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Photo by Dtiiui
The Burning of the City
A

History
of the Earthquake and Fire
in San Francisco

An Account of the Disaster of April 18, 1906
and its Immediate Results

By
Frank W. Aitken and Edward Hilton

San Francisco
The Edward Hilton Co.
1 906

YALE

Copyrighted, 1906,
by
The EDw.'kRD Hilton Co.
San Francisco

Copyrighted photographs used by permission.
Acknowledgment is due to Prof. C. Derleth, Jr.,
of the University of California, for permission to
use such o( his photograplis as appear herein.

Cr^L.L^

Printed by Engravings by
Ktw Atanltp.tlafior Coinpaiip ftitrra {Ibota entraUinit Coinpaiip
San Francisco San Francisco

CONTENTS

I. The Old San Francisco  i
II. The Earthquake  13
III. The Fault Line  31
IV. The First Day of the Fire  61
V. The Fateful Day  87
VI. The Conquest  106
VII. The Work of the Fire  126
VIII. The Relief  150
IX. The Resumption  167
X. The Damage by the Earthquake  193
XI. A Study of the Fire  214
XII. The New San Francisco  254
Appendix  273

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Burning of the City  Frontispiece
Mission Dolores, from an Old Print  2
Early San Francisco  3
Verba Buena Cove in 1849  5
San Francisco in 1856  7
Market Street in 1856  8
Skyscrapers Before the Fire  11
City Hall After the Earthquake  IS
Buildings Damaged by Earthquake  18
Buildings Damaged by Earthquake  21
East and Pacific Streets — Mission and Seventh Streets. 22
Damage to Streets  23
Tilted Houses  25
Demolished Frame Structures  27
St. Dominic's Church  29
Relief Map of the San Francisco Peninsula  33
Map Showing Region Affected by Earthquake and Line
of the Fault  35
Along the Fault  36
The Fault Near Lake San Andreas  37
Pajaro River Bridge and Salinas Sugar Mill  38
Pipe-Lines Along the Fault  39
Fault Line Views  41
Landslide Along Ocean Shore Railroad  42
Landslide Along Ocean Shore Railroad  43
General View of Slide Near Mussel Rock  44
Views of Slide Near Mussel Rock  45
Effects of Shifting Along Fault Line  51
Stanford Chapel and Arch  54

ILLUSTRATIONS
Stanford Gymnasium and Library  55
Buildings at San Jose and at Agnews  57
Buildings at Santa Rosa and at Oakland  59
Early Fires  63
Fire South of Market Street  67
The "Call" Building Burning  69
Rapidly Spreading Fires  73
Market Street Fire Seen from Nob Hill  76
Market Street East from Jones  77
Wholesale District Fires Seen from Nob Hill  79
Hayes Valley Fires Seen from Sixteenth Street Hill. . . 81
Maps Showing Fires First and Second Days  83
Scenes During the Fire  89
Mechanics' Pavilion  93
Appraiser's Building  96
The Mint and the Postoffice  98
Combination Issue of San Francisco Papers  101
The Famous Proclamation  103
Watching the Fire  109
Claus Spreckels' Residence  112
Mission Fire from Sixteenth Street Hill  114
Map Showing Fires at End of Second Day  119
Map Showing Course of Fires  123
Bird's-eye View of San Francisco from the South  129
Map Showing Burned District  135
General View of the Burned District  139
Telegraph Hill in Ruins  141
San Francisco in Ruins  143
Well-known Buildings Destroyed by the Fire  145
Picturesque Ruins  147
Temporary Shelters  153
Camp Established During the Fire  157
Breadlines in Camps and Parks  161
Permanent Camps for Refugees  163
Cottages Erected by Relief Corporation  165
Cooking in the Streets  169
Outdoor Kitchens  172
Signs on Tents in Camps  175
An Early Business Sign  179
Removal of Debris  181

ILLUSTRATIONS
Removing Debris from Street  183
Rebuilding Activity  185
Reconstruction Work in Burned District  187
Repairs on Merchants' Exchange Building  189
Temporary Business Houses  191
Buildings Damaged by Earthquake in 1868  194
Map Showing San Francisco in 1849  195
Subsidence of Streets at Market and Spear  198
Earthquake Waves Near Foot of Ninth Street  199
Cracking in Stonework of Postoffice and Flood Building. 201
Chimney Tops Shifted by Earthquake  204
City Hall  207
Concrete Block House at Palo Alto  208
Youths' Directory . .'  209
Brick Churches Undamaged by Earthquake  211
Palace Hotel  212
Doorway to Nob Hill Residence  215
Entrance to the Huntington Mansion. . . .*^  216
On the Edge of the Burned District  217
"Fireproof" Safes   218
Unburned Block on Upper Montgomery Street  219
Ruins of Six-Story Brick Building  220
Interior Steel Frame Work After the Fire  221
Front Wall of Iroquois Apartment House  222
Effect of Fire on Exterior Materials  223
Column Protection in Wells Fargo Building  225
Columns of Fuller Warehouse  226
Reinforced Concrete Girder in Monadnock Building. .227
Breaking of Tile and Buckling of Columns in Aronson
Building  229
Interior of Union Trust Building  230
Interior of Old Chronicle Building  231
Interior of Emporium  233
Buckled Columns  235
Buckled Columns in Bullock & Jones Building  237
General View of Building at First and Mission  238
Detail Views of Building at First and Mission  239
Interior of Sloane Building  240
Parrott Building  241
Sagged Floors in Kamm Building  245

ILLUSTRATIONS
Rear of Kamm Building  249
Map Showing Proposed Changes in Streets in the
Downtown District  255
"Call" Building  257
James Flood Building  259
Fairmont Hotel  '  261
Mills Building  263
Spring Valley Water Company Building  265
Merchants' Exchange and Kohl Buildings  267
Hall of Justice  269
Union Trust Building  270
Seismograph Record of the Earthquake  276
Comparison of the Burned Districts in the Chicago Fire
and the San Francisco Fire  278
Bullock & Jones, and Monadnock Buildings  280
Aronson Building  282
Mutual Savings Bank Building  284

A History of the Earthquake
and Fire in San Francisco

THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO
In some vast travail of a bygone age a peninsula
was born. Its birthright was a harbor (land-locked
save for its Golden Gate) and, beyond, an empire of
unrevealed wealth. For untold ages it slept; the
child-dream of power stole upon it. Suddenly it
woke and looked upon the sail-capped waters of its
harbor. What had been a lonely stretch of sand
became a city.
They called it San Francisco.
Founded as a Mission outpost by far-journeying
Franciscan friars in 1776, it grew but slowly until
1849. Clustered around the Mission Dolores and
the Presidio, or around the sheltered cove of Yerba
Buena, under the brow of Telegraph Hill, where an
occasional ship dropped anchor to trade for hides,
the people had little to do but amuse themselves
with their loves and foibles ; to go to horse races
and bull fights, fiestas and fandangos. They were
as carefree as the fat herds that roamed the rich val
leys of their nearby ranchos.
In 1849 came the awakening, ¦with the rush of
thousands of adventurous argonauts in quest of the
wealth that lay in the Californian mountain sides
and valleys. The dreaming peninsula was the natu
ral port of entry and base of supplies for the gold
fields, and straightway a little settlement grew up
in the Yerba Buena cove, where thrifty "Ameri
canos" traded for the gold their fellows brought
down from the mines. A city sprang up after the

2 THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO
fashion of any frontier settlement; wooden shacks
to shelter traders and gamblers and saloon-keepers ;
beyond, the insubstantial homes of their various
families. Three years before Captain Montgomery of the
United States war sloop "Portsmouth" had planted
the American flag in what subsequently became
Portsmouth Square; but that act alone could not
make the mission-military town American in its
habits. The loves and intrigues and fandangos went
on just the same. The men of '49, restless, tired of
clap-trap conventions, ever ready for new sensations,
came along and fell into the ways of the natives —
began to live their easy-going life.
Those first days of San Francisco, the Ameri
can, were such as might have been expected, where
many men of many sorts were thrown together with
out any common tie — where the law was weak and
men's passions were strong. They were days

Mission Dolores, from an Old Print

Hccht Collection

Early San Francisco

4 THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO
marked in passing with crime and greed and de
bauchery; with hardship, and many an unwritten
story of privation, and of fortunes made in a day,
and gambled away over night.
It was a hardy, rough-and-tumble people that
formed that first settlement — men from many climes.
The sturdy stock of New England mixed freely with
old England's younger sons, and the men of "the
continent," and with the hot blood of the Orient
and the Equator. They were a happy lot, too,
light-hearted, indifferent, taking things as they
found them, in serene contentment.
That beginning gave to San Francisco an indi
viduality and a glamor of romance all its own. The
start was picturesque, cosmopolitan ; and through all
the years a carnival spirit of light-heartedness has
been the motif of the people. Always it has been
San Francisco the golden — a city of adventure ; a
city of legend; a city of many peoples; a city of
the Arabian Nights. Of it Bret Harte well sang —
"Serene, indifferent to fate,
Thou sittest at the western gate;
Thou seest the white seas fold their tents.
Oh, warder of two continents."
Out of that settlement around Yerba Buena
cove, that chance stopping place of people bound
for the mines, a city grew, almost in spite of itself.
Soon came ships bringing merchandise from all over
the world, the treasure of two continents. Various
business interests allied themselves with its destiny.
In 1853 the population had grown to be 36,000. The
road to the Mission Dolores had become Mission

THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO S
street, planked throughout its length. California
street, for a distance of three blocks, was a thriving
thoroughfare. The city had stretched out to the
base of Telegraph Hill on the north, and back to the
foot of Nob Hill on the west. It expanded south
ward ; soon Market street was extended a block into
the bay and graded with sand from the Montgomery
street hills. The bay end of the street was then
four blocks from its present location. On the west
it ended at the line of sand hills parallel with Mont
gomery street:. A little further west, where a creek
meandered through, a cemetery, (the present site of
the City Hall), there was a favorite hunting ground,
far out in the country.
Ten years later the city had 90,000 people. The
Latin quarter had sprung up at the base and on the
sides of Telegraph Hill. Chinatown had become
quite a village on the slopes of Nob Hill, to the west.
The American city had expanded out over the tide
flats. Gradually high-water mark receded further
and further eastward, and buildings appeared on the
filled ground. Many were supported on piles in the

Hechf CoUection
Yerba Buena Cove in 1849

6 THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO
water, some only on a loose filling of whatever came
to hand. A stranded ship on the beach was righted
and converted into a building. Finally, when all the
filling-in was done, this ship, buried under the foun
dations of a tall building, was a full quarter-mile
from the new water-front. The people were of the
pleasure-loving type in '63 as in '49. They worked
by day and spent their nights in Bohemian fun.
In 1868 the building of the Palace Hotel was
commenced. After completion this hotel was recog
nized for years as the finest in the world. About this
time the Central Pacific Railroad was completed.
Overland communication by rail with the east bore
quick results. One by one various activities — com
mercial, manufacturing, financial — centered them
selves around the city's harbor. San Francisco be
came the metropolis of a vast territory — a world
power. Its trade was established. Montgomery
street became a Wall street in miniature; the city
was the financial center of the rapidly developing
west. Prosperity smiled upon it. Wealth poured
in from all sides. Its increase in population and
trade was phenomenal. The glamor of wealth and
magic growth surrounded it.
Following the advent of the railroad had come
wonderful development. To the men interested in
it the road brought fabulous riches ; and, drunk with
sudden wealth, they — Huntington, Stanford,
Crocker — erected palaces on Nob Hill, each trying
to outdo the other in the splendor of his mansion. A
few years later they were joined by Fair and Flood
of the Comstock, upon whom, also, fortune had
suddenly showered untold wealth. Nob Hill, thus

Hccht Collection

portsmouth squ.\re
"fort gumnyb.\(;s

San Francisco in 1856

C\MFnRNI.\ THEATRE

BATTERY STREET
NOB HILL

8 THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO
crowned with dwellings that had cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars to build, became known the
world over.
As in the early days, so later ; the prodigality of
many who had won fortunes on the Comstock gave
an air of romance to San Francisco, and a reputation
(which it never lost) for open-handed, lavish spend
ing — for generosity, hospitality, love of fun. Sprung
romantically from the mixing of many races and
many types, it retained to the end its cosmopolitan
picturesqueness. It has always been a city of men
of all kinds and many inclinations.
From the first San Francisco has been gay and
pleasure-loving — the lightest-hearted of cities. It
adopted a bit here and there from the customs of its
various races, and acquired a manner of life quite its
own. As far back as the days when Barrett and Mc-
Cullough played in the stock company of the Cali-

Market Street in 1856

llcihl CoUcctiun

THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO 9
fornia Theatre, the city has been a chosen home of
the drama. So, also, has it been noted as a place of
highly cultivated appreciation of music and art.
From the days of Bret Harte and Mark Twain it
has been the center of a widely-known literary cir
cle. Thousands of people throughout the world
have known of Stevenson's lounging days in Ports
mouth Square, where he conceived "The Wreckers,"
who had no idea of the city's population or the
amount of its trade.
But San Francisco was not all fun and gayety
and pleasure. In 1906 it counted its population as
four hundred and twenty-five thousand. It had be
come the seventh city in the United States in volume
of bank clearings. Its annual exports amounted to
sixty-five million dollars; its manufactures to two
hundred millions.
Through all it seemed still "serene, indifferent
of fate." The surrounding region poured wealth in
upon it, and it was satisfied. Taking its good for
tune and luck for granted, it seemed always to be
sitting in the midst of wonderful opportunities, in
different to them. Always, too, it had remained
the wonder city — the city of picturesqueness, of
romance ; the city that was neighbor to the ends of
the earth — Alaska, the Orient, the South Seas.
Meanwhile the city had grown out to cover
much of the peninsula — had scaled the hills and
spread through the intervening valleys. Along in
the sixties the Supervisors were discussing whether
it would be advisable to limit purchases of land west
of Van Ness avenue to fifty acres, and if those lands
would bring $6 an acre. They doubted if they could

IU THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO
give title to them anyway, as the "sand lots" (a term
general then to all ground west of the avenue) were
continually shifting. No way had been discovered to
tie the land down to the survey. In 1906 block upon
block of houses covered the sand lots of old, and if
one would buy, one must pay hundreds of dollars
per front foot.
During the seventies the cable road had over
come the hills, and gradually the most distant parts
of the city became accessible. Van Nessi avenue,
at the western base of Nob and Russian Hills, had
been the farthermost limit of the city ; now the
"Western Addition," stretching far beyond it, came
into being. Market street became the main
thoroughfare. On the north, at varying distances,
were the hills. Just beyond the site where the City
Hall was afterward erected, Hayes Valley, known as
Happy Valley until Thomas Hayes began to exploit
it, stretched some distance to the west. South of
Market the city had grown out so far that by 1906
the Mission Dolores, once a part of the far-country,
seemed almost downtown. Far beyond it lay blocks
and blocks of close-built residences.
Everywhere the houses were wooden; here, too,
the city showed its serene indifference of fate.
Visitors marvelled at the great frame city. Insur
ance men shook their heads, foretelling a tremendous
conflagration some day — a conflagration that would
almost blot out the memory of the great fires of the
past — London, Moscow, Chicago, Boston — in its
greater vastness.
San Francisco had had plenty of experience of
the fate that was to overtake it. Five times in the

Skyscrapers Before the Fire

Photos hy ll'iitfis & lirrhl

a THE OLD SAN FRANCISCO
early days it was devastated by fire, and five times
it was rebuilt. It was with grim pride, therefore,
that the city made the legendary Phoenix a part of
the design of its official seal, in 1850, but without
any idea of the task the Phoenix city would later
have to perform.

II
THE EARTHQUAKE
April, 1906, found San Francisco living its life
intensely, pulsating with the vigor of achievement
and hope, full of the "joy of living." The year had
been one of unexampled prosperity ; trade had never
been so brisk, business never so good before. Again
and again the real estate sales, the building opera
tions, the volume of business, had surpassed all rec
ords. Population was increasing with wonderful
rapidity. Never had the city's future seemed so
bright, its destiny so certain, as in those early days
of April. San Francisco had probably never been more
care-free, in all its laughing years, than on the night
of April 17. Easter Sunday had just passed and a
new season of jollity had begun. Society was awhirl
with a merry dance of pleasure. Festivities were
everywhere. Theatres and other places of amuse
ment were thronged. The Metropolitan Grand
Opera Company had just started upon a long en
gagement at the Grand Opera House. That night
Caruso, in Carmen, was at his best. The house was
filled to the foyer, and the great audience left the
theatre still thrilled by his magic tones.
Toward midnight the cafes and restaurants
began to fill. Parties dropped in for those quiet
little suppers that were a part of the city's fame.
The rattle of dishes and clink of glasses, a merry
laugh or a happy chuckle, a snatch of a stage joke

14 THE EARTHQUAKE
or a bit of repartee, perhaps a play on some word —
this for an hour or two ; then all was still.
The city slept. A lone policeman on his rounds,
the clanging bell of some owl car anxious to be off
the street, the tread of a newspaper man or so
hurrying home, mayhap the uncertain antics of some
befuddled fellow — scarcely more than this anywhere.
The city slept, unconscious of the manner of its
awakening. Slowly the stars faded into oblivion ; dawn crept
over the hills; some sleepy folk were getting their
wares out for the early buyers. A sudden rumbling
hurried closer and closer. The houses of the sleep
ing city shook as if seized with a sudden ague. At
first came a sharp but gentle swaying motion that
grew less and less; then a heavy jolting sidewise —
then another, heaviest of all. Finally a grinding
round of everything, irregularly tumultuous, spas
modic, jerky. It was as if some Titans, laying hold
of the edge of the world, were trying to wrest it
from each other by sudden wrenchings.
Plaster showered from the walls ; nails creaked
in their sockets, and pulled and wrenched, and tried
to free themselves. Crockery and glassware
smashed upon the floor. Doors flew open — swung
round — jerked off their hinges. Furniture toppled.
Pianos rattled their keys in untimed janglings.
Chimneys snapped and fell. Houses groaned and
twisted and reeled on their foundations. Outside,
streets were seized with writhings. Hill-sides slid.
The city shook itself like a dog coming out of the
water.

Photos by Waters and Ait!>-c

City Hall After the Earthquake

16 THE EARTHQUAKE
People ran from their houses and crowded into
the streets. In hotels and other places where many
lived under one roof, the commotion nearly reached
a panic. They crowded and jostled one another in
their flight down the stairs, and, reaching the street,
ran about in vari-colored night garments, overawed
by the unaccustomed experience. Some women
screamed, some wild-eyed men wept in the frenzy
of their fear. And as they ran and wept and
screamed, the temblor ceased. Abruptly it was
gone — mysteriously, without warning. Some said
it had lasted two minutes — five — an eternity. In
reality it was over in forty-eight seconds.
Throughout the city was heard the grating and
grinding and rattling of houses, and the crash of
falling chimneys. In the neighborhood of the City
Hall the noise was appalling. The heavy iron col
umns filled with concrete, with their massive cor
nices, on the west and south sides ; the greater por
tion of the dome ; and much of the roof of the south
and west wings, of that great monument of graft
and incompetence, fell with a crash into the street.
Across Market street the roof of the Majestic
Theatre fell in. Other buildings down town col
lapsed. As the crashing of falling walls and sub
terraneous rumblings died away, there came the cry
of dying horses, the appeals for help of men and
women pinned beneath the debris, and the laughter
of a few hysterical ones; while here and there ex
plosions of gas escaping from broken mains occurred
with loud reports.
The first wild moment passed, an intense quiet
pervaded the people of the city. Cowed and silent,

THE EARTHQUAKE 17
tongue-tied by this manifestation of the supernatu
ral, they huddled, half dressed, in the streets, and
looked at the swaying roof-lines silhouetted against
the half-lit sky. Then some, from courage or shame,
went inside to dress; others had the hardihood to
return to bed for one more nap. In the streets a few
low words were spoken — the hushed words of a
great fear; but in the main the people waited ob
jectless in the streets, wondering if it was all over.
Then the drollery of the situation broke in upon
them. It occurred to them that their sudden un
clothed flight was undignified, even ludicrous. Some
began to smile, shamefacedly; others crept under
cover. The suspense was over; straightway all
began to talk and gossip. The earthquake was a
general introduction ; everybody knew everybody
else. They laughed together at chimneys sprawled
in the street, and houses tilted out of plumb. Tales
of the freaks of the temblor began to circulate — of
chimneys that were cracked across but not thrown
down, of bronze that broke and china that survived.
Soon everybody knew that Jones' house had moved
on its foundation, and that Smith's marble steps had
cracked, and that Brown's chimney was split across
but still stood, and that Black had run frightened
into the street and then dressed on the front porch.
Throughout the greater part of the city — north
of Market street, and out in the Western Addition,
and over in the Mission — there was never a
thought that the earthquake would be found any dif
ferent in its results from any other. It was a heavier
shock than usual — that was all.

Photos b\' Mollcr. Estcy, and Derleth

PARK MUSEUM
SyNAGGGUE AND MKMORIAL TEMPLE

Buildings Damaged by Earthquake

REF[<CSHMEN"T HOUSE IN PARK
tUMMAXDERY ASYLUM

THE EARTHQUAKE 10
It became a holiday — a carnival. Leaving their
bric-a-brac where it lay, people went to see the
sights, to laugh at their neighbors' experiences, and
to congratulate each other that it was no worse.
They set out to go down town. Crowds collected
on Market street to see if any damage had been done
to the big buildings. They sauntered along easily,
and laughed at the strange appearance of rooms
exposed by the falling of the front walls, and at the
terror the occupants must have felt. They smiled
knowingly, and murmured "Graft" as they saw the
City Hall walls lying in the street. An occasional
business man hurried along, anxious to protect his
records. But for the most part the procession was
one of curious sightseers.
The smoke of many fires rose before them, and
they wended their way to vantage-places, with never
a thought that the fire department would be unequal
to its task. Never before had it failed to handle
every fire that occurred; always it had protected
them and their wooden city from the greedy flames.
They were in the best of humor. When the
soldiers took possession of Market street, the people
took to more circuitous routes without complaint.
They had not waited for breakfast at home, and soon
discovered that they could get none down town.
They walked far before they discovered that the cars
were not running. It was a long way home. Yet
they were happy, for they were viewing a spectacle
that was worth while.
It was all a play — a fantastic comedy. This,
north of Market street.

2(1 THE EARTHQUAKE
South of Market the play was a tragedy. There
the decrepit ramshackles, remnants of another gen
eration, flimsy with age, tottering on their founda
tions, had fallen into masses of splintered wood.
Cheap lodging houses and hotels had gone down
burying their guests in the ruins. Quickly, on the
wings of terror, spread the news — that many build
ings were down and many people injured and dying ;
that fires had started all about.
Hereabouts dwelt one-sixth of the city's popula
tion. Here the roll of the dead was longest, here the
fires sprung up the quickest, and spread, uncon
trolled, with greatest fury, leaping across the little
by-ways, and racing pell-mell from street to street.
It was an agony of fear. People saved a little,
whatever came handiest — needful or useless — and
waited for the moment when they must give up their
little remaining hope and flee. Some there were,
not strong enough to wait, vvho gathered up their
pitiful bundles in panic and hurried out into the sub
urbs. Many struggled bravely to rescue the injured
from the oncoming flames. From the first all there
saw the coming of Ruin and Death.
In addition to the innumerable tumbledown
structures which the earthquake brought to the
ground as scarce more than kindling — in many of
which people were pinioned and burned to death —
a number of hotels and lodging houses collapsed,
and buried in their ruins many who could not be
extricated before the fire reached them. Such were
the Cosmopolitan, the Brunswick, the Denver.
Wild rumors of cruelty and greed and murder
among the injured afterward got about; stories of

Photos by Dana. Estcy, HclIU. ami Kiiight Buildings Damaged by Earthquake kMiNF.MA.NN hosp.tm.
GIRLS inCUJCUOOL^^ ^^^^_^^ ^^_^^_^ ^^^^.^^ ^^^^,^^ STOR.XGE WAREHOUSE

n THE EARTHQUAKE
men who begged to be killed, and others who cursed
their mothers, of parents who left their wounded
dhildren unaided, while they, unheeding, made their
selfish way to safety ; stories, too, of fiends who cut
rings from the fingers of the dead, and of swift pun
ishment by quick-shooting soldiers. But followed
out to the end most of these stories have been
proved mere rumors, the weird hallucinations of
overstrained minds. To the eternal credit of man
kind it is known that here uncountable deeds of big-
hearted, unselfish kindness were done; and that
many who died beyond the reach of help closed their
eyes without complaint — stoics to the end.
The people who had gone about sightseeing
after the earthquake found much to interest and
amaze them. Although the big buildings downtown

Photo by Dcrlrlh
East and Pacific Streets — Mission and Seventh Streets

-.i

Photos by Dana, Weidner, Knight

VALENCIA STREET CAPP STREET

Damage to Streets

F I ( ; F[ T I-: E N T H STREET

VAN NESS AVEML"E
UNION STREET

24 THE EARTHQUAKE
seemed entirely uninjured, there were startling in
stances of the earthquake's power in various parts
of the city. Imposing brick and stone buildings had
collapsed, streets and car tracks had been twisted
out of shape, in a few neighborhoods that seemed to
have been especially hard-hit by the shock.
At the City Hall hundreds of tons of brickwork
had crashed to earth; in a moment the once impos
ing building had been stripped of all its pretense
and its seeming strength. Half the building was in
ruins. The great bronze dome, three hundred and^
thirty-five feet in height, rose airily out of the huge
piles of brick that had been its walls and columns,
its frame seeming strangely slight in the absence of
the brick work which had surrounded it and lay in
monumental ruin below. A group of massive col
umns, with their gigantic cornice, crashing into an
apartment house across Larkin street, brought down
its whole front wall.
The Majestic Theatre building, a short distance
away from the City Hall, was also demolished. Half
the roof fell in ; at both front and rear the walls fell
away for half their height.
The Hall of Justice, on Kearny street opposite
Portsmouth Square, lost much of the brickwork of
its tower. Out in the Park one end of the refresh
ment house at the children's playground — a pictur
esque lodge, of brick covered with sandstone — com
pletely collapsed.
At the Girls' High School, which cost over
$90,000 to build, great quantities of the walls fell,
and all around the building cracks zigzagged up and
down the bulging brickwork.

THE EARTHQUAKE

25

In the same neighborhood as the Girls' High
School stood St. Dominic's Church — a massive
structure of brick covered with cement. One of its
lofty spires was completely stripped of its covering.
From the companion spire all the brickwork of the
tower proper fell away, leaving only the rounded,
dome-like top, like a giant toadstool balanced high
on its fragile stem. The walls of the church
spread ; the roof fell in ; great cracks split the struc
ture clear to the foundations.
A few other large buildings met the same fate —
the Beth Israel Synagogue, the Scottish Rite Tem
ple, and the Knight Templar Asylum, all within a
few blocks of St. Dominic's. In each case, the story

Pliotns by Waters, Derleth, Hccht
Tilted Houses

26 THE EARTHQUAKE
was the same : much of the walls fell away ; the roof
dropped ; the wreck was complete.
A storage warehouse of four stories nearby pre
sented a unique spectacle. On all sides the wall of
its upper story had fallen, leaving exposed to view
the varied collection of household goods stored with
in, so that the roof seemed to rest on nothing but the
close-packed goods beneath. Further down town,
in the district of hotels and apartment houses, other
brick structures lost one or more stories from their
fagades in the same way.
Apart from the large brick buildings so dam
aged, and the numerous wooden shanties destroyed,
the most striking manifestations of the power of the
shock were to be found in its effect on the earth
itself here and there in various parts of the city.
On Valencia street, near Nineteenth, about a
mile southwest of the City Hall, stood the Valencia
Street Hotel, a four-story wooden structure. The
earthquake spilled it out into the street. From the
windows of its upper story the guests stepped out
onto the car-track; but in the rooms below some
twenty persons were crushed to death. The street,
in front of the hotel, is twisted far to one side, and
has dropped several feet below its level; the cable
tracks, heavy concrete conduits on steel yokes, are
bent sharply aside and broken, as if made of clay.
On Howard street, two blocks away (just beyond
the fire line), a row of houses leaned drunkenly on
each other for support. Through here ran Wil
low Creek years ago; and even yet, perhaps some of
the waters find their outlet beneath the loose soil
which has been placed on the old bed. It was on

Photos by Estey

Demolished Frame Structures

GOLDEN GATE AVENUE
REAR OK V.\M-:NCr\ STREET HUTKL

LAPPAGE AND EIGHTEENTH STREETS
FRON'T (1F VALENCIA STREET HOTEL

28 THE EARTHQUAKE
this filled soil that the Valencia Street Hotel stood,
as well as the leaning houses on Howard street.
When the earthquake shook things up the whole fill
settled a little more compactly and slid a few feet
along the course of the creek. Sidewalks and pave
ments and car-tracks were twisted; houses reeled
from their foundations; water pipes (one of them
forty-four inches in diameter) were torn apart.
Brick foundations at the edge of the fill cracked
across and sagged; the side walls of the Youths'
Directory, a four-story brick building, resting on
ground which moved unequally, split from its base
clear to its cornice.
Fully as interesting as the row of houses on
Howard street were those on Van Ness avenue, near
Vallejo street, far to the north. Here the whole
side of the gently sloping hill had been brought up
to the grade by being filled with sand, and here
some of the most interesting results of the earth
quake were shown. On Van Ness, just above Val
lejo, the street lengthened out. The cement squares
of the pavement, separating, tilted slightly on the
shifting sand beneath, and, twisting about with the-
shock, arranged themeslves fantastically en echelon.
The bituminous pavement, on its concrete base,.
split from curb to curb in several places, and, sliding
down the hill, produced alarming fissures, in some
places, and in another a ridge of jammed-up ends of
bitumen, a foot in height. Houses and fences and
backyards on the hillside moved down the hill ;
strange curves appeared in the retaining walls along
Vallejo street. But while the effect of the earth
quake here was startling, the amount of actual dis-

THE EARTHQUAKE 2'>
placement was small, four feet, with a drop of about
two feet in Vallejo street. On Union street, near
Pierce, however, the car track was shoved some six
feet to the side and dropped almost as much. The
sidewalk, indeed, dropped several feet. The street
there, however, was merely a fill on a side hill ; when

St. Dominic's Church

Photos by .¦litheii

.^'1 THE EARTHQUAKE
the earthquake came, it slid down into an adjoining
truck garden.
Lower Market street, and the other streets on
made land near the waterfront, sank noticeably,
though without such picturesque results. Some old
buildings tilted and twisted and leaned queerly and
lost much of their brickwork, and in some cases
roof-trusses unseated themselves.
These were some of the things seen by the
crowds who wandered about the streets after the
temblor. No one, individually, saw very much of
the damage, for soon the people looked at the sky.
Smoke was curling heavenward in many places —
lazily, with all the assumption of a fiend sure of its
power.

Ill
THE FAULT LINE
We do not have to go far afield to find what
sort of thing this earthquake was which thus shook
San Francisco. Probably never before has an earth
quake occurred which left so clear a record; for it
wrote its own story for some two hundred miles, in
the indelible characters of its power, on the earth
itself. While not ranking among notable earthquakes
in severity, it is almost unique in the opportunities
it affords for scientific study.
Of the causes of earthquakes nothing certain is
known. Coming as they do from the impenetrable
depths of the earth, without premonition, they defy
study, except through their effects. Some earth
quakes seem to be caused by volcanic activity, and
others have no apparent connection with volcanoes.
These latter — the San Francisco earthquake among
them — occur in conjunction with tremendous earth
movements along "fault lines," indicating a sudden
change of position in the rock-masses below. It is
now generally believed, among scientists, that such
shifting is the cause of nearly all earthquakes.
Sometimes — as in the Charleston earthquake
of 1886 — this shifting takes place miles under
ground and no surface displacement is caused. In
other cases, however, the shifting of the rock-masses
is nearer the surface and is communicated to the soft
overlying soil, with the result that a "fault line" or
"rift" appears, as in California last April.

32 THE FAULT LINE
Perhaps a homely illustration will explain what
the scientists mean by faults and fault lines. If an
arch of masonry be unevenly loaded, and then sub
jected to a severe sudden strain, by the fall of an
adjacent building or by earthquake or by an explo
sion within its walls, its keystone is very likely to
move out of position somewhat, sliding along on the
adjoining stones. So with the rocky masses forming
the earth's surface. According to the geologists
these rock masses (merging into more plastic mat
ter many miles below the surface) are split and
cracked here and there on the surface by long fis
sures, extending in some cases for hundreds of
miles. These cracks are known as faults, and occur
most frequently between rocks of different charac
ter. The rock masses are thus similar, in a way, to
the stones in an arch.
In the earth's formative period whole mountain
ranges were made by the uplifting of the rock on
one side of such faults above that on the other. But
now such movements are trivial ones — a few feet
more or less — and are felt as earthquakes. What the
ultimate cause of such movements is can only be a
matter of speculation. It has been suggested that
the seeping of water through the faults, either from
the surface or from the oceans, to the molten masses
of the earth's interior, causes explosions ; but the
view generally accepted is that these slight shiftings
are the result of changes brought about by the slow
contraction of the earth in its gradual cooling; that
as the earth cools and its crust shrinks, strains are
produced and the weak places slip, just as, when a
house is shaken by a storm, the plaster cracks in

Modeled by Prof. A. C. Lawson
Relief Map of the San Francisco Peninsula

34 THE FAULT LINE
the old cracks that have been patched. These faults
are the weak places — the old cracks. Volcanoes are
sometimes called safety valves; the faults, similarly,
may be considered slip-joints where the earth's
minor adjustments are made.
The Pacific Coast, from Alaska to South
America, is, geologically speaking, a weak place of
this sort ; as a result earthquakes are frequent. Very
severe shocks have been experienced in Alaska,
Mexico, Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador
since 1899. The California coast has had no severe
shock between 1868 and 1906.
Professor F. Omori, head of the Department of
Seismology of the University of Tokio, and inventor
of the Omori seismograph, is regarded as the great
est living authority on earthquakes. He spent two
months in California, studying the "fault," embody
ing his conclusions and deductions in a report for the
Japanese government. As to the causes of earth
quakes he says :
"The very ultimate causes of great earthquakes
are probably to be traced to the cooling and contrac
tion of the earth, and, to some degree, the change of
the distribution of the matter constituting the land
and ocean bottom. The more immediate cause of
such earthquakes is, however, frequently the activity
of mountain-making forces which produce fractur
ing, etc., along an extended zone. Different external
agencies which act on the earth, and many of which
are periodic, may be regarded as secondary causes
of earthquakes." Such a fracturing along an extended zone near
San Francisco is known to have occurred in con-

Map Showing Region Affected by Earthquake, and Line
of the Fault

36

THE FAULT LINE

junction with the great earthquake of April i8, 1906,
— a fracture extending over a length of two hundred
miles. From near Salinas on the south to Point
Arena on the north there is a clearly defined fault,
which extends over a long-known geological fault
line of even greater length, and runs in a direct line
just back of San Jose and Stanford University, and
through the two reservoir lakes in which San Fran
cisco stores its water supply. These latter are situ
ated in long, deep, and narrow caiions which are part
of the great cleft or trough along the line of this old
fault. On a relief map this trough shows up very

^,^~^.y^l

Photos by .Aitken

Along the Fault

Photo by De
The Fault, Near Lake San Andreas

lelh

3.S

THE FAULT LINE

prominently. To the south it is continued by a num
ber of similar valleys. To the north, across the
Golden Gate, it includes Bolinas Bay and Tomales
Bay, both long narrow bodies of water lying directly
in line with the long narrow lakes already men
tioned. In the vicinity of Tomales Bay was the zone
of greatest disturbance; from the reservoir lakes
led the water mains whose bursting left San Fran
cisco at the mercy of the flames.
South of the district affected by the earthquake
the same geological fault continues for at least two
hundred miles. It parallels the San Benito River to
its headwaters, and continues in the mountains be
yond. Its southern limit is uncertain ; some claim
to have traced it through Southern California and
across the Colorado Desert to Arizona.
It is but one of a number of such faults in Cali
fornia. The long narrow valleys of the State, paral
leling its straight mountain ranges, are no doubt

Photos by Derleth
Pajaro River Bridge and Salinas Sugar Mill

Pipe-Lines Along the Fault

Photos by Derleth

40 THE FAULT LINE
largely due to streams following old fault lines.
There are also many minor cracks. These numer
ous faults indicate that "mountain-making forces"
have been in operation within recent geological
times in California, and particularly in the Coast
Range. Because of these numerous cracks and fis
sures slight earthquakes are frequent. On the other
hand really dangerous shocks are very unlikely, as
great strains cannot accumulate in rock-masses so
badly cracked.
At some time in the dim geological past a tre
mendous upheaval raised a mountain-mass south
west of San Francisco. The uplift was at least two
thousand feet — perhaps more — at the fracture on
the west, along the present coast line. It was rather
less on the east; the fracture there was the fault
line along which occurred the earthquake of last
April. Doubtless many lesser uplifts and shiftings
and slidings took place after that first catastrophe,
but gradually the sharp edges were worn away and
the evidences of violent change were obliterated.
In time watercourses, following the rift, gouged out
the straight narrow valleys so noticeable on the
map. At last only the geologist could detect the line
of the old fracture; time and the elements had
healed all scars. In the south its rolling foothills
were a beautiful pasture-land for peaceful herds;
to the north giant redwoods covered it.
For some unknown, perhaps unknowable, rea
son, a slip occurred along this fault at about 5:13
a. m., Wednesday, April 18, 1906. Impelled by a
tremendous force, the land to the west of the fault
shifted with a sudden, rapid motion, toward the

THE FAULT LINE

41

north — six feet in some places, eight or ten on the
average, twenty in the region around Tomales Bay
— cracking and twisting the soft surface, and throw
ing down whatever was in its way. From the line
of the fracture the shock went far and wide. The
displacement and readjustment was almost instan
taneous, but throughout the fault the rock-masses
bordering it swayed and grated and ground on each
other, as they settled into their new relation. Quick,
sharp vibrations went out from it in all directions

Fault Line Views

Photos by Aitken

ROAP NI SR "1.1 MA SUtFTINC

f-RATK-S AnOVE OCEAN SHORE RAILROAD
>N FAUI.I ?-IME

42 THE FAULT LINE
through the rocks; California shook as a house
shakes in a heavy wind. Slower vibrations, heavier,
wider, went out across the sands and soft soils of
the valleys, as waves go out from a pebble thrown
into a quiet pond. At new places along the fault
and weak places on other faults, there were new
slippings and fractures, and from them new waves
of vibrations went out, crossing the others, joining
with them, jostling everything about sidewise, until
all the region was thrown this way and that, back
and forth and across and up and down and about in
an indescribable confusion — buffetted about like a
ship in a storm when wind and waves seem to assail
it from all sides at once. The whole earth swayed
in unison; delicate instruments thousands of miles
away — in Tokyo, Potsdam, Sitka, and Washington
— recorded the motion.

Photu by .\itkcn
Landslide Along Ocean Shore Railroad

THE FAULT LINE

43

At these far-away observatories the instru
ments showed a gentle swaying back and forth,
renewed with each new quake, three in all. But the
record at Oakland shows a complex motion which
is a veritable wilderness of crisscrossings. The see
saw, it has been said, was followed by a twister.
The complexity of the movements involved in the
twister can be realized by attempting to make a
marble in a plate traverse such a course as is shown
by the earthquake "signature" written by the seis
mograph at the Chabot Observatory.
It was this twister, with its sudden jerkings and
reversings and spasmodic joltings, that did the dam
age in the cities near the great fault. Along the
fault itself there was a pulling apart and jamming
together and destruction of fences, bridges, pipe-

Photo liy .litl.en
Landslide Along Ocean Shore Railroad

44 THE FAULT LINE
lines, trees, or whatever else happened to be in the
way; in the nearby cities whatever stood high and
insecure was unbalanced by the swaying, or thrown
down by the "twister."
In passing across the ocean bed from Mussel
Rock (eight miles south of San Francisco) to
Bolinas ( a point on the mainland across the Gol
den Gate) the quake gave to San Francisco the
severest shaking-up it had ever had. Many things
seemed to show the tremendous power of the tem
blor. Yet while there were striking instances of
damage to streets and buildings, such cases were
notable rather than many. Apart from the damage
to plaster and bric-a-brac and plate-glass show win
dows, and the throwing down of chimneys, the
damage in every case was due to "filled ground" or
poor construction — the houses and streets that had
gone down had done so because the ground slid out
from under them; and the imposing structures
which had collapsed had failed simply because their
pretentiousness was all pretense. The City Hall,
the Hall of Justice, the Girls' High School, a syna
gogue, a memorial temple, a fraternal hall — what a

Photo by .4itk-e
General View of Slide near Mussel Rock

Photos by Aitken
Views of Slide near Mussel Rock

46 THE FAULT LINE
catalogue of graft! These are the structures most
severely injured.
South of San Francisco the fault extends from
near the town of Salinas, about one hundred miles
south, to where it enters the sea at Mussel Rock,
just south of the county line. Between these points
it follows almost as direct a course as if laid out
with a "straightedge." North of the Golden Gate
it appears at Bolinas Bay, about twenty miles from
Mussel Rock, and directly in line with the course of
the fault, and continues as far as Point Arena,
ninety miles northward, where the line followed by
the fault runs out into the ocean, getting further and
further away from the Coast. In length this fault
greatly exceeds that made by any other earthquake
known to science. It is over three times as long as
that of the great Japanese earthquake of 1891.
Across the rolling hills and valleys between
Salinas and Mussel Rock it shows itself as a sharp
crack in the earth, along which a slight dropping on
the west side is apparent, or as a belt a yard or so
in width, of loosened and upheaved earth and up-
tilted turf. A few yards away on either side are
similar cracks of smaller size. Where the fault
meets a road or fence or other artificial thing, the
shifting of the earth is plainly seen.
At Salinas the shock caused the land on one
side of the river (which flows in the general direc
tion of the fault) to slide toward the stream a dis
tance of about six feet, thereby reducing to that
extent the width of the river bottom. The Salinas
sugar factory, an immense structure of five stories,
was on the portion that moved ; the tracks of the lit-

THE FAULT LINE 47
tie railroad on which the beets are run into the
works are pulled apart several feet. The building
itself, of steel frame construction and well braced,
was only slightly injured. The brickwork was
cracked here and there, and in the center, where the
massive machinery prevented the placing of much
crossbracing, the side walls bulged slightly. Salinas
is several miles from the fault line.
The steel railroad bridge across the Pajaro River,
having five spans resting on concrete pillars, was
directly on the line of the fault, crossing it obliquely.
It affords a striking example of the power of the
temblor. Here one side of the river bank moved
away from the other eighteen inches. As a result
the bridge was pulled apart at one end, the concrete
abutment sliding away beneath the tremendously
heavy plate girders which rested upon it, so far that
the latter had little more than the edge to support
them. Beyond, one of the massive concrete bases
of the bridge spans — some fifteen feet through in
either direction — was cracked from side to side
and the truss resting on it shifted, and the whole
bridge was twisted out of alignment.
Northward, the fault crosses the Santa Cruz
mountains. At Loma Prieta it caused landslides
from both sides of the cation and buried a lumber
mill one hundred feet deep. Near Wrights it split
the roof of the railroad tunnel which crossed it,
seven hundred feet below the surface, and loosened
great quantities of crushed rock; also, it blocked
various tunnels with landslides.
Further north the fault runs through the prop
erties of the Spring Valley Water Company, from

48 THE FAULT LINE
which San Francisco draws most of its water sup
ply. The great Crystal Springs dam of stone and
concrete — one of the largest in existence — was
within a quarter of a mile of the line of the fault, but
is wholly uninjured.
The fault passed right through the old Crystal
Springs Dam, which is of earth construction and
divides the upper Crystal Springs reservoir from the
lower one formed by the great dam just mentioned.
The shock twisted it sharply, at the line, the western
portion moving northward eight feet.
A few miles north of Crystal Springs reservoir
is the San Andreas reservoir, impounded by San
Andreas dam, which was directly on the line of
the fault. This dam is artificial at each end, the
natural rock of a pinnacle forming a short section
between. Luckily for the Spring Valley Company
— luckily indeed for the dwellers on the lowlands
below — the fault line passed through the rock and
not through the artificial portion, and although it
was badly cracked, no real injury to the dam
resulted. The portion to the west of the fault, how
ever, moved northward seven feet.
No such luck availed, however, in the case of
the company's pipe-lines, which afford striking evi
dence of the earthquake's power. For some little
distance the Pilarcitos pipe-line — thirty inches in
diameter — runs almost along the fault, zigzagging
across it at various angles. In places it is pulled
apart, the rivets shearing off as clearly as if cut with
a chisel; in other places it is buckled back sharply
to right or left, forming an abrupt shoulder; in
others it is telescoped, one section upon another.

THE FAULT LINE 49
At one place the pipe is as neatly sheared across,
diagonally, as a piece of soft rubber tubing would be
if cut by a sharp knife.
Near the head of the lakes a pipe-line crosses a
caiion from side to side, dropping down one hill and
ascending the other. Near the bottom of the canon
it crosses the fault line at an angle like that between
the arms of a capital X. It is twisted and thrust
aside, as are the fences and everything else cross
ing the fault; but, in addition, it is telescoped in
various places, a total distance of fifty-nine inches.
The measurements show that the sides of the cafion
are more than four feet closer together than before.
Everywhere along the fault line the fences show
the same result. On both sides of the line they have
the same direction as before ; but at the fault line
they are no longer continuous, the portion on the
west being from six to twenty feet north of that on
the east. The two parts, however, are still con
nected by short intervening lengths of fence that
have changed their direction from east-and-west to
north-and-south (roughly speaking) and strangely
enough, the connecting pieces, by their buckling,
twisting, and overlapping, show that the ends of the
displaced portions are nearer to each other than
originally. The western portion, in other words, not
only moved northward for several feet, and dropped
somewhat, but, in addition, was thrown over toward
the east as it moved, thereby jamming in tightly all
the soil that lay between. In no other way is this
queer result to be accounted for.
North of the Spring Valley properties the fault
continues, through an open country, to Mussel Rock.

5(1 THE FAULT LINE
Through this region it appears usually as a sharply
defined belt of crisscross cracking in the soil, with
narrower belts of the same sort a few yards away
on each side. A slight dropping of the west side of
the fault line is apparent, and the tilting and piling
up of the turf along the line shows plainly the jam
ming together that accompanied the general move
ment. Perhaps the most striking effect produced by
the shock is that to be seen in the neighborhood of
Mussel Rock. The rock itself is a slight promontory
rising to a height of about a hundred feet and pro
jecting a short distance beyond the general line of
the beach, a few miles south of San Francisco. Just
behind it the San Mateo hills end in a sandy bluff
rising about five hundred feet above the beach and
continuing some miles northward. The fault line
extended to and beyond this bluff just north of Mus
sel Rock, and the bluff, like the last billiard ball in
a row, received the whole force of the shock without
having anything to which to transmit it. As a re
sult, that part near the fault went to pieces com
pletely. About a mile to the north of the real line
of the fault the double-track roadbed of the Ocean
Shore Railroad was being graded along the side of
this bluff ; the sand thrown down by the earthquake
completely obliterated all that had been done, and
left a monster steam shovel buried, upside down,
a hundred feet down the slope.
This was trivial, however, as compared to the
disturbance on the fault line itself. Here the whole
side of the cliff for half a mile broke away with a
crash, and slid down the slope and toward the sea.

52 THE FAULT LINE
When it had stopped, the far-flying outer portions
from the base of the cliff had formed a new promon
tory reaching well out in the ocean, and the upper
part was some two hundred feet lower than before.
Cracked and contorted it was, to be sure, but in the
main the surface had ridden along undisturbed on
the sliding sands below, and bore the same covering
of underbrush as before. A cabbage patch at the
top of the hill was cut in two by the slide; while
part of it remained on the hilltop, another portion
reposed unharmed some three hundred feet below
and the remainder either hung on terraces near the
top or was stretched out on the steep slope between.
The ocean soon washed away the new promontory,
as it was mainly soft sand ; but back from the beach
a little valley runs down to the sea where none
existed before.
North of the entrance to San Francisco Bay is
the Marin Peninsula, between the bay and the ocean,
the Tamalpais ridge being its backbone. Between
this ridge and the lowlying hills further west, there
is a narrow valley, constituting an easy pass north
ward; it runs in the direction of the fault line, and
in line with it. At its southern end Bolinas Bay runs
into it ; at the north Tomales Bay — both long nar
row inlets having the same general direction.
Plainly at some remote period there was a subsi
dence through here, just as in the San Andreas
cafion. The fault line appears at the head of the bay
at Bolinas, and extends twenty miles over the roll
ing ground of the valley just mentioned to the head
of Tomales Bay, where it disappears in the soft

THE FAULT LINE 53
tideflats. At the little town of Olema, a few miles
south of Tomales Bay, a striking example of its
action appears. On one of the farms there the
fault line passes diagonally under a large barn and
within a few feet of a house. About three-quarters
of the barn was west of the fault; it moved as a
whole more than sixteen feet without any injury
except breaking the foundation joists under the
other quarter. The house just beyond moved a like
distance. Formerly three stately eucalyptus trees
stood before the windows. They are now far to one
side; as the fault passed between the house and
the trees, the former shifted and the latter remained
in their old position. The owner of the adjoining
farm complains that the lane which ran past his
barn down to his pasture has been moved, so that he
has to go around the corner of the barn now to get
to it, instead of straight ahead. The road to Inver
ness, passing over the marsh at the head of Tomales
Bay, now shows a sharp reverse curve where for
merly it was as straight as a string. It is offset
twenty feet; this is the greatest amount of shifting
anywhere on the fault line.
In this region the soil is a soft and deep allu
vium, and the vibrations caused by the shock were
very pronounced. The whole mass of soft earth
trembled like jelly ; when the shaking was over, the
soil of the fields settled down in its old place (except
along the fault line itself), but the stiff surface of the
roads was in some places very badly cracked. A
wagon bridge at Olema was laid flat; another, at
Point Reyes Station (near the head of Tomales
Bay), was arched several feet by the narrowing of

54

THE FAULT LINE

the creek it crossed. A train there was overturned
just as it was about to pull out for San Francisco.
Beyond Tomales Bay the line of the fault
passes under the ocean as far as Fort Ross, twenty-
five miles above, where it reappears in a country of
redwood forests. Through these it passes about
forty miles to Point Arena, always in the same
direct line. In the redwood forests we find the same
manifestations of power as elsewhere; great trees,
five and six feet in diameter, are thrown down,
twisted about by the roots, or split open for as much
as forty feet from the ground. At Point Arena the
fault runs down through the sand to the beach and
out into the ocean. How far northward it continues
is not known, as its direction takes it farther and
farther away from the coast, but serious damage to
coast towns as far north as Eureka indicates that the
fracture extends northward for many miles.
Apart from the actual shifting and displace
ment of the ground along the line of the fault, the
greatest damage seems to have been done several

I'hflo
Stanford Chapel and Arch

bv irci.iii

THE FAULT LINE

55

miles away from it. The houses on the Spring Val
ley properties were not seriously damaged by the
shock; the Crystal Springs dam seems not to have
been damaged at all. At Olema one house — a very
old one — was thrown down, but others, including
those nearest the fault line, were scarcely injured.
The zone of greatest disturbance on the fault
line itself extended from Point Reyes, forty-five
miles northwest of San Francisco, to Point Arena,
fifty-five miles beyond. In Santa Rosa, twenty
miles east of the fault, and directly east of this
region, the damage was very severe. But two
structures were left standing in the business sec
tion. In San Jose, fifty miles south of San Fran
cisco, and twelve miles east of the fault, the shock
brought down many of the most pretentious build
ings ; and Stanford University, seven miles from the
fault, suffered severely. All these places were on
the soft, sandy ground of the lowlands.
At Santa Rosa the destruction by the earthquake
was almost complete ; all the brick and stone build
ings (except two) fell, and many of the frame struc
tures did likewise. The tall dome of the Court

Photos by Weidner
Stanford Gymnasium and Library

56 THE FAULT LINE
House toppled over on the roof. The National
Flour Mills, a long narrow brick building, was re
duced to a pile of bricks, except at one end. The St.
Rose Hotel, a four-story structure, collapsed in such
a way that people walking about on its flat roof
were scarcely above those in the street. To a great
extent, probably, poor construction can be blamed
for the damage suffered in Santa Rosa ; particularly
the use of mortar mixed with river sand and with
lime instead of cement. Santa Rosa, like San Fran
cisco, suffered a devastating fire after the earth
quake; proportionately its loss of life and property
were even heavier.
In San Jose the damage by the earthquake was
not as general as at Santa Rosa, although a number
of important buildings were severely damaged. In
some places structures careened sidewise, and in
others parts of brick and stone walls fell. The Hall
of Records, a beautiful and impressive, granite-
walled structure, was bulged out on all sides so that
the walls had to be rebuilt. At Agnews, a few
miles from San Jose, a great deal of damage was
done at the State Insane Asylum. The center part
of the main building — a five-story brick structure
of poor design and poorer construction — fell ; a
hundred of the attendants and patients were killed.
Serious damage was also done at Stanford Uni
versity. The buildings were of a peculiar and very
pleasing design, patterned somewhat after the style
of the Missions. For the most part they were of
one story, with a wide colonnade. The material in
general was brick, with sandstone facing Some of
the buildings were of two and even three stories;

Photos by Derleth

Buildings at San Jose and at Agnews

58 THE FAULT LINE
there was a beautiful memorial chapel, with a tall
spire, and also a splendid memorial arch, of rather
top-heavy design. The arch was far from strong in
construction, the upper portion consisting of a mere
empty box, without cross walls, and almost without
bracing. The earthquake threw down the heavy box
at the top, and cracked the sides of the arch badly,
splitting off one of the corners. The heavy spire of
the chapel dropped through the roof ; the elaborately
ornamented gable ends fell out. The library and
the gymnasium, newest of Stanford's buildings, be
came shapeless wrecks. The dainty arched gate
ways at the entrance of the Campus spread them
selves out flat on the ground. The original build
ings, erected in 1891, were practically unharmed —
all but the museum, part of which was destroyed.
In Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley, across the
bay from San Francisco, the damage was compara
tively slight. Some chimneys fell; some buildings
in Oakland were damaged by the tumbling away of
part of their walls; a church lost a large part of
its box-like tower; a little theatre collapsed, killing
five people; some old, ramshackle buildings tele
scoped. Here, again, it was the old story of decrep-
,itude or poor construction.
Other cities equally near the fault line suffered
very little. Petaluma and San Rafael, while much
nearer the fault line than Santa Rosa, experienced
a much less severe shaking. Santa Cruz, at the same
distance from the line as Salinas, suffered very slight
injury. It would seem that the comparative im
munity of these cities was due to their being on

Photos by Derleth

Buildings at Santa Rosa and at Oakland

60 THE FAULT LINE
rocky ground, while the places more severely dam
aged were on the looser soil of the valleys.
San Francisco was partly on sand and partly on
rock; various degrees of damage resulted. Of it
self the earthquake did not do much damage there ;
it was in its indirect results that it was so terrible.
For it snapped every pipe bringing water into the
city, and started fires everywhere.

IV
THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
Even while the people were yet looking at the
strangely swaying houses and the serene sky, it was
discovered that fires were starting everywhere
throughout the city. Every district, nearly every
neighborhood, had its blaze — some of them caused
by falling and uninsulated electric wires, others
originating in broken flues, and stoves upset in res
taurant and hotel kitchens and flimsy tenements.
It is known that there were fifty-two "original"
fires on that fatal morning. Probably there were
many others that did not get into the records of the
Fire Department.
Some were put out by the occupants of the
houses where they occurred; others, finding things
more to their liking, made a stubborn resistance,
and were controlled only after a lively battle ; many,
too, getting a better start, growled and snarled like
wolves uncaged, and were soon beyond the power of
men to cope with.
At Twenty-second and Mission a fire started,
and a quarter of a block was burned before it was
controlled. Others occurred out in the "Western
Addition" — at Hayes and Laguna streets, at Bu
chanan street and Golden Gate avenue, and on
Polk street near Clay. Though in blocks solidly
built up of wooden structures, they were confined to
a few buildings.
Many other fires were already raging down
town in the wholesale district north of Market

62 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
Street, and in the tenement and manufacturing dis
tricts to the south. There, where many fires raged
among flimsy, tumble-down structures, the task was
great. The firemen were scattered by many alarms.
From the first the streets resounded with the hurry
ing engines. Here an instant to subdue some flame
almost at the moment of ignition; then, panting
away in response to some other, perhaps more im
portant, call. The department, on which the safety
of the city depended, was no longer a concentrative
force. Those first alarms had cut it up into small
squads, and scattered them along a great skirmish
line. Some found the hydrants dry from the first;
others for a time had water. Most of the latter were
effectively fighting their separate fires ; others were
too few in numbers, too limited of apparatus, to do
more than fight and fight, and hope for reinforce
ments. None of them were impotent, all had cour
age and grit and training; but their task was too
great, their isolation from their brothers too com
plete. And as they fought and fought, and hoped for
reinforcements, the streams from the fire hose dwin
dled away. Puzzled, confused, the men stood help
less, with the nozzles empty in their hands. Then
the truth dawned upon them that the mains had
been broken by the earthquake, and that the supply
of millions of gallons stored in the reservoirs was
seeping itself away into the soil, useless in this hour
of greatest need.
Serious as this loss of the water was, it was the
breaking out of so many fires at once, and the

w

64 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
absence of their chief, even more than the failing
water, that made the task of the firemen so hopeless.
From many places came the call for more men; and
from the hearts of many men in anguish went forth
the prayer for the chief to come — the chief they
felt to be equal to the emergency.
Foreseeing such a conflagration as had just
started, forethinking even of a water supply cut off.
Chief Sullivan had been perfecting his plans through
many years. In his own mind he knew what would
be best to do. He had the confidence of his men.
He could count on them to carry out unquestionably
whatever heroic measures might be necessary. And
now that the long-feared event had arrived, those
men fought on and prayed for his coming, not know
ing, then, that he was among the first victims of the
temblor. It is known, now, that all that were lack
ing were leadership, and discipline, and a plan of
operation. Water there was in the bay, and equip
ment, and willing men; but these were as nothing
in the unforeseen emergency without the chief. But
he, hurrying to his wife's aid in headquarters, had
been struck down by a wall from an adjoining build
ing and received injuries from which he died, three
days later, unconscious to the end of the fate that
had overtaken his beloved city.
Throughout the city the firemen struggled to
put out the many fires, any one of which might
cause a conflagration. Those struggles, however,
were only skirmishes ; the real battle was beginning
in the district south of Market street There the
dwellers in ramshackles were scarcely in the streets
when fires sprang up all around them; there the tin-

THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE 65
der-heaped blocks spontaneously burst into flame in
many places. In this district, as elsewhere, many
detached fires were soon subdued ; but others, either
larger in themselves or occurring several to the
block, had early grown into fires of threatening pro
portions. The firemen, willing, anxious, but badly
scattered and soon deprived of water, were pow
erless. In a perfect devil-dance of fury the flames
leaped among the crowded houses already shaken
into tinder piles. As far east as the water front, and
west to Eighth street, (which faces the City Hall),
every street had its fire. From Mission street south
to Harrison, innumerable tongues of fire shot up —
ever spreading, ever growing as they spread — lick
ing up in an instant whole blocks in their course —
darting down now this street, now that, to leave it
bare of all its buildings — writhing in sinuous ecs
tasy — never stopping in that wild devastating
dance. Soon the whole district was a cauldron in which
brick buildings with their steel and iron girders
crumbled away, and machinery of a thousand sorts
melted into a conglomerate mass of waste, and in
whose fierce heat frame structures flashed into sud
den nothingness. As the sightseers were on their
way to the parks and hilltops to watch the progress
of the flames, the many separate fires were eating
their way rapidly toward each other ; and each, like
an octopus, was sending out horrid tentacles in all
directions. Block after block went down; the fire
men, always fighting, were driven steadily back,
unable to make a lasting stand. Fire boats, tugs.

66 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
and other sea craft pumped water from the bay at
an early hour ; the firemen used water from cisterns,
and from broken sewers and mains as long as it
lasted; but still the flames spread, unrestrained,
save for the temporary check of a street to cross,
or a brick wall, or a pitifully insufficient water
supply. A case in point was on the water front. East
street, south from Market, and a strip extending a
block or two to the lower manufacturing district,
was built up of tumble-down buildings — remnants
of a past decade. Here were all the customary sur
roundings of the water front of any large sea port.
Ship chandleries, "cheap John" clothing stores, sai
lor's hotels, restaurants, little corner groggeries, and
various places of uncertain business, sprawled them
selves in tottering structures for blocks around.
When fires started very early Wednesday morning,
these places burned with the quick fury of a crum
pled paper in a stove. The manufacturing places
just beyond soon caught from the fierce blaze thus
started, and began a conflagration far beyond the
power of the crippled department to control.
Another large fire was getting under way at
the same time across Market street, among similar
buildings. Another was further north, at East and
Pacific, and another along Sansome near California.
Through the wholesale district that lay between,
these three gradually ate their way toward each
other, and north toward Telegraph Hill.
Up Market street, through the wholesale dis
trict on one side, and the lower manufacturing dis
trict on the other, the fires traveled, their advance

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Fire South of Market Street

Photos by Estcy

68 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
growing slower as they reached brick buildings of
a more solid sort. Wherever brick buildings stood
side by side only one at a time burned. Each waited
its turn, offering but a slight check to the onsweep
of the flames at the side walls, but soon igniting,
and finally passing the fire on to the next in line.
Some frame buildings were interspersed with the
brick, and their burning was very rapid.
Gradually Market street west to Sansome be
came the point of juncture of two immense fires.
Beyond, other great fires came down the south side
of Market street to meet them. The Palace Hotel,
world-famous, stood between.
Early in the morning a fire at the power sta
tion on Stevenson street, in the shadow of the Call
Building, and but a short distance beyond the Pal
ace, had eaten its way toward Fourth, then on either
side to Mission and to Market, following the line of
least resistance — the line of flimsy, wooden con
struction. As on the water-front, in fact as every
where in the city where the fire found old wood
awaiting it, these buildings on Stevenson and
Fourth were the scene of a fierce, quick fire.
Here, also, as throughout the city during the
days of its burning, these shacks acted as huge kind
ling piles for the better buildings around. The fire
fought its way through to Mission street direct,
and flames began to pour from the buildings there ;
from old St. Patrick's Church, and soon from the
Grand Opera House, further down the street toward
Third. The playhouse had long been a part of the
city's tradition, and only a few hours before its walls
had re-echoed the strains of "Carmen," at the open-

The "Call" Building Burning

Photo by Hecht

70 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
ing of the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company's
season. It contained the company's wardrobes and
stage settings — eight great carloads. It burned
quickly from the moment of ignition. The fire-
weakened walls crumbled ; the roof fell in upon the
smoldering embers; nothing was left but the tra
dition. Slowly the fire traveled through to Market
street, attacking the rear wall of a four-story sta
tionery store opposite the end of Grant avenue.
The store contained a large stock of artists' materi
als, stationery and printing papers, pictures, and
mouldings — all highly inflammable material — and
shortly flames were darting from every window.
For a time the firemen had a stream of water, but
it was wofuUy inadequate, and soon shrunk into a
mere dribble. The building became a seething fur
nace, and in an incredibly short time was a smolder
ing ruin. The flames approached the Third street corner.
Their progress was marked by the slow ignition of
the successive "fireproof" buildings en route. On the
corner stood the Call Building, most famous of all the
city's office buildings, and one of the best and most
beautiful in the country. Covering a small ground
space, but of extreme height, and with the elevators
in the center, it made a splendid flue for the flames.
Fanned by their own current, and drawn up by the
fierce draft, they made quick headway, beginning at
the third floor and spreading rapidly. The building
throughout its entire eighteen stories was soon a
shaft of fire.

THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE 71
It was a spectacle not soon to be forgotten. The
soldiers had taken possession of Market street and
had driven the crowds back. They gathered in
Kearny and O'Farrell and other nearby streets, and
looked, awe-struck, at the many windows belching
flame, like so many blast furnaces. Up and down,
and far out into the streets, and high in the air, the
fire raged, a roaring, devastating, uncombatable
force. Those who watched began to realize the
magnitude of the conflagration ; it had become some
thing greater than they had supposed possible.
With saddened hearts they thought of the price that
was being paid for the magnificent display, and won
dered how a fire they had at first thought would be
put out in an hour or two had succeeded in reaching
their cherished "Call." Gradually it had grown to
be something demoniacal — a godless monster dese
crating their temples. They resented the fire,
madly, with hate.
At the same time fires were reaching Market
street midway between Fourth and Fifth, and Fifth
and Sixth, and Sixth and Seventh. One by one the
great buildings fronting on the south side of Market
went down. The morning began to wear away, and
the crowds that thronged Nob Hill and other high
places gradually realized that all the district south
of Market was doomed. A pall of smoke hid the far-
lying districts, but they knew that the fire was
working its way there, too, and must eventually
spread far out into the Mission.
Of what was actually taking place there behind
the smoke they knew nothing. No regular papers
were distributed that morning; no extras were is-

72 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
sued; no man knew what was happening beyond
the range of his own vision. Oblivious to the stir
ring scenes around, the newspaper bulletin boards
foolishly announced the trivial news of the day be
fore — the doings of Congress and the President,
and all the other commonplace matter that had
seemed so important then. As to the real news of
the. day there was nothing anywhere; nothing as to
the damage in other parts of the city, the number of
fatalities, the fate of nearby cities — nothing but
anxious speculation, and a chance word here and
there. Disquieting rumors began to circulate — that
the city's prisoners lay dead in the ruins of the jail;
that hundreds had been crushed at the City Hall and
thousands killed in various hotels south of Market
street; that the Mechanics' Pavilion had burned
before the injured and dying who had been taken to
it could be removed to places of safety. None knew,
then, how little truth there was in most of the
rumors. Later wild stories that Chicago had slid
into Lake Michigan, that Manhattan Island was
submerged, that all the Pacific Coast cities were de
molished by earthquake, or were burning, spread
among the people; but they created only a mild
surprise. They were thought probable enough, but
of doubtful origin. Anyway it would be time to
find out after the fire stopped and ordinary life had
been resumed. The people were not worrying at
all about the outcome of the fire. It had not crossed
Market street; and in the wholesale district it
seemed to be dying out. The frequent roar of explo
sions, and the quick puffs of smoke as building after
building was blown up, indicated a stubborn contest

Photos by Dana and Weidner

Rapidly Spreading Fires

74 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
there, and the slow spread of the flames seemed to
presage success.
At about ten o'clock the word was passed
among the watchers on the hills that a fire had
started in Hayes Valley, and it needed but the ris
ing columns of smoke from the neighborhood of
Gough and Hayes streets to confirm the rumor.
Of the origin of this fire, it is claimed that a woman,
after satisfying her curiosity for a time, went into
her house to breakfast on ham and eggs. The chim
ney was broken, the house took fire, and to the con
flagration working elsewhere throughout the city
was added another great fire. This manner of
accounting for it is so plausible that the conflagra
tion it started became generally known as the "ham
and egg fire."
Finding block after block of frame buildings in
its path and with a brisk breeze blowing behind it,
the fire burned rapidly in the direction of the City
Hall, turning aside for a while to leap the space of a
whole block to the lofty spires of St. Ignatius
Church and College on Van Ness avenue. This
was an institution that had cost nine hundred thou
sand dollars to build, and, with its magnificent organ
and mural paintings of the finest, was reputed to be
the grandest Jesuitical church in the world. The
building, with the organ, the mural paintings, and
all the invaluable emblems it contained, were de
stroyed. Only gaping, unroofed walls were left.
A few minutes before there had been no fire within
several blocks. There was no warning, no oppor
tunity to save any of the precious contents.

THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE 75
With equal suddenness flying brands reached the
huge Mechanics' Pavilion on Larkin street, between
Hayes and Grove, — a great barn of a place which
had, earlier in the day, been converted into an emer
gency hospital. Quickly the injured and the dying
were moved, in such conveyances as came to hand,
and the building was abandoned.
Built all of wood, and hardly more than a shell
at best, the Pavilion burned fiercely, and communi
cated the flames to the City Hall, already wrecked
by the earthquake. In the yawning cavities left by
the fallen walls the fire found a means of easy en
trance. On the top floor at the southeast corner —
nearest point to the Pavilion — was the Law Li
brary; and here the fire caught. It spread from
chamber to chamber, each burning fiercely in its
turn, but each, too, igniting slowly through the thick
partitions. The building burned for three days, just
as a mine burns — without hurrying to get through.
But when the work was done it was complete. Not
a paper, save those few in the vaults, not a book in
the Public Library or the Law Library, scarcely a
document in the offices of the County Clerk, the
Recorder, the Assessor, and the other officials was
left to tell the story of the City and County of San
Francisco for forty odd years.
By late afternoon the Hayes Valley fire had
made its way down to Market street without
spreading dangerously either northward or west
ward, and seemed about to burn itself out. Across
Market street to the south, nothing remained ; from
beyond the City Hall clear to the bay, everything
had been consumed.

76

THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE

Almost the last to go of the buildings fronting
the south line of Market was the far-famed Palace
Hotel. Threatened by neighboring fires from the
very first, its roof tanks and the untiring work of
its employees had saved it, though at times it was
actually ablaze. But at last the water was ex
hausted and nothing remained but to leave the struc
ture to its fate. With its flag flying as proudly as
ever, the famous pile awaited the inevitable. Soon
flames fastened themselves upon it; gradually they
spread from room to room and from floor to floor,
working their way slowly downward from the roof.
The interior, with its rich furnishings, became a
seething furnace that burned till late in the after
noon; finally there remained only the massive brick
walls, standing as staunch as ever, undamaged by
either the earthquake or the fire. Ablaze it was
magnificent; burned, it became a majestic ruin, with
a dignity and beauty all its own.
With the Palace went much of old San Fran
cisco. Wherever the city was known, the name

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THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE

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Palace Hotel was familiar. It was one of the most
famous hotels in the world. Its register was an enu
meration of the notables who had visited the city,
and its hospitality was a pleasant memory to thou
sands of people in all parts of the world.
Even as the Palace, and its annex, the Grand,
were burning, the fire that had started from the
water front reached them, arid the destruction of
the south side of Market street, and of the district
beyond, was complete. West of the Palace naught
but swaying walls remained where great retail es
tablishments had been ; while southward from them

Photo by IJecht

Market Street East from Jones

78 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
Stretched a smoking prairie with here and there a
tall chimney to mark where some house had stood.
Eastward, from the Palace to the ferry, the fire had
passed through half a mile of well-built brick
and iron structures — wholesale houses and fac
tories — and had left nothing but charred ruins.
In the wholesale district to the north of Market
the fire had made slow progress.
All morning it had been held east of Sansome
Street. Most of the buildings were brick, some were
stone, some even had steel frames, and all offered
the customary check at the side walls. A few
wooden structures here and there made hot, quick
fires, but the general progress of the conflagration
was slow — very slow. All day a stubborn fight
had been waged against it, with a scant supply of
water from the sewers and the bay. Explosives had
been used persistently to raze threatened buildings
in the path of the flames. Through the afternoon
the firemen prayed in vain for the usual west wind
to come, and drive the flames back to the bay ; but
only mocking breezes broke the strange calm.
Again and again it seemed that the fire here was
subdued; but each time, when its advance was
checked in one direction, it spread in another, ever
breaking away from the firefighters at some new
point. Slowly, but none the less certainly, it ad
vanced upon the base of Telegraph Hill first, then
toward the financial district of Montgomery street,
and the retail district of Kearny. All afternoon the
burning of a new eight-story warehouse full of
paper, at Sansome and Clay Streets, afforded a
brilliant spectacle to those on the hills, and by its

THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE

79

intense heat sufficed to spread the fire among the
little fruit markets and print shops nearby. For
the first time it worked west of Sansome street. A
desperate stand was made to prevent it from reach
ing the slender eight-story Pacific Mutual Building
at Montgomery and Sacramento, — the city's first
building of any height. But despite all endeavors
the flames at length attacked it from the building
adjoining and that at the rear, and from the Italian-
American Bank Building across Sacramento street.
Even then it seemed that the fire would be checked.
To the south, fronting California street, were the
splendid eleven-story steel and stone Kohl Building,
the Mercantile Trust Company's smaller structure
of massive granite, and the excavation for the new
building of the Bank of California; eastward, all had
been burned already. .
But here, too, the hope of 'victory failed; here,
too, the fire turned aside when it seemed cornered —
leaving the Kohl Building almost undamaged. As

Photo by Estey
Wholesale District Fires Seen from Nob Hill

80 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
it worked down toward California street, a charge
of dynamite, intended to clear away a nearby small
building, scattered burning brands across Montgom
ery street, and set fire to the block runnning through
to Kearny. Quickly it crossed from Kearny to the
little arm of Chinatown that reached down the hill
beside Portsmouth Square.
And beyond Chinatown, with its huddled houses
and narrow passages and overhanging porches, lay
long miles of close-built wooden dwellings — all
the unburned part of the city save that other resi
dence district far to the south, through which the
Mission fire was eating its way, as yet unchecked.
Between, the fire from Hayes Valley was still ad
vancing along the north side of Market street and
through the upper retail district. Everywhere the
fires spread, relentless, all-powerful, overcoming the
most heroic efforts to stay their course.
So the day wore away, and with nightfall the
conflagration came to spell Doom to the watchers
on the hills ; one by one, landmarks were going —
a cloud of smoke here, elsewhere a tongue of flame,
told the story of the passing of some familiar haunt.
At first they had been merely curious watchers, but
gradually a feeling of sorrow, of regret, of love,
crept upon them. As time went on and the con
flagration spread over larger areas, there came a
tense wondering if it would all stop while there was
something, if only a little, left — something of that
beloved city in which they all had a share. In full
view of its helpless people, San Francisco was being
devoured by a monster which they were powerless

THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE 81
to subdue and the extent of whose appetite they
could only guess.
For a time the flames had seemed to be lessen
ing, and under control ; many were deceived, and
ate what little supper they could prepare, in the
fond hope that the fire would be subdued during
the night. Perhaps this confidence was shared by those
weary soldiers who, after their hard day's work, sat
down to rest and refresh themselves at the ruined
and abandoned Delmonico's restaurant on O'Farrell
street near Stockton. Perhaps they were a little
careless or even reckless; perhaps only a perverse
fate can be blamed. In some way the building
caught from the camp-fire which they had started,
and another conflagration, entirely independent of
the others, began. Delmonico's was in a fine four-
story brick-wall structure ; on one side was the
Alcazar Theatre, in a similar building, and on the
other a three-story lodging house of wood. Behind

Photo by Mullcr
Hayes Valley Fires Seen from Sixteenth Street Hill

82 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
it, running through from Geary street, were two
large six-story retail furniture stores, each contain
ing a great stock of the most inflammable material.
From the start the new fire was ungovernable ; seiz
ing on the great stock of furniture, and on the Alca
zar and Fisher's Theatres, and the Orpheum, across
O'Farrell street, it soon became a roaring conflagra
tion, which raged for hours, spreading slowly
through the brick buildings, or licking up the
wooden ones in a breath — always relentless, always
beyond the possibility of control.
During the evening, too, the fire from the whole
sale district, having thrust out an arm into China
town, stretched another down along Montgomery
and Kearny to Market, and advanced westward
along all the cross streets, through the city's retail
districts. By midnight a solid wall of fire, stretching
from Market street to Chinatown, was working
steadily out toward Powell street and Nob Hill.
Here again it seemed as if a stand would be made
— a last endeavor to stay the advance of the flames.
At Powell street. Union Square afforded an open
space for a block's width, between Geary and Post.
Half a block above was a large empty lot where a
new building was soon to be erected. Further up
the hill, the block between Pine and California was
unbuilt, save for the Stanford home, set in the midst
of an ample lawn, nearly two hundred feet from the
houses across the street; and all the next block was
occupied by the wide terrace in front of the Fair
mont. Only in the two blocks from Sutter to Pine
could the fire cross Powell street — there and in
the blocks below Geary, near Delmonico's. It

Upper Map Shows Start of the Fires
Lower Map Shows Fires at 3 A. M., Second Day

84 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
seemed that perhaps the fires could be cut apart by
these open spaces and so subdued. Across Powell
street the close-built wooden houses stretched all
the way to Van Ness avenue and beyond through
the Western Addition.
At about one o'clock the top of the slender spire
of a church on Powell above Bush caught from the
flying embers. Soon an engine was throwing a
small stream upon it, for at this point also there
was a small supply of water. Gradually the flames
spread, in spite of the water ; soon the roof ignited ;
soon after the interior. The whole structure blazed
fiercely; a row of flats just below began to burn.
Wearied, haggard, hardly able to hold the hose after
their eighteen-hour struggle, the firemen scarcely
knew where to direct the little stream, in the almost
helpless contest. Already the fire from down town
had worked half way through from the far end of
the block; a score of such streams would scarcely
have been enough to turn. back the flames from the
little corner grocery and laundry on which they
directed their scant supply. And even as they stood
there in the center of Powell street the fire reached
over their heads from the blazing church and fastened
upon the cornice of a tall apartment house on the
west side of the street, thus passing the only place
at which it seemed possible to stop its career.
In the meantime the fire from Delmonico's had
crossed Powell street and was threatening the St.
Francis Hotel, across the width of Geary street.
For a long time the building held out, and seemed
safe ; but shortly after two o'clock heavy smoke be-

THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE 85
gan to roll up from the interior and flames began to
play along the roof. Doubtless a little water could
have saved it; as it was, the burning of a mere
three-story wooden building across the street proved
sufficient to ignite it. Soon flames burst from every
window; by morning only the walls and the floors
— incombustible stone and tile — remained. Once
ablaze, the St. Francis was a great torch from which
the apartment and residence district took fire. Al
ready down-town San Francisco had all been con
sumed, except one alone of its great buildings.
At the corner of Powell and Market, running
through to Ellis, stood the James Flood Building,
just a year old. Twelve stories in height and of
monumental proportions, it was San Francisco's
mightiest office structure — greatest in size, most
massive in design.
During the morning it had stood unscathed,
while across Market street the great Parrott Build
ing, with the Emporium's tremendous stock, had
been consumed. At night the long row of build
ings adjoining it on its eastern side, and those facing
it on Ellis street, had burned; but it had still sur
vived. Later, all Powell street from Eddy to Ellis
burst into flames, and in the end fires burned on
three sides of it at once. Still it stood, an island in
a sea of fire, the fierce waves of flame beating in on
it from all sides. Finally, in the early morning —
about half past four — the intense heat of the upper
air ignited its eighth floor. With the Flood Building
went the last of San Francisco's business section.
The conquest was complete.

86 THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIRE
A line of fire, greedy, relentless, ever hurrying
on, stretched from Market street to Nob Hill, and
across the Mission district, traveling slowly, irresis
tibly westward through the city. And to the west
ward stretched an unbroken line of residences,
wooden, close-huddled — all that remained of San
Francisco.

V
THE FATEFUL DAY
Many there were who awoke that morning to a
stern realization of duty to be performed. From the
first the day was recognized as one of disorganiza
tion and strange responsibilities.
Mayor Schmitz hastened to the City Hall only
to find it a labyrinth of fallen walls. The Hall of
Justice (damaged but still tenantable) on Kearny
street opposite Portsmouth Square, was selected
for headquarters. The heads of the Police Depart
ment were already there, and an early roUcall
showed that the entire force of six hundred men
was intact and available. Soon the men were being
told off in various emergency details.
With quick intuition of the dread possibilities
from excessive drinking on such a day of excite
ment and danger, when the police would all be
needed for special work, an order was made at once
compelling the saloons to close, and officers were
dispatched through the city to put it into effect.
A few willing workers had gathered around the
Mayor, but others were needed. A list of names of
men high in civic affairs and deep in the confidence
of the people was made up. Messengers were sent
to bring them together. Street cars and telephones
were alike unavailable; "public utilities" had be
come in an instant a thing of yesterday. Dispatch
bearers hurried about on foot, on horseback, in auto
mobiles. Many of the latter were soon impressed

88 THE FATEFUL DAY
into the city's service, and went scurrying through
the streets on a thousand missions.
Fifty men formed the coterie of assistants to the
Mayor, and with former Mayor James D. Phelan
as chairman, constituted an advisory board called
the Committee of Safety. At once the Committee
planned and worked for the help of the needy, the
suppression of the criminal. As the situation grew
more grave, new tasks became apparent, and new
responsibilities had to be assumed. Soon it became
an emergency government. Ignorant as they of
course were of when the end would come or what
it would be, these men undertook to work out the
city's salvation among themselves. There is no
other case in history where a stricken city held con
tinuous control of its own affairs.
The care of the injured had to be provided for
— the country at large appealed to — fire lines es
tablished ; later the hungry would have to be fed —
the homeless housed — the half-dressed clothed ;
and all the time the machinery of government must
be kept moving; organization must be brought out
of that first chaos, and life made livable, among
200,000 helpless people, in a city deprived at a stroke
of cars, telephones, light, power, (all the tools and
conveniences on which it had come to rely), and of
food and water as well — the very means of exist
ence. Apart from the ever-present need of fighting
the fire, the first thought was for the injured. Tem
porary hospitals were established in many quarters.
All the private sanitariums opened their doors.
From the first doctors and surgeons and nurses

Photos by Waters. Muller, Estey

Scenes During the Fire '

90 THE FATEFUL DAY
were racing about the streets in automobiles, bind
ing wounds, dressing burns, and here and there pro
nouncing the dread verdict to those who sat by.
The Harbor Emergency Hospital on the water
front (long a factor in the city's care of the victims
of accidents and broils) was filled from the first. The
injured and sick and dying were taken there in large
numbers from the charnel-house south of Market.
While the fire was burning hottest all around, the
attendants worked away, unmindful of the danger.
Ambulances and patrol wagons hurried the patients
to the hospital, while others waited to remove them
should it become necessary.
Patients in the Receiving Hospital in the ruined
City Hall — miraculously uninjured themselves —
were quickly taken to the Mechanics' Pavilion,
which was at once converted into a hospital. Here,
too, were brought scores of those who had been in
jured. Autos tore madly along Market street piled
high with cots and mattresses, and bringing pre
cious supplies. Volunteer physicians worked all
morning. While the offices of many, containing
libraries and kits of instruments of priceless worth
to them, were burning, they remained with those
who needed their help. When the Pavilion was
abandoned, they joined in the exodus to the other
hospitals and to the Presidio, where a field hos
pital had been established, giving freely of their
knowledge and experience when there was nothing
else left for them to offer.
Many people came to the hospitals to seek lost
relatives. The cheery note of welcome and courage
rose here and there where the search ended happily.

THE FATEFUL DAY 91
Repressed sobs, the deep intake of fear-sprung
breath, told the story of others who went from cot
to cot without success.
Ministers of many denominations busied them
selves with the spiritual needs of the dying. Priests
of the Roman Catholic Church administered the last
sacrament to such of the dying as were of that faith.
Many, crushed by falling brick and timbers,
died during the morning, in spite of all that could
be done for them. Many others had been killed out
right or died before they could be extricated from
the wreckage. A temporary morgue was estab
lished in Portsmouth Square. As the fire came
near, some distinguishing mark was noted for the
subsequent identification of the dead, and a general
burial was made, hastily, in shallow graves — a
grim Potter's Field of the calamity.
To assist the Mayor came also the troops. Brig
adier-General Frederick Funston, temporarily in
command of the Department of the Pacific, was
quick to see the magnitude of the emergency, and
ordered out his men. Within two hours after the
earthquake fifteen hundred men were marching city
ward from the Presidio to place themselves under
the orders of the Mayor.
When the troops appeared on the streets the
impression went out that the city had been placed
under martial law. No more erroneous report of
affairs gained a general credence than this; but its
denial has had such publicity as to require only a
brief repetition here. The army, and later the navy,
the National Guard, and the cadets from the State
University, throughout the entire time of their ser-

92 THE FATEFUL DAY
vice in the city, were affiliating forces only, subject
to orders from the Mayor. Never did the city pass
out of the hands of the municipal authorities.
General Funston, a man of action, first put his
troops in the field, and afterward reported what he
had done to the Department of War at Washington,
asking Secretary Taft for the proper authorization.
The closing sentence of one of his messages is
unique. It reads: "I shall expect to receive the
necessary authority."
Soon the soldiers had separated into many de
tachments and gone off on a thousand duties, —
some to form an impassable cordon along the fire
line, some to fight hand to hand with the flames be
side the firemen, some to rescue and care for the
injured and bury the dead, all with strict orders to
enforce order at any price and to shoot looters at
sight. They helped to shut up the saloons of recal
citrant liquor dealers, and poured their stock into
the street. They arbitrarily reduced the price of
goods where merchants had made advances. They
opened some stores and confiscated the goods. They
helped some tradesmen who were distributing food
to the hungry without price, and assisted other
dealers to keep in check the anxious buyers who
feared a famine and tried to stock their larders
sufficiently to meet it. They policed the streets and
guarded the houses. Perhaps they were sometimes
domineering, even harsh, where they should have
shown the greatest patience and lenity; but in the
main they deported themselves with admirable
restraint.

THE FATEFUL DAY

93

Newspaper men were among the first in evi
dence. They saw great "scoops" in what was going
on. They must get out some "extras" right away.
There was small thought of printing facilities.
Surely some type-setting machine and press could
be found in the city when it came time to use them.
Reporters hurried from one stirring scene to another
and wrote great copy. When the hope of their
extras was shattered by the discovery that no large
press was to be had, a few went to Berkeley and
issued a combination paper, under the title, "Call-
Chronicle-Examiner." The paper told what the
men who made it knew about the earthquake and
fire, and what they heard was happening elsewhere.
The proprietors of the papers knew nothing of the
undertaking. There was too much news going to
waste to bother about authorization.

r^-mm,...M-

Photo by Estey

Mechanics' Pavilion

94 THE FATEFUL DAY
The operators of the great telegraph companies
stayed at their instruments all day. While anxious
thousands all over the country watched the bulle
tins, these men remained at their keyboards, ticking
off the story of the catastrophe with quiet heroism.
For most people the day was one of waiting and
watching only, but to some it was a time of excep
tional bustle. Wagons and push carts, backed up
to the curb in the threatened districts, were being
filled with business records to be taken to places of
safety. Expressmen made from twenty to fifty dol
lars a load. Those automobiles still in the hands of
their owners hurried along on various strange
duties. Photographers were snapping their cameras
everywhere. Bank clerks busied themselves stock
ing the vaults with their bank records and papers,
and the valuables of many merchants.
Down town, the busy and the curious were
alike gradually driven back by the fire or the sol
diery. Through the day the line of guards continu
ally reformed and shifted, stretching itself to sur
round new blocks within the doomed circle. Within,
squads of dynamiters began to appear. Everywhere
they hurried; charges were set; the men scurried
away, and with a roar and a cloud of dust a build
ing would fall. Unfortunately many charges were
set by unskilled hands, and the fire was scattered.
At this time, too, most of the "dynamiting" was
being done with ordinary black powder, the only
explosive available ; often it set fire to the ruins it
had made, or hurled burning brands in all directions.
During the morning the razing of buildings, with
but few exceptions, was confined to the neighbor-

THE FATEFUL DAY 95
hood of Washington and Jackson, Sansome, Battery,
and Front streets, with a few explosions in upper
Montgomery street. A notable exception was the
early attempt to blow up the uncompleted Monad
nock Building on Market street just across a small
alley from the Palace Hotel. This attempt failed,
as did also another made in the afternoon, at the
time the Palace was burning.
One place where the dynamiting of nearby
buildings helped in a successful fight with the flames
was at the Appraisers' Building, on Battery street,
between Washington and Jackson, where the strug
gle began early in the day.
General John T. Dare, the appraiser, had
reached the building at about eight o'clock, and
watched the fire approach from the rear on Wash
ington street. He realized that the building must
inevitably ignite unless stringent means were
adopted to save it, and gathering his few men to
gether, distributed among them buckets and pans —
anything that would hold water. Then he stationed
them at the windows. On the top of the building
was a tank containing five thousand gallons of
water. From this they drew their supply, and all
day long while the fire raged around them, and
while Washington street was being dynamited, they,
and the soldiers who had come to help them,
drenched the hot embers as they fell, and wet down
the window sills and casings when they began to
smoke — dealing out the precious water sparingly,
almost grudgingly, but well. The building was
saved.

96

THE FATEFUL DAY

At the same time a similar struggle was going
on at the Mint, far away to the southwest. Here
there was water, but the machinery that pumped it
from an artesian well had been broken by the earth
quake. The building was of heavy stonework, with
iron shutters; the chief menace was in its tarred
roof. Everything that could be drawn to the edge
was thrown into the courtyard, and while the pump
ing engine was being repaired, mops to fight the
fire with were wet in the vitriol tubs. Assailed on
two sides at close range, and on the other two at the
width only of the streets, across which were tall
wooden buildings, the Mint, with its treasure-store
of two hundred millions, was the scene of one of the
hardest and best-fought battles of the conflagration.
It lasted seven hours. Here, too, soldiers had come
to help. In the end the building was saved un-

Appraisers' Building

Photo by Hecht

THE FATEFUL DAY 97
harmed, except where the fierce heat had scaled off
part of the stone of the walls.
At the Post-office — which was almost isolated
and had only flimsy shacks for neighbors — the dan
ger was less. Once, however, the fire entered one
corner of the building, and the clerks who were there
turned aside from their work to subdue it and save
the structure. Down on the water-front the Harbor Commis
sion was at ^vork saving the wharves. The fire
boats Active and Leslie, with several thousand feet
of hose, had come down from the Navy Yard at
Vallejo, and were pouring salt water on the flames
as fast as their engines could pump it up. From
the Howard street wharf five hose lines were carried
far along the front of the fire. Marines had arrived
from Goat Island, and were hard at work where-
ever there was fighting to be done. Fire engines
were stationed along the eastern side of East street
(the other side was too hot for them) and were wet
ting down the wharf buildings and ferry houses. A
boat made frequent trips to Goat Island for fresh
water for the boilers. This fight at the water-front
was the first made where water in sufficient quan
tities was obtainable, and it was the first place where
the fire was beaten back from inflammable material.
Excepting a few small buildings. East street, south
from Market, was saved.
The wharfage was in danger almost continually
during the fire, but water and heroism saved it
intact. At one time a line five thousand feet long
was carried from the fire boats up the side of Tele-

98

THE FATEFUL DAY

graph Hill ; but it had to be abandoned there later,
and a thousand feet of hose was lost.
The fire south of Market traveled fast toward
the Mission district far to the southwest. Except
in the manufacturing district near the bay, there was
little to stop it. The buildings were mostly frame
affairs and none too well put up. Many had been
shaken down or badly shattered by the earthquake.
The flames rose higher and higher and wove them
selves into a leaden pall of smoke that hid the sun,
as they went on their uncheckable course.
At the Southern Pacific depot and freight sheds
(Third and Townsend streets) were three men
watching and waiting, armed only with a puny gar-

^

Mt

i'gii#H|ft

^p^

i^iiitiil^^^

Photos bv Derleth ami Fste
The Mint and the Post-Oifice

THE FATEFUL DAY 99
den hose. Men would laugh in calmer moments at
the antics those men went through. The fire came.
They fought it as best they could, dragging their
little toy hose around, and turning loose a few drops
where the roof was catching or a door began to
smoke, and giving up as much as a bucketful to a
red tongue that shot out at them from some blank
wall. Here they were at the front — there at the
back — around the sides — on the roof — everywhere
that they and their hose were needed — anywhere
that there might be danger. The kind of work that
makes men mad raving maniacs forever — or deities
for a spell. The fire around gave it up at last, and
away they went to see if they could do something
to help elsewhere.
Such episodes, however, were all too few. In
general the fire's course was unchecked and irresis
tible, and those whose possessions were threatened
could only await the inevitable. As the day ad
vanced it became more and more evident that no one
could foretell what the end would be. The need of
more stringent measures for the protection of life
and property also became evident as the day passed.
Lawless elements were beginning a carnival of
crime. There was some looting. It was reported
that there had been murder. Special policemen were
sworn in; soon a thousand men wore special stars.
A proclamation drafted by a member of the Com
mittee of Safety was signed by the Mayor and
ordered to print. It was sent to a printing plant at
Twenty-second and Mission where it was soon in
the forms ready to be run off; but there was no
power. Soldiers, stationed at the door, impressed

100 THE FATEFUL DAY
passing citizens in relays to work the press until
five thousand copies had been run off.
It was posted everywhere and warned people
that the troops and the police (regulars and specials)
had full authority to KILL anyone found looting,
or committing any other crime. Citizens were asked
to stay at home during the hours of darkness, and
were warned of the danger of fires from broken
chimneys. It was sought to lessen in this way the possi
bilities of new fires in the residence districts and to
suppress all forms of vice and crime. The proclama
tion was wholly without legal basis — in a way the
assumption of a dictatorship. But the iron note of
necessity rung through it, and few dared to violate
a mandate so sweeping and yet so reasonable.
In one respect, though, the proclamation was
but a grim mockery — in its admonition to the people
to stay at home at night, when thousands upon
thousands of them had no homes left, and of the
others none knew when his home, too, would go.
All day pitiful groups of them had fled from the
burning districts, abandoning their homes to the
flames. The whole district south of Market was a des
olate field of dying embers. The people from there
had early formed a weary army that had trudged
through many streets to the Presidio or Golden
Gate Park or the beach, or the San Bruno hills.
From the first they had poured out from the burning
region that had been their home.
Later, when the Hayes Valley fire started on
its ruthless course, the people there took refuge in

The Call=Chroniclc=Examincr

A\ fRVNCISCO. TtU RSDAV APBIL |0. |W6

EARTHQUAKE AND EIRE:
SAN ERANCISCO IN RUINS

NOHOPELEFT tO* ByiLDIESiWHOlE CIIY,CNyilCII0FSlTi«»^>'Oi?cowr£«a
ENTIRE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO IN
DANGER OF BEING ANNIHILATED
Bis Business Buildings Already Consumed by
Fire and Dynamite-30,000 Smaller
Structures Swept Out and Re
mainder Are Doomed
PANIC-STRICKEN PEOPLE FLEE
Ifl [MPflfllOM FflTEfOL %\m
 ION IN ins:  '¦¦¦" "  '

Combination Issue of San Francisco Papers
I'liRllliN "I I'lKHI I'Ai.l riiKIION IM-- Jlllini I'AI.I

102 THE FATEFUL DAY
Jefferson Square. They rasped trunks over the
sidewalks, set up shelters as best they could, tacked
cards upon their "stuff" that it belonged to so-and-
so, and then went back to see the fire as it neared
their homes.
In the early evening when the fire suddenly
came upon the hotel and apartment house district
adjacent to Union Square, another hurried exodus
began. One block and then another was abandoned.
Before the night was far advanced Chinatown,
too, was in the grasp of the destroying flames, and
the Chinese joined the throng.
It was a motley procession, sprung from many
places, its ranks ever filling with homeless, foot-sore
legions — orderly, and nearly silent.
Out Sutter, Bush, and Piqe streets, densely built
up with apartments, hotels, fiats, and office suites,
the flames advanced, and the residents there were
forced to flee. All day they had harbored no idea
that the fire would ever reach them. Even then,
with the flames only a block off, they did not realize
that their block, too, was doomed. They waited
with unreasoning confidence that in some way (they
knew not how) and by some hand (caring little
whose) the tide of destruction would be turned back.
They made no preparation for flight; not until the
flames were almost upon them did they leave.
Then, burdened down, they took up their retreat
from the monster that was laying desolate their fair
land of promise.
Quickly-filled trunks grated up the hills.
Wagons, most of them pulled by men, rattled over
the rough cobbles. Baby carriages and toy express

The Federal Troops, the nnem-
bers of the Regular Police Force,
and all Special Police Officers
have been authorized to KILL
any and all persons found en
gaged in looting or in the com
mission pf any other crime.
I have directed all the Gas and
Electric Lighting Companies not
to turn on Gas or Electricity until
I order them to do so; you may
therefor expect the city to remain
in darkness for an indefinite time.
I request all citizens to remain
at home from darkness until day
light of every night until order is
restored. I Warn all citizens of the dan
ger of fire from damaged or de
stroyed chimneys, broken or leak
ing gas pipes or fixtures or any
like cause. E. E. SCHMITZ, Mayor.
Dated, April 18, 1906.
ALTVATCR PRINT afl^^^ MtSSION AND Z2NO STS.

The Famous Proclamation

104 THE FATEFUL DAY
wagons rolled along packed full with the "things"
the fear-seized people had snacched up in their flight.
Pianos were bumped along the sidewalk — some went
to pieces in the process. Sewing machines slipped
along on their rollers with stacks of bedding and the
like lashed to them. Women hid their valuables
upon their persons, or carried trinkets Gipsy-wise in
handkerchiefs. Men wore columns of hats five high.
Some carried only a book. Parrots jabbered and
scolded from many cages. Some people had
blankets. Girls usually had band boxes. Boys
stretched poles between them, and carried, sus
pended there, bundles of clothing and provisions.
Once it was only a ham.
A few had the courage to smile. Friends met
and made a pitiful show of cheerfulness. Perhaps
they prayed, but it was without show. None cursed.
It was too desperate a time for visible emotion.
Many people sat down to rest, and such a state
of exhaustion had come that they slept, — a doorstep
or a cartrack or a curb for their pillow. Indomitable,
others continued the pathetic march.
To these outcasts of the flames the night was
unending. Those that had not already lain down
in the streets to rest made quick camps in the parks
and open lots. Jefferson Square was thick with
people who stretched blankets or rugs or over
coats over bed slats or between trees (anything
to have a roof over their heads) and tried to call it
home. Some slept. The lawns were hidden beneath
the close-lying ranks of exhausted people.
Many women sat alone, guarding the little
hoard of rescued chattels, while their menfolk went

THE FATEFUL DAY 105
from camp to camp in a vain search for their
children ; for families had been separated and loved
ones lost in the migration. In fitful dreams babies
cried out, and their mothers whispered bravely that
it was all right. Under a tree in Golden Gate Park
a child was born.
Over all hung a cloud, impenetrable, gold-
fringed with a dancing lace of flame that careened
and folded and flared deep cardinal against the
smoke above.

VI
THE CONQUEST
The second day of the conflagration stole upon
the city. The red glare paled slowly and_grew
yellow. Spectral flames of limpid ghastliness shot
up in endless array from the fire zone. Overhead
still hung the heavy smoke-cloud, lowering, sullen.
All night the sweep of the fire had been widen
ing. Everywhere the flames were spreading, resist
less, all-powerful. Two immense conflagrations,
either of which was great enough to destroy a city,
were sweeping down, the one upon the Mission dis
trict, the other upon Van Ness avenue and the West
ern Addition. Chinatown, the St. Francis, the James
Flood Building, block after block of retail business
houses, hotels, and homes, had been the sacrifice of
the night. Dawn brought no abatement. Ten blocks
across, the fire roared down upon the Western Ad
dition. Powell street, where it had been earlier
thought the fire could be stopped, had been added to
the long list of important streets devastated by the
flames. It was recognized that nothing could be
done to stem that awful tide until it reached Van
Ness avenue, which because of its great width would
make a final stand possible. Come what might, and
whatever the cost, every effort must lend itself to
make Van Ness avenue the ultimate boundary of
the fire. And so the people were driven out, and
half a mile of close-built houses was abandoned to

THE CONQUEST 107
the burning, while everywhere preparations were
made for the last desperate fight.
Early in the morning Nob Hill, famed every
where as the home site of some of the city's greatest
pioneers, was devastated. The hill looks down pre
cipitously toward the east from Powell street, and
commands an exquisite view of the bay and straits.
The world has few such choice spots to offer. In
early days when it was far from the whirl and bustle
of the growing city, its slopes were chosen for the
palaces of Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, James L.
Flood, and CoUis P. Huntington. Later the Crocker
mansions were added, and later still came the Fair
mont Hotel on the very crest of the hill, towering
as a guardian above the entire city, and overlooking
the bay for miles. The immense caravansary was
not fully completed, but had already become one of
the crowning achievements of the west. The home
of Mark Hopkins, which had been given to the Uni
versity of California for an art institute and gallery,
contained a number of the world's famous paintings,
as well as statuary and bronzes of the finest, and
represented in the West what the Metropolitan Mu
seum in New York represents in the East. Students
from all the coast cities attended its lectures and
classes. When it was seen that there was no way to save
it, a young officer impressed on-lookers to help his
small force in removing the more choice of the col
lection. No wagon could be had whether for love
or money, or upon requisition. Many of the pictures
were cut from the frames and rolled up; thus a
single man could carry several at a time out of

108 THE CONQUEST
harm's way. But the time was too short and the
heat grew too great to get all away. The marble
pieces were set out in the middle of the Flood lawn,
as were many of the pictures, also. Later, when the
fire came, they were burned there.
The Institute was given up. The houses and
the hotel were deserted. What has been saved
was a mere bagatelle to what was lost. Nob Hill,
which for years had stood sacred to the exclusive
and the elect, became in its ruin no different than
any other of the hills already devastated by the con
flagration. Its majesty was no more — its tradition
a mere legend.
The officials were forced to abandon their tem
porary headquarters in the Fairmont, to which they
had fled the previous afternoon, in fancied security,
when the advancing fire drove them from the Hall
of Justice. What a transitory affair the city gov
ernment had become! Determined to get beyond
the possible reach of the flames in this latest move,
the Mayor and his helpers established themselves
in Franklin Hall, on Fillmore street, a mile west
of the Fairmont.
Skirting the far line where it was seen that the
conflagration must be checked if anything of the
city was to be saved, the soldiers waited, as a force
in the field waits to be attacked. The exhausted
firemen lay down in the streets to gather strength
for the last battle. A few engines were there with
fires lighted, but burning low, and in the street
snaked idle hose, a mile long, their ends dipping into
the strait. Dynamite was brought. Loaded field
guns were trained to rake the east side of the street.

Photos by H'atcrs. Weidncr, Dana

Watching the Fire

110 THE CONQUEST
Everything was put in readiness, and the siege be
gun. It became chiefly a day of waiting. The streets
and open spaces beyond Van Ness were thronged.
Some refugees were watching in Lafayette Square,
but mostly the people thereabouts were those who
had been on the hills yesterday — today drawn irre
sistibly back by the fascinating horror of it all.
There is something almost pleasant in looking at
a monster. Soon the flames were racing down the western
slope of Nob Hill — racing across California street
to meet the fire on the south — racing pell-mell be
yond Sacramento street and back to the perlieus of
the destroyed Chinatown. There was no wind to
drive them, and no man there to stay them. They
went where they wished, spreading in all directions
at once, and making short work of the solid blocks
of wooden buildings. The people and the soldiers
waited for them to reach Van Ness. The firemen
rested. During this time the other conflagration, a mile
away, was traveling toward the Mission, mowing
down the buildings in its path with insatiable ra
pacity. The various fires south of Market had
united, and with unbroken front, were sweeping on
through streets and streets and streets, until one
grew tired of counting. Persistent hard work held
them in check on one side along Howard street,
where there were a few tanks and cisterns. On the
west they seemed certain to go as far as Dolores.
At places the fire crept but slowly, checked by
vacant lots. At Twelfth and Mission streets fully

THE CONQUEST 111
half a block was vacant. Near the Valencia street
power-house the neighborhood was sparsely built.
Except where open spaces retarded it, however, the
fire was quick in its work. A note pinned under a
door-bell on Guerrero street told "May" that at two
o'clock "Ethel" had gone to "Bessie's" on Capp
street, three blocks away. At half-past two Capp
street was burning.
The Railroad Hospital at Mission and Four
teenth, and the St. Francis Hospital nearby, were
blown up, but without checking the flames. Extend
ing out from here for a few blocks was the more
densely populated portion of the Mission. Close-
standing wooden houses and flats fed the flames in
rapid succession. But as the fire neared Twentieth
street it abated slightly, because of the wider spaces
here and there between the houses, many of the in
dividual owners having large lawns around their
homes. The firemen had been fighting continuously
from the first — fighting against hopeless odds, but
dogged in their determination to leave nothing un
done that their limited means would permit.
Toward evening their strength failed them. They
lay down in their tracks and gave it up, too weak to
drive themselves to further effort.
Meanwhile the other fire was nearing Van Ness
with the mad rush of a storm. It came on, and on,
an angry, terrible power, before which men bowed
their heads and trembled.
The hours of waiting were over ; the time of
battle had arrived. The cannon were unlimbered,
dynamite charges were set, and soldiers, firemen.

112

THE CONQUEST

and volunteers went at the work of razing the build
ings along the east side of the avenue — a long line
of mansions, churches, and apartment houses. The
fire was but three blocks away. A slight wind had
sprung up from the west.
The torch was applied, and back fires were
started to meet the approaching conflagration. Soon
all that lay between was a raging furnace. Perhaps
never before had human eyes beheld such a sight as
was seen by the people on the slopes beyond, as
they looked across at the westerly side of Nob Hill,
and the level ground below, all in flames at once.
Virtually all the district from which the people had
migrated during the night or had been driven in the
morning was ablaze — a flame-swept sea. The air
for miles was stifling. The roar, as the billows of
fire rose and fell, and leaped from house to house.

Claus Spreckels' Residence

Photo by Mullcr

THE CONQUEST 113
from street to street, was terrific. And ever there
was a cracking and lashing of whip-ends overhead.
In the morning it had been determined that the
Western Addition should be saved at any cost. By
night millions of dollars worth of property lay low
in ruin. The price had been paid ; and what a price
it was !
It had been a magnificent spectacle, but one
whose horror brought no fear to those who watched.
They saw in it the end, the furthermost limit of the
fire, and rejoiced that it had been checked. It was
comforting to know that though the fire was at its
worst, its progress had been stayed.
Vain joy ; for in the end it seemed that after all
the fire was not stayed — that all that had been done
had been without avail. Not even the width of Van
Ness avenue was a bar to the fierce heat of the con
flagration. Along the west side of the avenue the
houses were smoking. Firemen ran back into the
crowds and called for volunteers. Men responded,
and forcing their way through the cordon of soldiers,
fought the flames with wet blankets and mops and
the little water that four engines were able to pump
through the hose from Fort Mason.
The spire of St. Mary's cathedral began to
smoke ; then flames shot up nasty menacing tongues
from the extreme point of the top. The stream from
the hose would not carry so far, so men climbed the
sheer tower, and hanging on somehow, chopped
away the burning parts above. Then they stayed
on the roof until the fire around subsided, guarding
the exposed woodwork with a zealous care.

114

THE CONQUEST

Smoke began to curl up from Claus Spreckels'
residence, on the west side of Van Ness at Sacra
mento street. Placed far back from the street, sub
stantially built of stone and steel and tile, it had
seemed fit to withstand any attack. It seemed in
deed that if it could not be saved, there was no hope
of saving anything that lay beyond.
At last the fire-fighters — valiant, desperate, de
termined to the end — began to lose heart and were
ready to admit defeat. For two days they had
fought, and during all that time the best that they
could do was pigmy-play to the flames. There had
been an effective stand at the water-front, and a few
isolated buildings had been saved. The rest of the
battle had spelled victory for the fire, until just now
the growling pack of wolf-flames had been driven
back with solid shot and explosives. Now again
they were creeping back, and with an ugly snarl
had taken a fresh hold. This state of things was
not without its effect. Men lost their tenacity — were
ready to quit. It seemed useless to make a fight.

Photo by Mailer
Mission Fire from Sixteenth Street Hill

THE CONQUEST 115
Yet the fight had to be made, and then once
more those who were in the battle ranged them
selves in front of the fire. The firemen, the
dynamiters, the volunteers from the bystanders
prepared to make a final stand at Franklin street,
one block west of Van Ness. The water forced
through leaky hose from a mile away was not
enough to save the Spreckels mansion or the houses
behind it on Franklin street, but was sufficient to
protect those on the far side of that thoroughfare.
Down Franklin went the fire, and with it those who
were fighting — dynamiting the houses in its path,
protecting those across the way, and striving in vain
to check its advance at each cross street. Across
Sacramento street they followed it, and California,
and Pine ; at midnight they were at Bush. The fire
men, on duty for over forty hours, reeled at their
posts. Volunteers crowded thick around the one
hose, swinging it now this way, now that, as it was
needed. Gradually the fire had grown weaker. At
last when it reached Sutter street its advance was
stayed. The flames licked up the buildings on the
north side of the street. The houses on the opposite
side blistered and peeled, but their wide lawns and
the water saved them. The flames lessened and
died away. The city beyond was saved. It was
almost dawn.
The battle had been fought to an end — the vic
tory won — and there was not a heart among all who
knew that did not throb with thankfulness. The men
who had done it were too tired to think much about
it. The gratitude of the others who had seen it done
was too deep for tears. The tension had been so

116 THE CONQUEST
great that there was not even enough strength left
for a cheer. But all knew what might have been,
and understood. While this was going on others fought the same
fight far out in the Mission. In its westward sweep
the fire came to Dolores street — a thoroughfare as
wide as Van Ness avenue — first at Sixteenth, then
at Fifteenth also, and at Seventeenth. Finally all
the way out to Twentieth was ablaze on the east
side, while men fought to save what lay to the west.
The struggle at the Swedish church, at Fifteenth
and Dolores, is typical. Half a block away a pool of
water was found in an empty lot. It was carried
to the church in buckets and milk cans. These were
passed up to the men who were plying wet blankets
and cloths on the roof and steeple, and thrown down
again when emptied. A barn that stood near the
precious water was dragged down with long ropes
by many men, that it might not take fire and drive
out those at the pool. Four times the flames took
hold of the roof of the church ; four times they were
put out; in the end the church was saved.
The fire did not cross Dolores street, nor did it
get beyond Twentieth. Along Nineteenth were
open spaces — the Youths' Directory with its large
playgrounds; a house with a large garden;
wide lawns. Water had been found, too, on the
Twenty-second street hill. Young men and boys
dragged hose lines up to the reservoir, and then went
back and started the engines. They incited the fire
men to further efforts, and held up doors as shields
against the heat, while the streams were directed
against the flames. The wind, too, which had come

THE CONQUEST 117
from the northwest, began to blow from the south.
By three o'clock that morning the fire was over. All
beyond was safe. For the second time that night
the pack of wolf-flames was repulsed and driven
back ; and the beginning of the end was in sight.
The fire was within very clearly defined bounds
on three sides, but what was happening on the
fourth was pitiful — heartbreaking.
By some mischance, some freak or accident,
some perversity of a malicious fate, a tiny wisp of
flame had darted upon the cornice of a house just
east of Van Ness and across Washington from the
sea of fire that raged there during the afternoon. So
tiny was it at first that a cupful of water would have
sufficed to extinguish it. But at the time everybody
was busy with the fire at the Spreckels home and
along Van Ness avenue, and it was not seen; it
started a conflagration that burned during two days.
From the far-away wholesale district clear to
Van Ness, the south side of Washington street was
in ruins, while as yet the north side was untouched
by the fire. Nowhere in all that distance had the
flames leaped its slight width ; but when the back
firing added all that lay near Van Ness to the con
flagration, the heat was too intense for the houses
facing it to withstand. The dynamiting had been
stopped just the width of a street too soon. One
more explosion; a little less confidence in a victory
not yet won — just this precaution, and the flame
that was destined, like those that had sprung up in
many places at once early Wednesday morning, to
devastate many acres before its course should be

118 THE CONQUEST
run, would never have started. There would have
been no cornice for it to fasten upon.
The light westerly wind was soon fanning the
little jet of flame into a blaze that was quickly spread
to the house on the east, and sped down Washington
and back upon the other streets to Vallejo, gaining
momentum as it raced. By nine o'clock it had
reached the scattered houses of Russian Hill, an
ultra-fashionable district stretching northwest fr.om
Nob Hill to the bay. Here there was a hand-to-
hand encounter between the flames and the people.
There was not much to work with — just a little
water stored in bathtubs and pails; just a little wet
sand thrown on a smoking roof, or a mop laid on
an igniting window-sill ; just a sizzling stream of
soda water from a syphon; just a bottle of wine
converted into a hand grenade. In their desperate
strait they used anything. Once a boy threw mud
from the street at a flame and smothered it. Again
a sack of flour was scattered over the burning por
tion of a roof. Men hastily nailed cleats onto roofs
that they might climb gables with greater ease and
safety. With this precarious footing they worked
on, heedless of danger, intent only on saving their
homes. Unerring of foot they climbed to pinnacles
that yesterday they would have trembled to think of.
It was a time for the testing of men's strength.
Vacant lots, houses set down in the midst of gar
dens, and men who worked like maniacs, were the
salvation of many of the elegant homes on the hill.
Many were saved, too, only to burn on the following
day.

Map Showing Fires at End of Second Day

12(1 THE CONQUEST
With inconceivable rapidity the fire sped down
the eastern slope of Russian Hill and into the close-
built valley between there and Telegraph Hill,
racing most rapidly eastward along Washington
street and spreading northward, also, as it hurried
along. The little wisp of flame had become a roar
ing conflagration that crossed Vallejo street (four
blocks north of Washington) five blocks abreast.
By sunrise Friday morning it was working up the
steep slope of Telegraph Hill on one side, and
back upon Russian Hill on the other, while in
between it tore its way through the North Beach
district toward the bay.
The Italian settlement was on Telegraph Hill ;
Broadway, at the base of the southern slope, bristled
with the unpronounceable names of restaurants and
wine shops and hotels. It was quite as famous in
its way as Chinatown, and no visitor to the city had
completed his rounds until he had been to dinner at
one of its many restaurants. On Montgomery ave
nue, running obliquely across its western base, was
St. Francis church, oldest in the city after the Mis
sion Dolores.
All Friday morning the south and west slopes
burned. On the heights the houses were hung with
blankets saturated in casks of wine (real "Dago
red") and many were saved. By such primitive
methods, also, were the flames stopped at Mont
gomery street just west of the precipice that forms
the east face of the hill. A fringe of houses, lonely
and desolate, tops the bluff — all that remains of San
Francisco's "little Italy."

THE CONQUEST 121
To the south lies a strip of level country. The
fire of Wednesday had passed it by ; but its destruc
tion, though long deferred, was effected at last by
the conflagration which had sprung from that ra
pacious little flame at Van Ness and Washington.
Since Wednesday empty whiskey barrels had been
taken from a wholesale liquor house on Jackson
street to the new Custom House excavation near by,
and filled with water. The part they played in the
fight against the flames is best shown by the block
between Washington and Jackson, and Sansome
and Battery, which came out of the fire unscathed.
During the early morning, too, the fire had
raged through the densely built houses of the North
Beach district. It was a second "south of Market"
in the manner of its construction, and in the manner
of its burning.
The people who still remained there (sleeping,
many of them, in fancied security) found themselves
suddenly cut off from retreat, by the fire which
swept upon them from Russian Hill and Telegraph
Hill, and through the valley between. On three
sides was the fire; on the fourth the bay. They
made their way to the beach, and were taken off in
small boats sent to their rescue. And through the
city ran the grim report that thousands, unable to
escape, had been burned to death.
At the great open spaces near the bay the fire
stopped ; there was nothing within reach that could
burn. It had dwindled down to the matter of a few
scattered fires at the base of Russian Hill. Long
lines o? hose brought water from the bay to quench

122 THE CONQUEST
them. At last the end (the real, final end) of the fire
seemed at hand.
Over near Van Ness avenue a little remnant of
the fire was still playing along Green street, just
at the west of Russian Hill. Green street at this
time, like Washington street a day before, was the
boundary of the fire ; all to the south was destroyed ;
all to the north irltact. That it was such a boundary
was due to the splendid work of a little band of
residents of the district who had followed the fire
eastward as it burned, struggling to save, each in
turn, the houses that were threatened. By Friday
noon their work was done. But just then, at Green
and Van Ness, a house was dynamited by the
soldiery, to make sure, that by no chance the fire
should cross the avenue and endanger the Western
Addition again. But out of the dynamited building
(a chemical warehouse) burst another great fire
which started back toward North Beach. This was
at noon Friday. All afternoon it burned, sending up
great clouds of smoke (and causing consternation
everywhere as rumors spread that the Western Ad
dition was ablaze), and all night, sweeping over and
around Russian Hill and down to the district at its
foot, finding much of its fuel in the very houses that
had been saved overnight. Through Saturday morn
ing it burned among the iron foundries and great
lumber yards that covered many acres. The havoc
was complete, as everywhere, but was worked at a
very slow, an almost methodical pace. One might
almost think it was premeditated. Lumber in piles
does not make the best food for flames.

Russian HlU
District BuANtD
IhursoayNiohts FRlOftV f 
HoB Mil;
ftDRNEO

g;5ATURDAV
ENDOFriREc)*"l^°"

DISTRICT
BuRNto

(S'\Af<KET Burheo
VKEPNESDA-r

Map Showing Course of Fires

124 THE CONQUEST
Gradually the fire bore down upon the immense
oil tanks near the point of the peninsula where seas
or crude and refined oils were stored. During all
the days of the conflagration there was no more
spectacular and impressive sight than the burning
of those tanks, with the blood-red flames leaping
high into the dense black smoke.
By mid-afternoon on Saturday the fire had fairly
rounded the peninsula. A long grain shed setting
out over the water, piled high with wheat from the
Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, was burned.
Once more the water-front was menaced, more se
riously now than at any time during the conflagra
tion. Before, the fire had never come nearer than
the far side of East street, two hundred feet away.
Now it was among the wharves themselves.
Two miles of water-front seemed fated, at last,
to go; two miles of docks and freight sheds, and
steam and sailing vessels moored defenseless — the
very foundation of the city's prosperity, the reason
of its being — were in jeopardy of extinction. For
hope was ebbing among the men who had fought
against an overwhelming calamity through four
days. The voice of their despair whispered, "What's
the use?" Finally the sailors and soldiers and firemen and
citizens, worn out as they were, made a stand at
Pier 27, the northernmost pier on the front. This
was the last fight of the conflagration, and when it
was ended, the desperate men knew at last that vic
tory, the final victory, was theirs.
It was all over. The fire that had raged for
four days, with all the odds of the battle on its side,

THE CONQUEST 125
had been completely conquered. Over twenty-five
hundred acres — nearly half a thousand blocks — lay
in ruins. Yet on all sides the fire had been turned
back from houses and buildings that were no
different from all the rest.

VII
THE WORK OF THE FIRE
When Sunday morning came the end had been
reached. Overnight there had been a drenching
downpour ; but even so the sunless morn of Sunday
was the happiest since the earthquake, for the fire
was out at last, and the smoke had cleared away.
The days and the nights that had passed had been
for many a time of terror. By night there had been
a little sleep, but that infested by a hideous phantas
magoria of a malevolent earthquake, vicious, spite
ful, coming to engulf them ; and of a fire, stealthy,
relentless, ever stealing closer, and coming upon
them at last to burn up their little bundles and
themselves where they lay beneath the trees. By
day there had been the morbid turmoil of distorted
thought that follows upon the heels of loss — of the
loss that may be written in figures, and the other
that comes only to idolatry. Day and night alike
had been filled with anxious, dreadful, helpless wait
ing, while the frequent dynamiting told that the
fight was not yet won — that the danger was still
present. Except to those who had felt the tragic grip
of the calamity, it was the desecration of the city,
perhaps, that hurt most ; for with the feeling of
regret for the clothes and chairs and whatnots that
made up their personal loss mingled a fierce resent
ment at the wantonness, the willful rapine, of the
flames. The gods that make a city loved of its
people were being demolished, their temples de-

THE WORK OF THE FIRE 127
spoiled ; and never in all the years of their Babylon
had they been worshipped as in this last hour of
their adoration. Upon all alike fell this burden of
sadness. The man who had lived in the city that
was, and he who had dwelt beyond the line, stood
sorrowing at each other's side before the smoking
pyre of the sacrifice.
A whole city had been destroyed — a whole city
with all that it stood for. The wholesale and the
retail districts had burned. So had the manufactur
ing and financial districts; the districts of theatres
and clubs and hotels and apartments ; the residence
districts where two hundred thousand people dwelt.
Unburnt there were the homes of about as many
more, and the second-rate stores and little businesses
of a residence district; nothing else but the water
front and a few scattered factories. San Francisco
was no longer a city — only a collection of dwellings.
The earthquake had deprived it of the mechan
ical conveniences of a city — cars and light and power
and water and telephones. The fire robbed it of all
the organized specialization which distinguishes a
city from a hamlet — organized businesses, hotels,
theatres, stores. Without them San Francisco was
merely a great village — the largest village ever
known, too. In a way it was a gigantic camp.
The money value of the property destroyed can
never be definitely known. The fire had burned 490
entire city blocks, and portions of 32 others — 2593
acres in all, or 4.05 square miles. The destroyed
structures, if placed together, would line both sides
of a street a hundred miles long. Two hundred thou
sand people had been rendered homeless ; and

128 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
the entire goods and chattels of this multitude con
sisted only of those pitiful bundles which they had
wearily trundled over the cobbles in trunks or toy
express wagons or baby carriages.
Insurance claims covered about $300,000,000,
from which it is safe to say that the insured property
was worth $600,000,000; and there was probably as
much more not insured at all.
The municipality lost property worth millions
and records that were invaluable. Besides the de
struction of the City Hall and the Hall of Records,
the Hall of Justice had burned, and the County Jail,
from which the prisoners had been removed to the
military prison on Alcatraz Island. The Police De
partment had lost heavily. In the first hours of the
fire the Southern Station, located on Clara near
Fourth, was destroyed, entailing a loss of $42,000.
On the second day the Harbor Station went. The
Mission Station had been so badly damaged by the
earthquake as to be counted worthless. Of the
things that could be replaced by an expenditure of
money there had been a loss to the police amounting
to $232,195. But over and above this was the loss
of records (among which the Rogues' Gallery was
an important factor) that had cost $200,000 to com
pile, but whose real value to the department was
beyond a monetary appraisement.
The Fire Department lost thirteen engine
houses and one water-tower house — among the
saddest depredations of the fire, for it occurred while
the men of the department were doing their best to
save the property of others.

Bird's-Eye View of San Francisco from the South
1.30 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
Of the public schools thirty-four had been de
stroyed, with a loss to buildings and equipment of
$1,532,570. Not included in this estimate is the
Girls' High School. Though beyond the zone of
the fire, it was so badly wrecked by the earthquake
as to be entirely untenantable.
Every commercial and professional interest had
suffered, some almost to the point of extinction.
The loss in supplies, stocks, buildings, machinery,
office equipment, houses and household effects was
enormous. The business district was a maze of
gaunt brick walls and tangled iron. In the residence
districts which had felt the blight of the fire, there
was nothing but chimneys, and a worthless wreck
age of bath-tubs, melted crockery, and flatirons,
with the occasional frame of a sewing machine. So
complete had the work of the fire been in both in
stances, that not even ashes or cinders or embers
remained. Then on the other hand were the things that
had been the traditions of the city ; the theatres and
restaurants and dear midnight frivolities — the
quaint, unusual settlements. Celestial and other
wise — the art and music and science, the records of
Argonaut days. All were gone.
The art quarter, around which hung so many
memories of light-hearted workers, of men and
women who mixed plenty of merriment with the
seriousness of life, was gone. The quaint old studios
were gone. One queer old restaurant, where by
gone artists had caricatured each other on the walls,
and where footprints on the ceiling bespoke the top-
siturviness of Bohemia, survived alone, amid the

THE WORK OF THE FIRE 1,31
ruin of the haunts of the laughing sad crowd who
had been its patrons.
For many years San Francisco had been famed
for its restaurants. Cosmopolitan to an extreme,
every race in the world that pretended to be a race
at all was represented by its characteristic cafe;
some by many. Everywhere were to be seen Greek,
Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Mexican, Swiss, Kosh
er and French restaurants ; the latter of various
sorts, ranging from the one of four courses with a
bottle of red or white for "two bits," to the place of
cosy rooms and elaborate prices. There were the
after-theatre places that knew only the nationality
of Bohemia; others without even this race distinc
tion — merely San Franciscan. There were the chop
suey "joints" in Chinatown, too, where society was
wont to go for a lark, and the little mongrel places
along the Barbary Coast famed for their tamales,
and enchiladas, and other queer-sounding things.
No one really knew how much a part of the inner
life of the city the restaurants had been until they
were destroyed.
Chinatown had come to be but a memory. The
bright lanterns, the little grated windows, the bal
conies that whispered of romance, the flaring dra
gons, were gone. Gone, too, the ill-smelling fish
markets and cellar shops, the bazaars, the gambling
dens, the places where opium was smoked in
guarded secrecy. Everything that had made the
little foreign settlement a tradition throughout the
world had disappeared.
Telegraph Hill, upon whose slopes the scions
of sunny Italy and Spain and Portugal had breathed

132 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
the life of the home-land, was a bed of ashes, with
here and there a chimney to mark the grave of some
dead home.
Not a theatre in the city was left. The Tivoli,
where seasons of comic and grand opera alternated ;
the Orpheum, vaudeville's laughing center; the
Columbia, transitory home of the "stars"; the Alca
zar, where a stock company made fun in farce and
comedy; the Grand Opera House, where un-
"trust"-ed stars and the Metropolitan Opera Com
pany came from time to time ; the California, around
which clung memories of McCullough and Barrett,
but sunk in its last days to burlesque; the Central,
with its glaring melodrama ; — these and a score of
others had gone down before the unrelenting flames.
Every hotel was gone. The famous Palace,
with its renowned courtyard, was a labyrinth of
bare walls. In the beautiful rooms' of the St. Francis
there remained only ruined marble and the fluffy
white ash of costly furniture. The Grand, the Oc
cidental, the St. Nicholas, the Lick, were tangles
of water-pipes, window-weights, and bath-tubs.
All of the great newspaper plants were burned.
The entire establishments of the Call (of which the
business office only was in the Spreckels Building),
the Chronicle, the Examiner, the Bulletin, the Post,
and several published in foreign tongues were de
stroyed. The clubhouses with but two exceptions were
consumed. The men of the Cosmos and the women
of the Century still had their homes, but of the
others not one remained. . The Bohemian, with its
old masters and its quaint library, the Pacific Union,

THE WORK OF THE FIRE 13,3
the University, the Union League, the Olympic
(oldest athletic club in the world), the Press, the
University of California, the Family, and a dozen
besides, had gone.
The studio of William Keith, the famous artist,
was burned on the afternoon of the first day. A
few devoted friends took from it the full collection
of about two thousand pictures, and loading them
on an express wagon carried them to a house far
out on California street. The next day all but
twenty-six were burned.
Of the libraries there was scarcely a one that
did not suffer almost complete annihilation. The
Public Library, which in its various branches con
tained 166,344 volumes before the fire, could count
only 23,000 afterwards. These were all in the
branches beyond the fire zone. The Mechanics-
Mercantile Library, established in 1853, and con
taining 200,000 volumes, was totally destroyed, as
was also the collection of 12,300 scientific books of
the California Academy of Sciences, dating from the
same year. Among others totally destroyed were
the Law Library of 50,000 volumes, and the libraries
of the Astronomical Society, the Bohemian Club,
the Chamber of Commerce, the San Francisco
Medical Society, St. Ignatius College, and the
Young Men's Christian Association. The Sutro Li
brary of 200,000 volumes, rare old black letter tomes,
invaluable and irreplaceable, was stored partly in a
warehouse on Sansome street and partly in the
Montgomery Block, and lost only 75,000 volumes.
A few records and stuffed birds are all that the
Academy of Sciences had left with which to make

1,34 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
its fresh start. On Wednesday the records of the
Academy and certain specimens of rarer bird fami
lies had been removed by the director of the museum
and his assistants. First they were taken to Russian
Hill, but when the fire climbed its western slope
they were again removed — this time to Fort Mason,
where they remained secure, a pitiful remnant.
Old Pioneer Hall, home of the Society of Cali
fornia Pioneers, was burned early on the first day ot
the fire. Not a single record of the Society con
tained there, not a scrap of paper that bore the
stamp of early days was spared.
Old San Francisco had been destroyed — abso
lutely, completely. All that remained was of the
new generation. Everything of pioneer days, every
building with a history dating from the early years
of the city's life, had been wiped out, save a few of
no importance near the Appraisers' Building. The
old Niantic Block, built over a stranded ship; "Fort
Gunny-Bags," from whose windows men had been
hanged by the Vigilantes of the 'so's ; Meiggs'
Wharf, from which "Honest Harry Meiggs" set sail
with several hundred thousand dollars belonging to
trusting depositors; were all consumed. The en
tire district that had been young San Francisco
was gone.
Gone, too, was the city of the railroad builders,
and of the Comstock operators — Stanford, Crocker,
Huntington, Hopkins, Flood, Fair, Mackay, Sharon,
Ralston, Lick. Nob Hill, once covered with their
magnificent residences, was an acropolis of pictur
esque ruins. The buildings where these mighty men
of the growing city had done their work — the Ne-

Map Showing Burned District
Small Map Shows Tliickly Populaled Portions of fity

1,36 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
vada Block, the Stock Exchange, the Lick House,
the old Flood Building — were no more. The old
Mission Dolores looked across an empty century to
a city robbed of its past.
Truly San Francisco had become a city of sor
row, grieving over the loves and foibles and vanities,
the business triumphs and the pleasures, that were
no more. Of those things of which it had been
justly proud, not one remained. In the temple of
its greatness, no single stone was left standing upon
another. But greater than all the material loss, sadder,
even, than the loss of the traditions that were gone,
drowning out the thought of these (among those to
whom it had come) was the bitter anguish of the
personal tragedies of the fire. To all came the shock
of suddenly being rendered homeless and nearly
helpless, and the heavy blow of losing, almost in a
moment, all the treasured possessions of years,
about which had clustered the memories which make
home and fireside sacred. Many had lost, in their
little homes, all they possessed in the world, and
they had seen their places of employment vanish
as well, leaving them in absolute destitution. But
to all this the people of the city were resigned — or
perhaps they were stunned by the heaviness of the
blow. To others, however, came the poignant grief
of the loss of loved ones — the agony of suspense,
the dread knowledge that their fears were con
firmed. Husbands out of town on that eventful day had
fought their way back along disorganized railroads
and past the barriers of military control only to find

THE WORK OF THE FIRE 137
their homes burned and their families gone, they
knew not where; and in the awful time of flight
where the flames followed fastest on the heels of the
earthquake, in the district south of Market street,
none knew the fate of those who dwelt nearby, and
many could not be sure of the escape even of those
living in the same house with them. By day and by
night, untiringly, they tramped the length and
breadth of the city, searching among the thousands
in the various camps for those they loved; and by
day and by night the soldiers, going up and down
among the tents, called the names of the missing.
One man was seeking, almost hopelessly, for
his old, weak, feeble-minded grandmother, a
woman of eighty. He heard that she had been taken
into some hospital or charitable institution some
where in the city, and in the sad simplicity of a too-
great grief, was asking all he met if they had seen
her — as if they, perforce, would know his grand
mother among all that they might meet.
Others sought children who had wandered away
during the excitement before the home had to
be abandoned; or husbands or wives, brothers
or sisters, of whom they heard nothing. Some
times the search ended in success and those who
stood by witnessed joyful reunions whose sweet
pathos they can never forget. Other sad searches
continued in vain until at last the dreaded truth
was revealed when the form of a loved one was
recognized among the Coroner's grim display; and
many other such anxious questionings find no
answer save among the unidentified dead. In all,
438 deaths are known to have resulted from the

1,38 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
earthquake and the fire; and in many cases the
identity of the victims was never determined. Many
were the grim tragedies of that terrible day; many
the sources of the dull grief that was felt in the
camps. What suffering, what suspense, there is
in some of them!
Down on the water-front had stood a cheap
restaurant conducted by two men who were old
friends as well as business associates. Nelson
cooked; Johnson served. With the shock of the
earthquake the frail building collapsed and took fire.
With utmost difficulty Johnson at last extricated
himself from the ruins of the dining room. Nelson
was nowhere to be seen; the roaring pillar of flame
that had been the kitchen made a search for him
impossible. For many days Johnson sought his old
friend and partner, but in vain. At last he took up
his search at the old place. Bricks from the walls
of neighboring buildings lay in great piles where
the little restaurant had been. For days he worked
among the hot debris; at the bottom, pinned under
the overturned stove at which he had been cooking,
lay the charred body of him he sought.
Through the south of Market district there
must have been many such cases. Scores, pinned
in the wreckage, were burned to death in the fires
which followed the caving in of hotels and lodging
houses. Many there were who were nearly saved
and in the end had to be left to their cruel fate,
despite all that they and their heroic, stout-hearted
rescuers could do. One man who was taken out
of such a wreck at the last minute tells of two
Qthers who were near him, and who, like him, were

Photo by Weidner

General View of the Burned District

140 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
unable to free themselves. Even as the fire ap
proached they cheered each other. "I'm not at all
hurt," said one, "but there's a big beam across my
back and I can't get out. I guess they'll have us
soon, though." "I could get out all right myself,"
said the other, "only that my wrist is held tight in
the timbers." And there they had to be left while
the merciless fire burned those around, and, finally,
themselves. In some places which the fire did not reach until
long afterward there were equally harrowing oc
currences. High brick walls crashed through ad
joining lodging houses, carrying the various floors
of the latter down in mingled wreckage beneath.
Thus many were killed outright, or so badly injured
that they died soon after. Here, too, were grim
tragedies; for in adjoining rooms, perhaps, children
cried in vain for parents lost to them forever, or
mothers were crazed by the sudden grief that had
come upon them.
In many cases people were killed by falling
chimneys as they started up at the shock of the
earthquake, or were rendered unconscious and so
died painlessly when the fire reached them. Others,
injured and carried away unconscious, recovered
only to live through an agony of despairing search
for those whose fate they could but surmise. Such
cases, perhaps, contained the most harrowing trage
dies of all. Grim indeed is one such story. It con
cerns a happy little family of five; father, mother,
and three little girls. The father was very low with
pneumonia. Unconscious, he was taken from the
burning wreckage of his home, and conveyed to the

THE WORK OF THE FIRE 141
Presidio Hospital. In June he was discharged, re
stored to health ; during all the time intervening he
had had no tidings of his family. For a month he
searched. At length he found his wife, who, like
him, had also been taken out of the house uncon
scious, and who had been removed to a hospital for
treatment for her injuries. She, too, had been
searching for him and for their little ones, but of
them she had learned nothing. Together they took
up the sad search. At last, in one of the Mission
refugee camps, they found their little three-year-
old. From her joyous childish prattle they could
get only a meagre outline of the story — only that
some one had heard her crying and taken her out of
the house as it burned. They continued the heart
breaking attempt to find the other little ones, but
could get no clue. Finally the father began what he
had dreaded and had put off as long as any hope re
mained — the search of the ruins of his home. There,

Photo by Aitken
Telegraph Hill in Ruins

142 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
at length, he found a few charred bones. The
coroner pronounced them those of two small girls.
His long search was over.
It was such tragedies as these, — whether known
at once or only feared by those who, in suspense,
did not learn the dread truth till later — that wrung
the hearts of many in the camps, and, indeed,
throughout the city.
There were indeed many cases of actual in
sanity. Many a pitiful story is indicated by the
simple record of patients brought to the temporary
hospitals as insane during the days of the fire. The
shock itself; the harrowing scenes when loved ones
were crushed beneath falling walls, or pinioned,
helpless, to die by the fire's slow torture ; the agony
of suspense as day followed day and no news came,
caused many a man to lose his reason during those
trying times. During the first day of the fire many
were brought to the emergency hospitals and treated
as insane. In some cases the attack was but tem
porary ; in others, however, it was necessary to
place the patient in an asylum. During the first few
days after the earthquake many temporarily lost
their reason because suddenly deprived of a favorite
indulgence — strong drink, in many cases ; in others
morphine or opium. Of these some recovered after
a short period of raving; others made no improve
ment and seem permanently insane. There are
stories of crazed men who could not tear themselves
away from the horrid fascination of the fire ; stories
of men who in a moment's madness leaped into the
flames. One such tale seems to touch the utmost
depths of horror and grisly tragedy. A dealer at

Photos by Waters and Weidner Lr.oki

San Francisco in Ruins
ig South from Telegraph Hill — The Skyscraper District

144 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
the Italian market, it seems, was so terrified, or so
unbalanced, by the sudden falling of walls about his
place (a number of men and horses, backed up be
side the market for their morning supplies, were
buried beneath its wall) that he ran into the great
refrigerator and slammed the heavy door behind
him. In the confusion and excitement his absence
was not noticed; and in a few hours the building
burned. The refrigerator, covered with fallen brick,
remained unharmed, and in it the unwilling prisoner,
ignorant of the fire, ignorant of the death or flight
of his comrades, awaited the opening of his lonely
cell. For eight days and eight nights he remained
there, breathing the polluted air of the refrigerating
chamber (but slightly renewed by its ventilators),
drinking the water which came from the melting of
the ice, tearing at the raw meat which hung within
reach. At length those who came to clear up the
market heard faint sounds from within the refrig
erator. They opened it. On the floor lay their
former companion, faint, weakened, scarcely living,
a hopeless maniac. What he had suffered they
never knew; for within the day he died.
How many other such tragedies occurred in
the seething cauldron of the flames will never be
known, but there were unquestionably many cases
where men lost their reason momentarily in the
stress and excitement of the time. Many fought
each other, needlessly, for precedence in getting
into boats, and men were killed in such trivial
quarrels. Others brought to the authorities stories
so wild that it seemed certain their reason had left
them; and even after the immediate excitement had

146 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
ended, people were telling of sights that never could
have existed at all. They seem strange now, but
were believed readily enough when told by supposed
eye-witnesses. Thus one man was sure that he himself had
seen the Cliff House floating on the sea; if he had,
its return to its accustomed place must have been
marvellous to behold. A woman fleeing frightened
to Oakland told, hysterically, of her terrible trip
down Market street, and of crossing great crevasses
there on rickety planks which served as bridges;
so terrified was she by her wholly imaginary ex
perience that she could not be induced to return
to San Francisco! No less startling are the stories
told of the great buildings on this same street. As
one man passed below it, the Call Building was in
clined at an angle of fifteen degrees from the per
pendicular ; another passed it just before it fell into
the street; yet it is still standing, as straight and
sturdy as it was when first erected. Sincerely be
lieved, there can be but one explanation for such
stories — a very reasonable one, too ; that many
saw only what their fantastic fears told them was
present, and for a while many minds were unstrung.
It was a time of grief, of fear, of tragedy, blind
ing, griping, full of the pangs of death. To all had
come a common loss, to some a bitter personal sor
row. To such San Francisco might well have
seemed pitiless, cruel, remorseless, taking away
their all, driving them forth despoiled, condemning
their loved ones to sudden and awful death. And to
all it might have seemed that the city had become
the spoil of the gods, a city destined to destruction.

148 THE WORK OF THE FIRE
Yet, even amid all the pain and the heartache,
the love of the San Franciscan for his city rose su
preme. The beloved city, the adored one, had been
desecrated; her beauty shrunk into a shroud of
ashes, her people scattered like chaff. But never
had the city been so beloved, never was its will to
do so strong, as in those days of bitter defeat. In
domitable, undaunted by thought of earthquake or
fires, San Francisco — "serene, indifferent of fate" —
began to shake off its ashes and rise from its ruins.
The very immensity of the catastrophe was a chal
lenge that stirred the brawn and the muscle and
the brain of the stricken city into action. The op
timism of adversity asserted itself. The people
taught themselves to believe that it might have been
worse. A poem written by S. J. Alexander, whose oc
cupation after the fire was cleaning bricks on the
debris piles, shows beautifully the spirit of the peo
ple who set themselves dauntlessly to the work of
rearing a greater city than had been destroyed. It
appeared in the Century Magazine for August, 1906,
and is as follows :
TO SAN FRANCISCO.
If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime,
'twas the ghost of a dream; for I vow
By the splendor of God in the highest, we
never have loved her till now.
When Love bears the trumpet of Honor, oh,
highest and clearest he calls.
With the light of the flaming of towers, and
the sound of the rending of walls.
When Love wears the purple of Sorrows, and
kneels at the altar of Grief,

THE WORK OF THE FIRE 149
Of the flowers that spring in his footsteps, the
white flower of Service is chief,
And as snow on the snow of Her bosom, as a
star in the night of Her hair.
We bring to our Mother such token as the
time and the elements spare.
If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime,
adoring we kneel to Her now.
When the golden fruit of the ages fall, swept
by the wind from the bough.
The beautiful dwelling is shattered, wherein,
as a queen at the feast,
In gems of the barbaric tropics and silks of
the ultimate East,
Our Mother sat throned and triumphant, with
the wise and the great in their day;
They were captains and princes, and rulers;
but, She, She was greater than they.
We are sprung from the builders of nations;
by the souls of our fathers we swear,
By the depths of the deep that surround Her,
by the height of the heights She may dare.
Though the Twelve league in compact against
Her, though the sea Gods cry out in their
wrath,
Though the earth Gods, grown drunk of their
fury, fling the hill-tops abroad in Her
path.
Our Mother of masterful children shall sit on
Her throne as of yore.
With Her old robes of purple about Her, and
crowned with the crowns that She wore.
She shall sit at the gates of the world, where
the nations shall gather and meet.
And the East and the West at Her bidding
shall lie in a leash at Her feet.

VIII
THE RELIEF
The Chicago, flagship of the Pacific Squadron,
was cruising twenty miles off San Diego bay on
the morning of the i8th of April. From somewhere
came a wireless message, "Earthquake at 5:24 a. m.,
San Francisco," it ran. "Nearly demolished city.
Call Building is down, and Palace Hotel, both tele
graph offices. Wells Fargo Building. All water
pipes burst, city fire department helpless. City is
in flames." No signature — no way of telling whence it came.
Admiral Goodrich was quick to act. "Full speed
ahead," rang the bells in the engine room. Early
Thursday evening the Chicago arrived off Fort Ma
son, and communication was opened with General
Funston. On Saturday Admiral Goodrich took personal
command of the struggle along the water-front.
Already there was quite a fleet of naval vessels in
the harbor — the fireboats Leslie and Active, and the
speedy torpedo-destroyer Preble, flying the Red
Cross flag, sent early Wednesday morning from
Mare Island by Admiral McCalla; the Boston, the
Marblehead, the Princeton, the Paul Jones, and the
Chicago. The Preble was doing good work remov
ing many injured to the hospitals about the bay,
from the wharves where they had been left, and
bringing fresh water from Goat Island to the thirsty
in the city. When General Funston found that he
could not "raise" Monterey (from whose presidio

THE RELIEF 151
he needed troops) the Preble took the message for
him — a hundred miles of open sea in five hours.
The men in white caps and wide pants were on
hand until an end was made of the conflagration ;
and during the weeks that followed they worked be
side the soldiers and citizen volunteers, distributing
supplies and policing the streets.
In the same mysterious way that "wireless" had
reached the Chicago, the news of the calamity
spread far and fast throughout the country —
throughout the whole world. When the shock came
the incessant clicking of the telegraph instruments
connected with San Francisco ceased; the system
was dead. As the unwonted silence continued it
became known that there was something wrong
near San Francisco. What, no one knew. About
six o'clock Pacific time (about nine o'clock in New
York) a strange message went out over the "Postal"

There was an earthquake hit us at 5:15
o'clock this morning, wrecking several build
ings, and wrecking our offices. They are cart
ing dead from the fallen buildings. Fire all
over town. There is no water and we lost our
power. I'm going to get out of the office,
as we have had a little shake every few min
utes, arid it's me for the simple life.
R., San Francisco, 5:50 A. M.
It carried dismay to those who received it.
Could it be true? Or was it the dream of some
crazed operator? Soon another message came —
brief, significant: We are on the job and are going to try and
stick.

152 THE RELIEF
That was all, but behind it was a grim story
whose details they could but guess. Through the
day brief messages came, telling of the progress of
the fire. As the news of the disaster spread, mes
sages for loved ones in San Francisco crowded the
wires. By noon the local office had a thousand of
them, but as the soldiers and police would not allow
the messengers to go on the streets to deliver them,
no more were taken. The fire approached the office.
At II :o5 the waiting crowds saw this message:
San Francisco says fire within few doors
now. They are going to move out right now. Q.
But in the afternoon they were still there, per
sistent, courageous. From the main office of the
"Postal," on Market street near Montgomery, the
chief operator sent this bulletin :
The city practically ruined by fire. It's
virithin half block of us in the same block. The
Call building is burned out entirely, the Ex
aminer building just fell in a heap. Fire all
around in every direction and way out in the
residence district. Destruction by earthquake
something frightful. The City Hall Dome
stripped and only the frame work standing.
The St. Ignatius Church and College are
burned to the ground. The Emporium is gone,
entire building, also the Old Flood Building.
Lots of new buildings just recently finished
are completely destroyed. They are blowing
standing buildings that are in the path of
flames up with dynamite. No water. It's
awful. There is no communication anywhere
and entire phone system is busted.
I want to get out of here or be blown up.
Chief Operator Postal Telegraph Office.
San Francisco, Cal., 2:20 P. M.
Meanwhile some messages were going out from
Vallejo and nearby towns, and wireless items were

Photos by Knight, Estey. MoUci-

Temporary Shelters

1,S4 THE RELIEF
started forth to whatever office would take them.
Efforts were made to reach Washington by Manila
cable. Toward the end of the afternoon residents
fleeing in automobiles reached working telegraphs,
and sent out their frightened versions of the dis
aster. Thus in various ways the news went forth.
Everywhere prompt action was taken. For the
time business was at a standstill. Relief committees
were appointed, funds collected, supplies donated
and purchased. Public subscriptions were raised.
Newspapers became the depositories of funds.
Benefit performances were given. Oranges, papers,
and such articles were peddled at special prices by
popular celebrities. In Los Angeles a woman raised
a goodly sum by calling for contributions, at the top
of her voice, on a crowded street corner. In Wash
ington a little boy spent his spare time for weeks
selling postal cards. He raised $53.47 — as large an
offering in a way as the $100,000 sent by one of the
giants of finance. Physicians left their private prac
tices and with many volunteer nurses came to the
stricken city in hospital trains.
Every city and town and hamlet in the land
gave unstintingly. As the destruction of San Fran
cisco surpassed comparison, so the relief, springing
spontaneously, almost without appeal, from every
corner of the land, far exceeded everything of similar
sort in history. Out of the common round of affairs
sprung a magnanimous sympathy that impelled
action — quioK, almost impulsive in its spontaniety.
Before nignt Secretary Taft had started army tents
and supplies on their way to San Francisco, and had
expended a million dollars. Congress put aside its
\

THE RELIEF 155
legislative work and hastened to make the necessary
appropriation. Before it stopped the expenditure of
$2,500,000 had been authorized.
Commonwealths, municipalities, individuals —
everyone — forgot the things customary in a domi
nant wish to give. Organizations of every sort —
churches, corporations, clubs, banks — pledged them
selves for varying sums ; many millions in the ag
gregate. How ready and great was the response
to the appeal that scarcely found a voice is well
shown by the figures. Millions were subscribed
within a few days. The total subscriptions aggre
gated $9,015,812.23.
The railroads carried all supplies free, and gave
the right-of-way over all regular traffic to the re
lief trains. Passenger service was off schedule for
weeks. "Limiteds" took the sidings and forgot
their record runs while thousands of freight cars
rushed past on the main tracks.
Two hundred thousand people were homeless —
unfed — without the means of sustaining life. A
hundred miles of homes and business places had
been destroyed. A city lay wasted and desolate —
its hills swept bare — its people stricken beyond
conception. The world had known nothing of
sorrow so vast in all its history. The heart-strings
of the nation vibrated to it, and those rumbling
wheels of many cars, low on their springs with the
burden of mercy, sounded soft as notes celestial
upon a land affrighted with the discordant tones
of a great disaster.
In the stricken city itself prompt measures were
being taken to relieve the great suffering which it

156 THE RELIEF
had been foreseen would result from lack of food
and shelter and clothing. Many went hungry on
the first day of the fire, and even on the second day,
and many, too, found the scarcity of water a serious
discomfort. Thousands slept on the ground without
even the rudest shelter. But before the city had
stopped burning tents loaned by the army were be
ing set up and food distributed regularly to the
people in the camps. Even as early as the second
day of the conflagration soldiers in various places
were serving milk to women and children, and
crackers and corned beef to all who came, and were
dispensing water, sparingly, in the camps. For a
time the whole city was dependent on the relief dis-.
tributed by the soldiers, first from the government
stores, then from the relief supplies as they began
to arrive. Hardly a household in the city had a
day's provisions. The city's supplies in the whole
sale districts had been destroyed ; money was very
scarce, and for a time of no use at all, as everything
had been requisitioned by the authorities. So it was
that not only those who had lost their homes for
whom provision must be jciade, but everyone alike.
Within a few days after the breaking out of the first
fires supply depots were established and bread lines
formed at which the wealthy of the city, with
baskets on their arms, waited their turn with the
rest. During the first few days fifteen hundred tons
of supplies were distributed daily. In the lines, be
sides the hungry, were many who had to be clothed.
and many who had come to ask their way to the
hospitals where they would receive medical aid.

THE RELIEF 157
Almost from the first physical needs were pro
vided for. Scattered far and wide in vacant lots
and parks and open spaces generally the refugees
were gathered into regular camps. Among them
selves the campers at once established their own
disciplinary governments. Leaders were chosen,
and certain regulations for the conduct and sanita
tion of the camps set down, which were obeyed im
plicitly, or broken at the offender's peril of expul
sion from the camp. Later these governments were
merged into the general relief organization.
Within a few days people began to find each
other, through the newspapers' lists of "Addresses"
and "Inquiries," and through registration at the
various Information Bureaus. A fence near Golden
Gate Park had hundreds of addresses tacked upon it.
The Post Office Department carried letters written

Photo by Moller
Camp Established During the Fire

158 THE RELIEF
on scraps of paper, pieces of board, soiled cuffs —
anything and everything — without charge.
What stories of suffering may be read, between
the lines, in such items as these :
E. E. HINMAN, at  , would like to
find Mrs. Hinman, wife, in San Francisco.
BYRON J. MAXIM, if you are living, come
home; your mother is crazy; bring May,
Bessie, and boys; mother will shelter them.
MRS. W. J. LANE can find W. J. Lane at . .
INFORMATION and whereabouts of Mrs.
C. P. Herman. Address C. P. Herman, . . .
ANYONE having knowledge of the where
abouts of Mrs. M. A. Healy will please com
municate with her son, Fred A. Healy, 
ANYONE knowing whereabouts of Julia
Reddon, age 9 years, send word to Mrs.
Pike  Stockton.
MOTHER, Treany, Roy, Mae, inform Albert,
MRS. and MR. GEORGE WIRTH, come to
Tony Wirth 
ANY INFORMATION of Mrs. Bloom and
family will be appreciated by Helen Bloom,
E. KAPPENMAN — Are all safe at 
cannot get back. Papa.
Before the fire was conquered such queries
were being printed ; and for days afterward such re
quests for information, and the lists of people who
were safe and had handed in their addresses, were
the most important part of each day's issue.

THE RELIEF 1,S9
Many of the addresses in the lists of the saved
were of places in Oakland and other nearby towns;
for during the fire a tremendous, hurried, frightened,
rush out of the city had taken place. At first the
report that the ferry slips had burned had kept
many away, but nevertheless large crowds crossed
the bay Wednesday, and on Thursday, Friday and
Saturday the great ferryboats, crossing the bay as
rapidly as they could work in and out of the slips,
were crowded to their utmost. The rush out of the
city during these days had in it something, almost,
of the feverish haste of delirium. It was not merely
the burned-out who fled, but those also who were
untouched by the fire. People fled from an expected
visitation from On High; from a much-imagined
tidal wave ; from more terrible earthquakes which
they feared were coming to destroy them utterly.
Saturday and Sunday they fled from the dread fear
that typhoid or smallpox was about to devastate
the city. Many, of course, went out of the city
because they knew of places where they would be
better accommodated; but on the whole the exodus
was frenzied, purposeless, unreasoning, mad. The
current story, that the throngs pressing on the boats
from the slip had crowded off into the bay those
who had gone on in the lead, seemed almost pos
sible, though of course unfounded. The fear of a
smallpox epidemic, at any rate, seemed based on
actual dementia. It resulted largely from warnings
spread through the region near the Park, to the
effect that the Park camps were infected with the
disease, coupled with the admonition to flee at once,
as a quarantine was imminent. Although there

160 THE RELIEF
were a few isolated cases, the condition of the camps
at the time, and the subsequent outcome, indicate
that this was very probably only a hallucination of
an over-sensitive mind.
After the first rush of temporary relief it be
came necessary to make provision for the permanent
care of the homeless. Through the generosity of the
railroads, which carried out of the city, free of
charge, two hundred and twenty thousand people
while the fire was still raging, the congestion of
refugees had been greatly reduced. Mostly the ex
iles went to the cities about the bay — Oakland, Ala
meda, Berkeley, and the towns in Marin county —
but many went to the interior cities of the state,
and others even farther. Transportation was free
to all upon all the lines running out of the city. The
transcontinental lines carried people half way across
the country merely upon a request signed by any
member of the Relief Committees.
The people living in the unburned sections of
the city were at the same time taking into their
houses relatives and friends as rapidly as they could
find them, and in many cases making room for
strangers as well.
As soon as the daily papers could give the sub
ject space, another form of relief v/as undertaken by
California cities. Places all over the state began to
advertise that they would be able and glad to pro
vide homes and work for so many families, ranging
all the way from three hundred to three thousand.
Some cities sent agents to the camps. When they
went home many refugees went with them.

Photos by Estey

Breadlines in Camps and Parks

162 THE RELIEF
Over those who still remained, provident and
judicious supervision had to be exercised. Ten
thousand tents were set up. Barracks, built of
boards from the unburned lumber yards in the far
southern part of the city, were erected. As far as
possible families were housed or tented together.
When other cities have been visited by great
calamities the work of relief has been directed by
forces outside of -the stricken city itself. It was not
at first understood by the outside world that San
Francisco, even in the midst of its adversity, had
risen to the care of its afflicted. Hence it was that
President Roosevelt issued a request to the country
at large to make all donations through the Red
Cross Association, of which Secretary of War Taft
was national president. Dr. Edwin T. Devine, head
of the Charity Organization Society of New York,
was sent out by the Red Cross to take charge of
the relief. Secretary Taft, as national president,
was in touch with Judge Morrow of San Francisco,
head of the Red Cross Association of California.
Secretary Metcalf, en route to the stricken city, was
to co-operate with Dr. Devine and Judge Morrow.
The President's plan was to put the Red Cross in
entire control, seeing in it the only organization
capable of a systematic distribution of the relief.
Some friction was caused by the plan, as the city
itself had from the first undertaken the care of its
sufferers. But none doubted that the President had
intended only the good of the city, and, indeed,
when the facts were presented to him he withdrew
the request.

1

i

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it

i

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Photos by Knight, llslev, llciht
Permanent Camps for Refugees
164 THE RELIEF
When Dr. Devine arrived he found a perfect
organization, and had only to co-operate with the
local Relief Committee. Never before had a city
struck down by calamity undertaken to direct its
own relief work. By so doing San Francisco made
itself unique.
At the first the care of the refugees in the
camps had been undertaken by the soldiers. On
April 22 Major-General A. W. Greeley, command
ing the Pacific Division, who had left the city to
attend the marriage of his daughter, returned to San
Francisco. Under his direction the troops were the
distributing agents of the relief. Rations were
served raw, and the campers were their own cooks,
using such contrivances as they had rigged up for
stoves — often a few bricks with a piece of oil-can
across the top. On July 2 the troops were with
drawn ; in a letter of the previous day to the Mayor
General Greeley expressed his satisfaction at the
cordial relations that had existed between the army
and the civil authorities.
After the troops had left, camp restaurants were
established. A contract for running them was let
to private parties, who were to receive a stipend
from the relief fund for every meal served to refu
gees, and were allowed to charge a price for service
to others. The plan would have succeeded had it
not been for the greed of the contractors, wfio soon
began to give unfit food to their wards.
One by one the kitchens disappeared; the Re
lief Committee became the caterers ; and in the end
all but one kitchen having been abolished, raw pro
visions were again distributed.

THE RELIEF

16S

The work of relief continued upon a magnificent
system, in which charitable organizations and
churches affiliated with the Relief Committee. As
the summer wore away it became necessary to make
provision for housing the refugees during the winter
months. New conditions had arisen. Although
many in the camps had secured work, houses to
rent were few indeed, and the price of those had
been put up to prohibitive figures by penurious land
lords. The families in the parks could buy their
own provisions, but to pay rent at the advanced
rates was out of the question. The price of staple
articles had not been materially advanced by the
fire, and had it not been that they had no place but
the parks to live many would have been as w^ell off
(barring furniture) as before the fatal eighteenth of
April. It therefore became the chief work of the

Photo by Aitken
Cottages Erected by Relief Corporation

166 THE RELIEF
Relief Committee to build houses for these self-sup
porters, and three-room cottages were erected in
the parks. It was determined to properly establish
the independence of the tenants by charging a ren
tal. Six dollars a month was fixed upon ; at the end
of a year the buildings were to be the property of
the tenants, to be moved where they wished. The
indigents and the aged and infirm were still to be
cared for, and in all tenderness to be provided with
the necessities of life. But so rapidly had the city
become self-supporting that, although there had
been fully three hundred thousand people at the first
dependent upon relief, by the middle of October the
number of totally dependent ones had shrunk to a
paltry three hundred and there were only a few
thousand refugees in all the camps.
By this time the people generally had accus
tomed themselves to the new order of things. The
fire was remembered, to a large extent, as a time for
dating events as having occurred "before" or "since."
Business systems had been re-established, and the
old habit of life, though altered, had returned.

IX
THE RESUMPTION
In the vernacular of the gods who sit near
the roof, San Francisco was quick to "get busy."
While relief matters were taking up the attentiofi of
the entire country, the man-part of the city was
casting about to see what it could do in the way of
a fresh start. It was a little beginning, but full of
hope and grit, and argued well for the larger work
that should soon be undertaken — the work of
building anew upon the ashes of the past. Profes
sional men set up offices in front parlors; mer
chants established themselves at their homes or in
such vacant stores as they could snap up ; notary
publics and public stenographers who had taken
refuge in the camps, started afresh in their tents.
Often a chair, a towel, a razor, a cake of soap, were
the whole stock in trade of front porch barbers.
It was not a matter of hours, but in a short time
people generally began to think of ordinary things
again. Clerks and employees began to get in touch
with their employers. Stenographers hurried across
town on foot to take dictations, and letters innu
merable were sent out by business men to tell their
"customers'' that it would not take long to have
everything running smoothly, and that the cus
tomers had better send in their orders right away.
Egotism sublime!
The first trade was in soda water. The city
had "gone dry" by the Mayor's order on the morn
ing of the earthquake, and to its eternal credit raised

168 THE RESUMPTION
no objection when a similar edict kept it dry for
weeks afterward. The lid was on and nailed down
tight. This suggested a thirst-quencher to enter
prising men, the need of which was further empha
sized by the very limited supply of putrid, ill-smell
ing water that was doled out from the tail end of
sprinkling carts. Facetious boys had threatened to
go fishing in those carts, and even sedate old men
called them aquariums. As soon as travel was
resumed on Market street, as soon as Fillmore
street was "discovered," they were lined with men
and boys who made the neighborhood resound with
the popping of stoppers, a nickel the pop.
At about the same time came those dispensing
souvenirs of the fire for a consideration. It was re
markable how people who had been burned out and
had scarcely any money at all went down town and
spent a dime for a broken cup or twisted vase or
other trifle from the ruins.
Then came the canvas restaurants and cafes on
wheels and the fly-trap chop houses, that bore out-
landishly spelled menus, and served the worst, the
sloppiest, the most ill-savored coffee imaginable-
But the alacrity with which it was downed, espe
cially by the man who had earned some money and
was at last proudly independent of relief rations
(though the latter tasted better) was equally be
yond conception.
These were among the transitory measures of
an extraordinary nature — some of the things people
did to re-establish themselves without extraneous
aid. On the other hand, in that crowding whirl of
momentous events, certain official measures stand

Cooking in the Streets

Photos by Knight

170 THE RESUMPTION
out prominently in their bearing upon the gradual
return of normal conditions. Businesses had been
thrown into a tangled mass of uncertainties. No
man could do the accustomed things, and no one
could tell, or even guess with a chance of being
right, what anyone else was going to do. If affairs
were allowed to go on, regulated only by the calen
dar, the result would be a state of chaos out of which
nothing but ruin could come for many.
If the banks opened it was very probable that
frightened depositors would start a stampede. Cer
tainly some of the weaker would fail. If the calen
dar ruled business men would be confronted by
notes falling due and going to protest, because their
businesses had been temporarily wiped out. A like
fate would be meted out to innumerable mortgagees.
The statute of limitations would require the com
mencement of suits, which in the present disrupted
condition of the courts was a physical impossibility.
Thus it became necessary, in justice to all in
terests, that everything should be held in suspense
for a time. To this end Governor Pardee declared
April 19 a legal holiday, a like act being unnecessary
regarding the eighteenth, which by the mere force of
circumstances was virtually one already. The Gov
ernor continued to specify each day in succession a
holiday, until the extra session of the Legislature
(which he convened on June 3d) had passed bills
further extending the time of any contract which
should have been performed during the holidays, to
July 10; and also extending the time of the statute
of limitations to January i, 1907.

THE RESUMPTION 171
This combination of measures had the salutary
effect of giving people a chance to think things out
reasonably and sanely. It prevented the rushing in
of fools to their own and others' undoing.
Certain other pieces of legislation were intended
to remedy the extraordinary conditions prevalent in
San Francisco, because of the loss of the books and
papers in the public offices, acts concerning de
stroyed records and concerning land titles. The
first of these provided a method of restoring the rec
ords of judicial proceedings "in substance and
effect," in order that pending litigation might be
continued; similar acts provided for restoring pri
vate and corporation papers. Another act, neces
sitated by the destruction of nearly all the Record
er's records, provided a means of establishing title
to real estate (by publication, posting, etc.) without
serving notice on anyone or presenting any deeds
or similar papers, as in thousands of instances all
such documents had been burned. This did much
to inspire confidence among landowners, and to
facilitate real estate transactions; in many cases it
would have been otherwise impossible for owners
to prove their titles.
In the meantime the city had had a unique ex
perience in government. In the first stages of the
endeavors to bring order out of chaos, the Relief
Committee was supreme. The original Committee
of Fifty was soon reorganized as a Committee of
Forty, which through its various sub-committees,
handled the problems before it. The Mayor of
course was still Mayor, but he did his work with the
Committee. The Finance Committee received and

a^&SSfe-- .-... .

i

^.i^/-;^>.

Photos by Moller and Estey
Outdoor Kitchens

THE RESUMPTION 173
handled the Relief Funds, and arranged for the
compensation of all whose property had been seized
for the general good. Other sub-committees con
sidered special aspects of the relief situation. One
worked in restoring the water supply, another in
the resumption of street-car traffic. Still others
took up the problem of housing the homeless, sani
tation, food supplies, hospitals, insurance, and ar
ranged for the resumption of work by the judiciary ¦
and other municipal bodies, obtaining quarters for
them. Before the fire was out volunteer watchers were
patrolling the streets throughout the night, to pre
serve order. It was soon seen that such patrols
were unnecessary, and when on the morning of the
Sunday following the earthquake, a prominent citi
zen, while engaged in relief work in an automobile
displaying a Red Cross flag, was shot and killed,
through a misunderstanding, by a member of a citi
zen's patrol, they were disbanded. For weeks, how
ever, soldiers and militiamen patrolled the streets
to keep order and enforce strange regulations as to
lights and fires.
At all times the city government was in author
ity, although its work was done mainly through
the committees and the military. Gradually the
various departments resumed operations. The de
partment of Electricity had been at work ever since
the outbreak of the fire, doing its best to keep up a
fire alarm system at least, and, afterward, restoring
the lighting service. Other officials established
themselves in stores and residences. The Superior
Courts held their sessions in a newly finished Syna-

174 THE RESUMPTION
gogue, the finest building remaining in the city;
the Justice Courts had a school building; the Police
Department another. The physicians of the Health
Department, first cooperating with, began to super
sede the military doctors, and the police to take the
place of the soldiers. The Board of Supervisors
again came into being. By the end of May San
Francisco was in the hands of its regular adminis
tration. Meanwhile the business world had also
been working out its salvation in new and unusual
ways. The banks were among the first to catch their
breath after the calamity. As early as April 23d
the Oakland banks were paying depositors in sums
up to $30, and showing every accommodation within
their power to persons from San Francisco intro
duced at the windows of their paying tellers. The
bank vaults in the burned city had stood the fire
admirably, and though they were for some days in
accessible, (and could not be safely opened for
weeks), it was soon apparent that their contents
were unharmed. This knowledge gave great as
surance of the city's financial stability, for in those
vaults lay over $76,000,000 in cash and securities.
Besides there were available securities abroad
amounting to more than $38,000,000.
In the Mint, saved by heroic work, lay $200,-
000,000 in gold. The Government, through Secre
tary Shaw, was ready with assistance. Local bank
ers were permitted to deposit sums in any denomi
nation with the Sub-Treasury in New York, and
upon telegraphic advice of such deposits an equal
amount was placed to their credit at the Mint. This

Photos by il'ntcr.'!

Signs on Tents in Camps

176 THE RESUMPTION
led to the establishment of a Clearing House Bank,
which opened at the Mint on May ist. A teller from
each of the banks was in attendance. This extra
ordinary institution cashed checks drawn on the
various banks up to $500, provided they had first
been authorized by the bank officials. For the com
mercial banks, where the tellers were familiar, in
a general way, with the balances of the depositors,
this plan was perfectly feasible, but with the savings
banks, some of which had over fifty thousand de
positors, conditions were entirely different. They
did not feel justified in cashing checks except for
those of their depositors with whose standing they
were satisfied. These were required to execute
notes to the banks, upon which they were given
checks on the Clearing House Bank.
This remarkable bank was a boon to wage earn
ers, particularly, as it enabled employers to meet, in
part at least, their pay rolls for the unexpired week.
Soon the commercial banks inaugurated a sys
tem of special accounts whereby patrons were able
to deposit funds and draw checks against them.
These special deposits had no connection with old
accounts, and carried separate balances.
Thus the financial situation began to work itself
out. On the nineteenth of May all checks dated
prior to April 18 were "cleared", and on May 23 all
banks in the city resumed regular business. There
was no excitement, no rush. Depositors who had
lost their check stubs called for their balances, after
they had stopped at the receiving window and put
in their earnings. The banks had solved their own
problem.

THE RESUMPTION 177
Importations of gold aggregating $46,207,806
had been made from Europe and New York, with
which to pay checks; but as it turned out, none of
this was needed, as deposits exceeded withdrawals
from the first. The imported money was soon re
turned, and was followed by local gold, sent for in
vestment. Cash began to pour in far in excess of
the most sanguine hopes. If confidence in the city's
future had been shaken, it was speedily restored.
During June the banks cleared $121,677,692.77, a
decrease of only 9 per cent, from the clearings of
the same month in the previous year. During July
$160,631,793.87 were cleared, showing an actual in
crease of 85^ per cent, over July, 1905.
At the very beginning, measures were taken to
make important streets in the burned district pas
sable and safe. Dynamiting squads were sent about
to blow down swaying and threatening walls. Sol
diers were detailed to impress anybody who hap
pened to be luckless enough to pass their way into
the work of throwing bricks from the center of the
streets. Roadways, scarcely more than paths, were
thus cleared, and travel, however arduous and beset
with obstacles, was at last possible through the
former arteries of the business section.
Gradually public utilities resumed operations.
The Postoffice, which had lost many of its branches,
was overwhelmed with difficulties, which were par
tially defined by a carrier who remarked that most
of the house numbers had been rubbed off, which
made it hard to deliver letters. The task of
handling mail for a city in which 250,000 people had
moved was Herculean. At one time fifteen hundred

178 THE RESUMPTION
tons of second-class matter were piled up on the
Oakland mole, and for some time the first-class mail
was very much congested in very many places. But
the department was speedily reorganized, and the
delivery of mail slipped back into its customary
place, as a cog in the wheel of commerce.
During May the United Railroads was granted
a temporary franchise by the Supervisors for trolley
lines, to replace their old cable roads, and soon had
gangs of men installing the new system. The Fill
more street line had already been reopened as soon
as the Relief Committee's sub-committee had done
away with all possible danger of fire by cutting the
telephone, power, and light wires within two blocks
of the street on either side. Cars were in operation
there for a few hours on the Saturday of the fire
week. Traffic was resumed by the United Railroads
on April 28, on one line at a time, until all parts of
the city were comparatively accessible. The rivals
of the United Railroads were also quick to repair
the damage to their properties. The Geary-street
cable system was ready as soon as the tall chimney
of its powerhouse was rebuilt. In spite of the
widely circulated reports that the earthquake had
wrecked the cable conduit, the roadbed needed only
a few hours' work, where the slot had been warped
by the heat of the fire. The California-street cable
line was also in operation at an early date, although
the fire had distroyed its cars and powerhouse and
plant. For a time its machinery was operated in an
exposed basement, while walls were being built
around it.

THE RESUMPTION

179

The master stroke of the earthquake, from the
point of inconvenience, to those who had not felt
the tragedy of it, was divided into three parts: the
destruction of the water system, the demoralization
of the lighting system, and the throwing down of
chimneys. The water company, which hardly had a single
supply pipe left unbroken, had restored a partial
service within four days of the calamity; but in the
meantime water had to be obtained. On the first
day of the fire Admiral McCalla had sent lighters
from the Mare Island Navy Yard, carrying 50,000
gallons of water. The Preble and other steamers
brought water from Goat Island and Oakland. The
Board of Public Works had their sprinkling wagons
cart the water to the camps and about the streets.

yrejjereat HOWARD, near 81'' St
Hm'5 mm^trr bm. }
( I &hot'6<rinf ."Wfoflar IBuTfo rt ,
' Lf^PtMif, i Patj Soy, I Pair Sffx,
ANrlNDONIIABLEl
S^mii^nemit of "

An Early Business Sign

Phnfo by Eslcy

180 THE RESUMPTION
whence it was drawn off into the wash boilers and
saucepans and pitchers of the thirsty people.
The gas and electric companies that had sup
plied power and light and heat to the city were
quick to repair the damage to their properties. But
there was great risk that new fires might be started
in houses where pipes and wires had been damaged.
A thorough inspection had to be made before the
service could be resumed, and in the meantime
candles went to premium prices.
From the very beginning fires in stoves were
prohibited. Hardly a chimney in the city had es
caped some damage, and with water scarce and the
Fire Department crippled, it was not a time to tempt
the "imps of the perverse." It was decided to make
a careful inspection of all chimneys, and until it
should be seen that all damage had been repaired
and all flues were in perfect order, all cooking should
be done in the streets. It was necessary to place
windbreaks around the curbstone fireplaces to pre
vent the wind from scattering sparks. And so it
came about that pretentious cookeries, with every
show of convenience, lined the streets. Many
kitchen stoves were disconnected and set up in the
streets. Everywhere bricks from the fallen chim
neys were piled into crude fireplaces, across which
oven grates or sheets of iron were placed. Often
an inverted sink was used with a stove-pipe rising
from the trap. Real, substantial meals were pre
pared — meals to which any man would hurry home.
This phase of the new life remained foir several
weeks, as the unusual demand for masons made the
repairing of chimneys very slow.

THE RESUMPTION

181

The city at large was possessed with a cheery
spirit of hopefulness. Men met on the street and
congratulated each other that it was no worse.
Even amid the inconveniences of cooking in the
street and living in a tent, the people showed a
brave humor. A sign on a tent in one of the camps
bore the legend, "The Whole Dam Family." An
other bid the curious to "Ring the Bell for Land
lady." Still others announced that "Cars stop Here,"
and that the "Elevator is not Running." Some of
the kitchens were jokingly called after the city's
most pretentious restaurants— Tait's, Techau's, Zin-
kand's. Others bore fantastic names — the "Out
side Inn," the "Inside Out," the "Step Inn," the
"Goodfellows' Grotto." One, not much larger than
a dog kennel, displayed the crudely lettered sign,
"Un-Fairmont Hotel. Open all night. Will ex
change for country property." Another bore the

Removal of Debris

Photo bv Water.'

182 THE RESUMPTION
motto, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we
may have to go to Oakland." "Cheer up," said still
another; "Have one on me. Come in and spend
a quiet evening."
Even the ruins were made to play their part
in the fun. A firm which had occupied salesrooms
on the ground floor of one of the large buildings,
announced that it had moved because the elevator
was not running ; and another, "because of alter
ations in the building on the eighteenth of April."
Despite the holidays, the County Clerk was
compelled to open his office. An army of matri
monial aspirants besieged him. Recreants and pro-
crastinators had arrived at a sudden determination
that it was the best time of all to take the final step.
Boys and girls who had only half made up their
minds before, suddenly realized how necessary they
were to each other. The first license was issued
only one day after the earthquake. In the next
ten days two hundred and twenty were issued.
The newspapers, which had lost about every
thing they possessed, moved temporarily across the
bay, and issued from the presses of the Oakland
papers. Upon their return they housed themselves
as best they could; the Bulletin in a shed on the
roof of a cold storage plant; the Chronicle and
Call in hastily refitted offices in their former quar
ters; the Examiner in a one-story shack on Folsom
street near the water-front.
Theatres were among the first pleasure places
to show signs of returning life. The Orpheum had
a matinee at the Chutes the week following the
earthquake. The Central and others opened in

THE RESUMPTION

18.3

tents. The first building permit issued after the
fire was for a new theatre — the Davis. The res
taurants were soon displaying the old familiar signs
in unfamiliar places. The clubs quickly rehoused
themselves in private residences.
Fillmore street, which had been seized upon
as the first business thoroughfare, soon became the
center of operations; soon showed evidences of the
pluck and indomitable purpose of the risen city. It
achieved a temporary importance because the Relief
Committee and various branches of the city gov
ernment found quarters there. Other reasons made
it available for business purposes. It had the one
undamaged car line — a line between the Mission
and the Western Addition, the two unburned dis
tricts. Then, too, it was already a business street
in a small and unassuming way; and it also hap
pened that there were more vacant lots of large size
there than anywhere else, as a great deal of the
land around had been owned by one man who had

^^t^a.;-;;ift,l^.v

Removing Debris from Street

Photo by Estcy

184 THE RESUMPTION
believed more in holding property than in improv
ing it. The vacant lots were cleared and graded, and
the foundations laid of buildings in which mer
chants who had grown old in the city of the past
were to make a fresh start in the city to be. Old
buildings were raised and stores built underneath.
Among the wholesalers, it was decided that
they should gather on the vacant land near the rail
road, in the level district south of Townsend street.
This was at first intended as a temporary measure
to avoid clearing away the mass of wreckage in the
old district; but as time went on it came to be
looked on as a permanent change. The heavy ex
pense of drayage had been a great handicap in the
old location north of Market street (which had
grown up when everything came by steamer) and
this was entirely dispensed with in the new place.
By July the wholesalers were shipping 250 carloads
of produce daily to interior and coast customers.
Hayes Valley sprung into a little city almost
over night. There were no hills to contend with,
the streets were well paved, and it had two car lines
which, however, did not resume operations for some
months. Everything there invited business.
Van Ness avenue, with its great width, bare of
all buildings on one side, and with those on the
other blistered almost beyond recognition, offered a
splendid opportunity to retail business. The beau
tiful avenue, which had been at one time the place
of fashionable residences, only to give way to
equally fashionable boarding houses and apartments,
had at last sunk (or risen) to the fashionable

186 THE RESUMPTION
shopping street. The Saturday afternoon "parade"
on Market and Kearny had its resurrection after the
fire on Van Ness, so thorough was the change by
which this fashionable avenue had been given over
to the vanities of life. In its entire length the only
landmark that remained unchanged during the
metamorphosis was St. Mary's Cathedral, strangely
out of place in its new surroundings.
Property values along all the favored streets
took a fabulous leap. Substantial fortunes were
made by the juggling of ground leases, and by the
erection of stores to be leased at exorbitant rentals
to anxious retailers.
Hardly a month had passed before there were
twenty-five thousand men employed in the building
trades alone. In less than two months nearly a
thousand building permits had been issued by the
Board of Public Works. And in addition over two
thousand temporary structures had been erected.
By the middle of June eight firms were employing
a thousand clerks. Some firms had the courage to
return to their former sites, while the ruins were
still hot, and start over again in shacks built of
scraps of cans and corrugated iron pulled from the
debris. The removal of debris in the burned districts
was at first badly handicapped by the lack of facili
ties. But one at a time donkey engines began to
puff in the streets; standing walls began to dis
appear, and tangled steel and iron came to be
straightened out. Bunkers were built and spur
tracks laid. As early as July a hundred cars of de
bris were moved daily. An army of men from the

THE RESUMPTION

187

camps was soon at work among the ruins, clearing
bricks (which had a value in rebuilding, if un
broken) and piling them up in neat stacks ; loading
wagons en route to the bunkers ; tearing down with
pick and crowbar the stumps of walls; breaking up
with heavy sledges fallen and useless cast-iron
columns. Hotels early announced their intention of open
ing in temporary quarters. The St. Francis erected
a one-story shelter in Union Square — a building
almost classic in its simple, rambling design. Ham
mers were soon ringing upon the frame of a new
Palace on Leavenworth and Post. A hotel on the
west side of Van Ness avenue, unburned but badly
damaged, was soon refitted and opened. Quickly-
made changes converted popular apartments into
much needed hostelries.
The clearing away of the debris and the open
ing of badly littered streets in the burned district

Photo by IVaters
Reconstruction Work in Burned District

188 THE RESUMPTION
began to bear fruit. The banks built sheds over
their vaults and reopened on their old sites. Busi
ness houses followed the example of their more im
petuous brethren in the corrugated iron shacks, and
moved back to their old location. Repairs were
started upon the "fireproof" buildings ; within three
months eighteen were occupied in part, and thirty-
five others were being rehabilitated. At that time
there were also under construction sixty-six per
manent buildings.
Building of this class was retarded, however,
as no one could be sure where the new fire limits
would be established, or what the new building
ordinances would be; and a further delay was
caused by a general inability to adjust fire losses
with the insurance companies or to obtain any idea
of the course they would pursue.
The task of settling these losses was one of
monumental proportions. The estimated risks on
San Francisco properties of the various companies
was, in round figures, $235,000,000; their total capi
tal and surplus, including the foreign assets of some
companies, only about $270,000,000. In some cases
the losses were from six to ten times the entire
assets of the company involved.
In some way and upon some basis these losses
had to be met. They seemed to mean ruin to many
companies. As the basis of settlement was a cause
of wrangling and haggling and almost interminable
delay, no one knew how much he could expect to
receive. Finally the lines began to be drawn.
About a third of the companies acknowledged their
full indebtedness and paid the adjusted loss in every

THE RESUMPTION

189

case. Others made various offers to their policy
holders, some as low as 33 1-3 per cent., some 50
per cent., and ranging from there up to 75 per cent.,
in rare instances even 90 per cent.
Some of the companies were simply unable to
make payment in full and did what they could.
Others, whether able to pay or not, flatly repudiated
al) responsibility by leaving the State and carrying
on negotiations with all the impudence which is
available to a debtor in a foreign country six thou
sand miles away. A few American companies, un
able to do this, promptly entangled themselves in
litigation, and so tied up their funds with sufficient
red tape as to make access to them very difficult.
Some of the companies, too, had in their policies
various forms of provisions exempting them from
liability for losses caused by earthquake, and took
refuge behind the question as to whether this cov-

' ¦"<»Si |i«S

Photo by Aithra
Repairs on Merchants' Exchange Building

190 THE RESUMPTION
ered damage caused by fire indirectly brought about
by earthquake, and so effected compromises of vari
ous sorts with their policy-holders.
Many unkind things were said of the com
panies, many harsh names applied to them — "six-
bitters," "welchers," and the like. But in all fair
ness to both sides it must be confessed that no man
can look such astounding losses in the face without
trembling. Perhaps the example of San Francisco
will give rise to a mode of operation in the future
which will make sufficient allowance for all possible
contingencies — even the destruction of an entire
city. For years the companies operating in San
Francisco had feared such a calamity, but they had
gambled upon its uncertainty, and some of them
had recklessly involved themselves in risks far be
yond their ability to pay.
Gradually a settlement was effected in the great
majority of cases (although numerous suits against
certain companies will probably drag themselves
through years of court procedure) and land holders
began to take steps toward rebuilding.
The new building ordinance, which was passed
early in June, specified the requirements for the
various classes of buildings. Another ordinance
was passed fixing the new fire limits so as to include
almost all of the burned district.
These two measures had been watched for by
men eager to rebuild, and after their passage the
reconstruction of the city went forward at a rapid
pace; not strictly upon the old lines, but more in
the way of a mining town which suddenly wakes
to find itself important. Wooden buildings of from

Photos hv IJ'nfci'.K aud T)c
Temporary Business Houses

¦leth

N Ni:SS AVKNUI
FILLMORK STRI:K1

KK-KSTAHLiSHKn BUILDING

IN BURNM>

192 THE RESUMPTION
one to four stories clustered around the frames and
shells of the former great office buildings (already
under repairs) and here and there appeared the
growing skeletons of new steel, stone, and brick
structures — the work of the new city. The foun
dations of new and greater skyscrapers appeared.
Many brick buildings reared their splendid walls
high above the ruins around. Building operations
involving an expenditure of over twenty-five mil
lions, were under way. The streets were crowded
with wagons hauling great loads of lumber. Orders
for whole trainloads of steel were placed with the
manufactories. Carloads of cement were used daily.
Six months after the fire, six thousand buildings,
which covered half the burned area, had been
erected. A new city was rising from the ruins, grad
ually, with much labor.

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
The damage caused by the earthquake has been
much exaggerated. Then, too, much has been
blamed upon the earthquake for which it was not
really responsible. The truth is that in the damage
to its buildings San Francisco merely paid the price
of carelessness in construction — of placing heavy
structures on loosely filled soil and of erecting build
ings that were woefully weak in design or shame
fully poor in construction.
Doubtless many people have thought that a
very large proportion of the buildings in San Fran
cisco were injured or destroyed by the shock of the
earthquake, and that the sinking of the streets and
breakage of water pipes was general throughout the
city. In truth only a small proportion of the build
ings were damaged. Photographs taken during the
fire show blocks and blocks of brick structures prac
tically uninjured; and frame structures were dam
aged very little except some tumble-down affairs,
and some on filled land or on insufficient or wobbly
foundations. The sinking and shifting of streets
was confined to "filled in" areas ; so was most of the
damage to buildings.
The parts of the city that were built on the
rocky formations of the hills were very little dam
aged. The lower portions — valleys of softer soil,
and regions where deep sand dunes covered the
underlying rocks — were somewhat more severely
shaken. On the filled land the vibrations were much

194 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
greater. There such slight damage as the throwing
down of cornices and gable-ends was common, and
in some places streets and buildings sank somewhat.
The present generation has almost forgotten
what was well known to its predecessors : that much
of San Francisco's downtown district had been built
on fiUed-in tide-flats and marshes. The manner in
which it had been filled in they did not realize at all.
The old maps of the city show plainly enough
that in the early days the water came up close to
the hills. The inlet at Yerba Buena Cove, around
which the first settlement had sprung up, extended
from the base of Telegraph Hill on the north (at
Jackson and Montgomery) to the foot of Rincon
Hill on the south (at Folsom below Fremont)
almost in a direct line. South of Market, everything
east of Fremont street is "made land" ; California,
east of Battery, and Clay, east of Sansome, were,
similarly, under water. The upper view in the group
entitled "Early San Francisco," shows this inlet as
seen from Rincon Hill, with Telegraph Hill in the
center distance; a view of the same scene taken a

Hecht Collection
Buildings Damaged by Earthquake in 1868

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Map Showing San Francisco in 1849
Dcttecf Lines Show Present Streets beyond OM Shore Line

196 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
year ago would have shown heavy brick buildings
as far out as the main line of ships at the right.
The picture at the bottom of the same page
shows the upper portion of the same inlet. The beach
in the center of the picture is Montgomery street;
the two streets running up the hill are Clay and
Washington respectively; they are so marked in the
original engraving, which was made in 1849.
Southward, between Rincon Hill and the
Potrero Hills, a similar inlet extended as far west as
the lower end of Eighth street. Even now Channel
street is a waterway as far as Seventh. Beyond this
inlet one arm of a salt marsh stretched as far as the
present site of the Postoffice, at Seventh and
Mission. By 1850 San Francisco began to grow out over
Yerba Buena Cove. Wharves projected out on the
street lines; stores and shacks sprung up beside
them. A thousand people lived in houses on stilts
over the water. Gradually the cross-streets were
planked, and the whole district filled in with waste
and trash, packing cases, garbage, and soft materials
of all sorts, and a thin coating of sand and dirt
sprinkled on the top. All this mass rested on no
more substantial stuff than soft mud. As the years
went on heavy buildings were erected. In a few
instances buildings rested on piles driven through
the fill and mud. The earthquake of 1868 caused
considerable damage to some of the buildings in
this district.
The region became the greater city's wholesale
district, and was gradually covered with substantial
buildings. The land had never stopped sink-

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE 197
ing. The weight of the buildings had slowly
compressed the soft filling; each new building
erected on the official grade stood for a time above
its neighbors. In this part of the city the earthquake caused
some settling of streets and buildings. In general
it was a matter of a few inches only ; in extreme
cases two or three feet. The streets settled more
than the buildings because the soil under them
had remained loose. Market street sunk about four
inches for a distance of several hundred feet. East
street, in front of the Ferry Building, sank three
feet in one spot twenty feet across ; Davis street,
near Vallejo, sank three feet. These were the
extreme instances.
The general subsidence through this district
naturally canted and strained and cracked some of
the buildings, and a few small wooden structures on
rickety foundations were shaken down by the vio
lence of the vibrations that ran through the loose
soil. But serious damage was by no means general
even here, and buildings properly constructed on
good foundations were uninjured. The Appraisers'
Building, resting on a solid slab of concrete, does
not show a crack as a result of either the earthquake
of 1868 or that of 1906, although it has gradually
gone down eleven inches more at one end than at
the other since it was built. The Ferry Building,
resting on a similarly good foundation, was almost
undamaged, in spite of the subsidence of the adja
cent region.
So with the so-called Commissary Building at
Market and Spear, a block away. The street sank

198 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
some three feet here, but the damage to the building
was almost entirely by fire.
A similar subsidence occurred in the filled-in
district that had been Mission Bay and its surround
ing marsh, and which had been brought up to the
grade with sand loosely thrown in. Mission street,
near the Postoffice (at the corner of Seventh), sank
three and one-half feet.
The same disturbance can be traced diagonally
through the nearby blocks — at Sixth and Howard,
and at Fifth and Folsom, and at Fourth and Harri
son — along the edge of the old marsh. .
Through here were the most striking cases of
the complete wrecking of flimsy frame houses, which
tottered on their crazy foundations and collapsed.
Better-built structures — frame or other — held to
gether even when the, soft loose soil moved and
twisted and formed itself permanently into "earth
quake waves."
A third "disturbed region" was in the neighbor
hood of the Valencia Street Hotel. From about

Photo by Derleth
Subsidence of Streets at Market and Spear

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE 199
Nineteenth and Guerrero to Seventeenth and How
ard the steep-sided ravine in which Willow Creek
ran had been filled with loose earth; further along
was the marsh about the head of Mission Inlet. The
Youths' Directory, the Valencia Street Hotel, the
much-pictured houses on Howard street, the broken
sidewalk on Capp street, and the cracked pavement
of Eighteenth street, are all in this area.
The one other place in San Francisco where the
earthquake resulted in a general movement of houses
and streets was at Vallejo street and Van Ness ave
nue, and here too, a fill was to blame; for in early
days loose earth had been thrown in to fill in the
course of a creek that ran in a deep ravine toward
the Presidio. Here, however, the buildings were
of a better class, and, while more or less tilted, held
together and were but little damaged.
It was only on these filled areas that damage
to streets, or to houses generally, resulted. In other
parts of the city only isolated buildings were injured
— usually for more or less obvious reasons.
As nine-tenths of San Francisco is built on the
solid ground of its many hills, and only slight dam
age was suffered there, it will be seen that the few

Earthquake Waves Near Foot of Ninth Street

200 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
special cases where local conditions resulted in se
vere damage have made the earthquake seem much
more terrible than it was in reality.
If the filled-in regions had been properly filled
— if the houses on them had been properly built —
the damage done to San Francisco by the earthquake
would have been slight indeed. It was unreasonable
to expect such loosely filled land to hold up under
a severe shaking. Now that it has been solidified
it is not at all likely that a similar earthquake would
do any serious damage.
Closely related to the question of subsidence
throughout a district is that of the failure of the
foundations of individual buildings. This, however,
was mainly the result of poor designing and poor
construction. Many old wooden buildings had been
built on wooden foundations which had almost
rotted away. Others, stronger, had almost nothing
to brace them against side strains, and so slid over
sidewise down on the ground. In still other cases
the foundations themselves were all right but un
fortunately the superstructures were not securely
fastened to them and were jounced off by the shock.
Throughout the city, houses moved a few inches on
their foundations — and had to be pulled back at con
siderable expense — merely because they were held
to them only by a few nails.
A few houses, too, through the weakness of
their frame work — lack of bracing and general light
ness of material — bulged far to one side, their walls
cracking at the level of the second floor. The picture
on page 25 shows two such cases.

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE 201
Everywhere in the city the interior plastering
of houses was badly cracked by the shock. Such
cracking of plaster, indeed, came to be looked on as
a necessary result of the earthquake, so general was
it. But the fact that very many houses that were
better built did not sustain even this damage shows
clearly that a great deal of it was due only to a lack
of rigidity in the houses that were so shaken. An
interesting fact in this connection is that, through
out the city, leaded glass door-transoms and panels
were bent far out of position, although ordinary
windows were uninjured.
In general, however, the damage to frame
structures was trivial. Apart from cases of unusual
weakness, and insufficient or wobbly foundations,
the wooden houses of the city sustained almost no
serious injury, except where it resulted from poor
foundations. In the whole Mission and Western

Photos by Derleth
Cracking in Stonework of Postoffice and Flood Building

202 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
Addition — the unburned parts of the city — there is
hardly a house that is not structurally sound.
Among brick buildings, however, damage was
more general. To a great extent this also is due to
poor designing and poor construction; the only es
sential difference seems to be that poor work in
brick is more dangerous than poor work in wood.
But good work of both kinds was equally unharmed.
The fate of brick chimneys in all parts of the
city is typical of the effect of the shock on brickwork
in general. Where they were built within the houses
and supported by the frames they were unharmed;
but in almost every case the throw of the temblor
snapped off the unbraced part above. Many, on
flat roofs, moved over or swung around so that the
fire left them standing very decidedly "off center."
In general those which were braced by rods con
necting them with the roof did not fall, or broke
above the brace; others held together merely be
cause of the superior material in them. Outside
chimneys usually fell away as a whole; but some
split, the outer portion dropping while the grates re
mained in place. So with brick walls in general;
the unbraced portions above roof-lines fell, and walls
which were built well, and as parts of a well-unified
building, stood.
The most striking effect on brick buildings was
the falling out of parapet walls and the tops of front
walls. The former — rising several feet above the
roof-line as a protection from fires in adjacent
buildings — were almost invariably unbraced; many
of them were snapped off, in whole or in part, just
as the great majority of chimneys were, while others

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE 203
remained. In the case of front walls the conditions
were somewhat different. Where the roof rested
upon the front wall, as where it was carried out as
a cornice, damage was very infrequent. But in
many cases square cornices concealed pointed roofs ;
in very many cases such cornices were thrown down,
exposing the whole opening of the gable ; and often
the fagade of the whole upper story went down as
well. The chief reason for such results, apparently,
was the battering of the inside of the building
against the end walls, as it swayed on the sup
porting columns. Such swaying, of course, indicates
poor design, by which the building is entirely lack
ing in unity of construction, the various members
not being properly tied together.
This absence of proper tying of the walls to
the interior construction was the cause of two strik
ing effects in different buildings. In a few old build
ings the swaying of the walls allowed the roof
trusses and floor beams to pull out of the sockets in
which they rested, and the whole interior to tele
scope into the basement. In other cases, the sway
ing of the heavily loaded floors knocked out the side
walls, as in the case of the storage warehouse men
tioned in an earlier chapter. The simplest precau
tion — the use of the so-called "earthquake rods" —
would have avoided all of this; the damage so
caused should not be attributed to the earthquake at
all, but simply to poor designing. Buildings with
steel girders suffered much less than those with only
wooden joists, probably because the steel was fas
tened more securely; and the stiffening afforded by

204 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
concrete floors seems to have protected other brick
structures from even slight cracking.
Perhaps the most striking example of the de
struction of brickwork is found in the case of the
City Hall. Certainly the pictures of the ruins might
seem to indicate that the earthquake was a destruc
tive force of tremendous power, but the impression
so conveyed is a false one. Indeed, only half of the
building suffered any serious damage at all — the
dome and the' Larkin street wing. Apart from the
question of graft and poor construction (the dam
aged and the undamaged portions were built by
different administrations) the reasons for the down
fall of the building can almost be seen at a glance.
The tall framework of the dome, rising straight and
sheer and almost unbraced, within the surrounding
brickwork, almost proclaims in itself how its sway
ing back and forth knocked down the latter, just as
the swaying of the dome on the Stanford University
Gymnasium wrecked that edifice. The City Hall
dome, broad-based and sturdy in appearance, was
but a sham. Its tremendously heavy brick walls and

Photos by .Milken
Chimney Tops Shifted by Earthquake

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE 205
concrete columns supported nothing, and braced
nothing ; the slender frame derived no strength from
them in any way. On the Larkin street wing the
same story may be read; massive brick walls and
monumental concrete columns — uselessly huge,
shamefully top-heavy — are tied together at the roof
by only the flimsiest and most trivial trusses; it is
small wonder that when the earthquake set them
swaying they broke away and fell.
In much of the damage to brickwork in San
Francisco poor workmanship and poor materials
were only too apparent. Falling brick fell apart as
they struck the ground; the mortar, dry and
crumbly, had clearly been of the poorest quality.
In many buildings, where zigzag cracks appeared
between bricks, the mortar only too plainly had no
cohesive power at all. In others, and everywhere in
house foundations, the falling out of the facing brick
showed that there was no bond between the front
and the back parts of the wall. To a great extent
the use of mortar mixed with lime alone, or with
very little cement, was to blame for the damage that
was done to brickwork by the temblor.
In connection with the destruction of the three
large brick buildings in the neighborhood of St.
Dominic's — the synagogue, the commandery hall,
and the memorial temple — it should be noted that
each of the buildings was so new that it had hardly
had time to dry out and become solid. One of them
was a year old, the others hardly completed. The
disturbance in the neighborhood, too, seems to have
been unusually severe, perhaps from its position at
the edge of the hills.

206 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
The destruction of St. Dominic's Church, too,
it should be said, was one of the anomalies of the
earthquake. It was massive in design and honest
in construction. The bricks were of good quality
and well laid in cement mortar. They fell in great
pieces weighing tons, which hung together- even
though they cut into the pavement; and the cracks
in the walls ran down through mortar and bricks
alike. It seems that the heavy roof, which was sup
ported on wooden trusses that had become weak
through dry rot, dropped and spread, and so forced
out the walls. The fate of the structure is an un
fortunate example of the possibilities of one source
of weakness ; and even this would have been avoided
by the use of "earthquake rods." At the Chapel at
Stanford the spire fell in the same way; but the
walls, steel-braced, suffered no injury, except the
blowing out of the gable-ends by the rush of air.
A splendid illustration of the fact that even the
most vicious shaking has slight terrors for a well-
built building is the Youths' Directory, a four-story
structure, at Nineteenth and Guerrero, a block from
the Valencia Hotel. It was just on the edge of the
fill; the front part of the building moved several
inches further than the rear portion; it sank
several feet. As a result the side walls were split
apart by a crack that is six inches wide at the first
floor, and very small at the cornice. There is hardly
another crack in the whole building, although the
cross wall in the center was actually curved several
inches out of alignment by the unequal movement of
the soil below.

City Hall

Photo by Waters

208 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
So it was with the older buildings — those
erected in the early days. Doubtless many would
still be standing if the fire had not weakened their
walls so that they fell, or if they had not been blown
down by dynamiters; but a sufficient number of
churches (which, being relatively unfurnished, per
haps did not burn so fiercely) remain to show how
little damage was done to well constructed brick
work. St. Francis Church, at Vallejo street and Mont
gomery avenue, has hardly a perceptible crack any
where; erected in 1859, it is the oldest church in San
Francisco, except the Mission Dolores, and one of
the city's oldest buildings of any sort. The Temple
Emanuel, on Sutter street, was erected during the
sixties ; its walls and its lofty minaret-like towers,
fragile though they seem, are in perfect condition.
So is the tall spire of Grace Church, and its many-
arched walls. Old St. Mary's Church and the new
St. Mary's Cathedral (which was not burned) were
alike unharmed by the earthquake.

Photo by Derleth
Concrete Block House at Palo Alto

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE 209
Various old buildings tell the same story of
good construction. The old Wells Fargo Building
at California and Montgomery — built of Chinese
granite by Chinese masons, in 1852 — is as staunch
as ever. So is the Montgomery Block, built in 1853,
by General Halleck; so is the Appraisers' Building,
built under government supervision. The walls of
the Palace Hotel, too, commenced in 1868, are as
solid as ever, and as solid as any walls could be.
They are a splendid example of good construction.
The numerous partition walls — all brick — brace it
thoroughly, and "earthquake rods" run all through
it. It was the builder's boast that it could be pulled
up but not pulled down; its razing is costing
$80,000. Of the effect of the earthquake on the modern
steel frame buildings little need be said ; the damage
to them was trivial. The skyscrapers, so much mis-

Youths' Directory

Photos (iji Aitken

210 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
trusted, were scarcely injured. Here and there some
plaster was knocked down, or some of the stone
facing cracked; but substantial injury there was
none. Perhaps the most severely tried structures
were the Ferry Building, situated at the extreme
edge of the "made land," and the Postoffice, at the
edge of a subsidence. The tall tower of the former
swayed sufficiently to crack much of the facing
stone, and some, near the base, fell out; and there
are a few cracks in the front of the building and in
the stone pillars of its colonnade. Yet it might well
have been expected that such a shock would break
the long narrow building apart, or throw down its
tower. In the vicinity of the Postoffice, the ground was
badly disturbed, along the course of an old creek bed
and marshy inlet. The Postoffice Building, very
heavily constructed of steel and granite, was the
subject of much comment when in course of con
struction, because of the choice of an old lagoon as
a site. But although the street sunk several feet,
the building's foundations supported their tremen
dous load without any settling whatever. The
swaying of the building during the shake, however,
cracked it in several places, loosened several of the
stones, and split much of the interior marble, besides
loosening some of the wall tiles. The dynamiting of
nearby buildings, after the fire, caused much greater
damage than the earthquake.
The other large buildings — office buildings —
sustained damage of much the same sort. The
tower-like Call Building of fifteen stories and dome
— eighteen altogether — did not show a crack or a

212 THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE
loose stone, or, in fact, any visible damage at all.
The new uncompleted Chronicle Annex lost a few
bricks. The James Flood Building, of tremendously
heavy construction, with massive walls of chiseled
sandstone, swayed just enough to crack some of the
stonework in its corner columns, and to shake down
plaster here and there inside. The other great build
ings — the St. Francis Hotel, the Mutual Bank, the
Crocker, the Union Trust, Mills, and Merchants'
Exchange Buildings, and many more, showed al
most no trace of damage, their swaying steel frames
guarding them against any sudden shock. The old
Chronicle Building, erected in 1892, as San Fran
cisco's first skyscraper (while its tower stood it had
twelve stories) showed scarcely a crack or scratch ;
in one place some bricks bulged out a few inches.
Of reinforced concrete construction there was
almost none in San Francisco. What there was —
interior construction alone — was uninjured, and held
together the brick walls around it. The Academy

Palace Hotel

THE DAMAGE BY THE EARTHQUAKE 213
of Sciences Building — with reenforced concrete gal
leries around an open space, furnishes a striking in
stance. The Museum at Stanford furnishes another.
Part of it was of concrete; but in order to finish it
for the opening of the University, part of it was built
of brick. The earthquake wrecked the brick part;
the concrete stood.
Summing up the whole question of the destruct
ive effect of the earthquake, it may be said that the
shock caused loosely filled ground to slide and sink ;
that no frame buildings were damaged by it except
the very poorly built ones, which it wrecked; that
brick structures were more or less damaged, about in
proportion to their poorness in design and construc
tion; that steel buildings were scarcely injured
at all. On the whole — although it caused slight dam
age everywhere — the earthquake caused serious
damage hardly anywhere except in old buildings,
poor buildings, dishonest buildings. Others were
not injured and there need be no fear that any
similar earthquake in the future will cause damage
to them.

XI
A STUDY OF THE FIRE
After every great conflagration certain ques
tions are of much interest : How did it start? How
and why did it spread? How did it affect the
"fireproof" buildings?
There is much of interest and of practical im
portance in the consideration of the San Francisco
fire from the standpoint of each of these questions.
The first question which arises here, however,
is : How was San Francisco prepared to meet such
a calamity? In this connection something of the
manner in which the city grew is instructive.
When the adventurers of "49 built their houses
and stores and saloons around Yerba Buena Cove,
shanties served the purpose of the builders — shacks
with rough plank exteriors, and walls lined with
painted cotton cloth. The residence section, indeed,
was composed largely of mere tents.
Scarcely had the population reached the 5,000
mark (in December, 1849) when a fire broke out
which swept away the entire "business district" of
the city, entailing a million-dollar loss. The embers
were hardly cool when new shacks appeared among
the ruins. In five months the whole burned area
was rebuilt. Then in May, 1850, a second fire oc
curred, which again consumed the "business end of
town." Again the city began to rebuild, but scarcely
a month, had passed when another fire came along
and burned out the rest of the city.

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

215

After this, the third big fire within six months,
people began to build "fireproof" structures; brick
gradually supplanted boards and cotton cloth. The
city had just about readjusted itself after these fires,
and another which burned out two blocks in Septem
ber, 1850, when the great fire of May, 1851, occurred.
This conflagration made but slow progress through
that part of the city which had been rebuilt with
brick, but in the residence districts, where the houses
were wooden and close together, the fire burned
furiously. In the hours of the average working day
fifteen hundred buildings had burned. The destruc
tion of the city was complete.
Afterward, as the city grew out over the tide-
flats and marsh lands, the buildings were nearly all
of brick. Down-town San Francisco assumed the

Photo by Aitken
Doorway to Nob Hill Residence

216

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

aspect of" a city well prepared to withstand the
ravages of fires.
In 1868 an earthquake occurred which did con
siderable damage to these buildings on filled ground ;
and as a result the people again reverted to wood,
forgetting the many fires of a few years before, and
fearing the coming of other earthquakes. Slight
shocks from time to time in late years kept up the
tradition that brick was unsafe. Besides, wood was
much cheaper.
The business district had to be fireproof, and
was built of three- and four-story brick structures ;
but beyond, on the hills, and in the valleys between,
thousands of frame residences were erected. Upon
the whole, the city was very free from fires. Perhaps
it was because redwood does not ignite so easily as
pine or burn so fiercely, and because a redwood fire

Photo by
Entrance to the Huntington Mansion

.^ill.^i

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

217

is more easily put out with water than a pine fire.
But the danger of a great conflagration, as complete
in its destruction as that in May, 1851 — if one should
start during a heavy wind, for instance, — was always
present. Gradually the fear of earthquakes died out. In
1892 the slender Chronicle Building, of twelve
stories including its tower, was built around a steel
and iron frame. Temblors continued to come, but
after each it stood unharmed. Other tall buildings
were erected. Finally the Call Building was con
structed — a narrow, tower-like structure of eighteen
stories (counting those in the dome) reaching a
height of over three hundred feet. In recent years
a great deal of the most modern type and style of
construction had been done; the youngest of the
great cities had already begun to replace its old
buildings with new. In ten years more the business
district would have been practically rebuilt. In the

Photo !.y IJ'eidner
On the Edge of the Burned District

218

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

early part of 1906 but two per cent, of the city's
buildings were fireproof. When the disaster of April
18, 1906, came it found much of the old city await
ing it. A search for the actual causes of the starting of
the many fires that arose after the earthquake takes
us back to the underlying facts of filled land and
poor construction. Those, we have seen, were the
main causes of the throwing down of both brick and
frame structures by the temblor. And among the
fires that at once arose the fiercest were those that
started in the fallen hotels and collapsed shacks
"south of Market," and those that sprang up on the
filled land near the ferry. Fallen electric wires had
a part in some of the fires ; but in parts of the city
where houses were not shaken down they did little
damage. Whatever the real cause of the outbreak of the
fires, their spread certainly resulted from the number

"Fireproof" Safes

Photo by .4itlici\

A STUDY OF THE FIRE 219
of them that had sprung up, among unsubstantial
wooden structures, in the area of made land and
poor construction. The fire got its start in flimsy
old wooden buildings, that should have been cleared
away long ago. For years the Fire Department had
been fighting fires there, always with the fear of
a conflagration, but always with success — for then it
had water and could concentrate itself against one
foe. But when dozens of fires burst out at once on
April 1 8 conditions were different. In other parts
of the city — in the Mission and Western Addition,
for instance — a scant supply of water from mains
and sewers sufficed to put out the fires ; but along the
water-front they became uncontrollable, although
the inexhaustible waters of the bay were at hand.
There the rookeries in which the fires started
became huge kindling piles for the large buildings
nearby. Mission street, from Fremont to Fourth,
was built up of fine new buildings, mostly of brick
with wooden interiors ; the wholesale district was
full of similar structures of an earlier date but equal
sturdiness. Such, however, were little better than

Photo by Aitken
Unburned Block on Upper Montgomery Street

220

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

wooden ones when once the fire gained headway
among them. It was in buildings of this sort that
the fire north of Market street raged all the first
day; and they, in turn, created a general conflagra
tion which even the "fireproof" structures could not
withstand. Finally, when the fire reached the frame
districts beyond Chinatown and in the Mission, its
course was most rapid and its extent so vast that
nothing could stop it, except the great width of a
boulevard. The width of the streets over which the fire
jumped is of interest. South of Market, the streets
were eighty feet wide, but there the fires raged
all around, and almost in every block. Then, too,
the great size of each block (825 x 550 feet) made
the fire in each a conflagration in itself. In the
wholesale district the fire made slow progress across

Photo by Aitken
Ruins of Six-Story Brick Building

Photo by Waters
Interior Steel Framework After the Fire

222

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

Streets sixty-eight feet nine inches in width, which
were lined with brick buildings on each side ; in the
wooden residence districts, however, the flames
spread quickly across streets of similar width.
While the great width of Van Ness avenue (120
feet) proved effectual in stopping the- westward ad
vance of the flames on the second day of the fire, it
had not been sufficient to prevent the Hayes Valley
fire from crossing it the day before, when a favorable
breeze happened to be blowing.
Most conflagrations seem to be due to heavy
winds, and the quick leaping of the flames from
house to house and block to block. Yet San Fran
cisco burned in a calm, varied only by light breezes
that blew from time to time. The progress of the
flames, therefore, was slow, steady and deliberate
rather than fitful and capricious. They advanced
from block to block simply by the ignition of the one

Photo by Aitken
Front Wall of Iroquois Apartment House

Photos by Aitken
Effect of Fire on Exterior Materials

224 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
by the heat of the other across the street, without
any actual contact of flame, — except in the spreading
of the Hayes Valley fire by flying embers. It was
this that made the long struggle so heartbreaking,
hope, renewed at each street, giving way each time
to the bitterness of defeat and to a new hope of
success at the next.
Just as the Chicago fire of 187 1 is said to have
been brought about mainly by the prevalence of a
gale, so the San Francisco fire is popularly declared
to have resulted from the breaking of the water
mains. But in the light of post-fire investigations
it seems more and more plain that this was not
really the main factor in the early spread of the
conflagration. Probably no single agent had so much to do
with making this the greatest conflagration of
modern times as did the breaking out of so many
simultaneous fires, distant from each other, in the
first moments following the earthquake. It was this
that scattered the Fire Department in a battle
against many foes, and allowed the conflagration to
get its start. Afterward, of course, the absence of
sufficient water was fatal. Some water there was ;
it was used with good effect.
Six cisterns containing 169,000 gallons were
emptied during the fight on the first day. This was
used not only directly upon the fire, but also in the
boilers of several engines pumping salt water from
the bay. On Thursday four cisterns containing
84,700 gallons were emptied. A great deal of salt
water was used throughout the entire burning of
the city. In addition, a few hydrants here and there

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

225

continued to supply water from the reservoirs with
in the city, and in the lowlying districts much water
was taken from sewers. So long as the fire was not
too far to be reached by hose lines from the bay, it
was impossible that the water supply should run out.
Where the cisterns and the bay water could be
used, the fire was for a time stopped or turned aside.
If there had been more cisterns, much more effective
work could have been done. There were in the city
twenty cisterns which could be used during the fire.
In years past there had been more; they had been
kept filled, and had been of much service. Gradu
ally, however, they came to be neglected; some
cracked and were not repaired ; some were filled with
earth by corporations eager to run pipes or conduits
through them. Similar indifference and shortsight
edness left the wholesale district without protection

Photo by .Aitken
Column Protection in Wells Fargo Building

226

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

which it might well have had. If the city had
made the mechanical arrangements necessary for
the use of the pumping plant which a cold storage
company had offered to turn over to the Fire De
partment whenever a fire in the district occurred, it
is almost certain that the fires north of Market street
would have been subdued at the start.
As to the general handling of the fire, it has
already been shown how it might have been different
if the Chief of the Fire Department had not been
stricken down in the first hour of the emergency, if
the department had not been split up into such an
infinity of small squads combating separate fires,
if a full supply of water had remained in the pipes,
and if such complete demoralization of everything
generic in the city's affairs had not followed the
earthquake. After the passage of six months it is
now possible to see how, even against these heavy
handicaps, certain results might have been obtained

Photo by Wale
Columns of Fuller Warehouse

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

227

which would have been effective in the saving of
much property.
On the first day of the fire, during the burning
of the wholesale district, much real damage was
done by blowing up buildings adjacent to those
already burning. It would seem that if the dyna
miting had been done at a distance from the fire
(perhaps at the other end of the block) and back
fires started, the conflagration there — which burned
very slowly among the substantial and more or less
fireproof buildings — might have been confined to a
comparatively small area. Probably a natural hesi
tation about destroying valuable property which
might otherwise be saved (emphasized by vehement
protests from the owners) was partly to blame ;
perhaps it would have been done without question,
if the Chief had been there, while in the general dis
organization of the department no one may have
been willing to take the responsibility. It m^st be

Photo by Waters
Reinforced Concrete Girder in Monadnock Building

228 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
noted, however, that any general scheme of blowing
up a wide zone of buildings, and back-firing, would
have required more powder than was at hand at
any one time. Here, too, perhaps, civic shortsight
edness is to blame ; for an offer by the Federal Gov
ernment, to keep large quantities of high explosives
on its reservations, and available for the city's use
in case of fire, had been neglected, and no advantage
taken of it. The value of back-firing was splendidly
illustrated on Thursday afternoon when the west
ward course of the flames was checked at Van Ness
avenue. Unquestionably the assistance rendered by the
soldiers was of great value in preserving order and
preventing loss of life in the burning districts and
in giving the firemen a chance to work unmolested.
But in carrying out their instructions to allow no
one in the burning districts, they did much harm
also. Soon after the outbreak of the conflagration
fire-lines were established, and the orders to the
troops were to keep everybody out. As the fire pro
gressed over wider areas the soldiers were sent in
advance to drive the residents away ; the fire-lines
were continually widening and no one was allowed
to return after once leaving. So strict were the
soldiers, indeed, that in many cases they prevented
citizen volunteers from fighting the flames, even in
districts where there were no firemen; wherever a
few men were found fighting valiantly to save their
homes, they were driven from their work although
by remaining they might have succeeded in divert
ing the fire from several blocks of houses. Among
the throngs of watchers, too, were many anxious to

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

229

be doing something to help; many, even, who recog
nized the "psychological moment" when such or
such a thing might be done to good effect. All
alike, however, were excluded from the fire line,
except in certain rare instances where determined
men forced their way through the guards.
The success of parties of volunteers in fighting
the flames where they were allowed to do so in
dicates that much good might have been accom
plished if everyone had not been driven away. The
Mint, the Postoffice and the Appraiser's Building
were saved by the timely use of a scant water sup
ply by those who stayed in the buildings ; the Pal
ace Hotel held out for hours for the same reason.
Apart from the fire, too, it is unfortunate that
these orders were enforced so rigidly that many a
family -was able to save only what it could snatch
up at the time of its eviction. In these cases the
fire was almost invariably several blocks off, and

Photo by IVaters
Breaking of Tile and Buckling of Columns in
Aronson Building

230

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

there was plenty of time for the men among those
driven out to make a trip to their homes and return
with much property of value, and many things that
would have added materially to the comfort of all.
At the City Hall, too, soldiers for a time prevented
the removal of the Recorder's books, and when
finally they were prevailed upon to allow this to
be done, it was too late to save more than a few
hundred of the thousands stored there.
Were a similar fire to start now, San Francisco
would know how to use its engines to pump water
from the bay, and how to use dynamite to advan
tage and fight fire with fire. Indeed, while the city
burned the knowledge of how to conquer the flames
was acquired. It is no discredit to anyone to say

Photo by Water.,
Interior of Union Trust Building

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

231

that San Francisco burned because no one knew
how to use the resources that were at hand; but
it is high praise indeed to point out that in spite
of all handicaps the flames were everywhere
stopped and nowhere allowed to burn themselves
out — that at the water-front, and the freight yards,
and on Howard and Dolores, and along Van Ness
avenue and Franklin street, and on Russian Hill,
the fire was held in check while there was much
unburned beyond. The greatest of conflagrations
was brought to an end in the midst of combustibles.
There is heroism in that.
It has been seen that the absence of water was
one of the main reasons for the spread of the con-

Photo by Waters
Interior of Old Chronicle Building

232 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
flagration. The possibility of a dependable water
supply with which to fight future fires, even in the
event of a serious earthquake, is therefore a matter
of great interest. It has been generally supposed,
perhaps, that the earthquake "shattered the mains"
throughout the city, and that another shock might
do the same thing' again. But this is far from the
truth. Supply pipes crossing marsh land on tres
tles, outside the city, were thrown down by the
shock; another, at the fault line, was torn apart by
the shifting there. But apart from the damage done
by this shifting and by the sliding at such
plaices as Valencia and Eighteenth streets, the
earthquake did practically no damage to pipes
buried in the soil. It seems plain, there
fore, that by the simple precaution of avoid
ing the marshy ground, (and suspending loosely
any mains that have to be carried across
the fault line), any danger of such destruction in
the future will be overcome. Indeed, if the lesson
of the 1868 earthquake (which also threw down the
supply pipes crossing the marsh) had been heeded,
and the mains into the city laid in the solid ground
of the hillsides, there would have been water in
plenty for all of San Francisco's needs. It has taken
a bitter experience to inculcate the lesson ; but per
haps it is well learned now. Apart from the matter
of supply pipes, too, the advantage of having a num
ber of local reservoirs, and pipes connecting with
the bay, has been made manifest by the fire; and
such reservoirs and pipes, if constructed with even
ordinary care, would not be subject to injury by any
such earthquake as that of last April. It is perfectly

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

233

practicable, therefore — in fact, not at all difficult —
to protect San Francisco completely against the loss
of its water supply by earthquake.
In passing to the consideration of the effect
of the fire on the various buildings of the city, it
is interesting first of all to note the evidences of the
fierceness of the flames. In many places the basalt
blocks of street pavements were cracked and split
by the heat of the fire ; in some the very rails of the
car-tracks are twisted out of shape. The granite
coping around the City Hall lawns was scaled off,
although there was no fire within a hundred feet;
the paint on the Ferry Building and its tower was
blistered by fires at least twice as far away. In
shops and kitchen closets piles of crockery plates

Interior of Emporium

Photo by Waters

234 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
were fused together; glassware flowed into new
shapes. The contents of many supposedly fire
proof safes burned, wall vaults went to pieces,
and even heavy safes could not withstand the heat
.of piles of fallen brick. The contents of buried safes
burst into flames when opened, even several weeks
after the fire. Safes in buildings that did not col
lapse fared much better; the various banks' safe de
posit vaults, too, were unharmed. It is a curious
fact that the only combustible left unburned was the
fuel oil stored in tanks under the sidewalks in va
rious places in the burned district.
In the whole burned district there were scarce
half a dozen places which escaped destruction. It
has already been narrated how the fire was turned
aside from the Mint, the Postoffice and the Ap
praiser's Building and how parts of Russian Hill
and Telegraph Hill were saved, by the strenuous
efforts of a few volunteers who had the assistance
of a little water.
The turning aside of the fire at the Appraiser's
Building (at the northwest corner of Sansome and
Washington) and at the Montgomery Block (at the
southeast corner of Montgomery and Washington)
saved a block of old structures between Washington
and Jackson streets from the first day's fire; by
further hard work with a little water in barrels it
was saved from the fire that swept back from the
west on the third day. On the north side of Jackson
street, facing this saved block, one building stands
alone in a block otherwise destroyed. This struc
ture, the Volkmann Building, had eighteen-foot
alleys on two sides, and a low brick building on

cp
_5"o
u

3

2,36 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
another; it was of brick, and had wired-glass win
dows with metal sash, except on the front, which
faced the unburned block. To this fortunate com
bination of circumstances it owes its safety.
An almost similar set of circumstances saved
the works of the California Electric Company, on
Folsom between Second and Third, which had
driveways at each side and a small street behind
it, and was equipped with wired-glass windows and
metal sash.
The burned district map shows but two other
unburned spaces — the Atlas Building of ten
stories, at Second and Mission, and the Cali
fornia Casket Company Building of seven
stories, on Mission between Fifth and Sixth.
The latter was in itself fire-proof — of brick
walls and concrete floors — and was in a neighbor
hood chiefly built up of low frame structures ; more
over, it was as yet uncompleted, and contained
almost no combustible material except its window
frames which, indeed, burned. The former, on the
other hand, was in a well-built district and sur
rounded by buildings that burned fiercely. Its side
walls were windowless except in the upper stories.
The fire burned a few of the window frames of the
elevator shaft, but there was not enough combus
tible material there to spread the flames. The
escape of the ordinary two-story brick building
adjoining it at the corner of Second street, indicates
that the fate of both was largely due to a fre^k of
the fire, or some fortunate shifting of the flame cur
rents.

-4
Photo by IVatcrs

Buckled Columns in Bullock & Jones Building
(Shouins Sagging of I'loor Abovel

238

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

The Kohl Building, at the northeast corner of
Montgomery and California streets, is an instance
where thorough fire-proofing helped, though here,
too, good luck counted. Owing to the peculiar cir
cumstances under which the fire approached the
neighborhood, (which are narrated at page 79),
the building was subjected to a fire test rather than
a conflagration test. The fact that the windows of
the upper stories are unbroken shows that they were
not subjected to the extreme heat of a surrounding
conflagration. The fire entered from the low brick
building adjoining on Montgomery street and
burned the contents of the second, third, and fourth
floors. The floors above were uninjured ; doubtless
because all the woodwork was metal-sheathed and
the elevator shaft was practically cut off from the
wings. If the halls had had the usual wooden
wainscote rails and wooden doorways the fire would

Photo by AitUei
General View of Building at First and Mission

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

239

in all probability have spread to the various rooms
on each floor and completed the destruction of the
whole interior.
The city's other "skyscrapers" were subjected
to a more severe test in the form of a wide-spread
conflagration nearby. The Claus Spreckels or "Call"
Building, however, took fire in much the same way
as the Kohl Building — from an adjoining small
building. It is possible if the building had not had
a great amount of exposed woodwork, the upper
stories would have been saved just as those in the
Kohl Building were; but on the other hand the Call
Building was close to fierce fires on two sides and
but little removed from the many that made up
the South of Market conflagration.
In general the fire did its work with absolute
thoroughness. In the residence districts, for in-

Pliotos by Aitken
Detail Views of Building at First and Mission

240 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
Stance, which were almost wholly built of wood,
nothing combustible remained ; blocks and blocks
of houses were represented only by their chimneys
and such indestructible litter as window-weights
and flat-irons. There were no charred or half-
burned timbers ; no ashes ; no embers. It was as
if the wooden parts of the city had never existed.
In the case of the second-rate structures — the
ordinary "brick buildings" with brick walls and
wooden interiors, — the result was much the same.
The insides with all they contained disappeared
completely, leaving only the bare bricks. Cast-iron
columns fell into the basements; steel columns and
beams twisted into an unrecognizable tangle. In
many cases the brick walls themselves were split
asunder by the fierce heat of the fire or were

Phot,, bv Aitken
Interior of Sloane Building

A STUDY OF THE FIRE

241

dragged down by the falling of the interiors, so
that many structures which before the fire had
boasted five, six, or seven stories, rose hardly more
than as many feet afterward, or disappeared com
pletely in their own basements.
Buildings with concrete floors stood up much
better, and generally retained their integrity; and
the structures of modern steel frame construction,
carefully "fire-proofed", also escaped destruction,
although severely damaged. The whole "finish" in
each was destroyed, including all marble, tiling, and
plaster. Other portions suffered in varying degrees;
some buildings almost had to be rebuilt, nothing but
the steel frames and concrete floors being intact;
others needed only slight repairs.
The effect of the fire on these classes of build
ings will be best seen in connection with the study
of the various building materials. It is interesting

Parrott Building

Photo by .lit ken

242 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
to consider these somewhat in the order in which
they are exposed to the influence of a fire attacking
them from without, — the fire test to which they
were subjected in the conflagration.
The buildings of San Francisco had practically
no protection by wired glass or fire-proof shutters.
In the wholesale district iron shutters (hinged at
the sides) were commonly used to protect doors
and windows, but did not prove at all effective in
preventing the entrance of the flames. In the finer
buildings, however — the "fire-proof" sky-scrapers —
there was no such protection of any kind; except
ing one structure with metal-sheathed window
frames, all had ordinary windows which afforded
no barrier at all against the fire. For this reason
the fire had no difficulty in traveling from one
building to another. In all alike — even the "fire
proof" buildings — a little flame from without soon
set fire to the whole interior.
Before passing to the consideration of the fire-
resistive character of these interiors it may be v/ell
to devote a little attention first to the effect of the
fire on exterior materials.
Of the materials commonly used in the ex
teriors of buildings, stone of various kinds proved
to be the poorest in resistance to fire, and hard-
burned brick and terra cotta the best. Where gran
ite was subjected to a fierce fire it scaled off so
badly that it seemed almost to have melted away.
Two of the granite columns in front of a sporting
goods store in the Hobart Building were reduced to
less than half their former thickness, and the walls
of various buildings where granite was used show

A STUDY OF THE FIRE 243
the same result. Marble, of course, split and
chipped very badly. The lower part of the Mills
Building's walls, for instance, were ruined in this
manner; and at the Y. M. C. A. Building one of
the beautiful marble columns of the classic door
way was burned away through its entire thickness.
Many of San Francisco's buildings were faced
with sandstone ; it was used, for instance, in the
Call, James Flood, Mutual Life, Kohl, and Shreve
Buildings. In all of these a great deal of the facing
stone has had to be replaced because of the damage
wrought by the fire ; in the Shreve Building, for
example, almost all of it had to be taken down.
Common brick lasted much better, being al
most undamaged except in a few special cases. At
the Iroquois Apartment House, for instance, the
sandstone facing is so completely destroyed that a
great deal of the brick behind it is exposed; yet
the latter is in good condition.
On the other hand the special cream-colored
brick used in the walls of the Merchants' Exchange
Building and the enameled brick of the center court
there were so badly chipped and scarred that prac
tically all of it had to be taken down. But both the
side walls and the court walls of that building were
extremely thin, and the brick in them was there
fore subjected to unusual heat.
Several of the newer buildings had fagades
composed wholly or very largely of terra cotta.
These were only slightly damaged by the fire. The
front wall of Hale's, for instance — which is wholly
of this material, — is so little damaged that it is to
remain as part of the new steel frame structure;

244 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
yet the fire in the building — which was used by a
department store — was so fierce that the whole
interior was consumed and nearly all of the brick
work of the walls fell in. At the adjoining store —
a six-story furniture house — the fire was so hot that
nothing is left of the building except a bit of the
steel frame, a portion of the brick side walls, and
the terra cotta front, whose delicately modeled
blocks are absolutely intact. In a few instances
such blocks, when in places where the heat was ex
ceptionally intense — above windows, for example —
have been broken; but such cases are rare. In one
building, where very light and very elaborately de
signed blocks were used, they were practically all
ruined. In that case, however, it is to be noted
that the walls were very thin and were very close
to the steel of the frame work, and that the sides
of the building were nearly all window space.
To make a building fire-proof, it is not enough
that it be constructed of material that will not burn.
The various kinds of stone, for instance, are so
chipped and cracked by the intense heat that they
have to be replaced after even an ordinary fire in
the building; and in a great conflagration walls of
such material would not stand. Steel and iron, too,
while incombustible, are not at all fire-proof, as
fire deprives them of their strength and causes them
to twist and buckle. The modern fire-proof build
ing — fire-resistive is a better designation — is indeed
composed of materials that will not burn; but in
addition its vital portions are carefully protected.
In a "steel frame" building the weight is supported
entirely by the frame, which even holds up the

Photo by Waters
Sagged Floors in Kamm Building

246 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
walls. The frame, in turn, is encased in some ma
terial intended to protect it from the heat of a fire,
and prevent its being warped out of shape. Finally,
the floors and partitions are made of some material
more or less fireproof. In such a building a fire
started in one room could be easily put out, and
would not extend to any other room — unless the
rooms had wooden doors. But against a general
conflagration even these precautions are insuffi
cient to prevent the furniture and furnishings of
each room in the building burning out — either sin
gly or all at once.
When the fire had entered a San Francisco
¦'skyscraper" it found little to stop it; its progress
from room to room was easy. Apart from the fur
niture and cupboards, the wainscots, chair-rails, and
floors were all of wood, and the wooden doors, ar
ranged in line, gave ample opportunity for a draft,
as did the open elevator space. One of the great
office buildings — the Kohl — had its woodwork all
metal-sheathed; in the others there was nothing to
prevent a fire, once started in one room, from grad
ually extending to every other one.
The favorite materials used in San Francisco
for covering structural work of steel and iron, so as
to protect it from fires, were hollow tile blocks, con
crete, and cement or plaster on wire mesh or similar
fabric. The latter was applied at varying distances
from the column or beam to be protected, — the air
space being used as part of the protection, — and
sometimes two such sheathings were used, one
within the other. At the Merchants' Exchange

A STUDY OF THE FIRE 247
Building this method of fire-proofing the columns
was successful, although partitions of the same sort
were disintegrated. On the other hand the fire-
proofing on the columns of the Sloane, the Kamm,
and the Rialto Buildings failed to save them. At
the Wells Fargo Building the outer coating of
cement and mesh around the columns was prac
tically destroyed, but the inner remained and was
sufficient to protect them.
The hollow tile also proved insufficient, par
ticularly as a protection for columns. The condi
tion of many buildings, just after the fire, showed
that the heat had been sufficient to break down
the tile protection ; tiles lay about the floors ; parti
tions were down; columns were exposed. Where
tile floors were used it is found that the under-side
of the tile had cracked and fallen away, because
of the heat from below; in some cases the top was
also broken away, so that the whole tile arch had
dropped out, exposing the beams it was intended
to protect. Concrete protection of columns, on the other
hand, seemed to be very efficient. A striking ex
ample of this is the case of Fuller and Company's
eight-story warehouse. It was used for the storage
of paints and oils, and so burned with an intense
heat. Its wooden floors were soon consumed; its
brick walls fell, carrying the framework down with
it. But even under these exceptional conditions the
concrete was intact, and not even broken off from
the steel. In the extreme cases of structural dam
age, too, (such as will be mentioned later), it is
noticeable that concrete floors held together as long

248 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
as there was any chance of their doing so — in the
Sloane Building, for instance, and in the Kamm
Building, our picture of which was taken after the
floors had been removed.
It is on the protection of its framework (par
ticularly its columns) that the life of a "fire-proof"
building depends. In many cases in the San Fran
cisco fire the framework was threatened and indeed
successfully attacked, and only the dying out of the
fire (from lack of anything more to burn) prevented
the buildings from complete destruction. That even
a modern building of the best type could be de
stroyed by such a fire was made evident.
Any of San Francisco's great office buildings
would have withstood an ordinary fire starting in
any one room ; but in the intense heat of the con
flagration when the fire once took hold of such a
building it soon spread and converted the whole
interior into a roaring furnace. Soon the mortar
of the tile partitions lost its life and crumbled
away; soon the tile themselves began to fall to
the floor. In time the tile surrounding the columns
would give way similarly and expose the latter to
the fire's action. The steel heats to white incan
descence; its strength leaves it; the weight resting
upon it slowly settles. The column bends, flares
out; buckles; the framework above settles and
strains itself at every joint.
In some cases this would happen only in one or
two places in the building; in others, everywhere.
Such a buckling, repeated on several floors, could
result only in twisting and straining the frame so
that rivets are sheared and beams pulled apart, to

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251) A STUDY OF THE FIRE
drop through to the floor below and perhaps carry
that, too, to the basement.
Such complete destruction occurred, indeed, in
some of the second-class buildings — those with cast-
iron columns, steel floor beams and concrete floors.
Through the breaking of columns the floors of such
buildings were made to sag so much that the
floor beams pulled away from the shoulders on
which they rested, and, with the floor itself, dropped
through. The two buildings on Mission between
First and Fremont show this result in part. The
adjoining portions of each building for a width of
about twenty-five feet, and for almost the full depth
of the building, have no columns or floors at all,
the whole interior — columns, beams, girders, and
concrete arches — having gone down together into
the basement. The small picture showing the flar
ing and breaking apart of a cast-iron column in the
building at First and Mission streets, and the com
panion view showing the settling above, indicate
what happened in both these structures.
The same result was reached in much the same
way at the Sloane Building, a furniture store of sim
ilar construction, comprising seven open lofts and
basement. Almost the whole interior settled; the
center of each floor fell away; a courtyard, open to
the roof, came into existence. The manner in which
this destruction was achieved is clearly shown by
the columns in the basement under the portions that
did not break apart. Some of them are merely
thickened or bulged out, symmetrically, taking the
shape of a finger wearing a thick ring; others, where
the bulging was greater, are broken across, and tele-

A STUDY OF THE FIRE 251
scoped. In some places a settling of nearly three
feet was produced; in the center a slightly greater
subsidence unseated the floor beams and dropped
everything into the basement.
In all these buildings the columns were pro
tected by wire mesh and cement, fitted closely
around them. In the finer buildings, — the sky
scrapers — the tile fire-proofing seems to have held
long enough to prevent general settling. In some
of them many of thie columns buckled enough to
produce a slight subsidence ; but almost all these
buildings escaped such destruction as came to the
second-class structures.
That result, however, was almost reached in the
Kamm Building, on Market street, just above Third.
This building had a light steel frame supporting the
interior. The floors of the whole rear portion of the
building were tipped to an angle that would have
made walking on them almost impossible, just as if
some giant had smashed them down from above.
This building, it should be said, had a very severe
test, having been stocked throughout with wall
paper. Through some such series of events as has
been outlined (assisted perhaps by the falling
through of its heavy linotype machines from the
top floor) half of the old Chronicle Building com
pletely collapsed, inside of its walls, leaving the
latter an empty shell. The structure had been care
fully "fire-proofed"; its floors and partitions were
of terra cotta tile, and the same material protected
its wrought-iron and steel frame. Its walls, how
ever, were self-supporting, and braced by a great

252 A STUDY OF THE FIRE
deal of iron put in to stiffen them against earth
quake shocks. If they had been sustained by the
framework, (as are those of more modern build
ings) they would have gone down in the fall of
the latter, and the anomaly presented of a well-
protected building being destroyed by fire. A part
of the Rialto Building, indeed, almost met this very
fate, and at the Hall of Justice the weight of the
steel cells in the rear portion of the upper story
was sufficient to send them crashing down to the
basement, tearing out the whole rear of the build
ing, wall and all, as they went.
The Parrott Building, in which the Emporium
department store was located, furnishes another in
stance of almost complete destruction. The first
and second floors were occupied by the store, and
were intended to be fire-proof, the floor arches were
of hollow tile, and the columns were encased in the
same material. Above the third floor (there were
seven stories in front and five in the wings and
rear) the floors and their supports, and most of the
partitions, were of wood. The store itself had no
partitions, and afforded an intense heat because of
the great quantities of inflammable merchandise
which it contained. Almost all of the front portion
of the building — over the drygoods, suit, and toy
departments — is open from the basement up ; the
floors and steel frame alike have been destroyed. To
a certain extent this may be due to the falling of
safes from above, but the breaking away of the tile
flooring of the third story in places where the second
floor is intact (elsewhere in the building) indicates
that most of the destruction is due to fire alone.

A STUDY OF THE FIRE 253
Such being the effect of fire on the best build
ings, the question may well be asked — What ad-
vantagfe is there in such a building or in a city com
posed of such alone? It might seem that there is
no advantage ; but in reality there is. Such a build
ing — particularly if it has proper windows and win
dow casings — is: slow to catch fire ; and a fire in it,
even in a conflagration, is more readily handled
than in a building of less resistive character. Where
there is no water, and no fight can be made, such
a building becomes as complete a wreck, almost,
as another; but otherwise it may be saved with
comparative ease. And as to the safety of a city,
it is to be noted that that is enhanced by having
a number of fire-resistive buildings even if none
are entirely fire-proof; for if buildings do not ignite
quickly, and fires within can ordinarily be con
trolled, conflagrations are not likely to arise or
spread among them.

XII
THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
Immediately after the fire talk of a greater and
grander San Francisco arose — a city which no
earthquake or fire could harm. The fire, of course,
was for a time of paramount interest, and in the
plans for the city-to-be, an all-sufficient water sys
tem and wide boulevards like Van Ness avenue
were prominent features.
That San Francisco would be rebuilt and would
continue to be the metropolis of the Pacific was
never in doubt. It was impossible for the residents
to question its future, for their own will and en
thusiasm assured them of the glorious destiny of
the rebuilt metropolis. But apart from the energy
and determination of its citizens, San Francisco's
future is assured by its position. It is still the nat
ural point of entry for the empire behind — an em
pire now of half-revealed wealth. It is the gate
way through which all the wealth of the West must
pass; the nerve-center of all the life of the coast
region. It was with some realization of this that the
people of the city determined that the new San
Francisco should be worthy of its position in every
respect. The wiping out of the old city made pos
sible the building of a new one that should be mod
ern, convenient, beautiful, and fire- and earthquake-
proof. For some years an agitation had been going
on in San Francisco for the extension of its boule-

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Map Showing Proposed Changes in Streets in the
Downtown District
Small Map Slious l'n)|Kisc(l Parks and IJoiilevards in (he lUinihani Plans

256 THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
vards and park system, and for the general improve
ment of the city. Bonds had been voted for certain
changes — the extension of the Golden Gate Park
"Panhandle" to Market street and the acquisition
of some small parks, besides great improvement in
streets, sewers, schools, and hospitals. The Society
for the Adornment and Beautification of San Fran
cisco had had Mr. D. H. Burnham, the eminent
architect, work out a comprehensive plan of streets,
boulevards and parks, intended to combine con
venience and beauty in the greatest possible degree,
without radical changes. It was estimated that the
execution of the plan would cost $50,000,000, and
that it could be accomplished in fifty years.
In its main features the plan provided for an
elaborate system of parks and boulevards surround
ing the city, and for the creation of broad avenues
in the business and residence districts, by widening
existing streets and cutting others along diagonal
lines. Some of these avenues were to afford easy
access to the various hills ; others were to facilitate
traffic by cutting across the old rectangular blocks.
Splendid boulevards were to radiate from Van Ness
avenue and Market street, at which it was planned
to group public and semi-public buildings, thereby
forming an imposing civic center at the city's future
central point.
When the fire swept clean all the downtown
part of the city, it was felt that by the destruction of
buildings that would otherwise have been in the
way the immediate execution of the plans had been
made possible, at a reduced expense. The "sub
committee" went over the matter in detail and re-

Call Building

Photo by Waters

258 THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
ported in favor of making certain changes in the
burned district — some immediately, and others
within five and ten years, respectively. The Super
visors, approving the report, could only state their
intention to follow it. The Treasury would not al
low of anything else being done at once, as the
fire had wiped out a third of the taxable property
in the city.. With the adoption of the report the
question was for a time laid aside, until the prob
lem of financing the project could be solved; for
while the fire had lessened the expense of the work
it had also lessened the city's ability to pay for
them. Then, too, a few property owners had begun
to complain that they would be injured by the pro
posed changes.
In the meantime the immediate work of re
building the city had become all-important, and the
plans for the City Beautiful gave way, in the public
mind, to the reconstruction of the actual city that
immediate business necessities demanded. For the
time being San Francisco was in the anomalous
condition of having an enormous amount of busi
ness and no place where it could be transacted — the
trade of a metropolis, and the facilities of a village.
In the immediate rebuilding of the city, there
fore, the first essential was speed; and while many
concerns contrived to put up substantial edifices
many others had to be content with mere shacks.
But after July all construction was required to be
in accordance with the new building ordinance.
The new ordinance, itself, did not provide for
radical changes in the city's manner of building;
but great good lay in the fact that all of the burned

James Flood Building

Photo by Mollcr

260 THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
district — except outlying residence sections — would
be within the "fire-limits", and that all new build
ings would have to be of a substantial type. Apart
from allowing the use of re-enforced concrete —
which had always been forbidden, except for floors,
because of political influences — the ordinance was
notable as prohibiting the erection of any except
steel frame buildings above 102 feet, and limiting
even the latter to one and one-half times the width
of the street. Within the fire-limits no frame
structures will be allowed.
Within six months after the fire the work of
again covering the burned district with substantial
structures was well under way. Permanent build
ings costing many millions had been started, in
cluding many of steel frame construction, and re-
enforced concrete. The work which had been so
long delayed by insurance troubles, and by impera
tive need of some immediate provision for the re
sumption of business, was begun in earnest. In a
few years the city's new downtown district will be
far better than the old would have become in a
decade. The new city that is being erected in the burned
district will be fire-proof in the sense that any re
gion covered with brick and steel buildings, with
out many wooden ones, is fire-proof; no great fire is
likely to start in it, and any that starts should be
easily conquered. It will have more protection, how
ever, than that afforded by the ordinance relative
to fire limits; there will be window protection and
sprinklers and tanks, and here and there really fire-
resistive buildings — buildings as nearly fire-proof

262 THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
as any can be made. There will be no large wooden
buildings downtown, and not many such either
large or small; as long as the "temporary" struc
tures last there will be some, but they will be few
and scattered. In the matter of fire-fighting, too, there will be
a great improvement; for it is almost certain that
a system of salt water mains and high pressure
pumping stations will be established. With an in
exhaustible supply of water thus made available
there should be no fear of any fire that can get
started. It is expected that such a system will be
installed early in 1907, for the protection of the
stores on Van Ness avenue and Fillmore street.
In the new city it is evident that there will be
some shifting of business centers. The fire has
hastened changes that would otherwise have come
slowly, and brought about a better adjustment.
The change made by the wholesalers has al
ready been mentioned in connection with the gen
eral resumption of business. When everything
came by steamer to the water-front north of Market
street the adjacent district was the natural site for
wholesale business ; the land near the railroad, far
to the south, is the obvious place for it now, for
the same reason — except in the case of the fruit and
produce trades. So it may be expected that the
temporary wholesale district, south of the freight
yards, will become permanent.
The region known as South of Market street,
formerly given over largely to cheap tenements, has
been prepared by the fire for better use. The shift
on the part of the wholesalers, and the general

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Photo by Estey

Mills Building

264 THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
movement toward outer Market street, have made it
valuable for business purposes; the tenements,
therefore, are not likely to be rebuilt. The same
thing is true, to a great extent, of the residences in
the hotel and apartment house district, west of
Powell, which has now been included within the
fire limits. In both cases the destruction of exist
ing buildings has hastened the inevitable invasion
of business. In so spreading out into these new fields, the
business districts will be relieved of much conges
tion and the transaction of business facilitated. A
similar spreading-out is likely to result in the case
of the residence districts. People who have lived
downtown have been driven out, past the Western
Addition and the Mission, into the outlying dis
tricts. They are in the position of building up a new
city; one, however, whose suburban trolley lines
are already in operation. On the whole, it seems
that the new city will be much less crowded
than the old. There will be room for private gar
dens and lawns, and for public parks and play
grounds, and for much of the pleasure of living that
has been crowded out in the congestion of most
large cities.
With the realization of this, and with the set
tlement of the immediately pressing problems, come
renewed interest in the Burnham plans and their
suggested modifications. After careful investiga
tion, a somewhat changed plan was presented for
immediate execution, with a detailed statement of
the expense involved.

266 THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
The changes proposed by this last-mentioned
plan are shown on the accompanying map of the
downtown district, to w^hich they are confined.
They include the widening of Fremont street
to the water-front, the creation of a new avenue
from the ferry to Folsom and Fremont, the widen
ing of Folsom from the bay to Tenth street, and
the removal of Rincon Hill (from Fremont to Third,
Folsom to Bryant) by extensive grading. These
changes would result in great benefit to the South
of Market district. The widening of Eighth street,
which passes through the outer portion of this re
gion and reaches the new wholesale district and the
Potrero, is also proposed.
North of Market street the new plans are con
cerned mainly with changes in the old wholesale
district. Montgomery avenue, says the report,
should be extended through to Market and Fre
mont, forming, with the latter, a wide thoroughfare
from North Beach to the region of the mail docks.
In addition, it is proposed to widen Clay and Sacra
ment by closing Commercial street, a narrow
street between them; to widen the roadway of San
some street, and level its grade, passing it under
Broadway, thereby providing easy access to the
manufacturing region at the foot of Telegraph Hill.
Finally, the widening of Pacific street, which passes
over the saddle between Nob Hill and Russian Hill,
and affords a practicable grade from the ferry to the
Western Addition, is suggested. All these changes,
according to the estimate in the report, would cost
about $6,500,000, and would add ten times their
cost to the city's assessed valuation in ten years.

Photo by Aitken

Merchants' Exchange and Kohl Buildings

268 THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO
In this way they would pay for themselves and soon
bring in an annual profit over the amount required
to pay off the necessary bonds. The same report
places the cost of an auxiliary salt water fire system
at $1,500,000. There seems every probability that
all these changes will be made in the near future.
It is very likely also that other improvements
included in the Burnham plans will be made within
a short time — changes which combine esthetic value
with financial advantage. Such, for instance, are
the proposed series of boulevards up to and around
Nob Hill and Russian Hill, and the wide avenue
connecting Van Ness avenue and Market street
with the Mail Docks at the foot of Second street.
The small map shows in a general way the
system of parks and boulevards proposed by Mr.
Burnham. The diagonals, it will be noted, connect
the various parts of the city conveniently. Refer
ence to the bird's-eye view of San Francisco, pre
sented in an earlier chapter, will show the general
scheme of the parks planned for the city's surround
ing hills, and a splendid encircling boulevard.
To the people of San Francisco the proposed
boulevards and avenues are extremely interesting
as fire-barriers. It was in this connection that they
were extensively discussed just after the fire, and
unquestionably the advantages of such barriers will
weijgh largely in deciding the fate of the proposition.
Had such boulevards been cut through before April
eighteenth, it is not at all likely that the conflagra
tion south of Market would have gone beyond
Eighth street; or that the fires north of Market
would ever have crossed Sansome.

Hall of Justice

Photo by Moller

Union Trust Building

Photo by Wate

THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO 271
Of the people of the new city it is scarcely
necessary to speak; for it is but the material city
that has been hurt ; the real city is uninjured. The
spirit is there; the "atmosphere," the city's life.
Once again, San Francisco, the joyous-hearted, is
pulsing with the vigor of achievement, full of the
joy of living. Soon will come a time when all that
has been suffered will seem but a passing storm,
which for a time made all dark and drear. Such a
storm quickly clears away ; and there, as before,
are the sun-clad hills and beautiful lakes and ever-
changing sea; and, too, the placid bay and Tamal
pais, and the far sweep of mountains.

APPENDIX

THE RECORD OF THE EARTHQUAKE
The diagram represents the record made on the seis
mograph at the Chabot Observatory at Oakland. Professor
C. Burekhalter, who was in charge of the observatory, says
of this record:
"It shows that the main motion was gyratory, but the
wave like and the up and down motions were present also.
The dashes and dots represent the up and down motion.
The instrument enlarges the diagram, the real motion of
the earth's surface being a little over half an inch, but not
so much as six-tenths of an inch. The time was 5.14:48
A. M. April 18 and the duration 28 seconds. The shock
was so violent that the pen ran off the plate several times;
that is, the instrument was not capable of recording so
severe a shock.
According to the Preliminary Report of the State
Earthquake Investigation Committee, (1) "The time of the
beginning of the shock as recorded in the Observatory at
Berkeley was 5h 12m 6s A. M., Pacific standard time. The
end of the shock was 5h 13m lis A. M., the duration being
Im 5s." Professor A. O. Leuschner of the University of
California states (2) that the principal part of the earth
quake came in two sections, the first a series of vibrations
lasting about forty seconds, and that the vibrations dimin
ished considerably during the following ten seconds, and
then continued with renewed vigor for about twenty-five
seconds more.
The record made at the University Observatory at
Berkeley shows that the motion of the earth's surface
there was about half an inch; but according to Professor
Leuschner it was undoubtedly greater in San Francisco.
Professor A. W. Whitney states (3) that the amplitude of
vibration at Mt. Hamilton was about an inch. The period
of the vibratidn was about one second.
The preliminary tremors were recorded by the in
strument in the Weather Bureau Laboratory at Wash
ington, D. C. for about six minutes before the main shock.
These preliminary vibrations reached Tokyo about eleven

276

APPENDIX

and a half minutes after they were felt in San Francisco,
and lasted nine and three quarters minutes. In Tokyo
and in Washington the actual motion of the ground was a
little less than half an inch, but, because of its slowness,
it was perceptible only to the instruments. At Birming
ham, England, the preliminary tremors lasted twenty-five
minutes. (4.)
These preliminary tremors occur because some small
waves of vibration travel through the earth at the rate of

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Seismograph Record of the Earthquake

APPENDIX 277
about seven miles a second, while the larger waves travel
more slowly — at about two miles per second, apparently
moving on the surface. It is this preliminary vibration
that produces the rumbling often heard just previous to
earthquake shocks. Such a rumbling sound was heard as
far away as Death Valley, California (more than four
hundred miles from San Francisco) in connection with the
earthquake under consideration. Because of the different
speeds at which the preliminary and main vibrations travel,
the. duration of the introductory tremors enable the ap
proximate center of the disturbance to be located. The
observations made at the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamil
ton (about ten miles south of San Jose) indicate that the
shock originated about ninety miles north of that point —
that is, in the neighborhood of Tomales Bay.
It'ilh aih'iiinvlril!;iiiciils to
(1.) "Preliminary report of State Earthquake Investi
gation Commission."
(2.) "The Scientific Aspect of the California Earth
quake," A. O. Leuschner (U. C.) Pacific Monthly.
(3.) "Report of Chamber of Commerce on Insurance
Settlements." (4.) "The Scientific Side of It." A. G. McAdie (U. S.
Weather Bureau) Sunset Magazine.

STATISTICS OF THE FIRE
The area of the burned district was 2593 acres, or 4.05
square miles; the area of the district burned over by the
Chicago fire was 2124 acres, or about 3 1-3 square miles.
The Baltimore fire of February 7th and 8th, 1904, burned
over 140 acres, or less than ^ of a square mile.
The Chicago fire burned 17,450 buildings; the San
Francisco fire, about 25,000.
The property loss in the Chicago fire was $196,000,000,
with insurance amounting to $88,000.00, of which about

BURNED DiiTliaT
CH'lAC-o, 'til /lLZ.:i^

Comparison of Burned Districts in the Chicago Fire and
the San Francisco Fire

APPENDIX 279
half was recovered. The loss in the San Francisco fire
is estimated by the Chamber of Commerce at $350,000,000,
and the insurance at $235,000,000; it is calculated that pay
ments will equal about 807o of the total amount.
As a result of the Chicago fire forty-six insurance com
panies, of 255 that had risks in that city, failed; of the
106 that had risks in San Francisco, five have gone into the
hands of receivers.

CONCLUSIONS AS TO BUILDING METHODS.
The lessons to be learned from the earthquake are
simple but significant. There is nothing new in them;
the earthquake merely emphasized certain matters that
had been somewhat overlooked. Bearing in mind the
fact that it is only in buildings on made land that unusual
precautions are required and that in other cases buildings
conforming to the standard of good building elsewhere
are safe, they may be summarized as follows: Founda
tions should be made of ample strength, and should as far
as possible be in one piece, rather than in separate pieces.
On made land or soft soil of any sort, foundations for
heavy buildings should be deep.
Superstructures should be well fastened to founda
tions, and should be thoroughly braced. Frame structures
should have the wall studding well braced, diagonally.
Brick walls should be laid in cement mortar and should
be held and braced together by the joists and by earth
quake rods, well anchored. Parapet walls and gable-ends
should be securely braced. Copings and cornices should
be of light material. Brick and stone should in all cases
be well bonded, and facing courses never laid as a veneer.
With proper attention to these well known require
ments San Francisco buildings should be immune from
damage by any ordinary shock.
The lessons of the fire are likewise more important
than novel; they, too, call attention to what was well
known before as to protection against ordinary fires.

Photos by li'utcrs and Derleth
Bullock and Jones, and Monadnock Buildings

APPENDIX 281
That certain materials break down under fire influence
and have to be extensively repaired, or replaced, was
shown clearly. It was demonstrated, for instance, that
stone of various sorts (including the marble of interior
finish and stair treads), elaborately modeled hollow terra
cotta (where severely tested) and ornamental iron work,
are destroyed by a severe fire; that terra cotta tile floor
arches and blocks of the same material used for partitions
and for protecting steel work have to be replaced to a
large extent; and cement on wire almost wholly; and that
the steelwork itself sustains serious injury wherever such
fireproofing fails.
In connection with the possible spread of a fire, and
the risk of conflagration, the following may be noted:
Ordinary brick-walled buildings offer almost no resis
tance to the spreading of a fire; and that even the most
nearly fireproof buildings have many serious defects as
far as resistance to conflagration is concerned. In a
general conflagration such a building is menaced, through
out its upper stories by the intense heat of the upper air.
For this reason solid walls without openings should be
provided wherever possible.
Window openings should be small and few, and should
be protected by the use of metal sash and wired glass
where possible, and by fire-proof shutters or screens, auto
matic or otherwise. It is important that interior par
titions, floors, etc., be made fire-proof to minimize the
spreading of fires within buildings. Doors, etc., should
be metal-sheathed. If hollow tile partitions are used,
they should be better built, so as to hold together more
solidly. It would seem eminently desirable that office
buildings, which necessarily have many window spaces,
should have a really fire-proof wall — say of brick, with
wired-glass transoms and metal-sheathed doors — to divide
the front rooms from the others and prevent the spread
of a fire through the building after it had effected an
entrance. Such construction would have saved, for in
stance, at least three-fourths of the Merchants' Exchange
and James Flood Buildings.

Aronson Building

Photo by tl'aters

APPENDIX 283
Vertical openings, such as elevator shafts and stair
ways, should be isolated by fire-proof walls if possible,
and there should certainly be no combustible material
adjacent to them, such as the usual room doors opening
on central hallways. Both the Atlas and the Kohl Build
ings seem to have been saved from destruction mainly
by the fact thai there was nothing combustible near the
elevator shaft. ^ The only really safe method, perhaps,
would be to enclose the elevator in a brick-walled shaft
with automatic fire doors at the openings on each story.

STATEMENT OF RELIEF FUNDS
(From Report, Nov. 17, 1906)
Receipts from cash subscriptions  $6,213,259.28
Expenditures  4,628,452.23
As follows:
Housing the Homeless  1,234,094.43
Relief of Hungry  1,146,412.68
Rehabilitation  1,023,166.51
Sanitation  231,020.74
Transportation  171,470.53
Sick and Wounded  147,899.90
Construction and Operation of Permanent
Camps  140,805.56
Relief of other Cities  138,934.00
General Administration and Accounting  120,379.67
Construction and Operation of Relief Sections 92,804.21
Clothing Relief  66,255.09
Special Relief of Hospitals and Charitable
Institutions  55,774.45
Red Cross Administration  23,383.02
Reorganization of City  23,033.36
Appropriations for Special Purposes  5,780.00
Preliminary Relief, Organization and Adminis
tration  4,298.00
Miscellaneous  2,940.08
Excess of Receipts over Expenditures  1,584,807.05

Mutual Savings Bank Building

Photo by Walci

APPENDIX 285
In addition to receipts noted above, funds aggregating
about $3,300,000.00 are held by relief organizations in other
States — chiefly the National Red Cross.
The above report shows that the expense of adminis
tration has been about three per cent, of the amount
expended.

INSURANCE SETTLEMENTS
The report of the Special Committee of the Chamber
of Commerce on Insurance Settlements shows that the
following insurance companies paid claims in full or with
discounts (from 2 to 5 per cent.) for cash: —
.ffitna of Hartford, Alliance of Philadelphia, American
of Newark, American Central, Atlas, California, Citizens,
Connecticut, Continental, German Alliance, German
American, Glens Falls, Hartford of Hartford, Home
of New York, Insurance Company of North
America, Law Union & Crown, Liverpool & London &
Globe, London Assurance Corporation, Manchester, Mer
cantile Fire & Marine, Michigan Fire & Marine, New
Hampshire, New York Underwriters, Niagara, North
British & Mercantile, Northern of London, Northwestern
National, Pelican, Pennsylvania, Phoenix of London,
Queen, Royal, Scottish Union & National, Security of
New Haven, Springfield, State of Liverpool, St. Paul Fire
& Marine, Sun, Teutonia, Union Assurance, Victoria.
The same report shows that most of the other com
panies made settlements at from 60 to 90 per cent., that
the American of Freeport, American of Philadelphia,
Dutchess, German of Peoria, and New York paid 50 per
cent, or less, that the Atlanta-Birmingham, Austrian-
Phoenix, North German of Hamburg, Rhine and Moselle,
and Transatlantic denied liability and withdrew from the
State, and that receivers were appointed for the German
National, German of Freeport, North German of New
York, Security of Baltimore, and Traders of Chicago.

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