San Francisco History
 

Trocadero


Old Trocadero Rancho Made Playground

Historic Bar Preserved for Sodas; Once Was Battle Ground.

By George and Emilia Hodel.

Yesterday they turned the old Tracadero over to the children. Little girls in costume, danced folk dances on the lawn; in the old days there was dancing, too, but of another sort. The click of the roulette wheel has given way to the shouts of ring-around-the-rosie. The historic Trocadero bar has beenpreserved intact, but you will be served with soda-pop instead of rum-and-gumand Pisco punch.

The story of the Trocadero rancho is a richly colored one, full of melodrama, bloodshed and thrills. It was here that the celebrated Greene feud was fought—fought not with bullets alone, but with dynamite and scalding water. Here, withthe urbane Hiram Cook as host and proprietor, came the sporting bloods ofSan Francisco to dine, to dance, to play gentlemanly poker—hundreddollar change-in, table-stakes games.

RUEF'S HIDING PLACE

It was at the Trocadero that Abe Ruef was found hiding after his indictment in the famous municipal graft trails of 1907. Even then the roadhouse had begun to lose some of its old-time glory, and when prohibition came it fell away utterly.

An old man, octogenarian, but firm of step, walked into the Chronicle the other day. It was George Greene, the man who built the Trocadero, in '92. George is a fiery old fellow, the last survivor of the fighting Greenes,who in 1867 defied the Vigilantes and held the Trocadero rancho against allcomers.

“Yes, they called us squatters,” the old man said, “and they sent the red-shirts out to get us off the land. But we weren't getting off—no, not till they carted us off in the morgue wagon.” Greene spoke in a ringing voice that rose above the troubled noises of the cityroom and made a dozen heads turn around.

MADE HOME A FORT.

“No—we chose to stay. My father came here in '47, staked offthe land, and worked it. The house he put up was shipped around the Hornfrom Maine. It was the first house built in San Francisco west of Twin Peaks.

“We meant to stay—and we stayed. We built a fort, just east of where the Trocadero Inn is now, and we lined it with metal. We stood watch day and night, and Dad hired the best Indian fighter in the West. Then we planted the fence around the land with sticks of dynamite—and let 'em come, we said.”

“Did they ever come?” we asked.

The old man stroked his drooping white mustache. “Just once,” he said. He seemed reluctant to elaborate, and we did not press him.

STOOD OFF POSSE

Greene told us of the time when a Federal Marshal descended on the property with a posse of twenty-two men, bringing an order to evict the family. Greene's father was away, but his mother barricaded the house and threatened to spill a vat of scalding water on the men if they ventured near. The Marshal's posse took counsel, analyzed the situation, and resolved to return again some other time.

The Trocadero rancho remained in a state of siege for three months, whentitle to the land was finally awarded the Greene's by the United States Supreme Court.

“The first man to live in the Trocadero was C. A. Hooper,” Greene told us. Hooper was a millionaire lumberman and donor of the Hooper Institute to the University of California. “Then Adolph Spreckels took it over for a short time, and when he gave it up I leased it to Hiram Cook.”

THRIVED UNDER COOK

It was under Hiram Cook, prize fight referee and man-about-town that theTrocadero reached the zenith of its glory. It was fashionable to drive outto the Trocadero for Sunday breakfast and to spend the day among the grove'smultiple attractions.

“Oh, the place was in great order then,” Green sighed. “We had a deer park, and a boating pavilion, and a beer garden, and the finest trout farm in California.” The old man stared away into space withwatery eyes: he was seeing a vision of the Trocadero in its vanished glory.

“George,” we said, to break his trance, “the old Trocadero was nothing to what it's going to be. They may have had fun there in theold days, but the boys and girls who have it now will get twice as much funout of it.”

WOULD NEVER SELL

“Yes, that's right,” Greene said. “I had a dozen offers for the place. But I never sold—I knew they'd cut down the trees and tear down the inn, and I didn't want to see the work of sixty years go by the board. I planted the grove myself, you know, in '72—no, '73. But now the place is in good hands, and I guess that all the shooting and the fighting was worth while.”

Anyway, Greene is getting tired of San Francisco, after eighty-odd years. He wants to get away from here. He'd rather like to go to Africa, he says, and try his luck at potting lions. “I'm not afraid of any living creature, man or beast,” says he. And he's not.

But we doubt whether George Greene will ever get to Africa. His neighbors had tried to raise a little fund to send him, and there has been talk ofa benefit of some sort for the old man. But George won't hear of it, “Benefit?” he says. “That sounds like charity. Please put the lid on that benefit talk for me.”

After all, George Greene belongs in San Francisco, we think. It’s his milieu. It was he, you know, who wooded the Presidio. Greene and his father were horticulturists and it was the Greenes who planted much of Sutro Forest. They did the first reclamation work in Golden Gate Park, in the early seventies.

INTRODUCED EUCALYPTUS

Greene was the man who introduced the eucalyptus on a large scale in SanFrancisco, after the first seeds had been sent here from Australia by BishopWilliam Taylor. It was Greene, moreover, who reclaimed the waste lands ofthe Sunset by planting “Holland grass” on the sand dunes to preventtheir shifting with the wind. Greene is an integral part of the San Franciscoscene, just as much so as the eucalypti he planted. He belongs in the picture,and we for one don’t want to see him go shooting lions in Africa.

He is as hardy as the eucalyptus too. In the past year he had had doublepneumonia, he’s been hit by a tree, and he’s had enough elsebefall him to kill seven ordinary men. Greene lives on a diet of oatmealand molasses, milk and sugar—not for economy’s sake alone, butchiefly, he says, because its healthful.

MADE INTO PLAYGROUND

A few days before the dedication of the Trocadero grove we went down there to look around. It was our first visit. We went there with Bernard Maybeck, the renowned architect, creator of the Palace of Fine Arts at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. It was Maybeck who had supervised the conversion of the Trocadero rancho into a playground.; he had been called in by Mrs. Sigmund Stern, donor of the grove, at the time when she first resolved to buy the tract for the city.

We walked down the winding road into the dell, and as we went we felt ourselves carried back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In such a grove, framed in a circle of trees, one might expect to catch a glimpse of Druidic rites, or perhaps even a wood nymph racing for cover. We spoke to Maybeck of this, and he said that he had experienced the same feeling of penetrating hereinto remote time.

INN BEING REPAIRED

The spell was broken only when we came to the old Trocadero itself, on which a small army or carpenters and painters are at work. For a moment we were apprehensive of what the workmen might be doing to the inn, but Maybeck was quick to assure us that everything is being kept as it was, and that allof the work is in the nature of repairs and construction.

We walked over the grounds, and we became increasingly impressed with the policy which Maybeck and Mrs. Stern had followed in developing the project.

We admired what was being done, but we admired still more what was not being done. The old clambering rose bushes had not been trimmed, and the myriads of surprising little paths were left just as they were.

WILL NOT SPOIL PICTURE

“You see,” Maybe said, talking softly through his full whitebear, “we have simply had to be careful not to spoil the picture. Itwas nearly perfect as we found it.”

San Francisco will long remember with gratitude the gift of Sigmund Stern Grove, undoubtedly the most beautiful of the city's playgrounds. Thanks are due principally, of course, to Mrs. Stern, who in looking for a memorialfor her husband had the generosity and taste to choose this fit. Thanks aredue, too, to Bernard Maybeck, a wise and delightful old man. But we hopethat San Francisco will allow some measure of gratitude to old George Greene,who is neither wise nor delightful, but a bit bleary-eyed, but at the elbows,and fond of strong language. It was he, remember, whose hand seeded the valley and who preserved it with rifle, lawsuit and dynamite for its present date.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle. 5 June 1932. 7.
‘Trocadero’ Made History When S. F. Was  a Baby.
By George W. Kemper.

Somebody has said, “A microbe standing on a billiard ball thinks he surveys the universe.”

In writing this column about the West of Twin Peaks section, I found so much colorful history attached to the district that it seems almost a universe of itself, and I the microbe.

The history of the “The Trocadero” is a vivid one. In 1847, George Greene and his wife came across the plains from Maine and took up a homestead on land near what is now Nineteenth avenue and Sloat boulevard. A brother, Alfred, took adjoining land, west to the Pacific ocean. It was on this property that the first residential development west of Twin Peaks took place. Itwas a portable home sent across the continent from the New England States,and was in fact the first home in San Francisco.

The country at that time was in a virgin state. It was covered with underbrush where wild cattle, rabbits and coyotes roamed, and the large springfed lake (Pine lake) was a duck hunter’s paradise.

RENDEZVOUS OF ELITE

In the home of Alfred Greene was born the son of the original pioneer, George M. Greene, and from his story related in 1931 these facts have been taken. The son George, being a nature lover, started planting timber on his father’s land in 1871. In 1892 he conceived the idea of building a public hotel which was known as “The Trocadero,” and which operated continuously until the advent of prohibition when it was closed to prevent it from being used as a bootleg establishment.

It was the “spot” of its time, the rendezvous of the elite. Many an old Spanish barbecue and fiesta was held here. Many a spark of jealousy over a beautiful senorita was fanned into flames and the bullet holes ofone such may still be seen in the front door and hall stairs.

In the early 70’s a land grant was made to one David Mahoney and was known as “Rancho Laguna de la Merced.” A land dispute arose between Mahoney and the Greenes and a bitter feud was carried on which resulted in Greene building a fort on a portion of the land now owned by Mrs. Mable Hawkins. To use Greene’s own words, “We were advised to shoot low, inthe stomach, for it would take two men to carry them away.”

Such was the courage of the pioneers. The Greenes finally won their rights when a  special Act of Congress granted them the land in 1887.

This site has been preserved for posterity through the generosity of Mrs. Sigmund Stern, who in 1931 presented it to the city in memory of her husband, and it is today known as “Stern Grove.”

TUNNEL COMPLETED

Under the supervision of the Recreation Commission, of which Mrs. Stern is the president, it has been developed for purposes of recreation, music, drama, pageantry and education, and stands as a monument to the fine work beingcarried on by that commission in developing children with healthy bodiesand clean minds.

In 1917, the Twin Peaks tunnel was completed and with transportation facilities provided, the district was to see great development.

Rapidly there grew Forest Hills, St. Francis Wood and in succession the many other districts so well-known to us today. Last year the Lakeside district alone more than a million dollars of residential property was put on thetax rolls.

PURPOSE OF COUNCIL

Separately each district organized its own property owner’s or home owner’s association, but with the expanding complexities of our modern life greater co-operation between the groups became a necessity. In 1937the West of Twin Peaks Central Council was organized; it is now comprisedof 10 district associations.

One of the fundamental principles of the council is to maintain the strictly residential character of the section, to prevent the inroads of commercial business except in those areas set aside for purely commercial purposes,to maintain our boulevards as residential property so that there may be atleast one city and one place in this city wher ingress and egress may bemade without passing through a double line of hot dog stands and gasolinestations. To this principle the council has strictly adhered and to its credit—assisted by fine co-operation from our City Planning Commission—it can be proudly said that this is a truly residential area.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle. 15 July 1940. 24.

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