One man’s grand design
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
January 16, 2009
A small alley is probably not the most artistic way to honor San Francisco’s most creative and enduring architect, but then again, Timothy Pflueger didn’t start out building skyscrapers.
Still, it does seem a modest tribute to the man who gave the Bay Area its most majestic theaters and brought the art deco movement to glittering heights.
Yet, it’s at least fitting that when San Francisco officials soon recast Chelsea Place behind the stately 450 Sutter St. building to Timothy Pflueger Place, the street will lead directly into one of the many historic buildings for which the city native is known.
For that we can thank local journalist Therese Poletti — a tech columnist at Marketwatch — who pushed the idea before the Board of Supervisors, which voted unanimously last month to honor the gifted architect with his own street. Last fall, Poletti published “Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger,” which she spent three years researching with the help of grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts and the LEF Foundation.
Poletti essentially discovered Pflueger’s work through her weekend walks with City Guides and turned it into what she called an extensive “labor of love.”
“The more I kept digging, I kept finding all these other buildings that he did,’’ she said. “People didn’t really know all that much about him.”
But they know his craft when the see it. Pflueger is responsible for such gems as the Castro Theatre, the Alhambra (sadly, now a Crunch gym) and the jaw-dropping Paramount Theatre in Oakland. He also designed the graceful Telephone and Telegraph Building in 1925, which has been likened to a “skyscraper for the jazz age.’’
One aspect of Pflueger’s genius is that, unlike most other architects, he worked with a number of other artists (including muralist Diego Rivera and photographer Ansel Adams) to adorn his designs, such as the bold sculpture that greets visitors to Pflueger’s Stock Exchange Building at 155 Sansome St., which contains the breathtaking City Club. Pflueger said he wanted to use art that was not manufactured, and that would certainly describe Ralph Stackpole’s classically inspired “Progress of Man” sculpture, which rests high above the front door of the building.
Pflueger also designed the Top of the Mark, which would be a good place to raise a toast to his new honor.
A new ally in the quest to rescue Sam’s Grill
In my ongoing crusade to make sure Sam’s Grill in the Financial District remains Sam’s Grill, I’ve found a faraway but important recruit: the great-granddaughter of the man who founded San Francisco’s second-oldest restaurant.
That would be one Louise Moraghan Howell, descendant of Michael Moraghan, who long ago fled the West Coast for the long, hot plains of Houston.
Howell said she moved to Houston for the simple reason that while attending Stanford University, she met a “Houstonian” and ultimately married him. However, she’s quick to note that her parents, Charlie and Jane Moraghan, were lifelong residents of San Francisco.
“Obviously Sam’s was very close to my family,” Howell told me. “We ate there all the time. My father was extremely outgoing and very much part of the downtown culture at the time.”
Which is to say part of the martini-rich, rolling-dice-for-drinks custom that exists at places like Sam’s, Le Central and other venues that would have Herb Caen resurrecting if they were ever lost.
Sam’s is the real San Francisco treat, right down to the private booths, the sand dabs and its crew of crusty waiters.
San Francsico tax czar may be left waiting at the altar
It would appear that San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting should not count on support from the Catholic Church among his blessings.
Ting’s office is now regarding properties transferred by the Archdiocese to new nonprofits it has set up as part of an overall reorganization as taxable. And with more than 200 properties in the fold, that’s one God-fearing tax bill possibly awaiting the Archdiocese — estimates run as high as $15 million.
The Archdiocese has appealed the transfer tax, saying that the reorganization of the properties still puts them under one umbrella: the Archdiocese. But Ting said transfers to different legal entities made it nonexempt.
“To be fair, in the past people have come in and said they were exempt from transfer-tax laws without much scrutiny,” Ting said. But with added scrutiny, “we still didn’t believe they qualified for the exemption.”
“The law is overwhelmingly in favor of the Archdiocese in holding that church property transfers of this nature are exempt,” read a tersely worded statement from church spokesman Maury Healy.
Ting clearly isn’t as familiar with the Archdiocese as I am — like being called on the carpet to answer for my rhetorical pot shots by then-archbishop and now Cardinal William Levada for suggesting it would be a moral sin to close Sacred Heart Elementary School because of finance issues. Think of it like the bishop who told King Henry VIII divorce was out of the question.
A review board will consider the church’s appeal — and possibly higher powers.
A culinary report for the inauguration
As we get ever closer to Inauguration Day, details surrounding the various events are flying in fast and furious, down to the official big-day meal.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Barack Obama’s presidential lunch will have a “Lincoln theme,’’ starting with a seafood stew (that Honest Abe loved) and pheasant and duck served with sour cherry chutney and molasses sweet potatoes (oh, to be a vegetarian).
California will be tapped for the wines — a Duckhorn sauvignon blanc and a Goldeneye pinot noir from Mendocino.
The Times also listed a host of past inaugural meals, including the one held by Andrew Jackson, another “man of the people,’’ who, we are told, was followed into the White House by 20,000 rowdy revelers demanding their just deserts.
The White House was nearly destroyed by the raucous mob, something the Secret Service has required never to be placed on presidential menus again.
