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.

The Bernal house was on the north side of what would become Duncan, under what is now the SE corner of the St. Luke’s parkade. Here’s a snippet of the land grant map I loaded into Google Earth:

Click image to zoom, or see the entire map on Calisphere.

Note this matches up perfectly with the 1859 US Coast Survey map. (The red rectangle is El Rio.)

Plus they got this fine seal:

Mission Mistaken asked for some recent history on El Rio, but my time machine only starts working a minimum of half a century back.

Mission and Valencia, 1858:

El Rio’s future site is the red rectangle.

The 1859 US Coast Survey map (surveyed in 1858, published in 1859) is digitally available thanks to the fine work of David Rumsey, including a Google Earth layer.

A field and a creek mark what will become El Rio. Valencia is not yet a road, and the path that will become Mission makes a hard right at stone wall bordering Precita Creek, the future Serpentine/Army/Cesar Chavez. A few building are clustered to the west of the future El Rio site, around the “Road to San Jose” (now cut off by the St. Luke’s doctors parking lot, Salvation Army and Guerrero Park).

I suspect that these buildings were the home of Jose C. Bernal, son of Juan Francisco Bernal, a soldier under Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, “Father of San Francisco”. (There is apparently a photo of the Bernal homestead floating around — if you know of it, please oh please let me know.)

After a successful stint as a government administrator in San Jose, Bernal was given a land grant in the 1830s that encompassed most of the land south of CC and east of the road to San Jose.

October 10th, 1839. Governor Alvarado to J.C. Bernal; one square league, being “Rincon de Salinas y Potrero Viejo.” It will be seen, by an examination of the archives, that Bernal applied for a grant of this land, and “La Visitacion,” on the second of November, 1834, two days before the order was issued by the Governor for organizing the pueblo of San Francisco. On the second of January, 1835, Governor Figueroa decreed on this as follows:

“As it appears, from the preceding reports, that the land asked for by José Cornelio Bernal is of the property of the pueblo of San Francisco de Assis, to which it serves as ejidos for the common cattle, the petition is not granted, as it cannot be given in ownership (en propiedad), but the party interested may keep his cattle there, the same as other citizens do.”

The Rincon de las Salinas land grant (encompassing La Lengua, Bernal and Excelsior/Crocker/Outer Mission) was secured by 1839.  (He previously received a grant of farmland near Mission Dolores in 1834 and was given a third grant, El Potrero Viejo (Bayview and Hunter’s Point) in 1840.

But J.C. Bernal died in 1842, aged 46, and his widow Carmen Cibrian de Bernal and their son, José de Jesus Bernal, took over the land.  However, like many rancheros, the family was not exactly focused on business and sold the land off bit by bit. Within 15 years the family moved off the Ricon de las Salinas holdings to live near Mission Dolores.  By 1917, the Bernal descendants lost their last bit of land.  The Bernal History Project points us to this 1929 obituary of the grandson, which gives more detail of their lifestyle.  While not business savvy, they certainly seemed friendly:

The history of the passing of the Bernal grant was similar to that of nearly every one of the great Spanish and Mexican families who once held a huge portion of the best agricultural and grazing lands of Alta California. The dons and their descendants lived a feudal life, giving little care to business and leaving their vast herds of cattle and horses and great flocks of sheep largely to the supervision of the vaqueros and herdsmen. The homes of the owners were centers of hospitality. The Bernal family was no exception to the deep seated tradition of extending hospitality. The best road from the little Mission Dolores and the Presidio to the southern missions ran at the foot of the hill where the Bernal hacienda stood. The latch string was always out, and day or night weary travelers were welcomed by the Bernal overlord. It was this carefree life and lavish hospitality, coupled with the lack of good business instincts that led to the gradual breaking up of the grants. When the owners needed money, especially when the country began to attract Americans following the Mexican war, they borrowed. They never seemed to get ahead, and little by little the vast ranchos were whittled down through foreclosure of the mortgages.

SOLD FOR $1500: The first portion of the Bernal grant to pass to other hands was in 1859, when a foreclosure of a mortgage held by General William T. Sherman, resulted in the sale of a large tract from Butchertown to the San Bruno road by the Sheriff for $1500. General Sherman had loaned old Bernal $4298 in the early fifties. (ed: $4298 in 2009 dollars is about $100,000.) Later, the tract containing Hunters Point and South San Francisco was also sold for $1500. Other portions were sold from time to time, until in 1908 the last owner under the grant, the late Jose Cornelio Bernal, found himself in possession of only about twenty-five acres located west of Mission road in the little valley crossed by the Ocean House road, now Onondaga avenue, and used for vegetable gardens. This last tract was lost through foreclosure in 1917, and it marked the passing of the final bit of San Francisco real estate from the families of the original grantees.

(That vegetable garden was next to Balboa High School, and the Bernal Mission Dolores tract was on or near Mission High School.)

Thanks to Greg Pabst and his expansive article on the Bernal family, even longer than my typical diatribe but well worth the read.

UPDATE: Spanish land grants had to be approved by the US Federal government after California entered the Union, and here is a slice of the 1857 map showing the approved boundaries of the Bernal tract.

Bigger map of the tract on Calisphere. The Bernal residence was on the north side of what is now Duncan, at the SE corner of the St. Luke’s parking structure. Mashup of Google Earth, the 1859 Coast Survey map and the Bernal Survey.

I wish I had a seal like this for my house.

Mission and Valencia, 1886:

El Rio is an empty lot, next to some dude’s house, a glove factory and Misters Somers & Healy’s Hay, Grain, Wood and Coal Emporium.

In fact you can see many of the buildings in this wonderful (but sadly small) picture of the Mission from the SF Public Library’s collection, taken from the top of Bernal in 1888. You are looking to the NW and you just should be able to see the Mission/Valencia/Army triangle in the center, heart of La Lengua!

Somers and Healy’s two white buildings are just to the left of center, and the glove factory is to the right. El Rio would have been just to the left of the little white house beside Somers/Healy empire. (St. Luke’s is right behind that.)

(Anyone have a bigger version of this?)

Mission and Valencia, 1900:

In the 1900 Sanborn map of the area, you see progress – we have a harness and carriage trimming shop on the future site of El Rio! While I am not entirely certain what harness and carriage trimming involves, I suspect it would certainly be handy to amble on over to Mr. C.S. Healy’s and pick up some hay, or get your carriage painted at “Powell” and Mission. (Click to zoom btw.)

The 1908 directory tells us that JW McTigue owns that harness shop over at 3154 Mission on the future Rio site.

And there seems to be a saloon across the street as well now – hooray, that’s handy!  I bet Thomas Donlan’s bar at 3151 Mission is a fine establishment where you could get a nice steam beer from his wife Julia, listed in the 1915 SF phone book.

Mission and Valencia, 1914:

Jumping forward another 14 years, we find that (at least as of 1907) Healy’s is gone with Eagle Stables in its place. (I guess stables were like public parking lots?)

More saloons — one on the tip of Valencia and Mission — a drug store. Joe McTigue is still hard at work, and other friends and neighbors on Mission are listed thanks to the hard work of the Bernal History Project.

Joe (and his wife Mary) are still listed in the 1921 directory.

UPDATE: UC Berkeley Calisphere has a picture of the McTigue building in 1923, with carriages out front.

But within three years, the building will be torn down.

Mission and Valencia, 1925:

Let us venture into the future, somewhere between 1920 and 1950.  Joe McTigue’s building is gone and we get our first glimpse of El Rio’s building (but no information on 3150 in the 1936 directory. No listing for Joe McTigue either, though there is a Mrs. A McTigue on Army near Capp, perhaps a relative.)

A corner that once specialized in horse-related industries made a wholesale jump into cars (and on the east side of Mission, apparently paint). Click to zoom.

Pretty much everything in the triangle south of Sears is car related, with the exception of a bowling alley (where Roccapolco is now) and a beauty parlor. Atlas Motors’ historical echo is doing the same thing as now,  the AAMCO is the old Sears auto department, and Kragen was a car dealership – Mission Chevrolet!

UPDATE: The crack Imaging Systems team at Telstar Logistics points us to these shots of Mission and Precita in 1926 and 1927 from the UC Berkeley archives.  You can see Mission Chevrolet under construction in the first shot, and finished in the second.

North on Mission at Precita, 1926

North on Mission at Precita, 1927

The restaurant on the left will be called the Superior Grill in the 1930s, and will come to house Nap’s.

And here’s that great picture of the gas station on the corner of Valencia and Mission in 1944.

Some will remember the then-and-now shot I made a while back.

Finally, the Telstar Logistics Aviation Group presents us with this picture of the intersection in October 2009.

And such is 151 years of history from the corner of Valencia and Mission. Happy birthday, El Rio.

CPMC’s plan for St. Luke’s is not ideal.  SJG’s summary:

This is the opportunity to tell the Planning Commission, before it meets to vote on CPMC’s plan, that the services proposed by CPMC at St. Luke’s do not meet the City’s needs. The Planning Commission will be listening on the 15th for whether we think CPMC is proposing the right services in the right neighborhoods at the right time, and not yet concerned about the size, height or urban form of the buildings those services are in.

We hope you will attend to tell the Planning Commission that the rebuilt hospital (that is, “inpatient care”) proposed for St. Luke’s has no future unless CPMC also builds the outpatient facilities that most people actually use most of the time. (“Outpatient and Urgent care” take place outside a hospital—primarily in doctor’s offices equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment.)

The future of medicine is outpatient care, not in hospital beds:

Ten years ago, 90% of all cancer treatments were performed in hospitals, and 10% were performed in state-of-the-art medical offices on an outpatient basis. Today, the ratio is reversed. Increasingly, healthcare is about preventing disease and keeping us well and out of hospital beds in the first place.

St. Luke’s is doomed without modern outpatient care:

Currently, St. Luke’s has an average daily census of about 50 patients in its 229 licensed beds, and only about 7% of its patients have health insurance. The 11-storey hospital tower has heat but no air conditioning, and the average wait time for one of the 2 elevators is several minutes. The small existing medical offices are outmoded and full, and new doctors do not come to St. Luke’s.

CPMC is proposing state-of-the-art outpatient facilities for all CPMC campuses except St. Luke’s:

Just like every other neighborhood CPMC serves in San Francisco, we and our families need outpatient services in a modern health care facility in our neighborhood – at St. Luke’s – just like neighborhoods with higher per capita income. This will be especially true as San Francisco densifies in the neighborhoods South of Market Street. CPMC shows pretty pictures of a “future” outpatient building, but they make no assurance this will be built — and it therefore probably won’t. CPMC must be held to its promises.

We are designing for the next fifty years – let’s get it right:

With a lifetime of 50+ years, the facilities built at St. Luke’s will determine how both the medical facility and our neighborhoods function (or don’t) for generations. Let’s not merely rebuild what isn’t working now.

St. Luke’s is where the regional transportation is:

4 blocks from BART, St. Luke’s is the San Francisco hospital closest to regional transportation, particularly once San Francisco builds the Transbay Transit Center linking BART with Caltrain. Patients, Doctors, Nurses and students can readily access St. Luke’s from anywhere in the Bay Area – permitting a regional center of excellence.

If you live nearby but can’t attend, SJG suggests (and Burrito Justice agrees) that you should “email linda.avery@sfgov.org by Thursday morning, saying that rebuilding St. Luke’s doesn’t make any sense unless they also build outpatient and urgent care services – which the neighborhoods would actually use.”

A meeting regarding the future of St. Luke’s will be held tonight (Wednesday the 16th) at 6:30 PM in the Administrative Conference Room. (Enter from the main entrance on CC, go straight past the elevators up the ramp, first hallway on the left.)

CPMC’s PR agency theoretically called people living nearby, but no one we know on Duncan, Tiffany or Guerrero got invited.  If you live nearby please go and let them know your thoughts on their plans.

Current tower and layout:

Proposed 110′ replacement tower on current doctor’s lot:

If you go, please tell them we want them to build the medical office building on the corner, not a 110′ foot that is being pushed through in dark of night.

The future of medicine, our neighborhood and the viability and vitality of St. Luke’s, is not in the inpatient hospital building they propose to build in the Physician’s Parking Lot, but in building an office building where doctors see their patients: outpatient offices, urgent care, ambulatory services.

2) Once the 26 Valencia goes away, I want Valencia St Park. (Skinny park, skinny jeans — see, it all makes sense!)

TOWN HALL: NEIGHBORS & COMMUNITY MEETING ON THE FUTURE OF ST. LUKE’S HOSPITAL
HOSTED BY DISTRICT 9 SUPERVISOR DAVID CAMPOS

Thursday, July 9, 2009, 6-8 PM
Precita Valley Community Center
534 Precita Avenue, San Francisco

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/30/18604926.php

Join Supervisors David Campos and John Avalos to discuss Sutter Health/CPMC’s plans for the future of St. Luke’s Hospital. Since CPMC is a private entity, how can the public influence CPMC’s plans both to ensure a viable hospital that provides access to healthcare for all and livable neighborhoods?

This meeting will include an explanation of Blue Ribbon Panel recommendations by panelists and information on the updated plan presented at a CPMC hosted community meeting held on June 23rd.

Background:
* In 2001, Sutter Health took control of St. Luke’s as part of the settlement of an anti-trust lawsuit by St Luke’s against Sutter.
* In 2007, Sutter affiliate CPMC merged with St. Luke’s. That summer, CPMC revealed plans to close acute care at St Luke’s by the end of 2009.
* When faced with a Supervisors resolution to begin a medical redlining lawsuit against CPMC, CPMC agreed to convene a Blue Ribbon Panel on the Future of St Luke’s Hospital.
* The Blue Ribbon Panel met from March to July, 2008, and ultimately reached a consensus recommendation that St Luke’s be rebuilt.
* Since then, CPMC has altered or retreated from various Blue Ribbon Panel recommendations.

And for those of you disinterested in city planning — will the food match the tamales they had at the last meeting?

Date: Tuesday, June 23
Time: 6:00pm
Place: St. Anthony’s Immaculate Conception School Cafeteria
299 Precita @ Shotwell

Please email the commission and let them know what you think, or better yet attend.  (According to the SFHC site I believe the meeting is at 101 Grove, Room 300, but I am not certain.)

Here’s what *I* think:

• The current plan for St. Luke’s is flawed and was taken without enough community input. The neighborhood wants a better St. Luke’s.  The CPMC master plan does not make for a better St. Luke’s.
• The neighborhood doesn’t want faceless walls along Cesar Chavez, or the ass-end of the hospital up against the houses on Guerrero, or a dead Valencia Street:

• This city is clearly moving towards livable streets, yet this design seems to ignore that.  How does the CPMC plan integrate with the Cesar Chavez Street redesign?  Beats me.
• I obviously am in favor of a Valencia Street Park.  It would make for a better hospital.

Anyway, attend if you can, or email the commission with your thoughts.

Tuesday, 2 PM

• Rebuild of St. Luke’s Hospital – Evaluation of temporary hospital structure
• Question: Shall this Resolution be ADOPTED? (easiest search for ‘Luke’)

Wednesday, 5 PM

• El Tonayense (19th and Harrison) public hearing
• UPDATE: City Hall, Room 416, 5PM – agenda
• Mission Loc@l will be tweeting (guys, will this be on the MLnow account or another?)

Wednesday, 6:30-8 PM –

• Mission District Community Task Force Meeting – St. Luke’s Hospital
• When: April 1, 2009 – Wednesday, 6:30 to 8 p.m.

(Ed: This particular task force meeting was last year.)

More on Tonayense later. Re St. Luke’s – remember that the favored plan is a souless, two-story blank wall along Cesar Chavez, with the service “ass-end” of the hospital overbearing the houses on Guerrero.

Current layout – translucent red is 1970s tower that is too expensive to retrofit, blue are existing hospital buildings, green are houses at the corner of Cesar Chavez on the left and Guerrero on the right.

CPMC proposal – solid red is suggested replacement building, solid blue is future expansion building, no windows on the first two stories. Both are flush with the sidewalk on Cesar Chavez with no street access. Loading and garbage is between existing green houses and red replacement building.

This does not seem to be the neighborhood’s favored solution — feedback from the March 4th Community Workshop available for download from CPMC. (Strange how there is littel to no mention of the strong opposition to the new building on the doctor’s parking lot and over San Jose Ave, or the poor integration with the Cesar Chavez street improvement plan.) Secret CMPC plan to enrage neighbors, or just lazy? Regardless, a better plan is in order.

We here at the BJPLC (Burrito Justice Planning and Landscape Committee) have decided on a different approach for St. Luke’s. Instead of what we have now — a block on Valencia with no residences and stairs to nowhere:

We create Valencia Street Park, and build the replacement hospital across the street:

Details of our modest proposal:

• Close down Valencia between Cesar Chavez and Mission to auto traffic and create a park greenery, with bike access (and bus access?)
• Build the replacement building (green) across Valencia on the old Sears parking lot, not on the doctor’s parking lot.
• Expansion (yellow) can still happen across the park on the 1970 tower site.
• Make a cul-de-sac off of Cesar Chavez as the primary access point to St. Luke’s.
• Free the 1912 steps (brown/orange) which would now lead from the historic building down to our new and glorious Valencia Street Park green belt.

Unreasonable? No less so than the current CPMC plan. This alternative lets St. Luke’s rebuild, expand and improve the neighborhood at the same time. There are surprisingly few parks in the area — Precita and Garfield Parks aren’t exactly close, and Bernal is a different case. There are surprisingly few parks and playgrounds in Noe Valley — in fact, other than Juri, is there another park within 23rd, Diamond, 29th and Mission?

So what about the doctor’s parking lot? CPMC could sell the doctor’s parking lot for reasonable height mixed residential-retail development, or use it for new medical offices as was the original plan.

Most importantly, we can let the El Tonayense truck sit in front of the 1912 steps! Magic Curry Kart and other vendors are also welcome.

…which is gated off today. Not so inviting:

But using special gate piercing panorama technology — much more inviting!

Open it up and people could eat lunch on the steps. I’m thinking a taco truck in front to draw the crowds. Or now that it’s light at night, a dinner selection from the Curry Kart, or MSF!

Or maybe do a remake of the Battleship Potempkin.

Hmm, maybe not. Damn Cossacks.