Captain Fred Klebingat was 24 years old when the panorama at the right was made from the Ferry Tower. He had sailed into San Francisco in 1908, as a seaman-donkeyman on the S.N. Castle. In 1979, at the age of 90, he walked the city front recalling life through the years on what was East Street in his youth. He studied the four-part 1913 panorama: "Well, it was like this, you see." and the Captain was off on a fresh memory.
Over the years, starting in 1953, Karl Kortum, Director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, listened intently to Captain Klebingat, setting down the captain's detailed recollections of 57 years at sea - mostly in the Pacific, "My home from home." From seaman to captain of square-rigged vessels in the South Seas; he mastered a range of vessels, from Hollywood yachts to Liberty ships. Captain Klebingat died in Coos Bay, Oregon, aged 95 - his words set her in italic are the real thing - "Well, maybe I was wrong 2% of the time."
East StreetBecomes The EmbarcaderoIn 1909
San Francisco gave a week-long party - The Portola Festival _ to honor Gaspar de Portola's discovery of San Francisco Bay in October, 1769. For three years the city had been hauling debris and rebuilding from the 1906 earthquake and fire. "Let's give a party and invite everybody to San Francisco to see the city rebuilt." To honor Portola, streets were dedicated: Portola Drive and the Embarcadero paid homage to the city's Spanish roots. Mission Revival architecture placed red tile roofs on stuccoed police stations, on new pier facades and warehouses. Cool grey San Francisco fell in love with sunny Spain. East Street still appears on signs in this view and in the recollections of retired seafaring men.
View from the Ferry Tower, June 3, 1913
Around noon, on that Tuesday, a photographer climbed the tower steps up the 220 feet, set up his camera and loaded it with a seven-inch glass plate - not once but four times. Each time he shifted his camera's tripod carefully to make and overlap for a panoramic view of the waterfront. What he captured was an ad man's dream, the prime place to push your product. Where else could you be sure of reaching 60,000 people - not once a day, but twice. Twenty-three ferry boats made 180 trips a day, carrying a total of 12,000 fares every working day. Weekends carried half as many, but locals and tourists had a little money in their pockets. Such were the times, that it didn't take much. At 16 Embarcadero (directly above) Yosemite beer, at 5 cents a glass is advertised in stained art glass. In 1913 prices stay in place long enough to only post them once.
Steam Beer - 5 cents a scoop - so was a good cigar
Captain Fred Klebingat recalled, "San Francisco in those days was known all up and down the Pacific Coast as ?The City';
the Embarcadero was known as East Street; and all this part of town was known as ?The City Front'. It was here that the work of the city was done. If you walked in the Ensign Saloon and called "Captain" - half the men in the place would look up. If I was in the money, I'd get oysters at Herman Dree's, washed down with lager, and have a steam-towel shave and shine on my boots. You'd know it was summer in this picture - June 1st was Straw Hat Day - but I never wore such a thing. It was like this - the big talk around 1913 was the Panama Canal - due to open in 1914. Think what it meant for San Francisco shipping, if you didn't have to fight your way around Cape Horn with freezing seas over the deck."
You could buy a house cheaper than a car
"Horses still did most of the heavy pulling on the waterfront," Klebingat recalled. "Big iron wheels made a terrible racket on the paving." At Market Street, two buggies tear around the corner, as the sidewalk group admires the smart open roadster parked by the curb. The June 3rd Morning Call carries ads for "Six Passenger Torpedo Sports Car at 5,000" and "Comfortable Two-bedroom Cottage on Pacific Street at $3,500." Also noted, "During April, emigration from Hamburg and Bremen is heavier than in years, 43,000 people left Germany for the United State." "Well," said the Captain. "I was only 16, when I left on the German ship D.J. Waljen, bound for Chile by way of Cape Horn in 1905. Sailed into San Francisco in 1908. I'm not one of those fellows with one foot in Germany and one in this country, what we used to call ?white-washed Yanks'."
"Boss of the Road" - City Front - A Man's World
"No women on the Front," Captain Kibbling recalled: "Women you saw in a stream morning and night, crossing from the Ferry Building to Market Street, and back again. But not many others around. A few Salvation Army lasses, beating the drum on the street corner at night, part of the band. Maybe a whore or two in the waterfront hotels, but mostly that class of women congregated on the Barbary Coast - some distance away. You were safe on East Street at any time. The San Francisco waterfront was not a riotous scene filled with drunken sailors, as some romantic writers would have it. San Francisco cops kept things in hand: they might pick up an inebriate, but let him go if he was not causing any trouble. They might say to a bystander, ?You know that bird? You do! Well take care of him - get him out of my sight.'"
The Cosmopolitan Hotel: 20 cents a night
"I climbed the stairs with my shipmate Jack Van Barm;" Klebingat recollected, "Into a big hall divided with a running partition about six feet high. This hall was a maze of alleyways, with a door leading to each cubicle; the strong stench of crowded humanity prevailed. Jack's enclosure had a cot and a pillow and some blankets. ?This is all I can afford," Jack said, ?Just this morning a head stuck up over this low wall and says to me, "What time is it?" All at once, I knew that it was a damn easy way to rob a guy.' ?Yes,' said I, ?And you wearing that gold chain. Why not raise some money on it? I don't have much, but I can lend you a few bucks. And you can raise money on that gold watch chain.' Jack grabbed his bag, and we left. Later, I was told that they nailed chicken wire up, to stop the guests from climbing from one cell to another."
"Even In My Time The City Front Was Changing"
"Some seafaring men moved further up town, looking for a furnished room with a family. People liked this kind of lodger; he was very seldom there, but he paid his rent to store his good clothes. The people you knew when you walked down East Street, or the Embarcadero - the new name - became less. It had been a maritime community; it was less so. And by now it has been replaced altogether. What you see there now are skyscrapers and a park." Captain Fred Klebingat stood here in 1979 to search for remembered places. The entire block of businesses between Steuart Street and the Ferry Building had been dislodged by a park. A massive new hotel replaced the modest Terminal Hotel. All the small businesses between Drumm Street and the waterfront had made way for the Embarcadero Center, skyscrapers and fountain plaza.
On the front of the podia
San Francisco was the City, the Waterfront was where the work of the City was done - Captain Fred Klebingat
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