Victorian Architecture and a Farewell to San Francisco

Haas-Lilienthal House - San Francisco, Nob Hill

We took our last outing into San Francisco today.  We used transit exclusively - at the cost of $20, which must seem excessive to people living in the prairie culture, but it would have cost far more in both gasoline and parking fees if we had driven our car into the city.  I saw one garage which would give you a day's parking for only $25 - if you arrive after 9am and leave the garage before 6pm.  It was well off the beaten tourist path, so you would taken a bus or cable car anyway to get to any attraction.

Today we went to the Haas-Lilienthal House, the only standing Victorian house in San Francisco with it's original furnishings that is open to the public.  This house was built in 1886, and it survived the 1906 earthquake easily.  However, it was almost consumed by the fires which raged three days and swept across San Francisco.  Here's a very revealing aerial photo taken in May of 1906 (Earthquake:  April 18, 1906).

What we have here is mainly fire damage.  San Francisco was a 'modern' city in 1906, and people had gas lighting and gas cook stoves and gas fireplaces. The quake ruptured not only the gas pipes, but also the water pipes.  Once the escaping gas caught fire, there was no water to extinguish it.  Almost 40% of the city was destroyed before the fires were brought under control.  The fire officials of the time finally realized they had to create artificial firebreaks.  Moving ahead of the fire, they dynamited the buildings of entire streets.  One of the dynamited streets was Van Ness which contained the mansions of the wealthy.  The Van Ness firebreak was one block from the Haas-Lilienthal house, and thus the house we toured today was saved.

 You can see where the fire 'stops' at Van Ness at the top of the picture.  Notice Market Street - in 2014, the BART runs up and down this street which is in the heart of San Francisco bisecting the city like an arrow pointing northeast.

This San Francisco house was built in 1886 by a moderately wealthy Jewish family whose roots were Bavarian, and whose business was the wholesale grocery trade.  I couldn't help contrast the San Francisco house with the Maymont House in Richmond, and the Vanderbilt Breakers in Newport.  Each represents a 'step' up on the wealth scale.  The Vanderbilt houses were opulent; the Maymont House was ostentatious, while the Haas-Lilienthal house was comfortable.  Here's what I mean:

Maymont Dining Room

This dining room at Haas-Lilienthal is nice, but certainly does not reflect the level of wealth finance or railroad construction and ownership brought in the 19th century.  All three houses are contemporary to one another being built within 7 years, 1886 - 1893.  Much of the craftsmanship of Maymont and Breakers was created specifically for these houses by individual craftsmen, and in the case of the Breakers, craftsmen imported from Europe.  By contrast, Mrs. Haas went down to Market Street and 'picked out' her architectural details manufactured by machines, just as new home owners today pick out their cabinetry and counter tops.  Granted, Haas-Lilienthal is all first quality, but it is manufactured quality mimicking individually crafted details.  No one appeared in the San Francisco house to hand paint gold leaf around the carefully crafted plaster molding.

The one interesting fact the ancient tour guide offered (three times) was the typical Victorian crown molding around the ceiling of the 'first parlor'.  The top level is the 'egg and dart'; the second level are the dentals - we were specifically cautioned not to call them 'teeth' -, and the third level closest to the floor are the bay leaves or laurel leaves - all of which represent symbols going back to Greek and Roman times.

This is a perfect example of machine routed molding rather than hand carved molding.

There are more pictures of the various rooms of the house if you wish to flip through the pictures. 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115478608971584948192/albums/6044672105847148353?authkey=COaBuZ-W36XpQQ 

This was our last outing into San Francisco.  This sightseeing tour impressed upon me how many attractions have been in San Francisco for the past 40 years.  Our first trip here was in 1974, and in 2014, you can still ride the cable cars, buy cheap souvenirs in Chinatown, take the boat to Alcatraz, shop at the Piers, walk through Golden Gate Park, and even across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The fog still rolls in and out, and some days in the shank of summer feel like a chilly autumn day.  You need to pick your walking routes carefully in the city unless you're into mountain climbing which is what some of the steeper hills feel like as you trudge up and down them.   We've enjoyed this summer on so many levels.  If it weren't for the damn earthquakes, this place would be a paradise to live in.  We leave here in 6 days.  My prayer is I get out of town before the ground shakes.    

Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park is still as magnificent as ever.  I first saw it about 40 years ago, and it hasn't changed much.  If anything, it's been improved thanks to severe ocean storms and earthquakes. The origin of the park lies in nineteenth century San Franciscans deciding to compete with the newly created Central Park of New York City by developing a great park of their own.  The Golden Gate Park is the fifth most visited urban park in the United States.  Central Park may be the number one visited park, but the Golden Gate is 174 acres larger being 1017 acres.  Originally, the park area was sand dunes, but over a fifty year span, hundreds of thousands of trees were planted, and today, the dunes are a distant memory.

Japanese Tea Garden

One of the things I love most about the northwestern United States coast are the flowers. The climate is wonderful for flowers.  Golden Gate Park is filled with them.  The Conservatory of Flowers is a gigantic greenhouse.  The Japanese Tea Garden has both flowers and sculpted trees.
 The Rose Garden showcases the most beautiful roses I've seen since The Portland Rose Garden (which is the gold standard for roses in my opinion).     My favorite roses are the multi-hued ones, and this garden was filled with them.  Poor Drake, we were trying to catch a bus when he took a short cut through the Rose Garden.  We missed at least one bus as I lingered snapping pictures.

Speaking of buses,  I loved the subways and buses in New York, and I've loved the BART trains and the buses here.  The bus system in San Francisco is efficient, punctual and almost completely covers the city.  We've crisscrossed the city on buses.  Usually time is not exactly pressing for us, so if it takes us an hour to use public transit rather than 40 minutes to drive, we consider the extra 20 minutes as just sight seeing opportunities.  We're headed to our last attraction tomorrow - the Haas-Lillenthal House.  It's an 1886 Victorian which survived the big earthquake of 1906, and it's furnished with the original furniture and ornamentation.  It's also in a part of the city we haven't seen this trip.  We'll take the Bart into the city from Berkeley and catch a bus across a new part of the city.  

We've pretty much passed on the destinations we've seen before avoiding Alcatraz, the Piers, Ghiradelli Square, the cable cars, and a host of others.  This trip is actually our fourth time to San
Francisco.  Our choice of attractions this trip has pretty much centered on art exhibits, wine and getting to know areas outside San Francisco.  My favorite exhibit was "Gorgeous" at the Asian Art Museum.  Our last exhibit was at the deYoung, located in the Golden Gate Park, and we came for Modernism, a traveling exhibition from the National Gallery of Art.  I just couldn't resist dropping by the Japanese Tea Garden for old time's sake.

One of the unlooked for bonuses of this vagabond life is I'm getting intensive geography lessons about parts of the country of which I only had a hazy understanding of the lay of the land.  Here it's been fascinating to learn first hand about the microclimates which dot the Bay Area.  The weather can change by ten or fifteen degrees or go from sunny to overcast to fog by traveling ten miles.  From the viewpoint of the deck outside our door, we've observed the quintessential San Francisco image:  Fog rolling in over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Another real plus to living in the second most food mad city in America are the wonderful restaurants we've found here, and the joy of finding excellent produce in the Farmer's Market every Saturday just two blocks from this apartment.  I've been trying to store up for the restaurant desert of Sun City.  I suspect South Lake Tahoe (our next destination) will be somewhere between the two.

I close with a picture of one of the roses from the rose garden.  As always, there are more pictures for my art friends and my flower friends.   If you want to see them, follow the link.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115478608971584948192/albums/6042354458532970433?authkey=COXfnfS-tb_vjgE    

Naked Wine

We couldn't leave here without another trip to wine country.  After all, the town of Napa is only a one hour drive.  This was the last extended family time we got to spend with Sarah before she left for New York.  (Can you imagine?  She wanted to spend a couple of weeks with her HUSBAND before she has to return to New Haven for the start of the final year at Yale.  I mean, REALLY!)  Just kidding....learned this summer visits are better than cohabitation with your adult child.  Don't get me wrong - things went swimmingly.   We loved being able to help her with a place to live while she kicked off her start-up.  We didn't make the mistake of expecting her to live in our handkerchief pocket, and we all enjoyed the time we got to spend together - the most in the past 10 years.  However, despite all the positives, it just felt like having a long term guest, and we missed our privacy.  Smooth spots went each way - Sarah got her laundry done, and she cooked for us whenever she got the chance.  She already knows more about cooking than I've learned in the past 40 years.

As a final fling, we just decided to take off for Napa and see if we could hit the downtown tasting rooms on a Saturday.  Thanks to Emily (friend of Sarah) we went to Naked Wines.  Drake had suggested we try to find a tasting room which represented more than one winery, and Sarah remembered the Naked Wine, a tasting room they couldn't get to when they visited Napa in January.  We settled into seats at our own table, and proceeded to taste a wide variety of wine.

We have been solicited to join the Wine Club at every single winery we visited out here.  Basically, they are a very bad deal.  Usual deal:  They pick the wines from their bottles and send them to you. They send you a case or at the least a half a case and charge shipping every month.  We didn't find a single winery where we enjoyed ALL their wines.  Plus, the prices were pretty steep even for members.

Naked Wine is a totally different animal.  They represent hundreds of small wineries.  Their 'club' members are actually investors in these wine makers and their wineries.  Naked Wine invests not only capital, but also bottles and labels their participating wineries output, so small vintners can get their product out on the market.  In return the "Angels" (investors) get first shot at the wine at reduced prices. Each Angel pledges $40 each month - which is less than our monthly wine expenditure.   The genius is there are hundreds of different wines to choose from out of over 1000 wineries from all over the world, and you choose when to spend the money in your account.  This is exactly what we've been looking for.

Hey, Emily, your sommelier classes just paid off....for us!  Thanks.