Feature

by Christopher P. Verplanck

Even people with only a passing familiarity of San Francisco know that the rocky prominence north of downtown capped by Coit Tower is Telegraph Hill. What many probably don’t know is that scenic Telegraph Hill is one of San Francisco’s oldest neighborhoods, an enclave of impassable street right-of-ways, cozy pre-1906 workingmen’s cottages, lush public gardens, and modernist apartment buildings. Largely spared by the earthquake and subsequent firestorm that destroyed most of Victorian San Francisco in 1906, Telegraph Hill is home to San Francisco’s largest concentration of pre-1870 structures, with a handful of buildings dating back to the 1850s.

Rising to an elevation of 284 feet above sea level, with steep grades, the Hill’s location on San Francisco Bay provides tremendous views of downtown San Francisco, Angel Island, Alcatraz, Marin County and the East Bay. For decades an isolated neighborhood of artists and working-class immigrants, Telegraph Hill was gradually transformed after the Second World War into one of San Francisco’s most desirable residential neighborhoods. This article will trace the history of the core of Telegraph Hill, a six-block enclave defined by Kearny Street to the west, the Greenwich Street steps to the north, Sansome Street to the east and Green Street to the south.

Topography is the defining characteristic of Telegraph Hill. Jasper O’Farrell’s gridiron street pattern, however, did not defer to the rocky Hill’s steep grades. As a result , several of the district’s streets, including Filbert, Greenwich, Napier, Darrell and parts of Alta and Union, were designated as impassable. As a necessity, several of these right-of-ways have been converted into public footpaths or street stairs. Sections of some streets are so steep that they abruptly terminate at the edge of steep cliffs, such as Union Street, east of Montgomery. Union Street and Telegraph Hill Boulevard are the only means of vehicular access to the top sections of the Hill. Before the Second World War, residents converted several of the street right-of-ways into lush public gardens. The most famous, of course, are the Grace Marchant Gardens, lush plantings that flank both sides of the Filbert Street Steps.

During the Spanish and Mexican periods, Telegraph Hill was called Loma Alta, which means “High Hill.” Before the Americans began to arrive in large numbers in Yerba Buena Cove to trade with the residents of the small Mexican pueblo, Loma Alta was largely ignored. The notable exception was Juana Briones’ dairy ranch, which was located on the Hill’s west side, near the present-day intersection of Powell and Filbert Streets. In the years immediately preceding the American conquest of Yerba Buena and the rest of California, the foot of Loma Alta served as an informal burial ground for foreign sailors.

The history of Loma Alta began to change shortly after Captain John B. Montgomery sailed into San Francisco Bay on the U.S.S. Portsmouth on July 9, 1846, and raised the U.S. flag over Yerba Buena, which soon was renamed San Francisco. Two days after his arrival, Captain Montgomery ordered a fort to be constructed “on the hill off the point of Yerba Buena.” Fort Montgomery, constructed of adobe bricks hauled laboriously up the north slope, was the first permanent structure on Loma Alta. Happily for the Americans, Fort Montgomery never fired a shot and quickly fell into disuse, although not before bequeathing its name to Battery Street.

During the Gold Rush and the early American periods, Telegraph Hill continued to be known either as Loma Alta, its old Spanish name, or increasingly as Prospect Hill, because of the bird’s-eye view it offered of the Golden Gate and the Bay. This view made the Hill a perfect site for a semaphore apparatus and one was soon constructed on its crest. Crews posted there would keep watch over the approaches to the Bay and give advance warning to the residents below of the arrival of any ships through the Golden Gate. Gradually Telegraph Hill became the name of choice and by the 1860s it was known by no other name.

The unprecedented influx of immigrants into San Francisco during the Gold Rush led to the creation of what Roland Barth called the “Instant City.” During the brief four-year period between 1848 and 1852, the dusty pueblo of approximately 1,000 people mushroomed into a sprawling, ramshackle city of almost 35,000 inhabitants. The newcomers’ tents and shacks initially were concentrated on the flatter lands west of Yerba Buena Cove (later filled in, where much of the financial district now sits). But land was in short supply and within a short time dwellings began to creep up the south slope of Telegraph Hill. With the exception of the semaphore station and a handful of small houses, however, building on the crest of the Telegraph Hill was slower to develop. Ed Gilbert of the Alta, a state-wide newspaper based in San Francisco, described the scene:

“This hill and those around which have stood for so long, like giant sentinels, guarding the slumbers of our broad and beautiful bay, are fast becoming covered with houses, and their original appearance are long be lost and forgotten.”

During the 1850s and 1860s, inexpensive land prices and proximity to the maritime jobs available on the Northeast Waterfront began to attract working-class- cottage builders to the top of Telegraph Hill. Two of the Hill’s earliest dwellings were built during this early period: 1301 Montgomery (ca. 1850) and 291 Union (ca. 1854). Today, 1301 Montgomery is possibly the oldest brick building in San Francisco. The second-oldest documented building on Telegraph Hill is a tall wood-frame dwelling located at 291 Union Street. John Cooney, an Irish immigrant grocer, constructed this flat-fronted Italianate in 1854. The building contained a grocery store that did business on the bottom floor until 1906, and the building itself was owned by the Cooney family until 1937. The cottages located next door, at 287 Union, were constructed in 1857. Although altered since, these simple dwellings with their steeply pitched gable roofs and scroll saw-cut bargeboards are typical of many of the dwellings constructed in the neighborhood during the 1850s. Another important early dwelling located near the crest of Telegraph Hill is 9 Calhoun Terrace. The construction date for this unique balconied “Carpenter Gothic” dwelling is unknown. The first occupant was a man named Dr. David G. “Yankee” Robinson, a talented physician-cum-comedian-cum-theater
impresario. A final example is 31 Alta Street, a three-and-a-half story, gable-roofed dwelling with a two-level balcony. Early photographs indicate that this building, one of San Francisco’s oldest, has scarcely been altered since it was built by a Captain Andrews in 1852.

Between the late 1850s and the early 1870s, the crest of Telegraph Hill experienced a building boom. Most of the construction was of small cottages built on unpaved byways like Napier Lane and Norton Place (now Darrell Lane) by Scottish and Irish-born longshoremen, stevedores, draymen and laborers. Examples include: 10 Napier Lane, built by “Murty” Mortimer and John Clark in 1857; 218-20 Filbert, built in 1861 by Patrick McDermott; 1313-15 Montgomery, constructed in 1865 by Michael Carr; 110 Alta, constructed in 1866 by Patrick Moyles; and 228 Filbert, constructed in 1869 by Philip Brown. The Carpenter Gothic cottage at 228 Filbert, with its ornamental king-post truss and window hoods, is one of the most photographed dwellings in San Francisco.

Difficult as it may be to believe today, for most of its 150-year history, Telegraph Hill was a working-class neighborhood, and remained so until the 1930s. Early photographs of the Hill show a neighborhood of steep dirt and gravel streets (often little more than paths) lined with small false-front or gable-roofed Italianate-style cottages, with the occasional multi-story balconied dwelling. These worker’s homes were built on the Hill because steep grades kept land prices affordable and because the Hill was close to the piers and warehouses of the Northeastern waterfront where these workers had jobs. Rickety wooden stairs, in fact, linked the top of the Hill with that waterfront. Longshoremen, in particular, had an advantage living on Telegraph Hill because they could keep an eye out for incoming ships, allowing them to make it to the ‘shape-up’ at the piers before the arrival of other would-be job-seekers.

Throughout most of its history Telegraph Hill also attracted immigrants from all over the globe. During the Gold Rush and the years that followed, Chilean and Sonoran miners lived on the south slope between Stockton and Kearny Streets, and former British convicts from the penal colonies of Australia lived in the infamous neighborhood of Sydneytown (bordered by Sansome, Green, Broadway and Kearny Streets). The Irish dominated the crest of the hill from the Gold Rush until the last decade of the nineteenth century, when Italians and Spanish immigrants from Galicia began to expand into the area.

Initially the result of natural topography, the steep cliffs on the east side of Telegraph Hill were made even steeper by a half century of intensive quarrying. Although at the outset, done only on a small scale to provide ballast for empty sailing ships returning to their ports of origin, the quarry work intensified when rock was needed for the grading of Broadway, Stockton and Battery Streets. It was not until 1867, however, with the construction of San Francisco’s first seawall, that commercial quarries began to actively work the eastern slope of Telegraph Hill. During the early 1880s, blasting by W. D. English & Co. and the Gray Brothers made life a misery for those dwelling on the “twilight side” of Telegraph Hill. A particularly ferocious blast on June 1, 1884, set off landslides that made kindling of several houses on Union, Calhoun, Alta and Green Streets. Nonetheless, W. D. English & Co. and the Gray Brothers were well connected politically and attempts to stop the blasting came to no avail. The avowed mission of the Gray Brothers was to eventually level the Hill completely. Underestimating the tenacity of its residents, the Gray Brothers believed that the increasingly dangerous and unpleasant living conditions caused by their blasting work would force Hill residents to sell their properties at fire sale prices. Once the hill had been completely flattened and the rock sold, the Gray Brothers would then be in a position to sell the leveled land beneath for top prices. After the Gray Brothers openly defied a court injunction in 1906 against further blasting, desperate Telegraph Hill residents took matters into their own hands and pelted the workers down below with rocks. Nothing, it seemed, not even an earthquake, could stop the Gray Brothers. It was not until 1915, when a disgruntled employee killed one of the brothers that blasting finally stopped.

Despite its reputation as a rough and tumble working-class neighborhood, Telegraph Hill’s beautiful views and dramatic scenery did not escape the notice of the City’s more affluent residents. After a major storm destroyed the old semaphore station in 1870, the top of Telegraph Hill became vacant for the first time in a quarter of a century. Concerned that it would be purchased for tawdry commercial uses, a consortium of 22 businessmen bought four lots at the crest of the hill in 1876 for $12,000. They subsequently donated the land to the City on the condition that it be maintained forever as a public park dedicated to the memory of San Francisco’s early pioneers.

Less than a decade after the establishment of Pioneer Park, a real estate speculator named Frederick O. Layman obtained a franchise from the City to build a cable car line up to the crest of the Hill. Layman planned to build a major resort at the top— he hoped it would be as popular as Adolph Sutro’s Cliff House at Land’s End. The cable car line was a critical part of his business plan; Layman knew that the steep grades of Telegraph Hill would discourage all but the most hardy pedestrians. After the defeat of his proposed cable car route along Kearny Street, Layman managed to build a short four-block funicular system on Greenwich Street in 1884. Layman’s Telegraph Hill Railroad took visitors from the Powell Street line to his ‘German Castle,’ a huge gaudy entertainment pavilion and observatory where boxing, jousting and broadsword competitions, all fueled by plenty of steam beer, took place. Although the German Castle thrived for a decade, it quickly gained the reputation as a “hoodlum’s resort.” After several entrepreneurs tried to turn its fortunes around, the German Castle closed in the 1890s and finally burned to the ground in 1903, although not before being partially dismantled by local residents in search of building materials. Layman’s Telegraph Hill Railroad did not fare any better, for in the late 1880s the perennially money-losing venture went out of business following a well-publicized wreck.

The 1906 earthquake, of course, was the single most important event in the history of San Francisco and Telegraph Hill. Due to geography and personal heroism on the part of its residents, the crest of the Hill (along with Jackson Square and the crest of Russian Hill) was largely spared the destruction that ravaged most of Victorian San Francisco. The fires, caused by ruptured gas lines, reached Telegraph Hill on April 20, 1906, two days after the earthquake. Although some residents had given up and fled to Oakland when the seemingly insatiable fire reached the intersection of Kearny and Pacific, many valiant residents stayed behind to fight the flames. A natural firebreak in the form of Pioneer Park gave them an advantage that they extended by a little blasting. They then began soaking wood shingles and clapboards with stockpiles of wine and water, keeping the windblown embers from spreading the fire across the break. Henry Anderson Lafler described the scene in Thomas & Witts’ The San Francisco Earthquake:

“It was the boys of the hill that saved the hill. It was Toby Irwin, the prizefighter, and Tim O’Brien, who works in the warehouse at the foot of the hill, and his brother, Joe, who works in a lumberyard, and the Dougherty boys, and the Volse boys, and Herman, the grocery clerk—it was they who saved the hill.
It was the old Irish woman who had hoarded a few buckets of water through the long days of fear and rumor and who now came painfully toiling up the slopes with water for the fire—it was she who saved the hill.

It was the poor peasant Italian with a barrel of cheap wine in his cellar who now rolled it out and broke its head in with an axe, and with dipper and bucket and mop and blanket and cast-off coat fought the fire till he dropped—it was he who saved the hill.
It was Sadie who works in the box factory and Annie who is a coat finisher and Rose who is a chocolate dipper in a candy shop who carried water and cheered on the boys to the work—it was they who saved the hill.

It was the great, brave, roistering fight of all the dwellers on the hill for their homes and their lives, and gloriously they won.”

When they saw that Telegraph Hill was saved, refugees from destroyed districts of the City climbed to its top to watch the inferno raging below. Among them were several photographers who captured powerful images of the smoking, burning horror spread out below them.

While adjacent North Beach was rebuilt in a different guise after the earthquake and fire, Telegraph Hill continued to exist quietly in its own pre-quake universe until its scenic qualities and cheap rents began to attract artists and writers during the 1920s. Despite their sometimes legendary libertine pursuits, many of the early artists simply blended into the working-class neighborhood, painting and writing when the mood struck them and drinking large amounts of homemade red wine when the mood to work did not strike them. Some of the artists who came during this period included painter Desmond Heslett, muralists Helen Forbes and Dorothy Puccinelli Cravath, actor David Robinson, writer David Myrick, jeweler Pete Macchiarini, painter Wolo, composer Rudolph Friml and many lesser-known individuals. Gradually the number of artists increased. Some came with an entourage of hangers-on and wealthy patrons. For a short time the working-class immigrants and artists peacefully coexisted on Telegraph Hill. Unfortunately this state of affairs would not last long. Although unintentional, the influx of artists and other assorted ‘bohemians’ into a working-class neighborhood has almost always been a harbinger of increased affluence.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Telegraph Hill’s geographical isolation and primitive conditions also began to end as the result of City-sponsored street grading, coupled with the construction of concrete retaining walls and sidewalks and the installation of streetlights—all funded by the Work Projects Administration (WPA). In 1923, Telegraph Hill Boulevard opened, allowing affluent San Franciscans to drive up to Pioneer Park and enjoy sandwiches at Julius’ Castle. Improvements in infrastructure and access, coupled with the neighborhood’s residual “romantic” atmosphere, began to attract well-heeled young urbanites to Telegraph Hill. Some of these newcomers commissioned prominent architects including Richard Neutra, Gardner Dailey and William Wurster to design Modernist houses. Some of these dwellings include: 66 Calhoun, by Richard Neutra; the ‘Duck House’ at 60-62 Alta, by William Wurster and 261 Filbert, by Gardner Dailey. One of the most interesting dwellings on Telegraph Hill is an apartment building located at 1360 Montgomery Street. Designed in 1938-39 by architect Irvine Goldstine for Jack and Rolph Malloch, this beautiful Streamline Moderne building, with its sgrafitto ornament commemorating the construction of the Bay Bridge, was featured in the film noir classic Dark Passage starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Many of the newcomers to Telegraph Hill were civic-minded intellectuals who applied their talents to improving the quality of life in their city. Frieda and Dr. Hans Klussman lived at 260 Green Street. As many readers probably know, Mrs. Klussman led the successful fight in the 1950s against the proposed dismantling of the remaining cable car lines. Another resident of Telegraph Hill who worked to improve the quality of life on Telegraph Hill was Mrs. Grace Marchant. A quasi-legendary figure in the story of Telegraph Hill, Mrs. Marchant lived on the corner of Filbert and Napier. Disgusted by the barren and trash-strewn street right-of-way alongside the Filbert Street Steps, Marchant removed the junk in the early 1930s and began planting lush, ground-holding plants and flowering trees, including banana trees, roses, jasmine, palms and many others. Today Marchant Gardens, a San Francisco City Landmark, is tended by neighbors. The Gardens contribute to the almost otherworldly atmosphere of Telegraph Hill, as well as providing a habitat for hundreds of exotic and native birds.

The history of Telegraph Hill would be sorely incomplete without a discussion of its most famous landmark, Coit Tower. For almost half a century after its founding in 1876, Pioneer Park languished for lack of funds and from official neglect. Following the construction of Telegraph Hill Boulevard in 1923, things began to change. In 1925, the Parks Commission hired renowned architect and theater designer G. Albert Lansburgh to design the Classical Revival balustrade ringing the observation area. For many San Franciscans, this was not enough. In letters to the Chronicle, the Society of California Pioneers called for the construction of a monument on the crest of Telegraph Hill akin to the one originally envisioned in the Burnham Plan and later in the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition. After several attempts to raise money for a major monument came up short, eccentric San Franciscan Lillie Hitchcock Coit, an honorary member of the San Francisco Fire Department, left $118,731 for an “…artistic monument to the memory of the original Volunteer Fire Department.” In 1931, the City retained prominent San Francisco architect Arthur Brown Jr. to prepare plans for a monumental observation tower. After several revisions were made to the design, construction began in 1933, and on October 8 of that same year Coit Tower was dedicated. The streamlined tower’s design has, on occasion, been compared to a fire hose nozzle, as well as to other things. It has since become one of San Francisco’s most recognizable icons.Oneofthecrowning achievements of the project includes the frescoes painted by San Francisco muralists Bernard Zakheim, Ralph Stackpole and others with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA).

Telegraph Hill’s gradual transformation into an affluent neighborhood intensified after the conclusion of the Second World War. During the 1950s and 1960s, rising rents and real estate prices forced many of the Irish and Italians, as well as some of the less solvent artists, to move elsewhere. Throughout the past half-century, many of the newcomers have made their own stamp on the neighborhood in ways no less significant than their predecessors. Understandably protective of the unique character of their neighborhood, residents formed the Telegraph Hill Dwellers in 1954. Although the reason for forming the group was MUNI’s threatened removal of the No. 39 bus line, the Hill Dwellers soon took on other projects. Today numbering around 600 members, the group has evolved into a civic organization dedicated to preventing or at least softening the worst excesses of “progress” on the Hill and in the adjacent North Beach, Jackson Square and Northeast Waterfront neighborhoods. Some of the group’s major accomplishments, sometimes achieved with the help of other neighborhood organizations, include the implementation of a 40’ height limit throughout much of the neighborhood, stopping the Embarcadero Freeway at Broadway, establishing the Telegraph Hill and Northeast Waterfront Historic Districts, and the continued “greening” of the Hill through maintenance of Marchant Gardens and tree planting along the neighborhood’s streets.

Telegraph Hill Dwellers and others concerned about San Francisco’s history and culture have been largely successful in their fight to preserve the character of Telegraph Hill. New construction in the neighborhood continues to occur but design guidelines and cooperation with local groups and city agencies has ensured that the new buildings largely fit in with adjacent historic structures. Vigilance has been required, however. Astronomically high land values have placed pressure on the continued existence of tiny pre-quake cottages (particularly those outside the historic district) as well as on the few remaining empty lots, which thanks to modern engineering techniques are no longer considered to be “unbuildable.” Demolition and removal of historic dwellings still continues, including the razing of a handful of remaining cottages on Filbert Street, just below Pioneer Park (including the moving of labor union organizer Bill Bailey’s cottage). Thankfully, most people who choose to live on Telegraph Hill today do so because of its unique character. Most of today’s newcomers, as well as the thousands of visitors who climb its streets and stairs each year, not only seem to respect its special character but love it dearly.

The author would like to dedicate this article to the late architectural historian Anne Bloomfield. Her extensive original research into the history of Telegraph Hill is the basis for much of the information presented in this article. Residents of San Francisco have Ms. Bloomfield to thank for the designation of several important districts as “historic,” not the least of which is Telegraph Hill.

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the SF Apartment Magazine. This is the seventh in a series of articles dealing with the unique nature of San Francisco’s architecture. Christopher P. VerPlanck is the Architectural historian with Page and Turnball Architects. He can be reached at 415-362-5154. © Copyright 2002.