San Francisco History: Phoenix Rising, 1910 to 1919, from KRON-TV, 1999

Channel 4's Bay Area 2000, brought to you by Lexus. Who knew driving a Lexus could be so exhilarating? Tonight, we journey back to a decade of rebirth. A golden age, shaped by Mayor Sonny Jim Rolfe. A magical fair, celebrated by the world. It was a time touched by the tragedy of the Titanic, and young men going off to the Great War. Good evening, everybody. I'm Pam Moore. Tonight, we continue our unprecedented journey back in time, to a place you only thought you knew. We've assembled an outstanding team of historians and storytellers to bring you the glory, the tragedy, and the promise of one of the greatest cities in the world. With never-before-seen photographs and amazing archival footage, Channel 4 brings you the next chapter in the saga of this extraordinary place we call home. Now, Kron Channel 4 proudly presents San Francisco, Phoenix Rising. It was the beginning of a new decade, and San Francisco was trying to become a distinguished world city. Though it revealed the future of opportunity and possibility, San Francisco was also uncertain. In 1910, the city was kind of lost. It was confused. It had gone through a number of traumas, the greatest being the destruction of the city in 1906. In that same tumultuous decade of 1900, when San Francisco suffered the terrible earthquake and fire, it also endured the bubonic plague, deadly labor violence, racism, and widespread political corruption. Working alongside that pattern, and you can see this in a number of sermons, were people saying that San Francisco was destroyed because of its sinfulness. This was God's judgment on the city. In 1910, Patrick Henry McCarthy of the Union Labor Party was the city's mayor. Though he worked toward making peace between business and the working class, conflict between the two groups ended his brief administration. The newly opened immigration station on Angel Island was envisioned as the West Coast equivalent to Ellis Island, but it became a place of humiliation and rejection for the Chinese. And though the city experienced a spectacular moment in its cultural history, when opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini performed for thousands on Market Street, San Francisco was desperately trying to right itself. What the city also needed was a new Moses to lead it back to the promised land. I think every great city needs an embodiment of what it can be at the best. And for Athens, that would be Pericles. For Florence, that was Lorenzo the Magnificent. For San Francisco, that person was James Rolfe Jr., Sonny Jim. Born poor and raised in San Francisco's Mission District, Sonny Jim Rolfe became a millionaire businessman. A man of optimism and goodwill, Rolfe also had a political genius for getting along with everyone. In 1911, at the age of 42, Sonny Jim was elected the city's mayor. They called Rolfe Sonny Jim because he was always sunny. He was always effervescent, smiling. He was famous for his fresh boutonniere, a carnation in his lapel. Everybody loved this man. San Francisco's mayor for the next 19 years, the charismatic Sonny Jim personified the Hollywood image of the big city mayor. He enjoyed dedication, handshaking, opening days in the company of silent movie stars like Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Norman. But in this decade, Rolfe's ambitious crusade for civic unity will dramatically change San Francisco's physical and spiritual landscape. The reign of Sonny Jim will be a golden age of great building and expansion. And I think that that really is San Francisco's great period, the one that we look back on with great fondness and nostalgia. With the election of Sonny Jim Rolfe in 1911, the city continued its reversal of fortunes. Its cultural environment was enhanced with the formation of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. The world's first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, trained at Ocean Beach near the Cliff House. President William Howard Taft came for the groundbreaking ceremony of the city's future world's fair, the Panama Pacific International Exposition. Impressed, the enthusiastic president declared that San Francisco is the city that knows how. At the Tanforan air show, thousands of spectators were thrilled to an exhibition of daring young men and their flying machines. Aviation history was also made. The first live bomb was dropped from the plane of Lieutenant Myron Chrissy. Former San Franciscan Eugene Ely first landed then took off from the deck of the USS Pennsylvania, anchored in San Francisco Bay. Called an ethic in aviation analog, Ely's achievement demonstrated the potential use for the modern-day aircraft carrier. In 1911, women's suffrage was also sweeping the country. In the month after Mayor Rolfe was elected, California voters were going to decide the critical issue of voting rights for women. Active in the fight was Maude Younger, an impassioned 41-year-old suffragist and labor leader from San Francisco. Maude Younger was raised in a very wealthy family in San Francisco and became independently wealthy in her own right when her mother died when she was 12 years old. Maude Younger's life was one of social privilege, but on a trip to New York City she saw firsthand the terrible struggles of working women and was transformed. We're not just talking about dirty job conditions and hard labor, we're talking about sexual harassment as well. And she was very deeply affected by this. When San Francisco held its annual Labor Day Parade in 1911, Maude Younger led the suffrage float. This float evoked such a response of enthusiasm from people on the sidelines. People cheered. And the College Equal Suffrage League described the float as passing through a cool mist like a hot iron. It was such a dramatic day for these women. Inspired, Maude Younger and the women of San Francisco worked continuously to win the vote. They went to union meetings, they held public rallies, they stood on street corners. When Election Day arrived October 10th, the state's male electorate would decide the outcome of Amendment 8, the Voting Rights Amendment. Women suffragists are very nervous on Election Day. They know it's going to be very tight. They know that as hard as they have worked, there is still a significant amount of opposition to women's suffrage, particularly in San Francisco. Thirty-six hours later, women had their answer. And on that morning, it is announced that women's suffrage has passed. Amendment 8 has passed in the state of California. They won by 3,000 votes. Though San Francisco voted overwhelmingly against suffrage, California became the sixth state to grant voting rights to women. The victory also rejuvenated the national suffrage movement. Maude Younger became part of that struggle. And by the end of the decade, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution had passed. Maude Younger, I think, found her home in women's activism and found complete fulfillment there and remained a devoted activist for the rest of her life. In 1912, San Francisco was touched by one of the world's great tragedies. In April, a new luxury liner departed from Southampton, England, for New York City. 2,200 people booked passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Among them was San Francisco's tax assessor, Dr. Washington Dodge. One of Mayor Ross' top officials, Dodge was returning to the city with his family after a visit to Europe. Shortly before midnight on the 14th, disaster struck when the Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and began to sink. It was the beginning of a tragic, terror-filled night. He put Mrs. Dodge and the baby into lifeboat number five, I believe it was. And then she urged him to join because the other wives that were going in with the children were calling to their husbands, their receipts had come to come, and they apparently went in. According to Washington Dodge, after helping others to safety, he was told by an officer in charge to tumble in to a lifeboat. Three hours later, the Titanic was gone. At around dawn of the 15th, Dodge and his family were safely reunited aboard the steamer Carpathia. And in New York, he received a telegram, too, from the mayor, Sonny Jim Ross, and said how the city were really afraid that the whole family had been lost and we're glad that you will be returning. Of the 2,200 men, women, and children who sailed on the Titanic, 1,500 were lost at sea. Not long after his return to San Francisco, Dodge spoke of his experiences before the city's Commonwealth Club. And it must have been very difficult for him because I understand he broke down several times trying to tell people what happened. And also, speaking of this built-in resistance that people had at that time to men occupying seats for women and children, even though those boats would have gone out empty, but there was always this stigma that he had to live with. Years later, on June 21, 1919, Washington Dodge shot himself in the head. Within days, he was dead. Linked to questionable business dealings, no one will ever know if the burden of the Titanic also played a role in his suicide. When we return to Phoenix Rising, San Francisco's epic battle with John Muir. KRON's Bay Area 2000. Phoenix Rising is brought to you by Compaq. Better answers. And by Northern California Toyota Dealers 20th Annual Toyota-Thon. See your Northern California Toyota Dealer today. We now return to San Francisco, Phoenix Rising on KRON Channel 4. In 1913, Mayor St. Jim Ross' great building program continued when ground was broken for San Francisco's new City Hall. Voters also approved a $3.5 million bond issue to extend the Geary Street Railroad to the ocean. Then in the summer, during the city's dramatic fight for water, Congressman John Raker introduced a bill which would grant to San Francisco the beautiful valley of Hetch Hetchy. The battle over it had been long and controversial. All great cities and all civilizations are built on water and power. Without these, you can't actually build cities. As early as 1901, Mayor James Duvall Phelan looked to the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park and the building of a reservoir in the nearby valley of Hetch Hetchy as the solution to San Francisco's unquenchable and necessary need for water. In fact, by 1909, some 63% of the population of California lived in urban-suburban circumstances around the San Francisco Bay. In other words, San Francisco showed the fact that California was going to have a metropolitan future. And the instrumentality of that metropolitan future was the aqueduct culture, was water, the sine qua non for this culture. Among San Francisco's earliest supporters was Teddy Roosevelt when he was president. Roosevelt stated, in fact, in backing the Hetch Hetchy system that San Francisco was destined for empire. But in order to do that, it needed unlimited amounts of energy and water, and they were going to get it from Hetch Hetchy. Because Hetch Hetchy was located in Yosemite National Park, congressional approval was needed for San Francisco to gain access. Opposing the plan was the legendary John Muir. Muir was the best known and most important figure in the wilderness preservation movement. He helped form the Sierra Club and played a major role in making Yosemite a national park. He was an enormously eloquent character. He really was a kind of Old Testament prophet of nature. A man of great passion, Muir was the so-called Blue-Eyed Isaiah who believed in the beauty of wilderness as a sign of God's wisdom and goodness. He spoke of the Sierra Nevada as a holy place, and he spoke of Hetch Hetchy Valley as a great cathedral. How could we dam this great cathedral and fill it as water tanks for drinking water for the city? In addition to Teddy Roosevelt and Congressman Raker, San Francisco had other powerful friends. When Woodrow Wilson was elected president in 1912, former Mayor Phelan was Wilson's campaign manager in California. And Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, a close friend and colleague of Phelan's, was also a former city attorney for San Francisco. So he, of course, was very much in favor of Hetch Hetchy, and when he gave permission to damming Hetch Hetchy, he, of course, became an instant hero. On December 19, 1913, President Wilson signed the Raker Act. San Francisco had won. The Hetch Hetchy Valley would become a reservoir and dam supplying San Francisco's water needs. It would also guarantee its promising future. I think one of the greatest ironies of the Hetch Hetchy battle is that although Muir lost in 1913, and it's often said that he died the following year of a broken heart, in fact, Muir is the one who is remembered, and the engineer who built it, O'Shaughnessy, is the one who lost because he's the one who's been forgotten. In the history of San Francisco, Michael Maurice O'Shaughnessy was also one of its most important figures. As the city engineer, O'Shaughnessy not only carried out Thielen's grand vision of the Hetch Hetchy water project, but also implemented Mayor Rolfe's expansive infrastructure for San Francisco. He had a passion for public service. He was the kind of progressive figure whom we see very much in the early 20th century in California and the rest of the United States coming out of this new profession, engineering, and articulating public good and public value through engineering and public works. If Rolfe was the city's king, O'Shaughnessy was the power behind the throne. O'Shaughnessy was such a strong and autocratic character that, in fact, he made many enemies all along the way, and there were many people who just hated his guts, in fact. Irish-born, university-educated O'Shaughnessy came to California in 1884 and achieved great success in private business. Mayor Rolfe recognized O'Shaughnessy's engineering genius and convinced him to take a pay cut and come to work for San Francisco. The two of them met at the Whitcomb Hotel, and that was the city hall of San Francisco, and Rolfe laid out his dreams for what this new city would be, and O'Shaughnessy laid out his dreams, and lo and behold, the dreams coincided, and the two of them worked in a magnificent partnership in those early years. Because O'Shaughnessy's projects were numerous and costly, some thought his initials MM meant more money, but O'Shaughnessy engineered San Francisco into the 20th century. And whether you look to the Stockton Street Tunnel, whether you look to the Ocean Beach Highway, whether you look to the creation of the Civic Center, or the astonishing two-decade-long project of the Hetch Hetchy water system, again and again you see San Francisco articulating its imperial ambitions and dreams through public works. Now, given that need, the fact that we had a great public engineer, a talented civil servant, a skilled administrator at the helm, means that O'Shaughnessy is one of the founders of 20th century San Francisco. In 1914, as O'Shaughnessy was building a technological empire for San Francisco, the city's fortunes were also impacted by another of the great engineering feats of modern times, the Panama Canal. Called one of the great highways of civilization, this 50-mile-long waterway joined oceans and continents, changing world trade and commerce forever. San Francisco believed the canal would provide a great boost to its own economy, but the city had other grand expectations. Selected as the site of a World's Fair to commemorate the completion of the canal, San Francisco would also demonstrate that its recovery from the trauma and loss of the previous decade was now complete. To celebrate, it would throw the biggest party in its history. When we return to Phoenix Rising, love and death at the San Francisco World's Fair. We now return to Phoenix Rising. Who knew driving a Lexus could be so exhilarating? In 1915, the first coast-to-coast telephone conversation occurred when Alexander Graham Bell spoke from Newark to Thomas Watson in San Francisco. In the Civic Center, the new Exposition Auditorium was dedicated. So was the new City Hall. Its construction took two years and cost almost $4 million. Called a masterpiece, it was Mayor Roth's crown jewel, his greatest legacy to San Francisco. But it was on the other side of town, on 635 acres of leased and reconstructed marshlands called Harborview, that the city experienced its most stunning triumph of 1915. The Panama Pacific International Exposition reannounced, reintroduced, reinserted San Francisco into the roll call of significant American cities. After an early morning rain on the 20th of February, a chorus of whistles, bells, car horns, and Presidio gun batteries firing into the bay proclaimed to the people of San Francisco that opening day of the World's Fair had arrived. The price of admission was $.25 for children under 12. The fair was full of wonder and charm with its mixture of past, present, and future. The Liberty Bell traveled across country to be exhibited in the Pennsylvania Building. A 400-mile Grand Prix race featured the famous driver of the day, Barney Oldfield. 31 foreign countries participated. Rodin's bronze sculpture, The Thinker, was in front of the French Pavilion. There were spectacular buildings like the 435-foot Tower of Jewels, its thousands of pieces of colored glass sparkling in the daytime sun. At night, the jewels and the rest of the fair were lighted by a device called a scintillator, which projected 48 beams of light through steam. The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by architect Bernard Maybeck. Maybeck's grand vision became a symbol of San Francisco's renaissance. And I think in architectural terms, the Palace of Fine Arts suggests to San Francisco that there always will be ruins, there will always be a sense of lost time, and here in this dome and in these columns will be incorporated the reverberations of the lost city. Here was a place in which you could both mourn the past and celebrate the recovery of the city. The fair was built at a cost of $15 million, and its appeal was irresistible. It was also a place where people fell in love. When I was a little girl, my grandfather and grandmother, who lived in San Francisco, used to speak quite fondly of their days at the exposition. Donna Ewald's grandfather, Edwin Hanson, was from Hayward. Her grandmother, Irma Laurent, came from St. Helena. They courted at the exposition. And, you know, courting is a very old-fashioned word, but I think it's fitting, because if you just think of strolling down those beautiful, beautiful pathways at the fair and the landscaping was so beautiful, the romantic side of the exposition is quite heartwarming. The young couple went to the expo every weekend. They saw the famed John Philip Sousa perform with his 65-piece band. My grandmother said she saw Charlie Chaplin walking through the fairgrounds, and he had quite a following. They did see Henry Ford. He had the first Model T assembly line in operation at the fair, so they watched cars being made, which was thrilling. Her grandparents also saw the great aviator from San Francisco, Lincoln Beachy. Lincoln Beachy, known as the man who owned the sky, the man Orville Wright called the most wonderful aviator the world has yet seen. It is hard to imagine the adoration that followed Lincoln Beachy everywhere. He was Lindbergh at his prime. He was DiMaggio. He was all the stars of stage and screen combined with a touch of Superman thrown in. Lincoln Beachy was born into the poverty of San Francisco's South of Market District in 1887. As a young man, Beachy had an aptitude for mechanics, loved engines, and flying machines. By 1905, he was piloting dirigibles and became known as the boy wonder touring America. Thousands upon thousands of people crowded the city streets looking at something. Oh, there's something up in the air. That was those days. Nobody had ever seen anything in the air other than birds. Though Beachy was small and socially shy, women responded to the famous daredevil aviator and he to them. But having an intimate relationship outside of marriage was not socially acceptable, so Beachy devised an inventive plan. If he became engaged, intimacy would happen. So he literally bought diamond engagement rings by the dozen, and he always kept one in his vest pocket in case the need should arose. Oh, Felicia, you're the one. Would you please be my wife? Here's an engagement ring. Let's get it, honey. Beachy was also adventurous and daring in the air. In front of 250,000 people at Niagara Falls, Beachy flew through its dangerous river gorge. He also was the first person to fly upside down, first person to master the loop-to-loop. When you see the Blue Angels do all those fun stunts going over the bay and doing spins and trips and loops, he invented that. He invented aerobatics. He is called the father of aerobatics. Many aviators sought to imitate Beachy, the showman, but it became a deadly proposition. They were just trying to dazzle the crowds as only Beachy could, and they died in droves. Beachy knew of at least 24 men who were killed trying to imitate him, among them his friend, Eugene Ely. Filled with remorse, Beachy quit flying. He couldn't take the blame. Everybody was blaming him for all these deaths. But the challenge to fly was too strong. In 1914, Beachy went on a tour across America, flying in 126 cities. His popularity was beyond imagination. Seventeen million people saw him in 1914 alone. Thirty million people saw him in his career, when the population of the United States was only 76 million. Thirty million people saw him. At the World's Fair, officials made the hometown boy its daily headliner. March 14th was also designated as Lincoln Beachy Day. Thousands gathered to see their hero fly, as well as receive a gold medal from the nations of the world for his contributions to aviation. Beachy's flight was successful, but when his medal had not arrived, the ceremony was delayed. He was asked to fly again. So he said, sure, I'll do it again. He got ready and took off again at 335, and climbed again out toward Alcatraz. And this time, he decided he would try what they called the dive of death. After he achieved enough altitude, he turned and did some spins and loops and things, but then started diving back toward the fair, vertical, and flew down, down, down, down, down, getting faster and faster and faster. And just as he went to pull out of the dive, the wings snapped back, one then the other. This picture of Beachy's plane between two ships was taken moments before he slammed into the bay. He landed right there, smacked into the bay at an estimated 190 miles an hour. Lincoln Beachy, the San Francisco boy who loved to race his bicycle down the Fillmore Hill and became the man who owned the sky, was dead at the age of 28. He drowned in front of a quarter of a million people on Beachy Day in 35 feet of water. Nine months later, the San Francisco World's Fair came to a close. In the early morning hours of December 4th, the lights went out for the last time. When the fair ended, I think there wasn't a dry eye in San Francisco. People stayed till 4 o'clock in the morning. They just couldn't believe it was all going to be torn down. A bugler played taps from the top of the Tower of Jewels, and a lone aviator circled in the sky just until it was all over. And people just stood there. This is what my grandparents said. They just stood there transfixed. They just were stunned that it was ended. And that's why a lot of people call it the dream city, because it was just like a dream. It was just there for such a brief time, and then it was just gone. Soon after the lights went out, the fair was torn down and demolished. A few buildings were bought and moved. The Palace of Fine Arts survived. The land on which the fair was built was returned to its owners. Today, that area is known as the Marina District. As for Donna Ewald's grandparents, they married in 1917 and remained together for almost 50 years until Edwin Hansen died. They had one child, a daughter. The fair had been an overwhelming success. 19 million people attended. San Francisco had invited the world to her party. And the world came. And the world had a ball. And proved that President Taft was right, that San Francisco was the city that knows how. Romantic, fascinating, unforgettable. It was an epic celebration which declared to everyone that San Francisco was once again a city of permanence and distinction. When we return to Phoenix Rising, a parade down Market Street erupts into violence and a rush to judgment. You're watching Bay Area 2000, San Francisco, Phoenix Rising on Kron Channel 4. In 1916, the war in Europe had been raging for two years. A bloodbath of staggering proportions, the United States maintained a position of neutrality, urging peace. But American participation in the war was inevitable. In San Francisco, civic unity seemed in abundance. The city was still glowing from its triumph of the recent World's Fair. But it was short-lived. Once again, class warfare broke out between business and labor. On June 1st, a West Coast waterfront strike caused 4,000 longshoremen to walk off their jobs in San Francisco. Violence broke out, and two strikers were killed. In response, the city's business community formed a law and order committee, which was deeply anti-union. And they set out with a good deal of unity across the entire business community to challenge the power of labor. A week later, on July 17th, the waterfront strike ended. San Francisco could now turn its attention to the upcoming Apparentness Day Parade. Its patriotic theme advocating that Americans should be prepared for the war in Europe. But once again, the city was dangerously divided. Business strongly supported the parade. Labor did not. Fearful that the war would destroy unions and the working class, the anger of organized labor was complicated by the growing influence of socialist radicals and pacifists. On the eve of the parade, San Francisco was at a breaking point. There was an enormous amount of fear, not just about the left, but about the possibilities of anarchy itself in American society. On July 22nd, at 1.30 in the afternoon, the Apparentness Day Parade began its march from the Embarcadero downmarket. It was a Saturday, and over 100,000 people lined the street. There were units from the Sons of the American Revolution and veterans from the Spanish-American War. There were also businessmen and women among the 20,000 marchers. Mayor Sonny Jim Rolfe carried a small American flag. Then at four minutes after two, disaster struck. A violent explosion rocked the parade. It happened at the crowded street corner of Stewart and Market Streets. A bomb exploded just outside the Exchange Saloon. Those standing next to it were blown apart, killed instantly. People rushed to help. They found the bloody sidewalk littered with debris and the remains from the bomb victims. The final count was nine dead and 40 injured. Fear, hysteria, and shock gripped San Francisco. It immediately set off a search for those who were responsible. And almost immediately, attention focused on a group of labor radicals. Within days, suspects were arrested. Among them was Thomas Mooney, a socialist and suspect in another San Francisco bombing. Also arrested was Warren Billings, who had spent two years in Folsom Prison for the illegal transportation of dynamite. Once the bombing occurred, Mooney and Billings had been already on the landscape as activists, distributing literature. They had a reputation. Two months after the bombing, Warren Billings was tried, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life in prison. Tom Mooney's trial followed in January. A month later, he was also found guilty of first-degree murder. But Mooney was sentenced to death. The trials of both men were controversial. There were accusations of perjury, the disappearance of witnesses, a suppression of evidence by the prosecutor, and heated debate that in the rush to judgment, a frame-up had occurred. One of the key witnesses was revealed to have been miles away when he claimed to have seen Mooney and Billings and the others directly involved in planning the bomb. The whole prosecution unraveled. They were unable to secure any more convictions. But Billings and Mooney had already been convicted and were in jail, and Mooney was awaiting a death sentence. Opposition to the convictions grew in this country and around the world. President Woodrow Wilson urged leniency. The Mooney trial and the ability of San Francisco to bring charges and convict these two gentlemen on such flimsy evidence shows the lingering capacity for vigilante action in San Francisco, the city that hanged miscreants in 1851, that put the city under martial law in 1856, seemed to have a lingering tendency for abrupt and paranoid politics. And that's what this Mooney case was, abrupt and paranoid. California Governor William Stevens reduced Tom Mooney's death sentence to life in prison. At San Quentin, Mooney received the news on Thanksgiving Day, 1918. But despite repeated efforts to secure the release of Billings and Mooney, they remained in jail from the time of their conviction until 1939. The cases of Warren Billings and Tom Mooney symbolized not only the strident class divisions within San Francisco, but the continuing polarization between business and labor. The city would experience other labor conflicts in the decade, made even more dangerous by the Red Scare, when the Russian Revolution and the rise of communism brought new tension and violence to America. When the spring of 1917 arrived, there was no end in sight to the savage war in Europe. American participation was imminent. Its patriotism undiminished. San Francisco was also confronted with the sober task of sending its young men off to war. When we return to Phoenix Rising, the new music of jazz in the Barbary Coast. KRON's Bay Area 2000. Phoenix Rising is brought to you by Compaq. Better answers. And by Northern California Toyota dealers. 20th annual Toyota-thon. See your Northern California Toyota dealer today. And now the conclusion of Phoenix Rising. Brought to you by Lexus. Who knew driving a Lexus could feel so exhilarating? In 1917, San Francisco's new million-dollar public library was dedicated in the Civic Center complex. The Twin Peaks Tunnel was also completed. A major transportation artery, the tunnel connected the city with its developing residential districts. But this was also a time of changing morality in San Francisco. Mayor Sonny Jim Roth approved a series of measures to close down the vice district of the Barbary Coast, the city's infamous Strip of Joy. It was pretty much wall-to-wall bars, dives, dance halls, houses of ill repute. But when it was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake, the Barbary Coast had changed into an entertainment and nightclub district. African Americans played a leading role in the district's popular appeal. There were black musicians, performers, and black-owned clubs like the So Different and Purcells. Its white middle-class crowd of locals and tourists was also attracted by exciting new dances like the Cakewalk, the Turkey Trot, and the Texas Tommy. As a matter of fact, Al Jolson first saw the Texas Tommy performed at the So Different Club and later on incorporated it into his show that he took to New York. And so these dances that were invented on Pacific Street in the old Barbary Coast were later on adopted throughout the country. The music being played was ragtime, blues, boogie-woogie, and a new sound called jazz. It was brought to San Francisco by black musicians from the equally notorious district of New Orleans called Storyville. So it was really a regular circuit between the two areas and helped jazz music to transfer to San Francisco at a very early time. In fact, the first published use of the word jazz was in a newspaper here in San Francisco. But in 1913, the same year the word jazz was seen in print, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst joined the protests of local ministers when he launched an editorial crusade against the Barbary Coast, wanting to make San Francisco a clean city for clean people. So it's the civilizing circumstance that happens in all frontier towns. The church is open. The preacher has to preach about something. He's going to preach about the evils and sins of drinking, smoking, and chasing women. It was the beginning of the end for the Barbary Coast. In February of 1917, city cops put 83 brothels and 40 saloons out of business. Eventually, many of the district's black musicians and performers also moved on, but they had made an important contribution in San Francisco to the legacy of jazz and dance in America. It's the kind of thing that hits you in the heart if you're an American. When you hear it, it's the right-on kind of thing. It's just a perfect harmony between the mind and the soul. Two months after the sweep of the Barbary Coast, the United States entered World War I. San Francisco quickly became a center of war-related activity, building ships, producing goods and supplies to support the war effort. The city's patriotic young men, who would make the world safe for democracy, joined the Army's 363rd Regiment. The unit became known as San Francisco's Own. People were very motivated. Everybody signed up to go over. It was a time when good could prevail over evil. After training at Camp Lewis, Washington, the 363rd sailed to France in the summer of 1918 to join American forces under the command of General John J. Pershing. By September, San Francisco's Own was ready for its first major battle in the French region of the Meuse-Argonne. The Germans were always fortified, always in their trenches, and we always went over open ground in the machine gun nests, fighting uphill. On the 26th of September, at 5.30 a.m., the assault began when San Francisco's 363rd went over the top. Charging into the thick fog of no-man's land, the unit encountered fierce enemy resistance. It quickly became a killing ground. Sergeant Philip Katz risked his life for a wounded comrade. What Sergeant Katz did was, in front of all the German machine gun fire, he ran up, grabbed the injured soldier, and then brought him back to his own lines, and he was totally exposed the whole time. It was just a phenomenal thing. For his bravery, the 23-year-old sergeant from San Francisco received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Then in November, when the 363rd was engaged in the offensive in Belgium, word came that the Germans had surrendered. After four years of horrific fighting in which some 60 million soldiers and civilians were killed, an armistice was signed on the cold, rainy day of November the 11th, 1918. The Great War was over. San Francisco's own would be coming home, but they had paid a terrible price. Of the 2,000 soldiers who went off to fight, 1,000 were wounded. 265 were killed. Remember, World War I was the war to end all wars, and these were the boys that sacrificed themselves. These were patriots, and this was a time of patriotism. On April 22, 1919, all of San Francisco celebrated the homecoming of the 363rd with a parade down Market Street. They mobbed the streets. They threw confetti out, and they hugged these boys, and it was a very joyous affair. Amid the tears and smiles of thousands gathered at City Hall, Mayor Sonny Jim Rolfe addressed the young soldiers and offered his own feelings of boundless joy in their homecoming. There was a price to pay, and nobody knew of the futility of war more than the soldiers that had been there. These were heroes. In the last year of the decade, as the euphoria of victory in Europe faded away and young heroes tried to make new lives, San Francisco was once again a challenged city. There were labor strikes, a devastating worldwide flu epidemic killed some 5,000 in the San Francisco area, and Mayor Rolfe suffered a personal financial setback when he lost millions in his shipbuilding business. But the city's revival could not be denied. The optimism of the new Moses inspired a renewal of civic unity with dramatic results. It was there for all of San Francisco to see. By the year 1919, San Francisco is essentially in its fundamental physical, spatial, architectural, and psychological conditions fundamentally the city of today. Wherever one looked in San Francisco, one would encounter already a system in motion, a city in being that would really project itself through the rest of the 20th century. There are now half a million people living within the city's boundaries. The Chrissy Field Airport was dedicated. Tosca Cafe opened in North Beach. The San Francisco Seals were once again playing baseball. And the Board of Supervisors approved a study to see if a bridge could be built across the Golden Gate. Though San Francisco's future would always be confronted by new battles and old conflicts, it was no longer a confused, lost city. On the threshold of the Roaring Twenties, San Francisco had reclaimed its soul.