

J. C. Cebrian's gift to the Music Department of the San Francisco Public Library

image source: Sigma Delta Pi website

Juan Cebrián Cervera (1848-1935) was a prominent Spanish-American citizen of San Francisco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although he was born and died in Madrid, he came to California in 1870 where he made his fortune. He appears in directories and in the press variously as J. C. Cebrian, John C. Cebrian or Juan C. Cebrian. A man of many skills and interests he was variously described as a civil engineer, an architect, a surveyor, a scientist and a capitalist. 

Educated as a military engineer in Spain, he came to the United States in the 1870s where he worked on Pacific coast lighthouse construction. He later worked for the Western Pacific Railroad. In the 1880s he was the municipal architect and town surveyor for Santa Barbara and was quite prosperous by the time he moved to San Francisco in the 1890s. A 1909 article described him as "a millionaire government contractor."

Cebrian prodigiously donated Spanish language books and scores to many libraries, including San Francisco Public Library, Stanford and UC Berkeley. These gifts were especially welcome in San Francisco where the 1906 Earthquake and Fire had required the Library to rebuild its collections from scratch.

source: News Notes from California Libraries August 1918.

The San Francisco Chronicle proclaimed with his gift, the San Francisco Public Library had the best Spanish collection the west coast. Cebrian's donation of musical scores is listed in the August 1914 and November 1915 issues of the San Francisco Public Library Monthly Bulletin, a publication that listed all the additions to the Library's collection.

Many of the donated scores were for zarzuelas, a form of musical theater popular in Spain, Mexico and the Philippines. He also contributed collections of Spanish sacred music as well as the collected works of famed renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria.

Cebrian also sponsored the Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Church at 908 Broadway, San Francisco, provide the land and the funds to build it. Along with E.J. Molera he commissioned Jo Mora to create the Miguel Cervantes Memorial in Golden Gate Park.

Bibliography:

An incomplete list of volumes contributed by Cebrian to the San Francisco Public Library's collections.

"A Bridge of (Probable) Sighs," Santa Barbara Daily Press May 28, 1880.

"Cebrián Cervera, Juan (1848-1935)." Archivo de la Real Academia Española.

"Cebrian Donation," San Francisco Public Library Monthly Bulletin May 1914.

"Has Best Spanish Collection on Coast," San Francisco Chronicle May 17, 1914.

"Juan Cebrián Cervera (1848-1935)" Biblioteca ETSAM.

"Le Breton and Laveaga Heirs at War," San Francisco Examiner August 8, 1909.

"Music by Spanish Composers: Cebrian Donation," San Francisco Public Library Monthly Bulletin November 1915.

"San Francisco," News Notes from California Libraries August 1918.

“Services for Ralph J. Cebrian, 81,” San Francisco Chronicle November 14, 1970.

Varela-Lago, Ana Maria, "Conquerors, Immigrants, Exiles: The Spanish Diaspora in the United States (1848-1948)," PhD Thesis, University of California, San Diego.

Vives, General, Juan C. Cebrián (Huérfanos de Intendencia e Intervención Militares, 1935)

The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz

We've written earlier about Ralph Chessé's first foray into bringing marionettes into television, the 1951 children's program Willie and the Baron. While it received accolades, it ceased after about six months due to a lack of funding.

Financial support came his way the following year. Chessé recalled in his memoir, "I was approached by a group of ladies who were very much interested in promoting kindness toward animals." This was the Oakland's Latham Foundation for Humane Education who had presented the Adventures of Brother Buzz on KLX radio in 1937 and 1938.

According to Chessé's recollection, the Foundation approached him in the spring of 1952 and by the fall of 1952 he had assembled a number of marionette animals and went on the air. However, look at the San Francisco Chronicle of March 5, 1952 already shows Brother Buzz as part of the broadcast schedule.

Advertisement for KPIX, Channel 5 (source: San Francisco Examiner June 4, 1952)

A later advertisement noted that the program was created for children aged 3 to 10, describing it as "Fascinating lessons from insect life in these charming marionettes, with Brother Buzz as the bee."

It's difficult for us to imagine today that in 1952 near all early television was broadcast live and there was a limited amount of syndicated programming. Chessé had to bring his puppet theater and fellow marionnettists into the KPIX studios at 2655 Van Ness Avenue once a week to film on Wednesday afternoons.

Brother Buzz and Busy Bee  (image source: Chessé Arts Limited website in Archive.org)

The show continued to be written by Dolores Wilkins Kent, president of the Latham Foundation. Charlotte Morris produced the show for KPIX. 

In the early seasons Ralph Chessé's son Dion voiced Brother Buzz; Lettie Connell Schubert voiced Miss Busy Bee. Later on Bruce Chessé's took over for his brother and Virginia Arnett followed by Marian Derby took over for Lettie Connell. Ralph Chessé voiced most of the animal guests on the program.

While The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz only broadcast for fifteen minutes a week, each episode required significant creative labor on Chessé's part. He had to continuously imagine, design and make every new marionette characters. Throughout his long career he eventually created over a thousand puppets. 

Gilbert Fox and Mr. Rabbit (image source: Latham Letter Winter 2014)

When a syndicated show displaced Brother Buzz from KPIX in 1960, Chessé and his team continued the program on KTVU. This coincided a change in production team to a Hollywood based firm who according to Chessé were less interested in marionettes. Nevertheless, they made arrangements to get the show syndicated nationally. The show's end was foreshadowed in 1963 when the station began to broadcast the program from videotape. It was then paired with nature documentary shorts. 

The show broadcast through 1969, although it's possible that as soon as 1966 the marionettes were replaced by animated characters.

Filming of The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz at KPIX-TV (image source: Latham Letter June 2015)

The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz was longest running children's television show in Bay Area history. The show received continuous fan mail. By the mid-1960s, the Brother Buzz Club boasted more than 45,000 Bay Area members.

Remember these are the closing days of the exhibit Ralph Chessé: A San Francisco Century in the Main Library's Jewett Gallery. The exhibit continues through August 18, 2024.

Bibliography:

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

Comer, Kellie and Kathy Foley, "Ralph Chessé," Puppetry International, (n. 51) 2022. in: https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=df2e6cf1-ec9a-36c4-b5c9-ceefc6c950fb

Holt, Tim, "Conversation With a Puppeteer," San Francisco Chronicle April 28, 1974.

"Latham Celebrates: A Year in Our Life and A Little Bity of History," Latham Letter (Winter 2004).

Newton, Dwight. "Kids and Commercials," San Francisco Chronicle August 6, 1972

O'Flaherty, Terence. "Television and Radio," San Francisco Chronicle April 16, 1953

"A Page from Our History Book: The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz," Latham Letter Winter 2015.

Wasserman, John L., "Buzz Pulled Some Strings and Has Gone National," San Francisco Chronicle February 16, 1964.

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

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).

John Carl Warnecke and Associates Buildings in San Francisco (1950s-1960s)

Picketers in front the Lane Bryant store in 1957, source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

The earliest evidence of John Carl Warnecke and Associates work in San Francisco dates from the mid-1950s at 55 Geary Street, the former Lane Bryant store. A San Francisco Chronicle article credits him with work on the exterior, although this work is difficult to detect today. The present exterior facade is different than this 1957 photograph.

image source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

Warnecke's next work in San Francisco was on the Federal Office Building #2 (now known as the Phillip Burton Federal Office Building) completed in 1959. Warnecke's firm was one of three firms involved in the design along with with Albert F. Roller, and Stone, Marraccini and Patterson. It's difficult to determine what the respective firms' contributions were. Nevertheless, the exterior share properties that we will see in Warnecke's later work.

Multiple stone columns run the length of the building on all four sides. These are hashed by horizontal lines top to bottom; there are four of these vertical lines for every floor of the building. Between these columns there are additional metallic columns that subdivide the intervening space into four window spaces.  The windows take up the size of two horizontal hash lines and the other two lines are placed above and below as spandrels or buffers between floors. Continuing the theme of four, the long face of the building has seventeen columns creating 16 (four squared) sections.  Furthermore this pattern is executed across 16 stories.

In San Francisco Architecture, Sally Woodbridge and her co-authors dismissed the Federal Building as "A lackluster blockbuster expressing all too well the contemporary scale of government"

The Warnecke firm's next major project was an addition to the French Hospital (now the Kaiser Hospital French campus) which was opened incrementally in 1963 and 1964.  A 1964 Architectural Record article describes the architecture:  

Floor-to-ceiling glass walls of the first floor are recessed behind columns to provide an outdoor shelter related to waiting space in the lobby. 

The front facade is a rhythmic pattern of glass metal between precast concrete panels. Above and below each window are decorative bronzed grills giving the effect of balconies and providing sun control for tall windows.

French Hospital, photographed by Richard E. Persoff (source: Architectual Record 1964)

Around the same time, the Warnecke firm designed the high rise apartments at 1170 Sacramento Street, sometimes known as The Nob Hill, Nob Hill Apartments, or Nob Hill Condominiums.

Above a comparatively ornate lobby floor, this structure employs rectangular repetition and symmetry on a small horizontal scale. An Architectural Record review describes:

In form, the building is a 22-story rectangular tower with arched openings at ground level, and with balconies and bay windows serving to soften the shape of the rectangle above. 

The newly constructed Nob Hill Condominium (source: Architectural Record April 1965)

After working Nob Hill luxury apartments, Warnecke's next San Francisco project was high rise to house seniors commissioned by the City's housing authority.

One hundred and eighty residents attended the dedication Tuesday at the Housing Authority's new senior citizen resident, the Mission Dolores apartments at 1855 15th street. Eneas J. Kane, executive director, said the ten-story apartment cost $1,350,000 and was design by John Charles [sic] Warnecke, the architect. Rents range from $35 to $65 a month. There are 92 units. 

source: San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 1966

Named Mission Dolores Apartments, these apartments are located at 1855 15th Street. This building's front shows more exterior variety than other Warnecke structures but is still based on rectangles and symmetry.

image source: Bridge Housing

Portions of the facade seen from the street are inset.

image source: FineLine Construction

The back of the building, not visible from the street, shows more of the regularity seen with the Federal Building.

A pre-construction drawing of 425 California Street (source: Architectural Record September 1966)

John Carl Warnecke's tallest San Francisco building to that point was built at 425 California Street for the First Savings and Loan Association, a subsidiary of Great Western Financial Corporation. (This corporation was later acquired by Washington Mutual Bank that is now owned by JP Morgan Chase).

"Glass wall construction--with all its advantages of openness, color, reflectivity and drama--gives you, the architect, uncommon freedom of expression. For full details, contact your nearest PPG Architectural Representative, consult Sweet's catalog file, or write PPG Industries, One Gateway Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. 19522. First Savings Building, 425 California Street, San Francisco"

Architect: John Carl Warnecke and Associates, San Francisco

source: AIA Journal September 1968

The building opened in 1968. Advertising from PPG Industries (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) extolls the "glass wall" made possible through their materials. The exterior was distinctive enough to draw notice in the New York Times:

The bay window design was made possible by cantilevering each floor beyond the perimeter column line by about 19 inches at intervals of 6 feet, 4 1/2 inches, and enclosing the extended area with bronze-tinted glass on three sides. The facade line is indented between the bay windows to produce a curtain wall of unusual grace.

Each side of the building has 13 windowed sections -- six extended and seven recessed. The number of sections is half the number of stories for the building (26). A San Francisco Examiner article noted that the window treatment gave the building "a facade of visual interest and enhance the interior appeal as well" owing to the natural light. 

425 California Street (image source: 425 California [website])

The building's steel frame is encased by a grey glass exterior partitioned by opaque metal spandrels that blend with the glass in the daytime but provide contrast when the building is illuminated at night.

Pacific Telephone's Proposed Bay Area Headquarters... the 12-story structure, costing about $15 million will house more than 1,700 employes [sic]

source: San Francisco Examiner January 8, 1963

John Carl Warnecke and Associates designed an additional building at 666 Folsom Street in 1964 for the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph corporation. 

The site of the future 666 Folsom Street in 1961 (image source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection).

In the early 1960s, South of Market was on the cusp of major redevelopment. A 1961 view of the site shows parking lots and older buildings (with the original 1925 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph building in the background). 

666 Folsom, 1969-1970 (source: San Francisco Redevelopment Agency collection, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

The building was a pioneering structure in the redevelopment of San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

666 Folsom, 1982, photograph by Sid Tate 

(source: San Francisco Examiner April 25, 1982 in the vertical file "South of Market" in the Art, Music and Recreation Center's Newspaper Clipping Files)

Similar to Warnecke's other buildings, 666 Folsom uses geometric patterns and repetition to achieve its form. Verplank describes the main facade being "divided into ten bays by thin concrete fins." These ten bays correspond to the ten upper windowed stories.  A thin molding surrounds each window, grouping four windows together within each grid section. 

666 Folsom Street - May 2008 Google Streetview

By 2004, SBC Communications (the successor at that time to Pacific Telephone & Telegraph) had closed up shop in the building. The 2008 Google Street View shows the building probably abandoned with a couple of boarded up windows.  

In a 2008 report on the structure, VerPlanck noted that Warnecke's building appeared to eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources both "for its prominent and precedent-setting role in the post-war-era redevelopment of the South of Market" and "as the work of a master and as an excellent and early example of the Brutalist style in San Francisco." 

Around 2014, the exterior of Warnecke's structure was replaced and radically reimagined by the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill firm. Their architects rejected the "cumbersome, unwelcoming mass" of the original and replaced it with a glass facade. The Chronicle's architect critic John King wrote approvingly that "once homely boxes have a fresh sheen."

A later entry in the blog will look at John Carl Warnecke and Associate's designs from the 1970s and 1980s.

Bibliography: 

"About," French-American Foundation for Medical Research and Education [website].

"The Bay Window Is Going Modern," San Francisco Examiner August 20, 1967.

"Bay Windows Installed on San Francisco Tower," New York Times September 10, 1967.

CENTRAL SOMA Historic Context Statement & Historic Resource Survey (San Francisco Department of Public Works, 2015).

Historic Resource Evaluation 633 Folsom Street San Francisco, CA (Architectural Resources Group, Inc, 2014).

"Housing for Elderly," San Francisco Chronicle January 2, 1964.

King, John, "Out-dated Buildings in S.F. Swap Their Concrete Shells for Sleek Glass," San Francisco Chronicle April 23, 2014.

"Lane Bryant Will Open Store Here," San Francisco Chronicle March 20, 1955.

"New Residence," San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 1966.

"PT&T Played Big Role in Bay Area's 1962 Economy," San Francisco Examiner January 8, 1963.

"Nob Hill Elegance by Warnecke." Architectural Record April 1965. 

"Thoughtful Layouts for Efficient Nursing," Architectural Record October 1964.

VerPlanck, Christopher, Primary Record / Building, Structure, and Object Record, 666 Folsom (State of California - The Resources Agency, Department of Parks and Recreation, 2008).

Wallack, Todd, "SBC to Move Jobs Out of S.F. - Phone Giant Plans to Consolidate Its Call Centers, Offices," San Francisco Chronicle October 29, 2004.

Watson, Lloyd, "12-Story HQ for Bay Area," San Francisco Chronicle December 20, 1961.

Woodbridge, Sally Byrne, et al, San Francisco Architecture : An Illustrated Guide to the Outstanding Buildings, Public Artworks, and Parks in the Bay Area of California, rev. ed. (Ten Speed Press, 2005).