Whiskey Men: The San Francisco Quake and Fire

 

Foreword:  At 5:12 A.M. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, an estimated 7.9 earthquake hit San Francisco.  Within 30 hours of the quake’s first jolt, an ensuing firestorm had consumed much of San Francisco. In the inferno that swept through the city for three days, more than 3,000 people died. Twenty-eight thousand buildings were destroyed over 500 blocks of the city.  Property damage has been estimated at $235–500 million in 1906 dollars — equivalent to the entire 1906 Federal budget.  Today the amount would be between $4.8 and $10 billion.  Among those affected were many San Francisco liquor dealers.  Here are the brief stories of four.

John Lutgen and his whiskey company had gone from success to success in  San Francisco,  moving each time to larger quarters and in 1906 occupied a spacious building at 29-31 Battery Street. A local writer had opined : "Their trade has been prosperous from the start, and has since extended not only throughout the State, but also throughout the coast, their establishment being one of the representative liquor houses of the Golden Gate City."  

In 1904, Lutgen’s firm had incorporated with a value of $250,00, several million dollars by today’s reckoning.  He and a partner each received 3,998 shares, valued at $25 each.  About the same time, once again needing more space, the company moved to the Battery Street address. Increasingly John Lutgen was being recognized as a major figure in the community. He was a member of the Board of Library Trustees in Alameda and active in several German benevolent societies and Masonic orders.

Then came that fateful morning in 1906.  Among buildings destroyed was the Battery Street building housing the Wichman, Lutgen Company.  Going up in flames were thousands of barrels and cases of whiskey, the firm’s records and all its equipment.  If Lutgen was tempted to quit, he gave no indication.  Almost immediately he made plans to relocate the company into temporary quarters at 431-439 Clay Street  to carry on the whiskey trade.  Meanwhile he planned, designed, and supervised the construction of a new building at 134 Sacramento Street.  The company moved there in 1911, its final home.  The following year Lutgen reported very good sales.

Among others burned out of their business quarters were Louis H. Barner and Henry Kehlenbeck, thriving wholesale liquor dealers at 324 Clay Street. The earthquake triggered a fire at the California Fireworks Company on Front Street, burning north to Clay Street and creeping up that thoroughfare slowly but steadily.  Shown right are a group of onlookers on Clay Street, including anxious shop owners that may have included Barner and Kehlenbeck, watching as the flames drew nearer.  Along Clay some buildings were blown up as a preventive measure but the progress of the fire was not halted. 

Burned out of their business, Barner & Kehlenbeck disappeared from directories and the telephone book briefly, displaced along with tens of thousand of other San Franciscans.  Fearing future quakes some business owners simply moved away.  Not  Barner or Kehlenbeck.  By early 1907, just a few weeks after the earthquake, they were back in business at Devisidaro Street, an area of town that had not been ravaged by fire.  By the end of that same year they had rebuilt permanent quarters at 714 Kearney Street and moved in to resume operations.

The sign left is brim full of confidence.  Goldberg, Bowen & Company  in 1915 were proclaiming the specialty grocery and liquor firm  a “Master Grocer” with a “The World Our Field.”  The claim was backed up by illustrations of goods delivered by ship and rail from all over the globe.  Many San Franciscans, however, could remember when Jacob Goldberg, and the Bowens, Charles and Henry, posted a quite different sign on the burned-out shell of their headquarters. 

The sign made clear that despite the blow the disaster had leveled on them, the partners were determined to press on.  It read: “Goldberg, Bowen and Co. Grocers Will Open a Grand New Store, Van Ness & Sutter.” True to their pledge by 1909 Goldberg, Bowen was back in business at the old address, with a building, bigger and better than the one before.  Shown here, it still stands at 242 Sutter.  The company eventually would have four stores, including one in Oakland. Despite calamities Goldberg, Bowen Co. was on its way to “World Reach.”

 

The earthquake and subsequently burning of San Francisco in 1906 was greeted by a good many clergymen as divine retribution for the city’s wicked, wicked ways. The fact that houses of worship were incinerated right along with everything else — while a huge whiskey warehouse was spared — inspired this immediate verse by Frisco poet and wit Charles Kellogg Field:

'If, as they say, God spanked the town

For being over frisky,

Why did He burn the churches down

And save Hotaling's whiskey?’”

Anson P. Hotaling was the largest liquor wholesaler in San Francisco  with a sales volume of 1,750 barrels annually.  Hotaling’s salvation may have been by the grace of God, but there also were more earthbound causes.   According to accounts, the warehouse was threatened and saved three times:  First by a fireman who hacked off smoldering roof cornices.  Second by a single length of hose from a Navy fireboat in San Francisco Bay that firefighters dragged over the ridge of Telegraph Hill for over a mile and eleven blocks to the Jackson street site. There they sprayed water on the building.

The final salvation was a bucket brigade, many of the participants Hotaling's workers, who slopped a compote of sewage and sea water on the structure from an adjacent site.   The mixture steamed and stunk as it hit the hot exterior but as one writer reported, “the muck did the trick.”  Moreover, while other liquor dealers in the city suffered from looting, authorities allowed the Hotalings to hire a hundred men to stand guard. The firm lost nothing.

The Hotaling Company continued to prosper at its Jackson Street address until shut down by National Prohibition in 1919.  Subsequently a bronze tablet with Field’s verse on it was attached to the Hotaling warehouse where it still can  be found.  In addition, nearby Jones Alley was renamed Hotaling Way. 

In 1909 San Francisco threw a three-day party called the Portola Festival to celebrate the rebuilding of the city in so short a time.  San Francisco virtually had been made anew — 20,000 buildings erected in three years.   As one observer at the festival told the press:  “Who would have imagined that just a few days after, that people would step up and seek to rebuild…in the miraculous way that we see it here today?”  Among those responsible for the San Francisco “miracle,” its liquor dealers must surely be granted a role.

Note:  Considerably longer posts on each of the whiskey men profiled briefly here may be found elsewhere on this website:  John Lutgen,  July 23, 2012;  Barner & Kehlenbeck, December 8, 2015;  Goldberg, Bowen, July 20, 2021; and Anson Hotaling, March 29, 2013.