History of San Francisco: 1900 to 1909

You only thought you knew. We've assembled an outstanding team of historians and storytellers to bring you the glory, the tragedies, and the promise of one of the greatest cities in the world. With never-before-seen photographs and amazing archival footage, Channel 4 brings you the next chapter in the saga of this extraordinary place that we all call home. And now, KRON Channel 4 proudly presents San Francisco, Into the Quiet. San Francisco in 1900 was a city coming of age. Wealthy, cosmopolitan, it was on the brink of fulfilling its destiny as the Paris of the Pacific. The view down Market Street revealed a bustling city filled with horseless carriages, cable cars, and sophisticated men and women wearing the latest fashions. At the opening of this century, San Francisco had led a charmed life. It was a city on a roll. With a population of some 350,000, San Francisco was the ninth largest city in the country. It had the preeminent port on the West Coast that loomed more goods than all of the other West Coast ports combined. It had a brand-new city hall with a copper dome that was larger and grander than the one in Washington, D.C. It had one of the largest luxury hotels in the world, the 800-room Palace Hotel. It had completed Golden Gate Park, one of the finest city sanctuaries in the country. And San Francisco's society was enjoying European opera singers, cordon bleu chefs. They were going to Delmonico's on Market Street and eating oysters and champagne. San Franciscans were also optimistic. The city had made a full recovery from the devastating worldwide depression of the late 19th century. Everything was available in San Francisco in the way of vice and sin. And it was, it prided itself on that, as a matter of fact. It had wine, it had a strong Latin culture, especially in the North Beach area, its hills and its pastels next to Golden Gate. And this all contributed to this Bohemian-Mediterranean quality, which was feeling very much unlike any other city in America at that time. It was a time of real revelry and joy in the city. But that would start to crumble. In the springtime of that first year, the body of a Chinese laborer was discovered in a Chinatown hotel. The cause of death was the bubonic plague. Plague was only found in Chinese inhabitants of Chinatown. These were almost all men, single men, that lived in these various tenement houses. Because San Francisco was the leading West Coast shipping and manufacturing center, the city was in official denial. Mayor James Duvall Phelan sent a telegram to the mayors of 50 eastern cities, assuring them that all was well in San Francisco. It would have been very bad for business, and therefore they took the position of denying this presence. The plague had killed three quarters of the population in 14th century Europe and Asia. In San Francisco's Chinatown of 1900, there was fear of an epidemic because of its overcrowded conditions. 25,000 people were living in a 12 square block area. The Chinese had a great fear that the plague diagnosis was going to be used against them. Chinatown had been considered to be a nest of disease and prostitution and gambling. One newspaper, in fact, suggested that Chinatown be eradicated, stating, Clear the foul spot from San Francisco and give the debris to the flames. But that would not happen. White property owners who owned 90% of Chinatown were making too much money. Eventually, a cleaning campaign was implemented. Rats were exterminated, buildings demolished, and wooden basements cemented. But for some, it was too late. In 1900, 22 officially documented victims died from the disease. San Francisco's troubles continued. In April of the next year, employees from the United Railroads Company went on strike. By the end of July, cooks, waiters, machinists, and longshoremen had also walked out. Mayor Phelan attempted to mediate the dispute. Being an Irish Catholic, he very much appealed to the Irish Catholic workers, who were probably the majority of the working class in San Francisco at that time. But the mayor, who was a conservative Democrat, allowed San Francisco's police to serve as strikebreakers, angering labor. When he uses the police, he is very much criticized by certain church leaders and by the Irish Catholic working class. By September, there were 20,000 unemployed and 200 ships tied up on the waterfront. There was sabotage, threats, rioting. Five people were killed. The city was in crisis. You've got the city that is absolutely tearing itself apart. After months of conflict, the bitter strike was settled when Governor Henry Gage threatened to bring in the military and declare martial law. As for Phelan, he had lost. He would never again run for mayor of San Francisco. There was a tremendous revulsion against Phelan at that time. Phelan, of course, then decides not to run for re-election. And that's when you get the rise of the Union Labor Party. In 1902, the city was lighted by electricity. Buffalo Bill Cody came to town with his Wild West show. At the top of Knob Hill, construction began on the Fairmont Hotel. And Eugene Schmitz, a violin player who was the candidate of the newly formed Union Labor Party, became San Francisco's new mayor. The election of Handsome Gene, as he was also known, marked the beginning of one of the most corrupt administrations in the city's history. A band leader, a union leader, with parents who were both Irish and German, Catholic. Schmitz was an ideal mayor for the city of San Francisco. Mayor Schmitz, despite his good looks, didn't really run the city. It was being run behind the scenes by a brilliant, totally unscrupulous lawyer named Abraham Root, often known as just Boss Root. A native San Franciscan, Abe Root was a very ambitious lawyer who divided the spoils of extortion and bribery. The kickbacks included the granting of liquor licenses to so-called French restaurants, where prostitution flourished. There were other profitable deals with many of the city's leading businesses, like the United Railroads Company, which paid Abe Root $200,000 to ensure that overhead trolley lines would be allowed because it was cheaper than building them underground. Those same overhead lines are seen in San Francisco today. In the corrupt partnership between the mayor, the board of supervisors, and Boss Root, anything was available for a price. Boss Root was about as unscrupulous as they come. In early years, he was actually an idealist. He was somewhat of a reformer, but he found that that would get you nowhere in a city like San Francisco, and so he very quickly learned that to get ahead in the city, you would have to be corrupt, and he really went at it with great enthusiasm, with great gusto. But despite the growing scandal within its political and business culture, San Francisco's everyday life continued to thrive. It was, after all, an emerging metropolis, visited by American presidents, from William McKinley to Teddy Roosevelt's triumphant arrival in May of 1903. The popular president and Spanish-American war hero was greeted in the bright sunshine by thousands of flag-waving schoolchildren on Van Ness Avenue. Roosevelt had come to San Francisco to dedicate the Dewey Monument in Union Square. A year later, right across the street from the new monument, an opulent hotel opened its doors for the first time. Called the St. Francis, it was built in two years at a cost of $2.5 million. And there's a telephone in every single room, and that just totally thrilled people. In North Beach, six months later, a converted saloon on Washington Street became home to a new bank, the Bank of Italy. Amadeo Peter A.P. Giannini was the bank's founder. A.P. Giannini is one of the most important men in San Francisco's history, certainly in California's history, and I'd say even in national history. The son of Italian immigrants, A.P. Giannini was born in San Jose in 1870. And when the family moved to San Francisco, the young and ambitious A.P. worked after school for his stepfather in the wholesale produce business. Giannini had talent. He knew people, he liked people, he liked to talk to them. He understood the merchant mentality. Giannini believed a bank should be democratic, open to everyone, especially the working man who kept his money under the mattress. The story is he would feel the calluses on their hands, and he'd tell them how hard they worked. He built up a trusting relationship, and on that he built a bank. Many, like A.P. Giannini, believed in San Francisco's growth and prosperity, in its destiny as the Paris of the Pacific. There was even an ambitious plan to redesign the city in the image of Europe's other great capitals. But San Francisco's turn-of-the-century optimism was in trouble. In October of 1905, the National Board of Underwriters issued a critical report declaring that the city's water system would be inadequate when confronted by a major fire. The board's findings would haunt the fire chief, Dennis Sullivan. That same year, handsome Gene Schmitz was re-elected the city's mayor for a third term, but his corrupt administration was in serious trouble. The forces of reform were ready to begin a full-scale assault on what had become a growing public scandal. The investigation, however, is interrupted. Its future, as well as that of A.P. Giannini, Dennis Sullivan, and the city of San Francisco, are now on a collision course which will link all of them forever. Catastrophe is about to intervene. When Into the Fire returns, San Francisco is destroyed by the great earthquake of 1906. K.R.O.N.'s Bay Area 2000, Into the Fire. Brought to you by Compaq. Better answers. And by Northern California Toyota Dealers' 20th Annual Toyotathon. See your Northern California Toyota Dealer today. We now return to Into the Fire. It would seem that the night of April the 17th was one of the most glamorous nights in San Francisco's history. It was a Tuesday evening, and 2,500 San Franciscans packed the Grand Opera House on Mission Street to watch the famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso sing to great acclaim the role of Don Jose in the opera Carmen. On that same spring night, theater patrons could also see actor John Barrymore perform in The Dictator, attend the Orpheum for the latest in vaudeville, or the Columbia for Babes in Toyland. After the shows, there was dining and socializing in the city's great restaurants and hotels. It was the week after Easter Sunday. Everybody had been out, having a good time. Some people were still up early in the morning, carousing about. Chief Dennis Sullivan was on duty that night. He had been with the fire department for 26 years and had often battled with city officials over San Francisco's firefighting deficiencies. Sullivan believed the city was not ready to fight a disaster, and 90% of its buildings were made of wood. Fire underwriters were terrified when they looked at San Francisco and had been ever since the Gold Rush because it was so wooden, so dry, and the houses were so close together. Robert Louis Stevenson described it as a woodyard of unusual extent. It seemed like the whole city was fated to burn. Shortly after midnight on Wednesday the 18th, Sullivan was with his men when they extinguished a three-alarm warehouse fire near Market Street. He came in very late, not wishing to disturb his wife. He went into another bedroom. As the early morning hours passed, patrolmen walked their beats. The produce market was busy with activity, and the fun-loving crowd in the saloons of the Barbary Coast was ending its night of partying. On this spring morning, most of the city was still asleep. But before the sun would rise, San Francisco's destiny would be changed forever. Many people say Sodom and Gomorrah. This was Sodom and Gomorrah, and by golly, it met its fate. San Francisco met its fate on Wednesday, April the 18th, at 5.12 a.m. The San Andreas Fault tore apart. So did the city. The first shock lasted 45 violent seconds. Its impact was devastating. A moment indelible, forever known as the Great San Francisco Earthquake. The entire city shook and rattled relentlessly. It was quite terrifying. San Francisco's world went silent for some ten seconds. Then the quake became even more violent. Nature, in all of its fury, had overwhelmed the Paris of the Pacific. And what everybody remembered was this great roar, which you hear in great earthquakes. There's a tremendous roar that comes from everywhere, and it's almost indescribable, but it's part of the terror of the earthquake. Police officers who were on patrol saw the violence of the quake firsthand. One of them was Jesse Cook, and he stood on the street. Cook described the city streets as moving like waves in the ocean. And watched the earthquake basically coming to him. And he talks about just hearing this sudden sound beginning to get louder and louder and louder, hearing church bells clang, and masonry beginning to fall. They said he was like a carrier dog shaking a rat. City Hall appeared like a skeleton, some 27 years of construction at a cost of $7 million, destroyed in seconds. The four-story Valencia Hotel collapsed on itself. The exact number of people killed, unknown, but estimates were as high as 80. The area with the most severe damage was south of Market, near 6th and Howard Streets. It was a densely populated, working-class district of tenements built on landfill which liquefied. As many as 500 people may have been killed. If San Francisco had an epicenter, this was it. The buildings down there, which were generally flimsy, they just went to pieces, especially if they had been built on creeks or swamps. They were thrown off of their foundations or they actually collapsed. At Bush Street, a wall from the eight-story California Hotel fell on the fire station where Chief Dennis Sullivan and his wife slept. Chief Sullivan, hearing all of this, rushed into the room to check on his wife, fell through the hole in the floor and fell down on top of all of this debris. Sullivan's wife was fortunate. Her injuries were minor. The Chief, however, suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs, and a fractured skull. San Francisco had lost its fire chief. Dennis Sullivan was dying. Immediately after the quake struck, General Frederick Funston walked swiftly from his home on Washington Street to the top of Knob Hill. By this time, the sun had come up. A Medal of Honor winner during the war in the Philippines, Funston was shocked by the devastation. He ordered Army troops from the Presidio to report to a city in trouble. The magnitude of the quake, as measured by today's Richter scale, was around 8.3, the equivalent of some 20 million tons of TNT. The mayor, Eugene Schmitz, was stunned by the quake's destruction and acted quickly to help his city. Schmitz issued these draconian orders, his most famous one being to shoot to kill the looters who were found downtown. Schmitz also ordered a curfew from dusk till dawn and banned the sale of liquor. San Francisco's streets began filling with refugees, observing with both fascination and horror a damaged and frightened city. People gathered their belongings, put them into trunks, into baby carriages, tabletops, anything that had wheels. In Union Square, the St. Francis Hotel remained standing with minor damage. But hotel guests were afraid and began to congregate in the area near the Dewey Monument. They set up tables to feed people. The hotel actually took food from the kitchens of the hotel and was serving refugees out in the park in Union Square. Opera singer Enrico Caruso, who had captivated the city just a few short hours before, was now overwhelmed by the disaster. To a gathering crowd in Union Square, Caruso vowed never to return to San Francisco. He never did. Arnold Genta, a well-known San Francisco photographer, was nearby when Caruso expressed his desire not to return. Genta moved on. He would take some of the quake's most memorable pictures. He took the photographs with a camera that he borrowed from a friend who had a camera store. It was a small Kodak camera, very fast camera. And he, over the next few days, because he was one of the many made homeless by the earthquake, roamed the city and took pictures of everything. Walking through the same devastation which Arnold Genta had so carefully photographed was 7-year-old Marion Cowan. Now 99, Cowan remembers to this day the severely damaged streets and buildings and workmen desperately trying to save the new Fairmont Hotel. Oh, yes. Panic. Everybody working as fast as they could. But it was in the ruins at Stockton and Powell Streets where Marion Cowan experienced his most horrifying moment. A big building had collapsed. And a woman and her young son, I think he was about 6 or 7, were running out when the archway collapsed on them. And people were around trying to get them free, but the mansion was in such shape that they were pinned in at the entrance. And this was the most embarrassing moment of my life. She said, I know the manager coming down when she took the youngster at 6 or 7, he was scratching his head, he was bleeding, it was horrible. Fire. And a mother trapped with her young son, terrified by the approaching danger. Though a chain reaction of hundreds of shocks had pounded the city throughout the day and night of April 18th, the tragedy was not yet finished. San Francisco was now on the verge of total catastrophe. It was the week after Easter Sunday, and the city was beginning to burn. When Into the Fire returned, the fight for San Francisco's survival. We now return to Into the Fire, brought to you by Lexus. Who knew driving a Lexus could be so exhilarating? The city's fire department had 38 engine companies and 575 full-time firefighters. They never had a chance. What happened, these fires went out of control and linked up one with the other, and soon the whole of the town was one raging inferno. Clouds of black smoke covered the skies. The city's life support systems were in ruins. Gas mains snapped, water pipes shattered, fire hydrants useless. Dennis Sullivan's greatest fears became reality when his men responded to the raging fires. It was the first building on Market Street to catch fire. The fire as it approached from the south was so hot that the windows smashed and all the flammable material on the inside of the Spreckels building caught on fire and the building went up like an enormous 19-story torch. Multiple disasters were happening all at once. And when people up on Knob Hill were able to see the Palace Hotel starting to burn, which was considered to be absolutely impregnable, then they knew the city was probably doomed at that point. Chinatown was destroyed. So was the financial district. The St. Francis Hotel had survived the quake, but not the inferno. It was firestorms that were being created by the amount of fire. And these just swung around and built themselves up and no matter where they basically sat down, people were incinerated. The temperature of the fires was estimated at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. The Grand Opera House, where Caruso had sung the night before, was in ashes. The Fairmont Hotel was still standing, but completely gutted. Refugees carried what they could to safe havens like the Presidio and Golden Gate Park. Thousands were also trying to escape by ferry across the bay. In the chaos, there were instances of looting and arrests. There were also killings. This charred body was that of a looter caught trying to burglarize a jewelry store. The looter was turned over to a soldier who shot him. At the intersection of Post and Grant Streets, the body was burned. At Battery Street, this man was shot dead by a National Guardsman for stealing chickens. The body was later tossed into the bay. In the early hours of Thursday the 19th, fires swept through Knob Hill. The great mansions of the city's rich were burning out of control. Everybody thought that the buildings on top of Knob Hill would be safe because they were so far apart, and in fact, all of them burnt down to the ground because these were all Victorian buildings, wooden buildings. In some areas of the city, dynamite was used with the hope that it could stop the onslaught of the firestorm by creating firebreaks. It failed. By Friday, Telegraph Hill was consumed by fire. So was Russian Hill. When night came, the inferno had reached the city's world-famous waterfront. But the Navy and the Fire Department were able to save it from complete destruction. It was one of the few success stories of the quake and fire. Then on Saturday evening, almost four days after the first shot, rain began to fall, the drops echoing in the streets of a destroyed city like a requiem. The miracle had come too late, but San Francisco's hell was finally over. The San Francisco Fire was one of the greatest disasters in American history. It took out the financial district, the retail district, the produce market, south of market, the industrial zone there. It took out North Beach. It took out Russian Hill, Knob Hill. Before it was finally stopped at Van Ness Avenue, it even took out part of the Mission District. So within three days, you have a major American city which simply vanishes off the face of the earth. The battle to save San Francisco ended in failure. Some 500 city blocks were ravaged, 2,800 acres, 28,000 buildings destroyed. There was little which escaped total annihilation. San Francisco was covered in its own ashes. It was a tremendous devastation. 250,000 people are rendered homeless out of a population of 400,000. The initial death toll was listed at almost 500. More recent research has pushed that number to 3,000. Among the dead was Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan. Unable to overcome his devastating injuries, Sullivan died three days later. In the smoke and debris of a city lying in ruins, the question was not could San Francisco rebuild, but rather could San Francisco save itself from extinction? When Into the Fire returned, San Francisco was torn apart by political scandal. We now return to K-R-O-N Into the Fire. The damage to the city of San Francisco was estimated at $1 billion. It seemed inconceivable. But the nation and the world responded to the catastrophe. Within three days, America's federal government sent $2 million in relief aid. More would follow. Tent cities emerged. 40,000 people were living in Army Canvas in Golden Gate Park. Thousands more were housed in the Presidio in Fort Mason or in makeshift shanties on the streets. There were long lines for food and supplies at various relief points. Temporary graves for the dead were dug in Washington Square. Insurance companies were overwhelmed. Some made payoffs at discounted prices, but others would not or could not respond to the 90,000 claims against them. In North Beach, the Bank of Italy was in ruins. But nine days after the quake, A.P. Giannini placed an ad notifying San Francisco that his bank would open for business. I think A.P. Giannini is very important as a symbol and representing a group of people who were very courageous in the aftermath of the quake. On the Washington Street Wharf, Giannini set up a makeshift desk of two barrels and a board and began making loans from the $80,000 in gold and silver he was able to save on the day of the quake. Giannini wanted to help people rebuild their lives and businesses. The Bank of Italy did not have much capital in 1906, it was not a major force in this, but I think that his spirit, his saying, yeah, I'm right here, the coals are still hot, the city's still smoldering, I'm out here lending money. A.P. Giannini's gamble paid off. North Beach would be the first San Francisco neighborhood to rebuild. Giannini would be a banker for the rest of his life, eventually creating the largest bank in the world, the Bank of America. But from the ashes of the quake, Giannini was not alone in trying to renew San Francisco's once promising future. In the ten days after the quake, 220 marriage licenses were issued. By May, thousands of homes were able to use their gas stoves. 23,000 street lamps were turned on. Retail stores like the City of Paris, Bullock & Jones, and the Emporium set up business on Van Ness Avenue. Forty days after the quake, the little St. Francis was built near the Dewey Monument in Union Square. It was a replica of the original hotel in every way. Service, food, style, and always full. In the autumn, there were 40,000 construction workers doing business in the city. I think there's a sense that people want to get back, they want to get back to normal, they want to rebuild the same way as possible. But incredibly, in the midst of San Francisco's reconstruction, racism struck at the city's heart and soul, creating an international incident. On October 11th, the San Francisco School Board issued a resolution barring Asian children from the city's public schools. Included were some 90 Japanese children who would now have to attend the Oriental Public School on Clay Street. To segregate them and not allow them to go to school because of the purported danger to European American children from Asian children. As though the Asian children were some sort of disease that needed to be quarantined. But racism against Asians in San Francisco was nothing new. The Chinese had endured horrific treatment and even murder in the late 19th century when angry white mobs burned Chinatown businesses. Around this same time, Japanese immigrants arrived in California. Because of their success, they were viewed as economic rivals, the new yellow peril. But the Japanese also tried to assimilate into American society, observing national holidays like July 4th, learning English, adopting Western dress. The women all arrived wearing Japanese kimono. But as soon as they landed in San Francisco, the first thing their husbands did was to take them to a Western clothing store to fit them out from head to toe with Western clothing. When news of the school board segregation order reached Japan, there was outrage. The Japanese interpreted this as a major racial insult. And the Japanese government lodged an official protest with the U.S. State Department, and it became a major diplomatic incident between the two countries. The consequences were potentially dangerous. Japan had become a new world power after its military defeat of Russia in 1905. An angry President Roosevelt summoned Mayor Schmitz and the school board to a meeting in Washington, D.C. Roosevelt was quite explicit in reading the Riot Act to the San Franciscans and pointed out that they had to clean up their act. A compromise was worked out. The school board rescinded its segregation order, and Japan agreed in the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement to restrict the immigration of Japanese labor into the United States. But conflict between the two countries and America's Japanese citizens would continue. The prejudices and willingness to discriminate against Asians, particularly Japanese, that existed in the 1900s would be a persistent feature of San Francisco public culture throughout the 20th century up into World War II. Then a month after the school board incident, the investigation of City Hall corruption resumed. San Francisco's very public scandal would now become one of the most dramatic and colorful episodes in its history. On November the 15th, Boss Abruff and Mayor Eugene Schmitz were indicted for accepting bribes from the French restaurants. The trials were held in one of the city's few standing buildings, Temple Sharif Israel. It quickly became the scene of another kind of biblical encounter. Boss Abruff made a deal for partial immunity, rejected it, then disappeared. Prosecutor Francis Heaney was shot in the head by a rejected juror in the courtroom. The next day, Heaney's assailant, Morris Haas, was found shot to death in the county jail, a gun in his hand. Prosecutor Heaney would recover from his wound. At the home of Supervisor James L. Gallagher, a bomb exploded. Gallagher was a witness against Abruff. Police Chief William Biggie died under mysterious circumstances and was found floating in San Francisco Bay. It was Biggie who tracked down Abruff and arrested him. Fremont Older was the crusading newspaper editor who initiated the public campaign against Ruff and Schmitz and secured federal help from President Teddy Roosevelt. Older became an object of revenge. He's shunned, he's ostracized, he's forced to withdraw from the Bohemian Club, he's kidnapped and taken on the train down to Los Angeles where he probably would have been killed had he not been rescued in the nick of time. The entire board of supervisors resigned. So greedy, they were called the Paint Eaters by Abruff because, as he said, they would eat the paint off a house. The supervisors also cooperated with the prosecution and none was indicted. Over the course of its life, however, the graft trials issued some 3,000 indictments which included many of San Francisco's leading citizens and businesses like Home Telephone and PG&E. The first to be convicted was the mayor, Handsome Gene Schmitz. Found guilty of extortion, an appellate court later reversed the mayor's conviction. Schmitz was never tried again. By this time, there was also growing sentiment that the trials were bad for business, bad for the city's image. It was giving San Francisco a national black eye. The forces of reform would eventually be defeated. As for Abruff, he was convicted of bribery and received a 14-year prison sentence. Abruff was the only one who ever served time in jail. A number of years later on, Fremont Older, who had been his nemesis, who had hounded him in the prison, he goes over to visit Roof in his cell in San Quentin and comes out visibly shaken and declares that, in fact, Roof had taken the fall for other men who should at least be in there with him. And then Older begins a campaign to get Roof sprung from San Quentin and succeeds. Boss Roof served almost five years in San Quentin prison and was later pardoned. But so much more had been expected of him. When he was 18, Roof was the valedictorian of his class at UC Berkeley. His senior thesis was called Purity in Politics. As San Francisco's king of corruption, he had once been worth over a million dollars. When Abruff died, he died bankrupt. When Into the Fire returned, San Francisco pulled itself out of the ashes. KRON's Bay Area 2000's Into the Fire. Brought to you by Compaq. Better answers. And by Northern California Toyota Dealers' 20th Annual Toyota Thon. See your Northern California Toyota Dealer today. ♪♪ The year since the Great Earthquake, much of the city's debris had been removed. The Fairmont Hotel opened on April 18. Its rebuilding had been guided by a determined young architect, Julia Morgan. She was able to get the Fairmont Hotel built so that it was able to open one year to the day exactly after the 1906 earthquake. And San Franciscans lined up for blocks to go in and see this new luxury hotel that had been rebuilt. And it was said that many of them actually had tears come to their eyes. It was such an emotional experience because once they saw this hotel built in all its grandeur, they knew that San Francisco was going to be able to rebuild itself back to its former beauty. San Francisco now had a new mayor, Edward Robeson Taylor. Described as a man of integrity, Taylor was also a respected physician. At Aquatic Park, the world-famous escape artist Harry Houdini performed his magic when he escaped from chains underwater in 57 seconds. There was a flag raising at Pioneer Park and a new six-day comic strip called A-Mutt appeared in the Chronicle. February 1st, 1908. San Francisco's chief engineer reported that a new building was completed every one hour and 45 minutes. San Franciscans are filled with optimism about the future. There had to be. San Franciscans had to convince themselves that their city was going to grow into the future, surpass its previous glories, and maintain its competitive edge. When 1909 arrived, the normal rhythms of everyday life in San Francisco were more evident, the earthquake more distant. Makota Hagiwara, who maintained the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, introduced the fortune cookie. The city's first gay bar, The Dash, had opened for business on Pacific Street and the Barbary Coast. The San Francisco Seals baseball team became champions of the Pacific Coast League and the city's rebuilding continued to make progress. The value of new construction was now at $150 million. Homes and businesses were among the 19,000 new buildings filling the streets. Trying desperately to become a better city, San Francisco had also saved itself from extinction. On October 19th, the city held the Portola Festival, commemorating the 140th anniversary of the discovery of San Francisco Bay. The festival was also used as a public relations gesture to celebrate the city's ongoing recovery from the great earthquake. Like the proverbial phoenix, a mythological bird which symbolized death and resurrection, San Francisco had risen from its own ashes. The first decade of this century was the most pivotal in San Francisco's history in which we would see San Francisco transform from a quaint Victorian bird into a modern American metropolis. New Year's Eve arrived in 1909. The city's population was 415,000. They had survived an apocalypse which saw most of the city's physical and political structures completely obliterated and then rebuilt. It had been a wrenching transformation, but a tumultuous decade had finally ended. Now it seemed everyone could move ahead with renewed optimism. San Francisco's future was possible.