Grab Bag #69

You know how these Grab Bags begin, right?

Guess Where

Ready to play? The humble building above still stands in San Francisco today and holds a lot of history. The cars will give you a good clue to the year, but do you know where this building is and its importance?

Answer at the end for Friends of Woody who get to read the whole post!

Thanks Jane 

I heard on Wednesday that my old friend Jane Cryan passed away. Jane was one of San Francisco’s unique individuals, a force feisty and sweet at the same time, the kind of person who would found an organization with a name like “The Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of San Francisco’s 1906 Refugee Shacks.”

Twenty-five years ago, we spent a lot of time together when I was trying to save four 1906 earthquake relief cottages in the Outer Sunset District. We often found ourselves crawling under houses trying to identify others:

Jack Kerouac invited her to move to San Francisco via postcard. Here she played piano, collected fine linens, hosted salons, and argued with crass developers, short-sighted city officials, and anyone who couldn’t see the importance of preserving historic places. Her two-packs-a-day voice and exuberant rattling cackle should have made her a character actor in Hollywood.

She didn’t just advocate for earthquake cottages, she adopted them. Instead of addresses, she’d refer to them by her own names: “the Kirkies,” “the Little Red Houses,” “the Goldies.”

She succeeded in getting her rented Sunset District residence of combined refugee cottages designated as a city landmark (#171), even though cutting the deal with her fractious landlord required her to vacate the premises permanently.

For years, Jane tried to get two book manuscripts on earthquake shacks published, but she was so exacting with her writing and her design, so determined not to have a word changed or a image moved, she never found a publisher.

Last September, she wrote me a long letter asking me to update her book projects as co-author. When I said I was swamped with work, she emailed back:

Greetings and Salutations Woody,

I will wait for you. It’s either we do it or I do it. You are the only person in the world I would ask to update those books. […] You’re the best Woody! The girl whom San Francisco made what she became, yours Jane C.

Jane instructed the cousin managing her affairs to send me her works. I have to think how best to tackle this responsibility, but I do want Jane to get what she wants.

In the meantime, it’s my job to get her San Francisco-focused obituary published. Stay tuned.

Liberty Bell in San Francisco 1915 

The nation’s sesquicentennial is this week. It’s also the 250th birthday of San Francisco (sort of).

I am still not clear what official plans there are locally to mark these occasions.

I am certain the Liberty Bell will not be in town, but you might be surprised to read that it did once take a vacation from its Philadelphia home to San Francisco.