It’s the second branch to fall in the past year or so.  A panorama of the tree in better days:

This tree is well over 100 years old, and may have been planted by Bancroft (of the Bancroft Library) himself.

You may have seen the bronze historical marker below the tree – Hubert Howe Bancroft had his library at Valencia and Army / CC for 26 years.

Bancroft moved to SF in 1853 at age 20 to extend the family bookstore.  He started collecting books, maps and documents in 1860.  By 1870 he had opened a library on Market & 3rd in 1870, with 120 boxes of books. Within 10 years he had outgrown it and moved 622 boxes to a new library at Valencia and Army next to St. Luke’s hospital. (So, how do I get that job?)

I’ve always wondered why he chose to build on that corner.  It was pretty far out there in the day, and he lived on Van Ness & Sutter.

Good transit may have been a factor: streetcars had been running on Valencia since 1865, but stopped at 25th St (next to the SFSJ railroad station).  The streetcar line was converted to a cable car in 1883, and the line was extended across Army St (the car barn was at Valencia and Mission).

A picture of the “new” library sometime after 1880, looking from Valencia and Army, to the SW. (No fig trees as far as I can see.)

1886 Sanborn map (west is up). Tiny St. Luke’s hospital visible to the left.  Also, an “old ladies home”.

1888 view looking to the NW down from Bernal – the Bancroft library is just behind the big white barn looking building. (Can’t say that I see a tree.  If anyone has a higher resolution version of this I will buy you all the beer you can drink in one sitting.)

1900 Sanborn map.  (Cool, a hen house and a windmill!)

Because it amuses me, I include an undated picture of the St. Luke’s hospital  Taken from Valencia & Tiffany, looking NW. (1890s? 1900? When did guys stop wearing those hats?) Bancroft Library would just be to the right (along with our tree?) You can see the two hospital buildings on the Sanborn map above. (Nice deck!) Note also the tiny predecessor to the 1912 steps. And that retaining wall has been around forever.

Anyway, the Bancroft’s building was the only major library in the city to escape the fires of 1906. Alas UC Berkeley bought the Bancroft Library in 1906, moving it across the bay. “Three great vans full consisting of over three tons have already arrived . . . but it occupies five hours for a wagon to come from Valencia Street to Berkeley.” (24th to Berkeley on BART is half an hour.)

After Bancroft, the building turned into the “Eng Skell Company soda fountain supplies, syrup factory and warehouse” – a rather inelegant transition from a world class research library. Here we have the 1913 Sanborn map:

The shot below is supposed to be from 1910 and is labeled as the St. Luke’s, though I suspect it’s the employees of Eng Skell’s. (If they were nurses they’d be wearing their hats, no?)  Sometime in the early ’1os, 1538 was taken over by St. Luke’s as an outpatient clinic.

Our Mortenson Fig could very well be the one on the left – it lines up perfectly with the Sanborn-Google overlay (library in red). If so, I’d guess that Bancroft planted it 20 years before this? Any tree people, feel free to comment on my growthstemation.

Note that the Guerrero side (top) isn’t misaligned — remember the city pushed back those house 20 feet when they widened Guerrero in the early 1950s. (Oh, and the green square? Just the site of the Bernal Rancho in the 1840s-1860s.)

The old library stood until the mid 195os: “FIGURING IT OUT–Joseph Zem, right, director of St. Luke’s Hospital, and Episcopal Canon Charles Guilbert, talk about the new hospital annex to be built where they’re standing. The 74-year-old building behind them, formerly a library, will be torn down.”

(You can barely see the “ENG” above the door from the Skell days.)

I suspect our Moreton Bay fig is just visible on right in this photo.

Which ironically enough is the building on the left in this photo from 1940 (looking west on Cesar Chavez / Army @ Harrison — note crazy street alignment was they widened it from 40 to 100 feet…)

And the lovely vista that Cesar Chavez and Harrison is now:

The old Precita Creek went right underneath where the school would go:

Blue is the creek, orange is the old Serpentine Ave, and red is the old Pioneer Race Track. Serpentine seems to have been laid out along an old stone wall that marked the southern border of Potrero Viejo.

Anyway, Precita Creek now runs through a giant storm drain under Cesar Chavez.

Precita Creek was one such arroyo. It fell from “Sun Valley” (south of Noe Valley), was joined by springwater and runoff from Bernal Heights, and at high water cut a 30-foot wide path across the southern Mission District, along today’s Cesar Chavez Street. Its waters dispersed on the way to Potrero Hill, and eventually ended up in Islais Creek’s vast estuarine bog.  By the 1860s, the area near today’s Precita Park had become a small village. Some 30 houses lined the creek, drawing their water upstream and using the creek as an open sewer. The marginal water flow in the stream was inadequate to properly carry the sewage off, and as a sanitary measure, the city built the first box sewer.

This sewer was thirteen feet across and ten feet tall, a wooden hallway big enough to drive a carriage through. The sewer was made large enough to carry storm flows–the volume of water that comprised a 30-foot wide creek. During dry season, the box was nearly empty, except for a trickle of liquid at the bottom. A couple years after its construction, an internal inspection found the box to be a stinking mess. Solid wastes had built up where laterals, or residential hookups, connected to the big box. Strange foliage grew in the darkness, fertilized by the human waste and compost that congealed on the floor. Indeed, the ecosystem inside the box was so efficient at removing nutrients, the water flowing out at the east end of the sewer near today’s General Hospital was clean enough to drink.

It was in 1878 that the city decided to straighten out Serpentine, build Army St and build a sewer underneath:

AN ACT TO CONFER ADDITIONAL POWERS ON THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO TO PROVIDE FOR THE OPENING OF ARMY STREET, AND THE CONDEMNATION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY THEREFOR. [Approved March 16, 1878.]

SECTION 1. The Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco are hereby authorized and empowered… To receive and accept from the owners or claimants of the lots and lands lying contiguous to “Precita creek,” from the Old San Jose Road to the San Bruno road of said city, a deed or deeds of a tract of land, not less than sixty-four feet in width, and without abrupt curves or short angles, to be located on a line to be located by and to be satisfactory to said Board of Supervisors, for the construction of a sewer therein, and for the purposes of a public street.

In this 1888 photo, overlooking Mission from Bernal, you see the new Army St.  You can just make out the Valencia and Mission St bridges going over the creek coming down from Twin Peaks.

(Anyone have a better resolution scan of this photo?)

It took a while to get the people to hook up to the new sewer however, despite the  threat from diptheria (nearly 1000 children died in an 1876-77 outbreak.) From the 1889 San Francisco Municipal Report:

During the past year I have designed a system of sewerage for a district covering from five to six hundred acres, embracing portions of the Potrero and Mission. This, I venture to say, is about the only district in San Francisco that has a thoroughly designed system, and where any attempt has been made to carry out the details. In referring to this matter I would respectfully call the attention of your Honorable Body to a point in this connection which I have spoken of before your committees, namely, the necessity of opening Potrero avenue trom the old line of Serpentine avenue through to Army street. This is necessary to complete the drainage system referred to, as there is no other available method of disposing of this sewage, and as it at present will discharge in front of private property. Arrangements cannot be made too rapidly for its accomplishment.

While a lot of work has been done in the past 5 years…

• Guerrero is now two lanes in each direction instead of three
• Stoplight at 27th and Guerrero
• Trees and plants in the middle of Guerrero

…there’s still a lot on the list — here’s a resolution passed unanimously by the sups in 2004.

All the more reason to attend the Cesar Chavez Design Workshop this Tuesday at 6:30 pm at Leonard Flynn Elementary School, Auditorium (3125 Cesar Chavez Street).  And don’t forget the CPMC Community Meeting on March 4th at 6:30 in the St. Luke’s Cafeteria to address the new expansion plans.

For some context, here are some shots from the SF Public Library of Guerrero in the 20s and 30s, compared to current photos via MapJack. Click on any picture to get to the source.

1928, Guerrero @ 27th, looking south:

Today:

1932, 27th @ Guerrero, looking east towards St. Luke’s:

Today:

Note the staircase on the white apartment building — even with the houses moved back on their lots and narrower sidewalks, all the front stairs along that side of Guerrero had to be jammed to the side of the houses.

1931: Looking north on Mission @ Army (the old Sears building would be over your left shoulder)

Today:

The Walgreen’s construction site is on the left hand side — retail before, retail again.  Hey, the Palace Steak House is in that 1931 shot!  (Just kidding.)

1940, Army between Valencia and Guerrero (can’t for the life of me find a matching picture for this one — if I’m not mistaken, all those buildings were torn down when Army got widened.)

UPDATE – this is between Valencia and San Jose — you can barely see the Salvation Army building in the top right corner.  (This was before the Salvation Army bought the lot and cut off San Jose.)

Army looking west towards Guerrero, 1962, now more than twice as wide.  The liquor store on the left hand side is on the corner of San Jose and Army. (Source – 1962 Dept of Public Works, via G. Gillet)

The store and all but three of the houses were torn down to make the St. Luke’s surface parking lot, resulting in a rather bleak street.  (St. Luke’s also has a rather empty multi-story parking lot on Duncan…)  At least there are trees.  (Which I am sure will be cut down if St. Luke’s builds a 2nd hospital tower on that lot — but more on that later.)

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, you obviously care about La Lengua — consider attending the Cesar Chavez Design Workshop this Tuesday, the 26th, as well as the CPMC / St. Luke’s meeting on Wed, March 4th.

OK, no actual celebrities — sadly Allan from Mission Mission wasn’t able to make it — but regional breweries were finely represented: Sacramento Brewing, Triple Rock, Drake’s, Firestone Walker, Oskar Blues, and the “Born-On-Valencia” Shmaltz (more on them in a bit).

Obligatory pictures of food — Jen Biesty of Scala put together an astounding course.  Below we see a poorly lit, low rez picture of an amazing risotto topped with chorizo-stuffed squid. DAMN.

The other courses were all great but my lack of photographic skillz do not do them justice.

All of the beers were excellent, and came in many shapely glasses:

They were especially well paired with each course, something I have never really appreciated until now. My favorite beer of the evening was probably the Drake’s Special Wine Barrel Blend (50% Merlot Barrel BrettAmber 50% Pinot Barrel Belgium Triple). Then there was the Albino Pyhton, paired with the risotto-squid-chorizo-palooza.

All the brewers got a chance to talk about their beers, and Shmaltz even brought Donnie Vomit, the namesake of the Human Blockhead Tough-As-Nails Lager.  Who proceeded to:

A) hammer a nail into his nose:

B) Remove said nail:

C) drill a masonry bit into his nose:

D) Swallow a sword:

As you can tell, Schmaltz Brewing definitely has style.  This is, of course, due to their humble roots in the Mission — they started off in the old Sears building on Valencia and Army/Cesar Chavez.

“Wha? Sears? On Valencia?” you are likely saying. “Unpossible!  Valencia is and always has been is a secret garden of small and delicate boutiques!”

Not so, oh blog reader.  Both Mission and Valencia were a commerical hub up until the 60s, and “3435 Army” building was a Sears Roebucks, as we can see from the SF Public Library Historical Photo Collection.

1956:

1929:

A strike in 1947 (looking north up Valecia from on top of what now is Aamco):

(That’s almost the turnout of the AA hearing!)

More photos of the “The Miracle Mile” that was the Mission 50 years ago here.

And on a more contemporary note, I won the beer making kit in the raffle at the dinner! La Lengua Lager, anyone?