Audio
Marilyn Blaisdell
Transcript
John: 00:03 Make sure we've got the tape leader going. Okay. Today's Thursday, August the 8th, 2002. My name's John Martini. I'm a historian working for the National Park Service. This is an oral history tape with Ms. Marilyn Blaisdell, who used to operate the San Francisciana shop at the Cliff House and is a historian and collector of San Francisco information, photographs, you name it. We're at her residence in San Francisco. And this will be an oral history tape for the Park Archives and Records Center of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I'll start by saying good morning, Marilyn.
Marilyn: 00:41 Good morning.
John: 00:43 All right. First question we always ask at the start of a tape. Can you give me your full name?
Marilyn: 00:49 Okay. My name is Marilyn Janeck Blaisdell. I'm 74 years old. Been collecting San Francisco historic material for 35 years at least. Photographs, negatives, maps, cards, books, et cetera.
John: 01:13 In case the paperwork should you ever get separated from the tape, what's your mailing address?
Marilyn: 01:19 I have a PO Box 590955 in San Francisco, zip 94159.
John: 01:30 Where are you from originally?
Marilyn: 01:31 I was born in Washington State. I came from the Pacific Northwest, lived in Yakima, Washington, Spokane, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle before I came down at age 17 to Stanford University for college. I spent five years there getting a BA and an MA. And it was in my graduate year that I took a seminar on California history. John Fremont was the center of that seminar, and I just fell in love with California history. And that began my extreme interest in California and San Francisco.
02:24 I had come as a 10-year-old to the World's Fair on Treasure Island, Golden Gate International Exposition. And I was intrigued with San Francisco with funny houses all pushed together, little postage stamp yards. So I decided at that early age that I hoped to come to California for college, and I did. I loved it.
John: 02:54 Did you live down at Stanford when you were going there?
Marilyn: 02:56 Oh, yes, all five years.
John: 02:57 All five years. What'd you get your master's in?
Marilyn: 03:01 I got my master's in education. I taught one year, got married in the middle of that year and went back East.
John: 03:12 When you were down there going to Stanford, did you ever come up to San Francisco?
Marilyn: 03:17 Oh, many times, yes. My present husband, to whom I've been married for 51 years, used to bring me up to San Francisco and tantalize me with the gorgeous lights driving up Skyline Boulevard, seeing the city spread in front. So we often came to San Francisco to the theater or dinner or any event.
John: 03:46 What's your first encounter with the Sutro, Cliff House, Playland area? Do you remember that?
Marilyn: 03:51 I know that we came there on certain dates or swang by, certainly we came to Playland and did the rides. We both liked amusement parks, roller coasters. I can't remember how long ago that was. Well, certainly more than 50 years ago before I was married in 1950.
John: 04:18 Okay, right after the end of World War II, that that time period?
Marilyn: 04:22 Right. Yes.
John: 04:23 What was the aura of Playland at that time? Was it a swank attraction or was it a...?
Marilyn: 04:32 Playland was probably starting to fade at that point. I didn't know that then. But having done research on Playland and published a book on that, I did find that the deterioration of Playland began in the war years.
John: 04:52 Really?
Marilyn: 04:53 With all of the service personnel, the sailors and the soldiers and everybody. It just became a outer destination for everybody. And that was the beginning of its decline, I think. Today, I think that was true. I didn't know that when I was a college student.
John: 05:18 Sure. Well, you walked into it at a certain point. At that time, not knowing what came before or after. How did you happen to get so specifically interested in the Playland, Cliff House area that you focus so much of your research on it?
Marilyn: 05:35 Well, I have to take a little sidestep here. I was married in 1950 and I ended up having six children in about 10 years. And I did like to have some intellectual stimulation. So, with each of my littlest ones, I would go to Golden Gate Park. I took the whole family to Golden Gate Park and Playland many, many times. But with the last sixth child, I used to ride my bicycle regularly in Golden Gate Park. Just this morning I rode for 10 minutes along the beach here in San Francisco, near where Playland used to be. At any rate, I felt an intense need for intellectual stimulation. So I started collecting images of Golden Gate Park because that was where people went to have fun. And from beginning to collect Golden Gate Park, that naturally evolved into collecting things along the beach such as Playland and the Cliff House and Sutro Baths.
06:52 I had a very early mentor named Roy Graves, whose collection is in Bancroft Library today. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. He is the one who told me that the largest private collection of San Francisco images that he knew of that were not in an institution were in the basement of the Cliff House.
John: 07:21 Which at that time was being run and sold by the Whitney's.
Marilyn: 07:23 That's right. That's correct. So it took me a few months before I was able to talk myself into the Cliff House. I had to work through George Whitney's secretary, Enid, can't come up with her last name, maybe Enid Stroud or Strout, a very wonderful person. So she finally did set up an appointment for me to see George Whitney, who was the owner of the Cliff House at that time. This is George Whitney Jr., son of George Whitney Sr., and Leo Whitney being his uncle. They were the two early owners.
08:06 At any rate, George Whitney was able to be talked into allowing me to see the negative collection that his father and uncle had amassed. It filled an entire small room or large closet. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of glass negatives, film negatives, anywhere from three by four to five by sevens to eight by tens. And they weren't in good order. So I asked if I could be a volunteer and put them in order. So I worked two to three years, just coming over once a week to be intellectually simulated by these negatives and prints and started putting them in order.
John: 09:05 Give me a time period about when would this have been?
Marilyn: 09:08 1970, possibly as early as 1969, 1970, 1971. So I fell madly in love with these negatives in working with them. And George Whitney was very kind. He was always a gentleman. And at one point he decided that he needed to get rid of some of the materials and assorted items in the Cliff House basement rooms. So he asked me and two other antique dealers to have a sale. So we had a three or four-day sale in the Cliff House selling many of the things Mr. Whitney no longer needed or wanted. And after that time period, there was still quite a bit of stuff, so he asked me if I'd stay on for a week or a month or whatever to get rid of the things in an empty space gift shop, which was on the sidewalk. So I intended to stay no more than two months, but I stayed 12 years. No lease, nothing official. Just a word-of-mouth agreement with Mr. Whitney, a gentleman/lady agreement.
John: 10:32 Okay. And the years that you ran the shop would've been 1972?
Marilyn: 10:37 '72 to '84.
John: 10:40 1972 to 1984. And the name of the shop officially was the...?
Marilyn: 10:44 San Francisciana, the name of my business. San Francisciana, meaning anything and everything to do with San Francisco.
John: 10:54 Let's go back to the photographs for a second, the big collection downstairs. Do you know why...
Marilyn: 10:59 Those negatives.
John: 11:00 Negatives.
Marilyn: 11:01 This was a very large negative collection.
John: 11:04 Do you know why the Whitney's collected that huge collection of photographs?
Marilyn: 11:08 Well, the Whitney's were collectors. That is Senior George Whitney and his brother Leo. I believe they had started as photographers in Seattle, Washington. You can corroborate this. So they would collect anything. They would collect mermaids or stuffed animals, pictures, coins. Someone told me that if there was a collection of anything, Leo Whitney would buy it. He didn't have the time to collect something himself, but he would just buy collections that people had put together. So They were collectors of collections.
John: 12:02 So these weren't their PR photos or anything like that?
Marilyn: 12:02 No.
John: 12:05 What was the scope? What did you find when you cataloged everything?
Marilyn: 12:11 Well, it was 90%, 95% San Francisco images from boxes, Cliff House, Sutro's, Playland, cable cars, hotels, homes, street scenes, wonderful street scenes. The bulk of this was the Behrman Collection, B-E-H-R-M-A-N. Martin or Marvin, I'm never sure.
John: 12:45 I think it's Martin.
Marilyn: 12:47 Martin Behrman, who was an Oakland photographer. And he copied photographs of San Francisco that were in institutions or library collections. So he had a system of... Well, that's too detailed.
John: 13:08 No, that's okay. How Behrman organized his photographs? Please.
Marilyn: 13:12 Right. Behrman did organize them in an alphabetical fashion according to how he thought. So EF before a number meant earthquake fire. Whereas, I file everything connected with the earthquake under Q for quake. And of course, SU stood for Sutro, CH stood for Cliff House.
John: 13:42 Now are these his numbers or your numbers?
Marilyn: 13:44 These were Behrman's numbers.
John: 13:45 Behrman numbers. I see quite a few prints with the SU and the CH.
Marilyn: 13:49 Correct.
John: 13:50 That's his numbering system?
Marilyn: 13:51 Those were the Behrman definitions of the subject. And streetcars were STC, but he put the cable cars with the streetcar. I couldn't quite go with that.
John: 14:10 I think at the turn of the century because cable cars were so common, people hadn't yet differentiated. It was like an overlap. Yeah, because in fact streetcars was the name applied to cables at one point.
Marilyn: 14:23 Okay, well the balloon car was the early, early.
John: 14:32 Yeah. Yeah. And there was the omnibus and all these variations.
Marilyn: 14:32 Right. Right.
John: 14:34 Yeah. So that was one of his favorite topics. We'll call them street railway.
Marilyn: 14:39 Correct.
John: 14:40 Because many of the photos that I've seen are the Lands End Railroad and the one that actually used to come down to where Playland was located.
Marilyn: 14:49 Then he had another labeling called OF, and that stood for old firms of San Francisco. Couldn't figure that one out for quite a while. And buildings were BU, but banks were just B. So at any rate, I was able to put these in order alphabetically by his allocations.
John: 15:23 So you never found a Rosetta Stone that told you what these were, it just hit you eventually as you organized them?
Marilyn: 15:28 No, I never found a key or a guide.
John: 15:31 Right.
Marilyn: 15:32 No.
John: 15:33 That's great. And he did extremely high-quality copy work too. I mean, most of the photos I saw, they look almost like they're struck from original negatives. There were other photographers in San Francisco doing similar things, weren't there? There was a fellow named Hecht?
Marilyn: 15:46 Yes.
John: 15:47 Whose name I've seen.
Marilyn: 15:48 True. True. Hecht. He lived out in the Richmond, not too far from the Cliff House. He was a very fine copyist. I give Hecht very high marks for his work. And there were some Hecht images within the Whitney collection.
John: 16:10 Great. Now, I know that the photographer who operated the Sutro Heights Gallery.
Marilyn: 16:20 Billington.
John: 16:21 Yes. Was there a lot of Billington photos?
Marilyn: 16:25 There were two Billingtons. They were brothers apparently. And most of the Billington images, oh dear, I think are Jr. And the other was W something. So I believe there were two brother Billingtons. One with a gallery on Sutro Heights near the Sutro home, and one next door to the Sutro Baths on the Cliff House curve road.
John: 16:51 Because I've seen in the old pictures, I was wondering if they were associated with each other or they were competitors? So they were brothers?
Marilyn: 16:58 That's what I think. I do not know that as a fact. This is just what I think. But I have images by both in my collection.
John: 17:09 So Billingtons...
Marilyn: 17:10 Filed under Billington.
John: 17:12 Some are very clearly marked of course, Sutro Heights Gallery.
Marilyn: 17:17 Right.
John: 17:18 Okay. Very interesting.
Marilyn: 17:22 It is very interesting. And then there were all kinds of little tin type photographs too, of the Cliff House, which were in the Whitney collection. These are little tiny, maybe two by three inches in size. Tourist posed in front of second Cliff House, the third Victorian Cliff House and the present fourth Cliff House. I have tin types from the Whitney collection with the assorted Cliff Houses in the background. Those are really just a wonderful group.
John: 18:02 And you're talking about the painted backdrop where someone would go into a studio and sit in front of the backdrop and they make you a tin type. Yes. I've also seen a fascinating one where the people are sitting in what looks like an airplane flying along.
Marilyn: 18:17 Yes. There were many different assorted, I guess cardboard props, cardboard or wood. There was an airplane image. There was auto, two or three different autos in which you could squeeze anywhere from one to seven or eight people. Sometimes the dog would appear at the steering wheel of the auto. Oh, it's a very fascinating collection of souvenir images on tin. So it's a piece of tin that I'm sure was very inexpensive. I don't know, 10 cents, 25 cents probably at the most. And some of those images come in a pink wrapper with Billington's name on it or other photographers. I can't come up with the other names.
John: 19:16 Yeah, we have one or two. But I believe the costs where it was only like 25 or 50 cents or something. Not inconsequential at that time, but not a fortune.
Marilyn: 19:24 I think 25 cents. And that was probably a fair amount of money at that time.
John: 19:32 And you said that's how the Whitney's themselves, they started as photographers up in the Seattle area.
Marilyn: 19:38 So I'm sure they did similar type pictures up there.
John: 19:43 Can you tell me what you know about the origins of the Whitney's and how they came to be so involved with owning most of the Playland, Cliff House, Sutro area over the years? You have written really the only book about it, your Playland book and your Cliff House book.
Marilyn: 20:05 Well, I don't have true facts about most of that. I know that the Whitney's were in Seattle, Washington at certain time and had a photo gallery up there. And I believe they went to Australia and that's where they got an interest in amusement parks. I believe the two brothers went to Australia sort of on a lark perhaps, or maybe one of them married a girl from Australia. I think maybe that might be able to be tracked down. So they had some tie-in with amusement parks in Australia. Then they returned to the West Coast. And how they came to San Francisco, I do not know. But a small amusement park had been started at the base of the Sutro Heights hill between Fulton and Balboa, a tiny one. It was at the end of the cable car line, which came through the western portion of Golden Gate Park. The cable car line ended maybe at Balboa.
John: 21:32 Somewhere in that area, yes.
Marilyn: 21:34 And so the very first thing that was put up was a gravity train. This was the predecessor of roller coasters. So apparently throughout America, gravity trains would be set up at the end of a streetcar cable car line in order to get people to have an amusement at the end of the line while they were waiting for a car to go back into town. So there is one early image in the late 1880s of a tiny gravity car on what is today, Ocean Beach. And then probably a merry-go-round was the next thing. Or maybe there were just some portable rides. I don't know this for sure. I'm just making guesses here.
John: 22:43 Well, we know that the first real building that was built down here was way back in the 1850s, the Seal Rock House. And then sporadically attractions were more up on the top of the hill. But then yes, in 1884, I just read this this morning, they built the big pavilion at the corner of Balboa and Great Highway.
Marilyn: 23:13 Right, the Ocean Beach Pavilion. Though it had many different names. So both of those structures had many different names. I can't come up with a...
John: 23:24 It seems that what was going on was that...
Marilyn: 23:27 So there were two buildings built at the base of Suture Heights hill.
John: 23:32 Yeah. And there's a couple of photos that show them both side-by-side.
Marilyn: 23:36 Right. That's correct.
John: 23:37 They did last a parallel for a while. But it's almost as every year or two new buildings are popping up. Facades are added. It never ceased evolving.
Marilyn: 23:49 That's exactly right. And it even became a slot car track in the '60s that Ocean Beach Pavilion.
John: 23:59 Yes.
Marilyn: 24:01 Jack Johnson, the very famous Black boxer trained at this structure, the Seal Rock House, it was called very early. And that is sometimes confused with the Cliff House.
John: 24:19 Yeah, thank you for bringing that up.
Marilyn: 24:20 The Seal Rock House is on the eastern side of the Great Highway. Whereas the Cliff House is on the cliff on the ocean side. There's also a mix-up with the Beach Chalet, which today is on the eastern side of the Great Highway. But the original one was on the ocean side. And that appears in many photos. The early Beach Chalet was really on the beach.
John: 24:53 Correct. There's lots of pictures of the Cliff House where at one point even had a neon on the front. I think it said, "Since 1858." And I'm going to surmise here that people may have grasped for an earlier date than the Cliff House because it sounded more romantic.
Marilyn: 25:12 And nobody really knows. There's two or three conflicting stories.
John: 25:16 Right.
Marilyn: 25:17 And nobody can know the truth because those people who wrote the assorted stories are gone.
John: 25:27 The first Cliff House in its current location, that was 1863 Civil War vintage. So you had down here something happening at the beach. This was the middle of nowhere though, in the 1850s and '60s. Is that why they built the streetcar line that you talked about was to get people out here?
Marilyn: 25:50 So people could come out to the ocean, right. And not have to walk. I mean, a lot of people walked everywhere.
John: 25:58 What was the attraction?
Marilyn: 25:59 It was a cable car line initially. It was a cable car line, and it actually came out close to Lincoln and then cut through the western part of the park between where the two windmills are today. The windmills were not built till 1900s, early 1900s.
John: 26:27 When they built that out here, why did they want to come to the beach?
Marilyn: 26:33 Everybody wants to come to the beach. That's been a destination from the beginning of time is find the water. You want to go to the water, whether it's ocean water or river water or a lake. Water is a very pulling attraction, has been and always will be.
John: 26:54 And attraction... Now, this is a chicken or the egg question. Do you think that the attractions were built out here, the Cliff House, the rides, the gravity car, were those built out here because people were coming here? Or were they built here, do you think, as an extra reason to get people to spend their nickel to take the ride out here?
Marilyn: 27:16 Oh, probably a bit of both. Yeah. I mean, the two interact with one another. Because yes, you have to have an initial destination such as the Seal Rock House and later the Cliff House. But once you have that, you have to add to that in order to have multi things for people to do. Again, there would be balloon ascensions. There would be tightrope walkers who would go from the balcony of the, I call it second Cliff House, over to Seal Rock. There was a woman who would ride a wire using her teeth to grasp the thing that swung over to Seal Rock. There's several Seal Rocks. They do have separate names. But anyway, anything would be used to get people to come and stay, spend the day, spend their money.
John: 28:35 So with this growing series of arcades down here, the gravity car, and the merry-go-round and all that, what was it called originally? It wasn't always Playland at the Beach. It had another name before then.
Marilyn: 28:50 Looff. Looff and Friedle were the two early men who really started an amusement park, a group of concessions. John Friedle and Looff, L-O-O-F-F. They had the merry-go-round and they had a Hippodrome.
John: 29:25 What's a Hippodrome?
Marilyn: 29:27 I'm not sure. I think Hippodrome is a name that could be put to any kind of an amusement place. I'm not sure. I've never tried to track that down. I should have.
John: 29:39 There was one on the Barbary Coast too.
Marilyn: 29:41 Yes, in New York. It was a word that was applied to things, probably meaning an entertainment place.
John: 29:52 Okay. All right.
Marilyn: 29:52 I do not know that. At any rate, at some point, the two Whitney brothers did return to San Francisco and started working at the amusement park. Chutes. Chutes at the Beach. I'm not sure that was the first name. There had been four different Chutes to digress here. In San Francisco, there have been four different locations for the Chutes. One on Haight Street, one on Fillmore, one on Fulton, and 6th or so. And then Chutes at the Beach. That's the earliest name of the amusement park here that I can come up with.
John: 30:42 It'd be the 1910s, 1920s? What time period would we be talking about for the Chutes?
Marilyn: 30:51 I'm not sure the name was in use until the teens or the twenties.
John: 30:51 Okay.
Begin Side 2
John: 00:06 This is side two of the Marilyn Blaisdell interview, August 8th, 2002. So we were talking about when George and Leo Whitney came back and the area was known as Looff and Friedle's amusement park. Did they call it Playland?
Marilyn: 00:26 Oh, no.
John: 00:26 No?
Marilyn: 00:27 No. The name Playland replaced the title Chutes at the Beach in the late '20s. I was told that it was... This was after the Whitney brothers took over the amusement park. They had found it was lucrative, especially the merry-go-round and the roller coaster. There'd been many, many different roller coasters, by the way, at Playland. Not just one, many. At any rate, it was in the late '20s, I believe, that the Whitney brothers bought out Looff and Friedle. Perhaps one of them passed away. I don't know. I didn't find an answer to that in my research when I did my book. At any rate, then, it's supposed to have been an employee of George and Leo Whitney's, who came up with the name Playland. Even though it has often been attributed to the Whitneys. I was told by what I thought was a reliable source, I don't remember who it was, that it was an employee who wanted to do some PR. At that time, they didn't call it PR.
01:49 So Playland turned out to be a very good name. Described what was here. They used bright coloring, all different colors like Crayola crayons, promoting the word Playland, and very clever juxtaposition of letters like a child would do to advertise Playland. So this was all over the park, everywhere. On the corner of Fulton and the Great Highway and down Balboa where the streetcar came and turned around. At least two, maybe three lines ended at Balboa.
John: 02:35 In the 1930s, when they were first taking over, there was no real design concept. It was a hodgepodge assemblage of buildings, wasn't it?
Marilyn: 02:45 Yeah.
John: 02:47 Did they redesign Playland intentionally or did-
Marilyn: 02:50 Oh, I think it just sort of grew like Topsy.
John: 02:53 Like Topsy?
Marilyn: 02:58 And of course, Topsy's is what did take over the space where the Ocean Beach pavilion had been. Topsy's Roost was a wonderful destination where they specialized in chicken dinners and entertainment, and they had chutes inside of the restaurant, which you could... I guess you came in on the second floor, second level, and then you'd slide down a big slide into the restaurant. Multi slides. There are wonderful interior shots of Topsy's-
John: 02:58 Right.
Marilyn: 03:35 ... And they had dancing and all kinds of entertainment.
John: 03:40 How long did Topsy's last?
Marilyn: 03:41 I don't know, quite a while.
John: 03:42 Yeah?
Marilyn: 03:43 Quite a while. It appears in hundreds and hundreds of photographs, certainly through the forties. I don't know if it was there in the fifties or not.
John: 03:55 When you were bringing your kids down here, in the fifties, we talked a little earlier about it. It was already on its decline. But what attractions did you routinely go to?
Marilyn: 04:09 Oh, everybody's favorite was the Fun House, outside of which Laffing Sal reigned and cackled and laughed and scared people. She was a wonderful, mechanical woman. There was also a mechanical man, can't come up with his name, sorry.
John: 04:41 It's okay.
Marilyn: 04:42 There were mechanical figures made by a company back Eastern Philadelphia, called the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, who made lots of roller coasters and merry-go-rounds. So at any rate, the mechanical figures who laughed or made noises were come-ons to get people to come in to a place. And most amusement parks in America had a fun house, in which there were many, many things inside.
John: 05:19 Now, is that where you wanted to go or where the kids wanted to go?
Marilyn: 05:23 Oh, we all loved it.
John: 05:24 Yeah?
Marilyn: 05:25 Yeah.
John: 05:25 Oh good. Did you-
Marilyn: 05:27 And they had five parallel slides, incredible wooden slides with burlap bags to sit on, or pieces of cardboard, whatever.
John: 05:41 Now there were arcades and rides and the fun House...
Marilyn: 05:45 Right. The midway. There were just many, many things, but it was quite a hodgepodge, as you said.
John: 05:54 Now, I'll learn more about this later-
Marilyn: 05:57 Shooting gallery. I think the first concession that the Whitney's had at the amusement park when Friedle and Looff were here was a shooting gallery, because they'd had one in Seattle also, I believe. Perhaps adjacent to their little photo studio in Seattle, very long ago. So they were versed in shooting galleries. So there was always a shooting gallery on the midway of Playland here, and I think that's how the two Whitneys put together enough capital to buy out the others.
John: 06:37 And then they expanded and they took over the Cliff House.
Marilyn: 06:39 Yes.
John: 06:41 Now, the Cliff House was actually dark for many years, which surprised me, in the twenties.
Marilyn: 06:46 I'm not good on the dates on that.
John: 06:49 But the Whitney's bought it, I believe, 1937.
Marilyn: 06:51 Okay.
John: 06:53 From the newspaper articles, which was kind of a gamble during the Depression.
Marilyn: 06:58 Right, and then they purchased the Sutro Baths after that.
John: 07:03 My understanding.
Marilyn: 07:05 Do you have the date on that?
John: 07:07 I'd have to read your book. I think it was within a year or two.
Marilyn: 07:11 I think it was quite close together, that the Whitney's were owners of Playland, and then they added the Cliff House, because it had also been deteriorating and they thought they would spruce it up. And then Sutro Baths again, they purchased and spruce that up.
John: 07:31 Now, the baths themselves, that was still owned by the Sutro estate, right? In the thirties?
Marilyn: 07:39 Probably. And I don't know when the skating rink was added.
John: 07:49 Some of that stuff you have to key out from photographs.
Marilyn: 07:51 Yeah.
John: 07:51 It was about, I think, '39 or '40. A personal aside, is my mother remembers very distinctly when they put the skating rink in, because there was just a plywood wall, and she remembers there was indoor fog because you had heated saltwater baths on one side, and you had-
Marilyn: 08:11 Right, there were a lot of problems in the baths because of the combination of saltwater in the baths, and they had to have non-salt water for the ice skating.
John: 08:24 Yes. Now, you said the Whitney's were collectors. Was what I saw at the baths, in the fifties and sixties, was that Adolph Sutro or was that the Whitney brothers? All those carriages and stuffed animals and Ito and everything else? I guess another way to phrase that is how much of-
Marilyn: 08:45 Right, I have no idea how many of those things belonged to Adolph Sutro and his estate, because of course, he was a master collector himself. Sutro had an incredibly fine library, and he had paintings, and he had statuary. So Adolph Sutro was a fine collector, had many things on display in Sutro Baths and in the Cliff House. So perhaps the Whitney's acquired all of that when they bought the Cliff House and Sutro Baths. So a lot of material probably did originate from the Sutro estate, but of course, Sutro died in the late 1890s, so...
John: 09:37 There's sort of that middle ground in there. There's like a 40 year period that I want to learn more about.
Marilyn: 09:46 Right, and I am not very knowledgeable in that arena.
John: 09:49 I know that the Whitney's, about 1950, seemed to have gone on an art modern remodeling, where they put the redwood exterior-
Marilyn: 09:59 Right.
John: 09:59 ... on the Cliff House.
Marilyn: 10:00 That was in the early fifties, I think.
John: 10:03 And they-
Marilyn: 10:04 Right. The redwood front was very attractive.
John: 10:06 Yeah.
Marilyn: 10:07 I thought that looked extremely nice for this fourth Cliff House.
John: 10:13 Let's go to that for a sec. Cause you've used that term. How do you define the various incarnations of the Cliff House?
Marilyn: 10:18 Right. I very definitely use four periods. The initial Cliff House was just a little cracker box, a little tiny square building, and I call that the original first Cliff House. And I give the designation second Cliff House to a large expansion of that little cracker box Cliff House, with the addition of wings on either side of the tiny cracker box and a large balcony along the ocean side. The structures were so different, even though it was additions, that I call that structure the second Cliff House.
11:03 So in defining my photographs, the first Cliff House I designate only the one that was tiny and original. Second Cliff House was the one with additions, which at least tripled the size of the original. And then that one burned on Christmas of 1894, and the Victorian was built. A fancy Victorian one was built by Adolph Sutro, who was the owner at that time. He had purchased the second Cliff House with the wings and the balcony, and it burned a '94, and so he decided to build a beautiful structure to tie in with his Sutro Baths, which he was also building 1894, '95. It had an official opening in 1896, but it had opened in 1894.
John: 12:00 I wonder. I've seen both dates.
Marilyn: 12:02 Because he didn't want to officially open it until he got his railroad line coming out from downtown.
John: 12:10 Oh, okay.
Marilyn: 12:12 But he did open it, and they had swimming, they had events there, in 1894. There are many photographs of events going on, and yet many things you read say that the Sutro Baths didn't open until 1896. Well, that's not correct.
John: 12:31 Okay. Okay, good. So by the time he died, the area was developed, the third Cliff House, the baths were in, his estate was up.
Marilyn: 12:44 Okay.
John: 12:47 Now the fourth Cliff House is going to be the one that's there today, right?
Marilyn: 12:52 Yes. That was opened in 1909, and it has gone through many transformations, but it's still the same core building as far as I'm concerned. So anything that is now sort of a square structure Cliff House, I just lump that all under fourth Cliff House.
John: 13:10 Okay.
Marilyn: 13:10 Though it's renovation in the fifties with a Redwood front was the most handsome of the assorted improvements or changes on this fourth structure, which now is almost 95 years old. Let's see, 90-
John: 13:30 Uh...
Marilyn: 13:31 ... 93, I guess.
John: 13:32 Yeah.
Marilyn: 13:32 Yeah.
John: 13:35 At the same time I-
Marilyn: 13:37 And your park service is going to renovate again starting in-
John: 13:40 Ooh, yeah.
Marilyn: 13:41 ... September. So tell us what you're planning to do with-
John: 13:46 Well, I'll stop the tape recorder for a sec, because I'm not-
Marilyn: 13:49 Okay. No, then don't.
John: 13:50 Okay.
Marilyn: 13:51 I thought maybe it could tie in with-
John: 13:53 Just briefly, the plans call for going back to the 1909 core structure by taking off the third floor dining room, which was added in 1950.
Marilyn: 14:05 Really?
John: 14:07 Yes.
Marilyn: 14:07 You mean upstairs at the Cliff House?
John: 14:09 Yes.
Marilyn: 14:09 You're going to eliminate?
John: 14:10 And the facade that includes your old shop, and go back to roughly the floor plan that it had about 1911. Because 1909, very quickly they added a bar on. So they'll go back to about that form, and-
Marilyn: 14:29 You're going to strip it back to that basic-
John: 14:31 Yes.
Marilyn: 14:32 ... cracker box.
John: 14:32 Yep.
Marilyn: 14:33 Again?
John: 14:33 And the North annex where the Pronto Pup is, that is going to be entirely demolished, and a new annex of dining room facilities for the Cliff House will be built there in a more contemporary design.
Marilyn: 14:47 Where Allen's shop was?
John: 14:48 Yes.
Marilyn: 14:49 Was that closed now?
John: 14:50 I believe so. I haven't been there in the last couple of months.
Marilyn: 14:55 Is the Pronto Pup still working?
John: 14:57 It won't be.
Marilyn: 14:58 No, but is it?
John: 14:59 Yeah. They'll all be... That whole north-
Marilyn: 15:02 But there's no shop there? At the moment?
John: 15:05 I don't think so.
Marilyn: 15:06 There's nothing where Allen had his space?
John: 15:08 Use Allen's full name. I don't know it.
Marilyn: 15:10 Oh, he was there a long, long time.
John: 15:15 The big curio shop in the North Annex, we're talking about the one-
Marilyn: 15:15 Right.
John: 15:18 ... across from the Pronto Pup
Marilyn: 15:18 Okay. That's peripheral.
John: 15:23 Yeah. The Sky Tram also is going to be removed. That's why the new visitor center for the Cliff House, which hasn't even been built yet, is causing some discussion.
Marilyn: 15:32 Okay. Well, Sky Tram was very short lived because it wasn't...financially... It didn't pay for itself.
John: 15:44 Yeah.
Marilyn: 15:44 I think that was one of Whitney's additions that didn't work. A lot of the things he did worked out. I mean, his goal was to make money-
John: 15:54 Yes.
Marilyn: 15:54 ... And if something didn't make money, then he dropped it.
John: 15:58 The historic plans that we have, many which we got from you, showed continuous replacement of attractions in the Cliff House, especially that downstairs area where Musee Mecanique is now located. There was something down there called the Country store, and there was the-
Marilyn: 15:58 Right.
John: 15:58 ... Doll House.
Marilyn: 16:18 Right. And the Last Supper used to be there
John: 16:20 Uh-huh.
Marilyn: 16:21 And an exhibit of missions, you know, models of missions. Huge variety of things, all of which I think were not lucrative except the Musee Mecanique.
John: 16:38 In interviewing Ed Zelinsky, he said that what the Whitney's would do is they would move attractions... Actually, the mechanical machines, they'd move them between Sutro's, the Cliff House and Playland to see where they would make the most money. So there was a constant movement of these.
Marilyn: 17:03 No, no. Ed should be so much more knowledgeable on things connected with the Whitney's than I.
John: 17:12 He's very good with, of course, the machines, because he and George always used to swap, and-
Marilyn: 17:19 Right. But I mean, they were such good buddies for such a long time, and I would think he would be your best source, besides George, for-
John: 17:26 I've gotten quite a bit from him.
Marilyn: 17:27 Oh, good.
John: 17:28 Yeah.
Marilyn: 17:28 So you've done an oral history of Ed?
John: 17:32 Not with the tape recording, unfortunately, but a lot of transcribed.
Marilyn: 17:36 Oh, but you will?
John: 17:37 I'm hoping to.
Marilyn: 17:38 Oh, you should.
John: 17:40 At the time that we're making the statement, of course, there's-
Marilyn: 17:42 Because he's really getting along in age.
John: 17:43 Yeah. There's some up and downs right now between the-
Marilyn: 17:46 Are we on right now?
John: 17:47 Yeah, that's okay. There's, there's some up and downs currently with Musee Mecanique and where it's future location is going to be while the Cliff House is rebuilt.
Marilyn: 17:57 Right. They've had a lot of publicity.
John: 17:59 When that settles down, I hope to interview him more at length. What I did, as part of the early negotiations a year ago, was I went through and did something he'd never done. I inventoried all of his equipment for him.
Marilyn: 18:15 Oh, how wonderful.
John: 18:15 I photographed it all, and I came up with a list.
Marilyn: 18:19 Oh, how wonderful.
John: 18:20 It's a huge collection. It's marvelous. It's wonderful. He has stuff in basements out in the Richmond District and an apartment on Cathedral Hill, and I got to see it all. Dan Zelinsky took me around, and then I interviewed him mostly about the machines. That's most of the interview. Where did they come from? How did he acquire them, if he remembered? And what we were trying to do was establish provenance. Which ones were actually from here, and which ones had he collected in his wanderings. Most of the Musee Mecanique things that we see aren't specific to the area, with the exception of the mechanized farm and the county fair and all that-
Marilyn: 19:01 Oh, the toothpick.
John: 19:02 The toothpick fair. That was wonderful.
Marilyn: 19:05 That was always in Sutro Baths.
John: 19:07 I thought I remembered it there.
Marilyn: 19:08 Yeah, my kids loved that. We would just go to see the toothpick carnival.
John: 19:15 Wasn't that the one that was supposedly built by convicts at San Quentin?
Marilyn: 19:19 I think that was the story that went with it. I mean it's very possibly true.
John: 19:28 There was a lot of stuff at the promenade level of the Sutro Baths that sticks in a lot of people's minds, like the Tucker Car, the Last Supper, the Tom Thumb collection.
Marilyn: 19:46 I never saw the Last Supper in Sutro's. Was it there at one time? The Tucker Car I remember being in the window on the sidewalk of Sutro's, like a come-on, like Laffing Sal of Playland. The Tucker car was in the window and a motorcycle, a very special motorcycle.
John: 20:07 Steam motorcycle.
Marilyn: 20:08 Steam motorcycle.
John: 20:11 Yes. Ed owns that now. Something that I'm trying to find out is what happened to a lot of these things. I found the Tucker car.
Marilyn: 20:19 Yeah, Whitney sold it.
John: 20:21 Yeah. Were these the things that took place in the big sale where you helped him?
Marilyn: 20:25 Well, I think he had sold the Tucker on his own, probably prior to having the sale. The sale was mostly things that weren't that easy to get rid of.
John: 20:35 What kinds of things did you sell at the sale?
Marilyn: 20:37 They were suitcases. Suitcases that had been down in a closet, probably belonged... Oh, there were weapons. There'd been an exhibit of torture instruments. A lot of very weird things. Again, I think accumulations... Spinning wheels. There's a whole collection of spinning wheels that had been inside the Cliff House gift shop. At one point, the gift shop adjacent to the Cliff House building was called the world's largest gift shop, and that shows in many photographs. I'm pretty sure it was the Whitney's who did that, made that huge gift shop.
John: 21:33 Photographs of the interior show, of course, display tables, but high on the walls there's-
Marilyn: 21:38 Right, there were the spinning wheels. There were bicycles.
John: 21:42 Yes. Whitney Collections.
Marilyn: 21:46 I think so. Yes.
John: 21:47 I'll ask about that. That's fascinating.
Marilyn: 21:48 I would guess that those were things that Whitney Brothers probably bought.
John: 21:54 There was a taxidermist in that building.
Marilyn: 21:57 I think you're right. There was also a Chinese man, down on the lower level as you would walk to the Musee Mecanique from the ramp to go to the GGNRA-
John: 21:57 Yes.
Marilyn: 21:57 ... and the-
John: 22:09 The Chinese-
Marilyn: 22:13 That one time there was a Chinese-
John: 22:15 Oh, there was a tea house.
Marilyn: 22:17 Also a coffee shop on that lower level and then over where your GGNRA headquarters are. Yes, there was a wonderful Japanese restaurant and a hot dog stand, also.
John: 22:32 All in that plateau behind the Cliff House.
Marilyn: 22:34 Just before that, all in that flat area opposite where the Musee Mecanique is at the moment.
John: 22:43 When we're talking about Sutro's. Tell me if you can, why do you think they shut Sutro's down in 1966?
Marilyn: 22:58 Well, probably because it wasn't bringing in enough revenue to pay for the maintenance. I don't know that as a fact, but again, that structure was starting to decay and deteriorate because of the salt water and the salt air. It takes a heavy toll on any buildings. Cliff House has to constantly be repainted because I can't hold up for more than a year or two.
John: 23:27 When you were, a couple years later, working with George Whitney, did he ever talk about closing it down and any feelings about such a big plan-
Marilyn: 23:36 Oh, no. I never talked to George Whitney about the Cliff House or Sutro's, really.
John: 23:43 Oh, really? Oh.
Marilyn: 23:44 No. We didn't have conversations. That's why I'm so pleased that you're going to see him next week.
John: 23:51 You have to tell me some questions to ask him. Things you always wanted to know.
Marilyn: 23:55 A lot of this stuff, which I don't know, hopefully he will tell you.
John: 24:02 One thing that I really want to ask him, that maybe you know, a lot of the famous things that were in there, like Ito, the carved man.
Marilyn: 24:10 Right. I can give you an interesting aside-
John: 24:15 Tell me about Ito.
Marilyn: 24:17 Ito. Well, Ito is this wonderful wooden structure, wooden man, carved by the man himself. But what Whitney did, because Ito was a big attraction, because this carved wooden structure was in detail down to every part of his body. George Whitney commissioned Ito's mother to be made, so that there would be a companion piece to Ito, and so this is a seated or kneeling female figure. But because Whitney commissioned her, of course, she didn't have details. She didn't have the body shape or anything. She just had a great big baggy black dress over, so her face looked like it could be the mother of Ito. I do have pictures of that. If you're not familiar with Ito's mother.
John: 25:25 It's ringing a bell somewhere, but that's such a great idea, the incredibly detailed man-
Marilyn: 25:32 Right. I do have some information on Ito that's printed material. You must have that.
John: 25:37 I have something. His fate is-
Marilyn: 25:39 Because I used to have a copy of that image, which I sold in the shop, of Ito and then the story about Ito.
John: 25:48 He was bought by the fellow that was the clown.
Marilyn: 25:51 Ito was bought by PoPo the Clown, who was at the Oakland Amusement Park.
John: 25:59 Do you know where Ito is today? I've heard Ripley's-
Marilyn: 26:02 I just know that PoPo bought him because PoPo had Ito on some world tour for 10 years or so. Ito was a part of PoPo's show when he was going around the world, and PoPo was the clown at the Oakland, I guess it was Lakeside Park, Amusement Park.
John: 26:28 Children's Fairyland?
Marilyn: 26:29 For a long time... Children's Playground.
John: 26:35 Yeah.
Marilyn: 26:39 And he arrived... I can remember when PoPo the Clown came to the Cliff House. I had the shop at that time, and he had taken the bus over from Oakland all the way to the Cliff House. That's a long way, if you're taking public transportation, and I believe that the price the Whitney's were asking was $10,000. I could be wrong, but it seems to me the price was $10,000, and PoPo pulled out of his pocket cash, in hundred dollar bills. This was told to me, I believe, by Ephraim, who was the major helper to George Whitney, and Enid was the secretary, and Ephraim Bastarache was the wonderful jack-of-all-trades who did everything. I'm pretty sure that was the story that Ephraim told me, that he was on the far side of the room where he'd come by and he saw PoPo dealing out all these hundred dollars bills and George counting them. Probably $10,000 for Ito.
John: 27:58 When the Baths finally burned down, was it vacant or was there still anything from their collection in there that was destroyed?
Marilyn: 28:09 It had been pretty much emptied before it burned.
John: 28:10 That's what I was hoping. I'll pause, but I got a question later about that. I'll come back. When you started operating your shop, at the Cliff House, what did you sell in your San Francisciana shop?
Marilyn: 28:26 Well, then I started producing my own products. People wanted pictures, very badly. They'd come into the shop and they'd want pictures. So, I had copies made from the negatives of the Cliff House and Sutro's and Playland and cable cars. I published four posters early on, one of each of those major subjects. And so it just evolved. I continued to produce things that people asked for. People wanted Victorian homes, so I had a series of postcards made on brown sepia stock, of Victorian homes in San Francisco. Again, from negatives in the collection. Cable cars were always popular, images of buildings, hotels. So I just branched out and tried to produce things that people wanted to buy.
John: 29:37 You replicated that great color poster of the inside of the baths, right?
Marilyn: 29:42 Right. Well, the original people who did that large interior shot of Sutro Baths, which had been a promotional poster long ago, billboard poster, was initially done by Louis' Restaurant. Jim Hountlas did the first printing of that poster by many, many thousand. So after he ran out of his Sutro Bath posters, I asked him if I could... I had been buying 500 at a time from Jim Hountlas, so he said, sure. He didn't want be bothered with having the negatives. He didn't know where the negatives or the separations were.
John: 30:30 Without prying, did you break even? Did you make profit running the San Francisciana?
Marilyn: 30:37 My profit was small, but it provided a place for my kids to work. I have six children, and they all took turns working at the shop, talking to people, answering questions, good questions, stupid questions. One of the most frequent questions was in regards to why the Seal Rocks were white. It's because of bird guano.
John: 31:09 Yeah. Your shop was almost de facto... an information center, a visitor center. Yeah.
Marilyn: 31:16 It was fun.
John: 31:18 And it closed because...?
Marilyn: 31:22 Because I had no lease. I stayed for 12 years when I intended to stay just for two.
Description
An interview with Marilyn Blaisdell about her time operating the San Francisciana shop at the Cliff House.
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