BABY BIG CITIES OF THE PACIFIC: SAN FRANCISCO
Our history centers on why San Francisco competed not only with its southern California neighbor, Los Angeles, but also with Oakland, Portland and Seattle. Essentially, our focus ties to better understanding how intra-regional competition among the Pacific Coast’s regional urban hierarchy is affected by our dynamics of ED (population mobility, jurisdictional economic base and political culture).
San Francisco (founded in 1776) was a sleepy enclave of about 500 in 1846 until spurred by the 1848 Gold Rush. It was the only viable seaport and commercial trade center on the Pacific Coast. San Francisco thus functioned as a transshipment point (gold/commodities processing its principal export/service), and marine trade flourished between the East Coast, Mexico/Latin America, Hawaii and the Far East (navy Commodore Matthew Perry opened up Japan in 1854). San Francisco, literally the only “port,” established itself as the financial center of the West Coast. Wells Fargo Bank was founded in 1854. After statehood (1850), the city developed the institutions associated with contemporary politics, commerce and finance. A chamber and several merchant exchanges sprang up, and cultural institutions also flourished.
San Francisco’s chief city-builder was William Ralston, president of the Bank of California, whose fortune accrued from Nevada’s Comstock silver mines. Other early city leaders included Levi Strauss and Domingo Ghirardelli (Ghirardelli Chocolate Company). But the ED engine of early San Francisco was its port facilities. Business firms that controlled the operating facilities realized they needed public services (dredging, lighthouses and wharves/piers) to keep ports open and ensure dependable profits. So, in 1851 the first American “port authority” was created: Governor Leland Stanford signed legislation creating a formal “Board of State Harbor Commissioners for San Francisco” (later renamed San Francisco Port Authority) “to construct wharves at the ends of all streets commencing with the Bay of San Francisco.”
Through its debt commission, the San Francisco authority leased wharf space for periods of up to ten years. The state port authority (governed by local business) operated these facilities until 1969 when they were merged with the City/County of San Francisco (California Burton Act). State management of San Francisco’s harbor was patchy and scandal-prone. Facilities were chronically underinvested—frequently unable to compete with other Pacific ports in attracting trade. Seeing opportunity, in 1926 Oakland established its port and, for years, lived off trade seeking to avoid San Francisco’s facilities.7
San Francisco’s fragmented business community imagined their city as the natural leader of the West. In these early years San Francisco adopted same Big City style as eastern Big Cities—mayor-businessmen and chamber–merchant exchange—and professional elites economic/political leadership prospered. This business community was well established previous to the railroad’s arrival, but marine/harbor-based business elites, operating through the Port and the Marine Exchange, were a separate force from the downtown business community. The San Francisco’s business community differed, in one respect, from its eastern counterparts—there were few manufacturers, and, aside from shipping and marine elites, merchants, real estate and finance dominated. Even in these early years trade and the service sector, not manufacturing, drove San Francisco’s growth and was the chief element in its business community.
With an early head start San Francisco established commercial primacy over California and the West Coast. The transcontinental railroad (the Overland Route) opened in May 1869. That arrival was a mixed blessing in that while benefiting San Francisco, it also spurred construction of regional railroads into the hinterland. In fairly short order that leveled the playing field for Pacific cities by linking them to each other and to points east. Nevertheless initially San Francisco expanded greatly (by 1880 it was the nation’s ninth largest city). By the turn of the century, however, its growth rate moderated considerably. It was no longer the “only Pacific port” in a storm, so to speak.
San Francisco never was demographically homogeneous. A magnet for fortuneseekers of all sorts, the city attracted a diverse citizenry from the beginning, and that diversity persisted into the twentieth century. Like its northeastern/mid-Atlantic Big City counterparts, San Francisco attracted foreign immigration—notably from China (Asians comprise about 5 percent of the city’s population), and by 1869 Chinatown formed into a neighborhood. As of 1900, 30 percent of the city’s population was foreign born, and an additional 40 percent were second-generation foreign immigrants (in descending order Irish, German, English, Italian and Jewish). Less than 0.5 percent were African-American.
In the suitcases of ethnic migrants were two items that affected future San Francisco public policy and economic development: first, a desire to live together and form ethnic neighborhoods; and, second, a propensity to join unions. Ethnic neighborhoods (Mission Hills, for example) developed throughout the city, and the upper classes retreated to places like Nob Hill and Pacific Heights. San Francisco became one of the most unionized cities in the United States, and labor-management issues soon polarized the local economy and San Francisco politics. The election of the famous Abe Ruef–Eugene Schmitz machine in 1902 was a polarizing dynamic. The machine, composed of ethnic voters, centered on the Union-Labor Party which controlled municipal politics through 1909.
Oakland prospered from this turmoil in the sense that geographically it captured San Francisco’s departing middle class. Suburban-like in its initial settlement, Oakland offered affluent housing and neighborhoods, and quickly acquired an industrial base (canneries, breweries). Oakland aggressively annexed its peripheries (1897-1910), set up its own streetcar system—and invested in port facilities. By 1910 Oakland had captured about 30 percent of the freight tonnage passing through the Golden Gate (Blackford, 1993, p. 16). After its earthquake/fire (1906) many firms relocated from San Francisco. San Francisco by the end of the twentieth century’s first decade faced a home-grown urban competitor in its immediate back yard.
San Francisco stumbles on the City Beautiful walkway
San Francisco is the West’s best candidate for inclusion as a Big City. The San Francisco Merchants Exchange, originally formed in 1866 by 47 bankers and merchants, became the city’s leading EDO. Within four years it had enlisted over 1000 members; its projects included street cleaning, lighting and paving, a new public market area and enhanced fire protection. Its agenda mirrored Big City agendas back east. Responsible for municipal water supply infrastructure was the Real Estate Dealers’ Association/Exchange (1897): 30 business-led, neighborhood improvement associations led the crusade to improve streets, public buildings, sewers and the water supply (Blackford, 1993, p. 33). Physical upgrading and redevelopment was thought essential for business prosperity—and San Francisco would not be left behind when the Planning Movement and City Beautiful became economic development’s “latest and greatest.”
The leader of the turn-of-the-century movement was James D. Phelan, a San Francisco-born son of a “Forty-Niner” who made his fortune in real estate, trade and banking. As Vice-President of California’s World’s Fair Commission, he managed the state’s exhibit in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. He returned determined to bring about similar redevelopment in San Francisco. He got elected mayor and served for three terms, until 1901. In 1898 Phelan obtained approval for a new municipal charter establishing at-large elections and providing authority for municipal ownership of water and other utilities. Phelan was San Francisco’s version of a Great Lakes social reform mayor.
True to form Phelan pressed hard for both infrastructure and neighborhood programs. The essential tool required was issuance of municipal bonds, which required a referendum. He sought bonding authority to finance a hospital, sewers, schools, streets, a library, a jail and playground/parks improvements; also an opera house civic auditorium, a music conservatory, flower/tree-planting, prohibition of overhead trolley car wires and construction of harbor improvements. The basis for all this stuff, of course, was the comprehensive plan which would “elevate the public taste” and serve as a “great advertisement for our city” (Blackford, 1993, pp. 40–41). Phelan had the support of the Merchants’ Association and the Public Improvement Central Club (created by the 30 neighborhood improvement clubs). Their objective was to bring the City Beautiful movement to San Francisco.
Despite pushing hard for several years to issue bonds, Phelan was unable to secure bond financing. Trouble appeared from the Real Estate Exchange which believed bonds would increase taxes. So City Beautiful bond issues were voided on technicalities and, when reapproved in 1904, no banker was willing to buy them. So a “meeting of about twenty gentlemen” set up the Association for the Improvement and the Adornment of San Francisco. The AIASF was Progressivism personified; within a year its membership climbed to nearly 400:
The main objectives of AIASF are to promote … beautifying of streets, public buildings, parks, squares, and places of San Francisco; to bring to the attention … [to] the best methods for instituting artistic municipal improvements; to stimulate the sentiment of civic pride in the improvement and care of private property; to suggest quasi-public enterprises [utilities], and in short, make San Francisco a more agreeable city in which to live. (Blackford, 1993, p. 40)
The AIASF, composed of bankers and the Merchants’ Association, convinced local banks to purchase City Beautiful bonds. Their immediate agenda were civic improvements such as an opera house, civic auditorium, music conservatory, street/boulevard improvements, parks—and a comprehensive plan for San Francisco.
In 1904 Phelan, as President of the AIASF, had extended an offer to prepare the plan to our old friend Daniel Burnham (see Chapter 6). The AIASF, streetcar companies and railroads would foot the bill. Burnham, completing his Washington DC plan, was mid-stream in Cleveland’s City Beautiful initiatives, but accepted nevertheless. He and his assistant, Edward Bennett (who shortly after designed Portland’s comprehensive plan), came to San Francisco. Burnham and Bennett worked off and on through 1905 to write up the plan, completing it in late 1905.
Burnham’s plan proposed a series of concentric circles—with each circle playing a special role in the city’s social and economic life. A civic center was included. Wide concentric streets, with arterials slicing diagonally, the plan radically reconfigured San Francisco’s existing pattern.
At 5:14 a.m. on April 18, 1906 an earthquake lasting less than a minute leveled buildings and ruptured gas pipes and water mains. Fires spread throughout the city, burning for three days and destroying much of San Francisco: almost five square miles encompassing the financial district, the major retail district, much of the wholesale, factor and entertainment sections of the city … Burning an area one and one-half times as large as the great Chicago fire of 1871 … Between 500 and 3,000 people died, and another 250,000, about three-fifths of the population were left homeless. (Blackford, 1993, p. 32)
“Damn the earthquake and machine; full speed ahead”
The almost total destruction of the past’s built environment created an opportunity for the plan’s speedy approval and implementation. To the surprise of Burnham/the AIASF the plan went nowhere. The city was eventually rebuilt with little correspondence to the outlines or principles of Burnham’s plan. Why?
City Beautiful, however, had triggered an eruption from the unions (teamsters and waterfront) and ethnic voters, who viewed its initiatives as serving the interests of affluent business elites. A two-month strike ensued, forcing Phelan to intervene—and costing him the next election. That election brought to power the Union-Labor Party, headed by Eugene Schmitz. From then on, behind the scenes, Abe “Boss” Ruef ran city politics. San Francisco enjoyed machine government for the better part of a decade to follow. City Beautiful seemed stillborn.
Relations between the machine and AIASF deteriorated further. Business elites, the core of the AIASF, sparked investigations that led to indictments/trials which threatened to end the machine and throw its bosses into jail. Suffice it to say, trust on both sides was lacking—and the plan/funding went nowhere fast. A committee was formed to review the plan and make recommendations. The review process extended for some time and broke down:
Street construction proved to be a particularly contentious issue, for until the locations of streets were fixed and the streets rebuilt, businesses could not fully resume operations. Merchants and other businessmen who had long supported planning now broke from it in the interest of getting back in business as soon as possible. Another divisive matter was the proposed extension of new strict ordinances governing the building of fireproof structures … to make San Francisco more secure against future blazes. The attempt led to vociferous opposition from small business owners … as too expensive. (Blackford, 1993, p. 49)
The Merchants’ Exchange had second thoughts if the plan could not be rapidly implemented. Time was money.
A third issue, building the civic center, proved contentious. Some businessmen thought it too expensive; San Francisco could not afford such a luxury—the city had burned down after all. This tapped an underlying fear of all business owners that Burnham’s plan would play havoc with the city’s tax base, resulting in huge tax increases. Those opposed to the plan continued to see it as serving business and upper-class tastes while doing nothing concrete to address the needs of non-elites: affordable housing, for example, was totally left out of the plan. The San Francisco Chronicle expressed it best:
Every individual in the city is practicing economy. So must the City itself … There must be the strictest economy in government. We all desire the city beautiful just as we desire the home beautiful, but the business man who at this juncture should attempt to borrow money to decorate his home would knock in vain on the doors of any bank in America. (Blackford, 1993, pp. 49–50)
The City Beautiful had run into the crosshairs of the City Practical.
The trials of Schmitz and Ruef drew blood; both would go to jail. But, in their wake, the city’s business leaders were hopelessly divided and conflicted. Construction and rebuilding commenced without plan approval and seldom came close to following the plan. Many in the business community, however, believed for a decade following City Beautiful that physical improvements, and beautification in general, were essential to “the commercial supremacy [of San Francisco] on the Pacific Coast.” The divisions among business and the gulf between the business community, the unions and ethnic workers lingered on for decades after—getting something done in San Francisco was going to be difficult indeed.
To facilitate business support for the City Beautiful, the San Francisco Chamber merged with the Merchants’ Exchange and Downtown Association (1912–13). The goal was to secure public approval of municipal bonds for desired infrastructure and the Burnham-proposed civic center (city hall, auditorium and library). The civic center was defended as a link between art and commerce without which San Francisco would not be considered as a “great city” to outsiders, and unlikely able to compete in attracting external investment. The civic center was likened to Pericles’ Athenian Parthenon, which, no doubt, increased its attractiveness to ethnic voters (sarcasm again). Anyway, the chamber president stressed that “We’d better … take a few lessons in civic pride and patriotism from our sister cities on the coast, and get busy” to install infrastructure (Blackford, 1993, p. 57). The campaign finally worked; bonds were approved and construction began two years later.
San Francisco then focused on its 1915 World’s Fair—the Panama–Pacific International Exposition (PPIE)—to demonstrate that the city had indeed overcome the devastating earthquake and to assert regional leadership over its coastal competitors. Four years later the city held the Balboa Exposition to follow up on the 1915 World’s Fair success. Public improvements again became the targeted focus. By this time, the machine had been ousted and business leadership once again had returned to City Hall. Civic improvement associations formed to support and create “a new, clean city. Business prosperity, industrial peace, and increased commerce.” According to the Vice-President of the chamber, the critical infrastructure after the civic center success was to “call the attention of the world to this powerful western empire and its chief city and glorious harbor” (Blackford, 1993, pp. 59, 61). Discussion of the harbor will be picked up later in the chapter.
Ron W. Coan 