Film Vaults of the Tenderloin

 Posted by on November 7, 2013
Nov 072013
 

245-259 Hyde Street
The Tenderloin

 Film Vaults of San Francisco 1930's

I have driven by this area with these stunning Art Deco/Art Moderne buildings all in a row, and never pursued the history.  An evening of beers at the Brown Jug with Mark Ellinger and my eyes were opened.

Originally theaters purchased the films they showed their patrons. Then Harry, Herbert and Earle C. Miles, San Francisco brothers, realized there was a business in buying films in bulk and renting them to movie houses. Their original distribution centers were on Market Street/Golden Gate Avenue.

Inside these four buildings were film vaults with thick concrete walls and big iron doors with elaborate sprinkler and ventilation systems.  The reason is, the original films were highly flammable nitrate-based.  Movie theaters frequently caught fire because of these flammable films, even more reason for a delivery system.  In the 1950’s a less flammable form of acetate based film, actually called safety film, came into existence.

 

MGM Lion

The first building of the series is the MGM Film Vault, distinguished by the MGM Lion.

 MGM Grand Film Vault SF

These four buildings are built on two lots.  The MGM and the Comedy and Tragedy buildings were on one lot (255-259) and the brown building and the blue building hidden behind the tree were on a second (245-251).  These now all sit on one lot.

According to Mark’s article at Found in SF  the original owners of the corner building were the Bell Brothers in 1930 and then Frank and Ida Onorato in 1947.

Until the end of the 1980s, businesses along this stretch of Hyde Street and around the corner on Golden Gate Avenue included Wally Heider Studios (now Hyde Street Studios), Monaco Labs and Leo Diner Films—a recording studio and motion picture labs/post-production facilities that, with the advent of acetate-based Kodacolor and black-and-white reversal motion picture film in the early 1950s, had taken over film exchange buildings.

Comedy and Tragedy on Hayes Street, SF

*Hyde Street Film Vaults

The architects were O’Brien Brothers and W.D. Peugh (1930). These gentlemen worked together on several buildings in San Francisco including the Art Deco Title Insurance Company Building on Montgomery Street, where you can read about their long history with San Francisco.

These buildings housed 20th Century Fox, Loews, and United Artists film exchanges as well.

Film Vaults of San Francisco's Tenderloin

*

Ornamentation on one of the fil vaults

 

 

Knights Templar Building

 Posted by on July 25, 2013
Jul 252013
 

2135 Sutter Street
Western Addition

Knights Templar Building on Sutter Street

This steel reinforced building with brick exterior walls trimmed in lots of terra cotta was designed by Matthew O’Brien and Carl Werner in the architectural style known as the Jacobean Phase of Medieval Revival. It was built in 1905 and 1906-1907.

The building has been home to two institutions, the Knights Templar and the Baptist Church. The building was originally built for the Golden Gate Commandery #16 of the Knights Templar,  a masonic order at the turn of the century.  In the 1950’s there was a decline of masonic and other fraternal groups in the city, possibly as a result of a movement towards the suburbs, and the Knights Templar moved to a smaller building.

The building was then bought by the Macedonia Missionary Baptist church in1950.

Martin Luther King Jr. preached at the Church in the late fifties and early sixties, making the church the center of much of the activities that took place regarding the civil rights movement.

O’Brien & Werner had their offices at 1683 Ellis Street in San Francisco. Between the two of them they designed and built several San Francisco movie palaces like the Orpheum, the Tivoli Opera House (later the Columbia), the Hippodrome, Golden Gate Theater, The Princess Theater, and the Valencia Theater.  They designed the Golden Eagle Hotel and three buildings in the Alamo Square Historic District.

Carl Werner was born in 1875 in Philadelphia and was at one time the unofficial architect for the city of Alameda.  Werner was a mason and it is possibly one reason that Werner and O’Brien received the commission.

Knights Temple on Sutter Street SF

 

Look at the wonderful terra cotta faces that grace the building.  The sculptural elements are drawn from both the Knights Templar imagery and Gothic architecture.

Macedonia Church on Sutter in SF

 

This building was deemed San Francisco Landmark #202 in 1993

 

The Knights Templar is an international philanthropic chivalric order affiliated with Freemasonry. Unlike the initial degrees conferred in a Masonic Lodge, which only require a belief in a Supreme Being regardless of religious affiliation, the Knights Templar is one of several additional Masonic Orders in which membership is open only to Freemasons who profess a belief in the Christian religion. The full title of this Order is The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta. The word “United” in this title indicates that more than one historical tradition and more than one actual Order are jointly controlled within this system. The individual Orders ‘united’ within this system are principally the Knights of the Temple (Knights Templar), the Knights of Malta, the Knights of St Paul, and only within the York Rite, the Knights of the Red Cross. The Order derives its name from the historical Knights Templar, but does not claim any direct lineal descent from the original Templar order.

The historical Knights Templar trace their origin back to shortly after the First Crusade. Around 1119, a French nobleman from the Champagne region, Hugues de Payens, collected eight of his knight relatives including Godfrey de Saint-Omer, and began the Order, their stated mission to protect pilgrims on their journey to visit the Holy Places. They approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, who allowed them to set up headquarters on the Temple Mount. The Dome of the Rock, at the centre of the Mount, was understood to occupy the site of the Jewish Temple. Known to Christians throughout the Muslim occupation of Jerusalem as the Holy of Holies, the Dome of the Rock became a Christian church, the Templum Domini, the Temple of the Lord. But the Templars were lodged in the Aqsa Mosque, which was assumed to stand on the site of Solomon’s Temple. Because the Aqsa mosque was known as the Templum Solomonis, it was not long before the knights had encompassed the association in their name. They became known as the Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici – the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, which was shortened to “Knights Templars”.

 

The Embarcadero – History of our Street Names

 Posted by on November 15, 2011
Nov 152011
 
The Embarcadero
Looking Down and Learning History
Archetypical Gold Rush San Franciscan, Sam Brannan was first in many achievements.  He arrived in Yerba Buena by sea in 1846, leading two hundred Mormon pioneers, and founding the city’s first newspaper.  He rode through the streets of San Francisco in 1848, announcing the discovery of gold for all to hear.  In 1851, he inspired the vigilantes to take the law into their own hands and restore order to a chaotic city.  The first California millionaire, he spent his fortune in building Calistoga as a health resort and lost it all.  He died in 1889 with a twenty dollar gold piece in his hand.
Pioneer physician in California, Dr. John Townsend and his wife came overland from Missouri in 1844 as part of the first immigrant party to cross the Sierra by way of Truckee.  A founding member of the school board in San Francisco in 1847, he was elected town Alcalde (traditional Spanish municipal magistrate) in 1848.  He abandoned his office at the first news of the discovery of gold, but later returned to practice medicine at a time when the new city was being swept by epidemics of dysentery and cholera.  Moving to a farm near San Jose, Townsend and his wife died of cholera there at the end of 1851.

“A good feeling man, Townsend is much attached to his own opinions, as likewise to the climate and country of California.  His wife, a pleasant lady, does not enter into all her husband’s chimerical speculations.”    James Clyman, 1845

The wording of an actual hand lettered sign found near this spot circa 1850.
Now back to the view
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