April 21 - Saturday "Touching Stone"

Morning - midday

The weather was glorious for our first real visit to San Francisco. Driving back across the Bay Bridge I pointed to the towering pyramid shaped Transamerica building and told Deb that was where we were headed. In the time of our great grandfather the streets between Market and Broadway, going out from the bay and up past Montgomery contained many small industrial and wholesale concerns. Now the area is the heart of the financial district with several skyscrapers, ringed by numerous distinct and beautiful relics of the early days. Quite a few of these buildings have been preserved and restored, and now they house galleries, offices and restaurants.

407 Jackson St.

The narrow streets felt like home as I wended my way through each intersection and sidled up to 407 Jackson St. I was parking on the very street, in front of the very building, that had been the headquarters of the Lazar-Aicher Paper Company! I cannot easily douse my enthusiasm at this point because this landmark, with all its varied history, is the starting point of a mystery that has never been fully uncovered about our family.

The building is now the home of The North Point Gallery and nothing could have suited us better. The gallery specializes in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American and European paintings, with an emphasis on early California art. The president, Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., is an author of several books on California painters. The gallery presented many views of early California and some of the state’s most interesting and beautiful natural scenes. Every room held a new fascination, including a few Albert Bierstadt landscape paintings.

Alfred Harrison, Deborah Lazar and Jessie Dunn-Gilbert

Ms. Jessie Dunn-Gilbert, director of the gallery, took a great interest in our journey and our story and made every effort to be helpful while we were in the downtown area. Mr. Harrison looked over Deborah's art portfolio and was extremely approving of her work and abilities. He then talked about the world of art and the unfortunate situation great artists like her are in today.

"Your paintings are beautiful” he said, “unfortunately, you will probably not be successful until you're dead."

 Deb smiled, nodded, and said nothing, as if this was a funeral and there wasn't anything one could say.

 "But keep doing what you're doing! You don't know how happy I am to see the work you are doing."

Making myself at home

During the whole of our conversation, in the back of our minds, we were busy getting the feel of the first floor of 407 Jackson St., with its high ceilings and thick joists held up by fat round beams. The exposed brick above the clean walls looked like they'd been through hell, but they also appeared quite strong and thick. The city grew from its ports and the story goes that many buildings along this street were built out of abandoned ships that had been beached and covered in.

Plaque on the wall of the former Hotaling Whiskey Co.

There are two stories about this building I want to share, one is about the earthquake and the other is about the Lazars. After the earthquake a huge fire raged for three days destroying most of the downtown area of San Francisco. There wasn't much the fireman could do to stop the flames since all the water lines had been broken in the quake. But the block that housed Hoteling Whiskey Co. on Jackson St. was saved. Evidently some ingenious navy guys rigged up a hose from the bay and soaked the barrels in the cellar with sea water. They say it smelled terrible, but the building, the whiskey, and other structures on that block survived. One other nearby block in the downtown survived and that was the large twin buildings of the Customs House and the Appraisers, which was a good thing for the property owners who were able to confirm their deeds and rebuild.

I don't know when Solomon Lazar started using space at 405 Jackson. Maps of the building shows that in 1896 there was a paper warehouse in one of the back offices. Solomon was in the paper business from around 1901 and may well have used this same office prior to 1910 when the first record can be found. We had wanted to go up to the third floor where the paper towel factory had been, but were disappointed to find that it was closed.

Here is an excerpt from "Zellerbach: The House of Paper," a 1926 company publication, which talks about the building:

"A man of the name of Lazar on the dingy third floor of a Jackson Street building, just half a block from the principal Zellerbach building began to operate a little folding machine for tissue papers, which he had patented. The machine was far from perfect, but it worked, and the Zellerbach Paper Company very promptly began to buy from him folded paper towels for sale to the trade. Anything that was paper, Zellerbach bought and sold.

The business in paper towels grew rapidly to the point where it outdistanced the manufacturing facilities of the plants and perhaps also the mechanical possibilities of the machine.

When Isodore Zellerbach and Mr. Higgins in 1913 climbed the stairs to the dingy third floor story plant--they saved time that way, rather than ride in the building's leisurely water power elevator-- it had not occurred to them that they were about to do something without precedent in Zellerbach history." ~ Chapter VI, page 5. (This chapter goes on to say more about the relationship between Lazar-Aicher and Zellerbach but I will save that for later.)

We were sad to leave our friends at Northpoint. We had ventured out to the Ferry House for lunch (we  had Crab Louis- cold Dungeness crab salad) and bought a few California products (wine and olive oil). Our new friends at the gallery had become our touchstone in the big city, even helping with the hungry parking meters (most street parking in San Francisco costs $3.75 per hour!). But it was time to move on to find the two former homes of the Lazar family in San Francisco. I had addresses, but the number on the first house never matched up with my maps, so I was eager to see the street and houses for myself.

What we found in beautiful lower Nob Hill neighborhood gave us even more to smile about.