Face In The Clouds: Nob Hill Visions


	Louis Martin

	You can hate it, you can despise it, you can call it "Snob Hill" in a fit of rage and condemn everyone who has ever lived there. But when you calm down and look around, you've got to admit there is no place like it; it is a rarified atmosphere, found only perhaps in story books, or on that place the Greeks called Mount Olympus, where the gods sipped nectar and looked down upon the lives of mortals.

	Now there was a case of power. Though the Olympians did not own the railroad, since it had not yet been built, they had a monopoly on everything else: thunder, lightning, ocean, forest, meadow, stream, flower ... and of course the fickle emotions of the human heart.

	And, oh, those gods of the Greeks were not always admirable. Take Zeus, for instance, who was always becoming infatuated with some lovely young female mortal and seducing her, thereby invoking the wrath of his wife, Hera, who almost always took it out on the young mortal. Remember the lovely maiden Io who was turned into a miserable wandering heifer? Now did she deserve that? But it did make good reading, or storytelling back then.

	Same with The Hill. Lots of history and it makes good reading. Like Crocker's "spite" fence; like the wealthy Mr. Hopkins on a mule and selling vegetables.

	Though almost everything on the Hill burned down in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake--some said it was retribution for profligate living--you can still walk around this little piece of heaven and spot traces of former times. If you listen carefully, maybe you can even hear the beginning of a new story in the spoiled bratty whine of a young woman in a Nob Hill grocery:

	"Well, I would never be seen .... Oh, it was a bargain: only nine hundred and fifty-thousand ..."

	But let us stick to the past; the future can take care of itself.

	Take Leland Stanford's old house. It doesn't exist anymore, but if you walk down California Street to the Stanford Court Hotel, you can see the huge stone posts of the entrance gate to the Italian-style villa built in 1876. It had the largest private dining room in the West, an art gallery, an East Indian parlor, and other exotic attractions. Stanford liked to entertain, and he liked to do it in style. He also had six other houses and an eight-thousand acre horse ranch in Palo Alto that became Stanford University. Stanford, like other men of his age, did things on a grand scale.

	The idea of the university came following the death of the Stanfords' son, Leland, Jr.

	Leland, Jr., was a tall slender youth who spoke fluent French, had a budding interest in art and archeology, but also loved dogs and horses and life on the Stanford ranch. He once built a miniature railroad with 400 feet of track. He was the Stanford's only child. While the family was traveling in Italy, the youth contracted typhoid fever. It was a few weeks before his sixteenth birthday. His father stayed at his bedside continuously and it was thought that the boy was recovering. Instead, on March 13, 1884 he died.

	It is said that his father fell into a troubled sleep the morning the boy died and when he woke up he told his wife, Jane Stanford, "The children of California shall be our children."

	The idea of building a great university was born that moment. (More on Stanford)

	Some have claimed the university to be the only lasting legacy of the "Big Four"--also known as the "robber barons" of Nob Hill--which consisted of Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington, and Stanford.

	They were some of the original "risk takers" of California. All Sacramento merchants, they attended a presentation by a railroad engineer who pursuaded them to invest in construction of a railroad that would link the east coast to the west. By eliminating the competition, they eventually controlled all rail transportation on the west coast. No one could ship anything anywhere without paying their price, which was exorbitant.

	They, in fact, are much of the reason for anti-monopoly laws today. Though not mentioned in the government's suit against Microsoft, their ghosts linger in the courtroom. Coupling the web browser to the operating system is child's play compared to these gentlemen's strong-arm tactics.

	Stanford's was the first "house" on the hill and only to be outdone by the palace of his neighbor Mark Hopkins. While Stanford was a big spender and enjoyed the limelight, and even bought his way into politics, Hopkins was a frugal man with an ambitious wife who loved art, architecture, and romantic literature. While his wife engaged her passion for Victorian Gothic architecture and interior decoration, Hopkins rode around town on a mule selling vegetables. Both Stanford's and Hopkin's beginnings were as grocery merchants in Sacramento. When Hopkins died, his wife married the interior decorator of the $2,500,000 Hopkins mansion.

	Along the retaining wall of the estate can be seen a medieval turret that must have delighted Mary Hopkins. The retaining wall encloses both the former Stanford and Hopkins estates. It is made from stone blocks from a quarry near Sacramento that made blocks for retaining walls for the Southern Pacific Railroad. The best view of the wall is from Pine Street, one block south of California. The Mark Hopkins Hotel now stands where the original Hopkins mansion did.

	The Huntington and Crocker mansions shared the same fate; they burned in the 1906 fire. Huntington Park is now where the old Huntington mansion stood, and Grace Cathedral stands where the Crocker mansion once stood.

	Huntington spent very little time on The Hill, prefering his role as a greaser of palms in Washington, DC. Crocker, who was the construction chief for the railroad, is known for the "spite" fence he built around the house of his German neighbor, Nicholas Yung, who refused to sell Crocker his property when Crocker was set upon buying up the entire block. The spite fence was forty feet high, and effectively blocked most light to the Yung house. Clearly, what was "fair play" in those days would not be considered "fair play" now in a court of law. But Yung, who was an undertaker, did get even in his own way. He mounted a coffin on the top of his house and faced it in the direction of Crocker's big estate house. The squabble was not settled until both men were dead. In the end, Yung's relatives sold out to the Crockers.

	The spite fence is gone today, and perhaps it is fitting that Grace Cathedral, a symbol of peace, stands where these minds once warred against each other. You can walk the labyrinth just inside the cathedral's doors and ponder former times, while being watched over by the patron saint of the City, "Saint Francis" by Beniamino Bufano, in this eclectic church on The Hill. The labyrinth, by the way, is not some "New Age" invention; it is part of an ancient tradition of pilgrimage: when the pilgrim reaches the destination, he or she walks the labyrinth, its center representing the "New Jerusalem" of the soul. The labyrinth at Grace Cathedral is modeled on a thirteenth-century one at Chartres Cathedral in France.

	As to traces of these former lives, there isn't much: But you can still see six-inch-wide granite blocks on Sacramento Street that were part of the original estate. Located just a short distance west on Sacramento up from Taylor, they are embedded in the sidewalk and lead from the curb up to the wall. Right around the corner on Taylor you can see a square of sidewalk stamped with the name of the original sidewalk manufacturer--CALIFORNIA ASP Co. It is close to the Diocesan Center wall. You will have to look hard. The letters have grown faint with time. The ASP stands for Artifical Stone Paving. ASP, with a bit of a modern ring to it, like the late phrase "Artifical Intelligence" or "AI," may be the precursor of the Silicon Valley buz word. And like Artifical Intelligence, it seems to have exhausted itself; the company no longer exists.

	But take a walk around. You will notice a lot more of these brown pebbly squares of sidewalk. The square by the wall shows a patent for 1870 with a renewal date of 1871. Presumably this is for the ASP "process," which, translated into modern jargon, would be ASP's "intellectual property."

	Do much staring at the sidewalk, however, and you may have others staring at you. Nob Hill is one of the more "traditional" areas of San Francisco. Stare all you want down on Market and 8th; stare at anything and everything. No one will notice. On The Hill, however, decay and decline are less pronounced; the "sane" look is still the "in" look.

	Take Huntington Park across from Grace Cathedral. Unlike other parks in the city, you are not tripping over drug dealers and the homeless. Instead, you will find clean benches and well-tended flower beds and trees. You might think for a moment you were in Paris. The park has a sense of grace and order.

	In the center there is a fountain in the classical tradition with four young men holding up a basin. There are tortoises on the edges. Water streams from the sides of the basin from the mouths of gods into four seashell-like basins below. The young men, totally naked, hold onto the tails of fish. The fountain was made in Rome between 1909 and 1911 and was donated to the park by the Crocker family.

	At the edge of the park there is another fountain with cherubic-like children running in a circle around the stream of water from the fountain; they look like real children full of mirth on a hot summer day. They are a moment frozen in time in this park with a sense of timelessness, in this town mostly into the rapacious "now." The donor for this fountain is James Flood who built the mansion next to the park.

	The park is a gem. It is located almost in the center of Nob Hill and provides one of the finest visions of the Hill itself. The land for the park was donated to the city by Huntington's widow after the 1906 earthquake, so there is perhaps one more little legacy from the "robber barrons."

	To the east of the park, almost on the middle of the Hill, is the old Flood mansion. It is the only one of the original mansions on the Hill that did not burn down in 1906. That is because its exterior walls were built of Connecticut sandstone. James Flood probably chose to imitate New York 5th Avenue mansions over the prevailing wood Victorian style on the Hill. This extra bit of snobbery may have saved his house.

	Unfortunately, the brownstone seems out of place on Nob Hill; it exudes dullness in a place where nature has graced all else with color and life. Only the high-rise "waffle" architecture of more recent times seems duller.

	Flood was one of the Bonanza Kings who became rich from Comstock Lode silver. Before he became a stockbroker on the Mining Exchange and began quietly buying stock, he was a saloon keeper. Imagine the greatest Olympian Zeus working as a short-order cook on Van Ness and you have the picture.

	Today the Flood Mansion houses the Pacific Union Club, a stodgy old-boys club of the wealthy. In or out of the drab-looking building with drapes pulled at the windows, few seem to come or go. Around the mansion is a brass gate, now tarnished green. In earlier times, one servant was assigned at all times to be polishing it.

	Across Mason Street to the east from the Flood mansion is the Fairmont Hotel. This, too, is a survivor of the 1906 earthquake. It was built by the daughters of James Fair, another Bonanza King, after he died. Fair apparently had plans to build a house there, but due to a divorce and other distractions, never quite got around to it. The hotel was nearly finished when the earthquake struck. Room furniture, stacked in the lobby, never made it up to rooms. The building was gutted by the fire, but the walls and the foundation were not damaged. Its huge lobby with rich red carpet and gold paneling evokes some of the glory of the former Nob Hill. Flags flowing in the breeze outside give it an international, regal look.

	The grand style, in an age where vulgarity seems to rule, might also be considered a kind of legacy of the original inhabitants of The Hill. It is perhaps a reminder that there may be something better then rap, rock, and T-shirts bearing suggestive slogans.

	Though not on the tour maps, another building of note is the one to the North of the Fairmont on Sacramento. That is the Brocklebank building, where the late Herb Caen lived for nearly the last eight years years of his life. It sits right on the corner edge of Nob Hill looking east over downtown and across the bay, and north towards North Beach and Telegraph Hill. From the top of Nob Hill, it provides perhaps the prettiest view of San Francisco with the big cargo ships coming and going on the Bay.

	Though Caen, writing his column for almost sixty years, seemed almost immortal, he was no snob. The doorman of the Brocklebank called Caen a "fantastic" person but a "real working man" too. "He was out of here every morning." To the Chronicle that is. To paint a portrait of the City and its people; moving among all classes, he nagged those who were causing the City harm and praised those who were making it a great place to live. Though he hobnobed with the rich, it has been said he was never "soft" on them. He was a little like the late Jesse Unruh who said of lobbyists that you have to be able to take their money, drink their booze, screw their women ... and still vote against them.

	The Top of the Mark, located on the south-east corner of heaven, offers an even more spectacular view. Sipping a martini in its big panoramic bar with tattered swathes of fog swirling about the Hill, it is hard to hate a place with such a view. Look hard enough and you may spot the strong features of a face in the clouds; listen carfully enough and you may hear the faint whisperings of some grand plan.

	Nob Hill Tour