Category: history

EAST BERLIN MEMORIALS: LOSS AND TOURISM

Before last summer we had visited East and West Berlin in 1985 and looked forward to seeing the changes that occurred in the 23 years since the Fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989.  Our cultural subconscious held a cache of images of horrid truths and heartless propaganda:  juddering film clips of goose-stepping Nazis and skeletal prisoners,  Walter Cronkite’s TV voice over of the Wall’s construction,  and AP photos of East Berlin escapees in mid-air jumping to freedom or death from walls and walled buildings.  The images form a deep, muddy cold-war pool from which the vitality of modern Berlin emerges, staggering out of the emotional depth and  intellectual complexity.

The marks of last centuries’ history, written with bullets, bombs and barbed wire, still remain visible in places but disappear quickly with the massive new architectural construction of the last two decades.  This March protests arose over the demolishing of a long and fantastically graffitied vestige of the Berlin Wall, called the East Side Gallery (listed below), to make way for luxury condos–this in a city only 3/4 occupied.   Formerly a symbol of oppression, the Wall has been claimed as a battle trophy by artists and activists who have repossessed the emotional weight of the Wall’s history as a symbol of self expression and threatened freedom.  Among the works at the East Side Gallery Dmitri Vrubel’s street art perversely commemorates Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev’s historic kiss, passionately celebrating the 30th anniversary of Soviet control of East Germany, “My God.  Help Me Survive This Deadly Love”.

Because its history is so dark, modern Berlin has uniquely embraced it and memorialized it, largely without the masks and costumes of bombast and glory typically associated with memorials, of which those of the historic Prussia and Soviet Berlin are extreme.  The Doonesbury-like statuary at Friedrich the Greats Neues Palais at Sanssouci (at left), not unlike the Third Reich itself, pushed Deutschland’s tragic romance with glory and death to a chaotic absurdity, exhausting loss’s decorative potential.

   

Post Cold War Berlin has another idea.  In  a positive way Berlin’s “Gedenkstætte”–places of recollection” form a popular tourist industry.  They combine historical information  with an architectural focus for reflection upon the cities own horrific losses and the consequences of confusing loss and glory.   The effect is emotional powerful, disturbing and entertaining.

Among the places of recollection

  • the Holocaust Memorial:  a super-scale field of concrete blocks envisioning a Jewish Cemetery next to the Brandenburg Gate suitable for grieving or sunbathing.  Architect: Peter Eisenman.
  • the Topography of Terrors:  Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center naming names and historically detailing in exhaustive photos and text the Nazi reign of terror including relocations, forced labor, social manipulation, public complicity, defeat, accusals, trials and on-going convictions.  Architect: Ursula Wilms.
  • Mauerpark and the Berlin Wall Memorial: A personal favorite, both a very serious memorial and a park for music, play, market, etc., including a preserved Berlin Wall segment and Death Strip, a viewing tower chronicling the history of the partitioning of Berlin, and the serene rammed earth Chapel of Reconciliation remembering a demolished east/west church divided by the wall.  The variety of physical representations of the Wall and the Iron Curtain’s damaging history is incredible, and the number if not the scale rivals the Theme park approach of the Capitol Mall but with less cherry blossom draped reflecting pools and more photographic evidence, text and mangled concrete–architecturally, artistically, photographically, educationally and emotionally stunning while still appropriate for picnicking and tanning.   Architects of the Chapel: Rudolf Reitermann and Peter Sassenroth.
  • the Eastside Gallery: a threatened Berlin Wall Segment and Street Art gallery.
  • the Jewish Museum: dizzying architectural moments mismatched with wordy educational exhibits on the history of the Jewish people.  Architect:  Daniel Liebeskind.

  

With the Soviet War  exception, these monuments aren’t celebrations of valor but serious meditations on loss of lives and spirit under two regimes.  That the history is recent and disturbing, makes its memory that much more palpable, dimensional and personal.  The visitor owns the history through horror’s catharsis and awakens to find themselves suddenly present at history’s fulcrum.

Thanks to Diane Watson for her fantastic image of the Book Burning Memorial and Gary Trudeau for Doonesbury’s “W”.  We also recommend Isabella Oppen‘s study of Berlin’s Book Burning Memorial:”Sculpting Memory” reflecting upon  the construction of a collective memory through the “memory work” performed by the state–both East and Unified Berlin, by the historian, by the artist, by the citizen and  by the tourist.  Thanks also to Lou Reed in Berlin.

One of many sidewalk "Stumbling Blocks" commemorating citizens of Berlin who died in Nazi Camps

BERLIN SOVIET WAR MEMORIAL: GRIEF, GUILT AND GOOD GRIEF

An aerial view of the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park lays out a procession of mourning and remembrance across a landscape and culture.   With the Soviet occupiers beginning construction 10 months after the end of the war, the memorial spreads the granite ruins of the Third Reich Chancellory over territory the length of three football fields.

Since our summer trip to Berlin our posts have focused on comparisons between East Berlin and San Francisco’s Western Addition as a sort of Learning from Berlin.  We have included thoughts on gentrification , on graffiti and now, lastly,  on memorials.  Before we tackle what a memorial in our home town might look like (and we welcome suggestions) we would like to provide online photo-documentation of East Berlin’s most colossal, yet less advertised, memorial.  The Soviet War Memorial(Sowjetisches Ehrenmal) serves as a mass grave for more than 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers, fallen in the Battle of Berlin, creating a  superscale landscape of heroic death and monstrous bombast providing an apt synopsis of the physical horrors of WWII and the psychic horrors of Stalinist domination.  More than DDR kitsch the monument marks the origins of the modern post-war memorial in Berlin establishing a pattern combining solemn remembrance, didactic reflections on horror and an historical critique presented through a  landscape choreographed to achieve maximum emotional effect.  While its monstrosity is tasteless and blatantly manipulative, one’s emotional response becomes thoughtful and complex, powerful and disturbed.

Along the sidewalk a memorial arch announces to the recently crushed Berlin population “Eternal rest for the heroes who have fallen for the freedom and sovereignty of the Soviet Homeland.”  From the arch (1) a tall and deeply shaded tunnel of rustling leaves (2) leads to the distant silhouette of Mother Russia (3).  Dwarfed by the distance, on approach  her gigantism and weeping become evident.

Turning toward the light at a processional dogleg, the sequence makes an emotional dogleg too, as the direction of her anquish becomes apparent.  Two kneeling Soviet soldiers leaning heavily on their PPSH41 sub-machine guns (4) frame a gateway to a field of 16 raised tombs (5) holding 5000 Russian dead forming a parade ground of death and mourning.  Each tomb is decorated with quotes from Stalin in Russian with German translation and with carved images depicting the liberation and total annihilation of Berlin by Soviet troops on the ground and  the Allied bombs from the sky. (See the movie Woman of Berlin for a dramatic depiction of Berlin’s fall into vengeful Soviet hands.)

The long perspective of tombs climaxes on an apparent mass grave topped with a 75 foot high monument of a toddler hoisted by a mammoth Soviet soldier who in a damning act of liberation crushes a Swastika under his sword and boots (6).  Surrounded by depictions of war’s atrocities, the proximity of fearful baby and blade are disquieting.

The Soviet memorial combines heroism, grief, justice and revenge, using emotional content as a didactic tool of propaganda to inflict psychic damage upon the defeated Berlin citizenry, heroizing their oppressors as liberators and rationalizing Berlin’s  oppression as the weight of guilt.


Lacking subtlety the memorial confirms architecture as a tool to manipulate human emotion, the well-spring of memory.  While vengeance and despair are negatives, reflections on loss and recognizing history’s toll can be liberating as emotional relief and can lead to a positive social re-commitment.  In this way the crushing gigantism of the Soviet War Memorial can be compared to the unsettling dizziness created by the sloping walls and ground planes of architect Daniel Libeskind’s  Jewish Museum in Berlin or the deep grief brought on by the dark descent of Maya Lin’s elegant Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, where architectural devices manipulate one’s sense of well being in the interest of national catharsis and historical revelation.

The memorial to the Red Army in Treptower Park provides the blueprint for Berliners’ modern mania for memorials as a means for an expiation of history’s guilt, providing an effective avenue from national shame and denial towards self-awareness, truth and reconciliation.

The Jewish Museum‘s Holocaust Tower and the Soviet Hero, both shown below, are similar in  size.

thanks to koobcat for video

EAST BERLIN/WESTERN ADDITION: CHANGE COMES TO PRENZLAUER BERG…AGAIN

“Berlin-prettier than ever!” beckons the 1947 prop art poster for Soviet  East Berlin’s 5-year plan for the rebuilding of social housing and infrastructure following the devastation of the Allies’ bombardment and the Soviet invasion.

Distance provides perspective.  Unpacking our mental suitcase from a recent summer holiday in graffitti-bedighted East Berlin, we edit snapshots, positioning them for inevitable comparisons to our own living situation, in our own neighborhood in the Western Addition considering topics of street art, gentrification, bicycles, social housing, memorials and population relocation.

The changes in Berlin have been cataclysmic.  A city of 4.5 million in 1939, the population now stands at 3.5 million, 25% un-occupied, uncrowded and affordable.  For those with connections to Eastern European immigrants, the absence of a vibrant Jewish culture in Berlin is a palpable loss.  The World War and Cold War past is still present in the empty lots, the bullet-pocked plaster, the missing windows, and graffitied squats standing side by side with chic window displays, hot clubs, cool condos and high art.

Berlin is not an elegant city, but it is emotionally exciting and easy to live in with  a historical investment in the public realm of trains, subways and buses, parks and benches, street trees and street life, bike paths, museums and memorials.  Curiously and unlike San Francisco, Berlin–at least in parts–appears indifferent to sidewalk maintenance, graffiti removal and sidewalk obstructions–elements of the public realm whose vigilant maintenance is a San Francisco obsession with repeated inspections,  personal warning notices, and offers of rewards for informants.

The twice graffitied “YUPPIES GET OUT” adds an edgy touch to a sidewalk cafe in the leafy Prenzlauer Berg district in Berlin.  Nearby, an eery display of children’s garments graces a kiddie clothing store appealing to the new hipster parents and a younger fashionable clientele.

For centuries a rebellious enclave of breweries and politics, Prenzlauer Berg, a less bombed, more neglected, tree-lined district was home to Weimar political riots, pre-deportation Jews, 30′s Communist supporters, 70′s  artists, musicians and dropouts, 80′s Communist dissidents, 90′s squatters and punks, each group pushed along by the next, all enjoying a neighborhood providing a diverse if changing street life, a diversity of housing types and a fractious diversity of opinions.  Famous denizens include Marxist martyrs Rosa Luxemborg and Karl Liebknecht, and Kathe Kollwitz, artist of the proletariat, and punk eccentric Nina Hagen.  The neighborhood continues to change, recently becoming a well-priced option for an influx of West Berlin families.

Kollwitz’s death portrait, Memorial for Karl Liebknecht, is shown below.

We stayed in Prenzlauer Berg in a young ex-pat’s Airbnb vacation rental, a charming, bright, high-ceilinged late-19th Century apartment.  Through tall, uncurtained windows,  one looks across the street to the broken  windows of a largely abandoned brewery housing an art center, repair shop and rockabilly bar.   On Sunday mornings church bell chimes mixed with bass thumps from an all-night club.  In this heady atmosphere it is difficult not to fantasize about the promise in the half-occupied fixer-uppers.  With the fall of the Wall and the equalizing advantages of socialism  dismantled, East Berlin became a land of opportunity for Western squatters,  opportunists and now families who possess all the unequal advantages of a free system.

Metzer Eck has served Schnitzel and the Berlin favorite Hackepeter (raw ground pork) to locals for 99 years.  Sharing a table and thoughts with Gert(promoter/producer) and Manfred(avant-garde electronic musician), both long-time residents of Prenzlauer Berg,  talk turned from Hackepeter to the history of the pub, the long-standing bohemian community it fed, and the sweet-sour results of gentrification and, more broadly, of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.  The Capitalism they have now promotes inequality.  Communist control was flawed.  ”What is needed is a Third Way.”

Like Western Addition in much of Berlin there is  an attractive  tension of a place not fixed and postcard perfect–not like Munich, not like San Francisco’s Marina or Marin, not like Alamo Square for that matter–but complicated, still struggling with the process of  becoming something else while recognizing its difficult past.  If there are lapses of conscience and historical recollection in Deutschland, it is certainly not evident in East Berlin.   If anything, the Soviet Occupation built monuments, walls and governance on historical foundations of guilt, fear and suspicion.   Since the 80′s resurgence of prosecuting war criminals and the 90′s outing of Stasi informers, there is a clear recognition that the process of remembrance and healing is ongoing and open-ended and healthier than forgetting.

Don’t refuse, re-use.  A re-purposed  statue of Lenin decorates the entrance to a cardboard distribution warehouse.

In the coming blog posts, we take a summertime holiday in East Berlin, looking at the politics of street art, and how and why to memorialize a painful past.

 

 

 Nina Hagen: Smack Jack 1982 

LAST OUTPOSTS: LAST DAYS AT GETHSEMANE

“The last days are here.”  80-something,  Ray takes his morning constitutional down to the corner store, at Broderick and Fulton around 8 am, hangs out to catch his breath, smoke a cigarette, socialize and sometimes prophesize.  We talk about the recent foreclosure and sale of the Gethsemane Missionary Baptist a block away.  ”I’d been sayin’ it all along, it’s the last days, I do believe that.  The last days are here!”

The Gethsemane Missionary Baptist at Grove and Broderick is the latest of Western Addition’s church closures.  Neighbor Bill reports the church had been failing for  a while and was not shocked to hear the loan had been foreclosed and the property sold.  The realtor for sale reports the interior was in shambles.

I bump into Dharma, drinking lattes, a block east at Mojo.  He recalls, “I think maybe it was 2004.  I ‘member walkin’ by and those walls were like pumpin’.”  Here he makes a squeeze-box oompah gesture.  ”Yeah, it was this cool, loud gospel music.  We stuck our heads in, but it didn’t exactly feel right. So ….”

Friday the 13th, April 2012, was the day the music died at  Gethsemane Missionary Baptist–the day the foreclosed property was listed for sale.

As described on the realtor’s website redfin.com: “601 Broderick is a charming old church … in the heart of NOPA.  Not for the faint of heart or faithless, this property needs a revival. … make them believers. Heaven only knows what the possibilities could be!”  Receiving multiple offers on first showing, the sale closed before the For Sale sign was hammered in the ground.  Highland Ferndale Partners,  a luxury home developer purchased the church for restoration and resale.  David Papale, partner and realtor,  prefers not to disclose the sale price, but  redfin.com notes the price clearly at $1,401,000, 40% over asking, a sizeable investment in the future of the community. One might speculate, since this is real estate, that the sale price is more than adequate to cover the losses the bank faced in foreclosure on their faulty loan, a profit unrealized by the church.   Mr. Papale claims, while the possibilities for the property include six  units, it will be restored as a single family  home and to its original Victorian appearance without “that horrible addition.”  

Emphatically squat and unadorned, aluminum windowed and with in-your-face exterior spots, the addition could easily be seen as the Anti-Victorian to an ardent preservationist.  The photo from the Planning Department’s  1976 Architectural Field Form  shows the original entry porch, intact up to 1976.

“DESTROYED EN FACADE BY ABOMINABLE ENTRY ADDITION.”  Overcome with emotion the Planning Department’s  Field Notes for 601 Broderick rave with a zealot’s outrage about the 1977 entry addition for the Gethsemane Missionary Baptist.  The Field Notes represent the personal indignation and righteousness that mark the beginnings of historical preservation enforcement in San Francisco’s Planning Department.

In 1962 the women’s Junior League of San Francisco, the self-proclaimed incubator for “many of San Francisco’s most successful fundraisers and philanthropists (Opera, Ballet, Symphony, etc.),” initiated a drive-by survey of important historical structures and recorded them in the book Here Today (c 1968).    Responding to Western Addition’s decay, Urban Renewal‘s demolition (including 2,500 Victorians) and the post-war craze for asbestos shingle and stucco facade upgrades, the survey focused heavily on homes with Victorian ornamentation.  With the advent of Redevelopment Phase 2, their record serves in memoriam the further Victorian disappearances and relocations of the coming decades.  Pictured here are Here Today’s authors: Junior League’s Mrs. Alden Crow, the writers Watkins and Olmsted, and the masterful California landscape and architectural photographer Morley Baer.

The volunteer efforts of the Junior League are notable and praiseworthy.  Based on their  groundbreaking work, the Planning Department extended the list with the 1976 Architectural Survey of rated buildings–10,000 buildings in 60 unpublished volumes, accessible in the department’s database but less available to the general public.  For decades this  historical listing became the Planning Department’s chief basis for more severe scrutiny of facade alterations comparable to airport security’s no-fly list.   With this years online publishing of the survey field forms, the information for all listed properties is at last accessible and its inherent subjectivity evident.

It must be admitted, looking back in time, the historical porch is elegant and charming in the old black-and-white Field Form photograph.  And with the loss of the congregation the carefree chutzpah of the 1977 entry addition becomes less supportable to the values and beliefs of a new community.  Likewise, its inevitable demolition and architectural loss become trivial compared to the loss of   affordable options for a broader community.

The goal of historic preservation remains laudable, but one some can ill afford.  In the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s when redlining made home loans unavailable to residents in the Western Addition, maintenance, repair and improvement were not even an option.  Today, chipping paint, warped flooring, aluminum windows and asbestos shingles can look as attractively affordable to a budget minded renter or a TIC purchaser, as they can to well-funded developers like the Highland Ferndale Partners.

At Gethsemane, one should expect that under the watchful eye and wagging finger of the City’s Historical Review Process a new historical look will be recreated including entry and garage for the freshly painted luxury home at 601 Broderick.  And one can reckon that the so-called horrible abomination of an entry that served a rocking congregation for 36 years will be bull-dozed and our post will serve in remembrance.

LAST OUTPOSTS: VICTORIANS AND PENTECOSTALS OF THE WESTERN ADDITION

The First Apostolic Faith Church displays a Pentecostal purity of form in stark contrast to the ornament laden Victorians that populate the neighborhood.

Cleansed of its Victorian ornament to a powerful austerity and a puritanical severity, the First Apostolic Faith Church at Pierce and Bush, top,  provides an affordable and architectural alternative to the prevailing upper middle class styling common in Lower Pacific Heights in Western Addition’s upper end.  It represents one of many small and endangered churches still active as its supporting congregation is pushed out of the neighborhood to make way for a less evangelical population.

A Bible belt of small churches, Pentecostals and Baptists, cradles the former Redevelopment Area of  the Western Addition.  During the reconstruction period of the 1960′s and 70′s  the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency replaced demolished Victorian row-houses with large-scale housing blocks.  The new plans eliminated small churches, mom and pop corner stores, bars, clubs, even front stoops –all spots for neighborhood socializing.  The churches migrated west into the adjacent hospitable Victorian era neighborhoods of Hayes Valley, including the Lower Haight and North of the Panhandle.  Shown above, ”The indiscriminate mixture of commercial, industrial and residential structures … is the disease of blighted areas.” proclaims the San Francisco Planning Commission in their anti-urban propaganda “New City” of 1947.

Considered Urban Blight by the Redevelopment Agency and now called Painted Ladies, the Victorians of the Western Addition form an astounding collection of which the tour-bus beloved  Six Painted Ladies of Alamo Square are but a tiny piece.  These other Ladies of a certain age like the one below just happen to be on a different maintenance schedule.

Among the earliest, these classic italianate row houses at Grove and Scott, shown above, represent 10 of more than 1,000 identical homes built throughout Victorian San Francisco by William Hollis’ The Real Estate Associates (TREA), building developer of the early 1870′s with a very successful homeowner package.   Between 1870 to 1877, TREA building production averaged 2 to 3 homes a day, a scale of construction, mass production and landscape re-invention comparable to that undertaken by the Redevelopment Agency itself.

Presenting a Before and After view,  the Mount Hermon Baptist displays its original Victorian ornament(the Before) on its annex, above left.  In contrast, its sanctuary(the After), above right, strips down to a purity of form animated only by subtle use of color, iconography and window placement.  Both are Victorian era structures.  Both are stunning.  The modern sanctuary is also surprising.

In conflict with San Francisco’s legislated  Residential Design Guidelines, the Pentecostal Temple at Grove and Lyon and the Second Union Baptist on Page interrupt residential street pattern with positive mid-block socializing and the safety of the bright neon glow–that is as long as the light stays on.

The Solid Rock Church of God re-thinks what Victorian ornamentation can mean.  Below the elegant cornice, Victorian trims are removed and replaced with a stone  veneer and a tomb like entry.  Above the roof peak floats a heavenly cross.   Unfortunately, the church’s footing North of the Panhandle seems less than rock solid along with many of the remaining congregations.

The neighborhood churches provide a unique counterpoint in an otherwise well preserved, if less painted, Victorian neighborhood.  They up-end our expectations of appropriateness and call to question the restrictive goals of preservation and zoning which encourage greater neighborhood consistency and discourage architectual diversity and affordability at a parcel by parcel scale.  If less ornamented than the Victorians,  what the small church structures offer the community is variety and character–aesthetic, economic, cultural and  certainly spiritual.

Real estate profits, radically improved commercial activity and city infrastructure support the revitalization of the neighborhood but do less to support the fragile economic integration of its community.   Historically, the neighborhood was Victorian.  Historically, the neighborhood encouraged a middle range of incomes and a diverse community.

Thanks to Eric Fischer for his monumental postings of San Francisco City Planning maps and documents including “Reclaimed from Blight.”  Below the crosses of the recently sold Gethsemane Missionary Baptist at Grove and Broderick and the dark cypress at the door of the Emmanuel Church of God in Christ.

 

LAST OUTPOSTS: BAPTISTS AND A.M.E.S OF THE WESTERN ADDITION

On Thursday evenings and Sundays mornings, the largely white neighborhoods of the Western Addition are transfigured by  voices singing the gospel and shouting Amen from within the local African Americans churches of what were predominantly black neighborhoods.   Once occupying the entire Western Addition as “the Harlem of the West“, the now scattered black community reassembles in the church choirs and congregations with former neighbors driving in from more affordable neighborhoods across the city, and across the bay for worship and community.

Connecting the dots on a googlemap of “baptist churches”, one can chart the size of the mighty community that filled San Francisco’s Western Addition including the neighborhoods of the Fillmore, both Upper and Lower, Haight Ashbury and the Lower Haight, Hayes Valley, Alamo Square, NoPa and Divisadero Street, the Lower Pacific Heights, Japantown, and Cathedral Hill.  Along with the Baptists we’ve added to the map the names of black A.M.E.s (Black American Episcopal), C.O.G.I.C.s (Church of God in Christ)  and Pentecostals.

The churches range across the heart of the city from the imposing Macedonia Missionary Baptist in Lower Pacific Heights  to the gothic Mount Zion Baptist across from Golden Gate Park in the Haight Ashbury, pictured above, and from the rosy Love Chapel Church of God bordering Presidio Heights to the modest Mount Trinity Baptist along the new Octavia Blvd. near Market Street, both shown below.

Over a 69 year history these church communities have fought a continuing battle for permanence and relevance.

Typical of many, the founder’s plaque at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist dates the Sanctuary’s beginnings to 1943, during the heyday of wartime ship building and at the height of black migration from the deep south.  The plaque goes on to proudly honor “Mortgage burned, July 6, 1958,” while one block down, San Francisco Urban Renewal begins its buy-out and wholesale demolition of the district, replacing Geary Street with Geary Boulevard, effectively cleaving Pacific Heights and the Macedonia Missionary from the heavily  concentrated black neighborhoods south of Geary with a six  lane expressway beginning and ending precisely at the Western Addition borders, serving all but the locals.

Beginning in wartime 1943 like the Macedonia Missionary, the more nomadic congregation of the Greater Gethsemane C.O.G.I.C.  suffers both forced and voluntary relocations before settling down.   Starting on Eddy Street, ground zero for Urban Renewal Project Area A-1, the congregation relocates to Buchanan Street, soon to become Project Area A-2, where the church is claimed by San Francisco Redevelopment and demolished.   Re-established in a former theater in the Lower Haight, they sell to the developer of The Theater Lofts Condominiums.  In 1999 Lord Pastor Dad Grant leads  his congregation 5 blocks home to the stately 240 Page Street, the former St. Paul’s German Methodist built in 1909, shown below.

Nearby up Page Street, the neon cross at the 2nd Union Baptist still glows nightly after 50 years.


Among the  more prominent congregations, the Third Baptist near Alamo Square claims to be the oldest, founded in 1852.  Both believers and activists , the church  maintains long-standing connections with the N.A.A.C.P.   Below W.E.B. Du Bois  speaks in the sanctuary to the NAACP in 1958.   It has been pastored by the outspoken  Dr. Amos C. Brown since 1976, current President of the local branch.

Out at the fringes of the district, two different strategies address the issue of dwindling attendance.

The steeple of the First A.M.E. Zion, the oldest African Methodist Episcopal, congregation west of the Mississippi (1852), stands opposite the private San Francisco Day School at Golden Gate and Masonic, below, one representing the older and one the newer demographic.   In 2009, the 26 year old, Rev. Malcolm J. Byrd was called from Brooklyn to re-vitalize the aging congregation.  Check out the video of his arrival,  “A New Beginning”,  for an inside view.

At Turk and Lyon, the congregation of the multi-colored St. Cyprian’s Episcopal, below, adapts to survive, transforming from a 34 member declining black congregation to an integrated  neighborhood  church, reflecting the evolving neighborhood  with significant community outreach programs and its own voice in issues affecting new community interests.

Like the recently publicized foreclosures in Bayview, the steady loss of the churches of the Western Addition through foreclosure, eviction  and attrition echoes  the economic expulsion and flight of San Francisco’s black population, representing 17% in the 60′s before Urban Renewal and the loss of blue collar work, and now representing 6%.  The churches stand as testament of their binding strength as a spiritual homeland for a community dispossessed of its physical, geographical neighborhood.

Above NoPa’s Pentecostal Temple and nearby the recently foreclosed Gethsemane Missionary Baptist.

The next few blog posts present an incomplete catalog of the endangered Western Addition churches, representing both a spirited culture and free-spirited architectural approach.  Our interests are:

1.  to chronicle the remnants of a disappeared community and an endangered multi-culturalism.

2.  to recognize in the simple, evocative  forms and iconography of the smaller churches an historical architectural resource that provides a powerful counterpoint to the bric-a-brac laden Victorians in the neighborhoods they renovate.

3.  to critique San Francisco’s historical review process that deifies the middle class Victorians, promoting  neighborhood consistency while casting out neighborhood diversity and creative affordability.

Below, sidewalk topiary at the Love Chapel Church of God in Christ glows in the light of a setting sun.

Thanks to the recently defunct San Francisco Urban Redevelopment Agency for Geary Street Demolition photo and the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society for DuBois at 3rd Baptist and Joe Philipson for Rev. Amos Brown.  And thanks to Mrs. Dominique Jackson Byrd and the First A.M.E. Zion Church for the image of Rev. Malcolm J. Byrd and the video “A New Beginning.”

 

PLEASE, PLEASE, DON’T GO: PARTYING WITH THE HAIGHT-ASHBURY REUNION

May 25th, 2012,  Leah Garchik’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the Haight Ashbury Reunion which occurred on May 12th bringing together former and lifetime residents of the Haight Ashbury to party in the Golden Gate Park Panhandle.  The group was predominantly African American like the neighborhood 50 years ago. Garchik reports many had graduated Dudley Stone Elementary, now De Avila Chinese Immersion on Haight, in 1970 and 1971 to become among the first bussed out of their neighborhoods to A.P. Giannini Middle School at 37th and Ortega, 4.5 miles away.  Roslynn Grimal, now of El Sobrante, recalls, “Not only were we exposed to a different class of people, but it was the first time a lot of us were in school with anybody other than African Americans.”  Craig Cook, formerly of Waller Street, adds, “We were, like, sightseeing.  We saw grass.  People had lawns…”

Meanwhile, same day, four blocks away on Lyon and Hayes, NOPNA (North of the Panhandle Neighborhood Association) held its 12th Anniversary block party including tables for NOPNA, the Wigg Party, the Bicycle Coalition, St. Cyprian’s and  Paragon Real Estate.  If the reunion presents the old face of the Western Addition, the NOPNA Block Party presents the new face.

Questioning  Reunion members why most people left the neighborhood, Garchik  received mixed responses.  London Breed, running for supervisor in District 5, cites “living expense.., crime, public schools,” while Cook claims it wasn’t “an economic or financial thing.”   Not so simple, but hardly surprising, to realize that many blacks share the same anti-urban American Dream of gardens, cars, security, affordability, home ownership and better schools that sparked white flight to the suburbs in the 50′s and 60′s.

In the late afternoon, both venues, the Reunion and NOPNA Block Party, blasted the music of James Brown with a Reunion member providing a live dance tribute to the Godfather of Soul pleading to the black community:

“Please, please, don’t go!”

Our thanks to the Haight-Ashbury Reunion and to columnist and neighbor Leah Garchik for her coverage of this important event.

On a similar topic, a shout out also to the San Francisco African American Shakespeare Company for their recent insightful production of “Raisin in the Sun” scripted by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959.  The melodrama portrays an African American families’ ambiguous attraction to the American Dream where the sharecroppers pick and hoe is replaced by garden trowel and hand weeder in the heroic struggle for fair housing.  With its history of home loan redlining, Urban Renewal, low income housing projects, street improvements, and now gentrification, the Western Addition has served as testing ground and battleground in this struggle.

MODERNIZING 1921: SCHINDLER CAMPS OUT

Could this design from the Housekeeping Campground Map in Yosemite Valley be the original inspiration for LA architect Rudolf Schindler’s radical home design on King’s Road? (See our post Sun-worshipers and Free-thinkers.)   As Schindler describes it,  the home “… fulfils the basic requirement for a camper’s shelter: a protected back, an open front, a fireplace and a roof…”( ‘A Co-operative Dwelling’ , T-Square, February 1932).

In 1921 amidst the falling oak leaves of September and October Rudolf and wife Pauline  enjoyed an idyllic few weeks in camp shelters in Yosemite Valley.  Having just terminated his employment with Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf and Pauline planned their modern life and modern home in Los Angeles. Four independent and  utilitarian studios conjoined in a communal relationship would provide a background for work and play.  They would be joined in this experimental four-plex by housemates and friends Clyde and Marian Chace.

Schindler enlists his Illinois in-laws’ financial support with this enticing description of their daughter’s future Hollywood home: , “The rooms are large studiorooms–with concrete walls on three sides, the front open(glass) to the outdoors–a real California scheme.” (letter to Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Gibling). He continues: “Both ‘court’ and ‘terrace’ are to be used for social events–especially the ‘court’ may be covered by velumn and serve as a real room.”

Rating 3 1/2 stars on Yelp, Chad A describes the Housekeeping Camp experience like “The name sounds totally ghetto, but believe me this place is awesome. You have a couple of concrete walls that are of course covered, a couple of beds, drapes to close the “door”, a camp fire pit, covered “patio” area, and the best part electrical outlets to plug things in. Now I know some of you will say that is not camping to have electrical outlets, but I think it makes for a most wonderful addition… especially if you have like an iPod Dock because then you can cue up music for hours.  If you want to make the small trek they also have a small liquor store with all the basics for a good time in case you forgot something. We kept hitting it up for more beer for our drinking games. They also have laundry facilities and some transportation to some of the more famous places.”  Beyond the fireplace neither place has heat so bring extra blankets.

The home was completed for move-in by May of the next year.  In terms of partying and bohemian entertainment it was certainly competitive with Housekeeping Camp.   Schindler employee and architect Harwell Harris writes: The Schindler’s open house on Sunday evenings attracted the “arty” intellectuals of post-World-War I. … Hollywood drew them like a magnet. … Poets, playwrights, dancers, photographers and musicians … Socialists, reformers and intellectuals of all varieties were there. The talk was not chit-chat but about revolutionary ideas in all fields. The New, the Advanced. There were no fights because the participants, too, were advanced and so in fundamental agreement with one another. Most were locals; some were habitues; others were ones who came and went. Everyone felt free to bring a friend if he were interesting; it was a way to entertain.” (as quoted in Esther McCoy’s: Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys).

Schindler would live and work here for the rest of his life.  As others came and went, he would  share spaces with architect Richard Neutra and wife Dione, Galka Scheyer (Pasadena Art Museum donor) and dancer John Bovingdon (here in 1930 photo by Imogen Cunningham), musician John Cage, and Pauline Schindler returned from a gypsy lifestyle, but now separated from her husband. After Schindler’s death, Aldous Huxley moved in, the year of his first LSD trip.

In recent history Yosemite’s Housekeeping Campground provided both X-shaped four-plexes as well as this H-shaped duplex under a tent roof still extant at Housekeeping Camp.  Schindler slept here?  You can too!

For reservations:  www.yosemitepark.com/Accommodations.

VOLCANO, SIERRA FOOTHILLS

The classic farmhouse form of this gold rush era home can be described in a few words: a gable house wrapped by a porch. The two shapes, gable and porch, can be described with hand gestures. The shape is simple and common, lodged in our shared memory and dreams. Its commoness confirms its comfortable familiarity and borrows from past associations with similar homes, with farms, porch swings.

The geometric shapes are simple, but they have gathered emotional weight. Because of their simplicity and despite their nostalgia, they remain practical, an effective shelter from sun and rain.

The snow outlines the simple roof forms of the Pattison Lake Residence pictured here during construction. Sited at the end of the road leading to the lake, the home seems familiar as if remembered, its deep porches, welcoming. The simplicity of the form allows easy recollection.  It’s practicality ensures its endurance.  One can easily imagine living here, because it is easy.

GARE D’AUSTERLITZ, PARIS

The colossal spans of Parisian rail stations witness a time of technological breakthrough looking back at a historical sense of proportion and delicacy while looking forward to the new scale of the industrial age with its efficiencies of mass production and big box warehousing.  Through this temple of arrivals and departures have passed daily commuters, returning loved ones, and deported Jews.  Unable to assume a moral position on passing events–right or wrong–the station has effectively assumed a positive position on history and society, ennobling the passage of time and people without judgement of the circumstances.