Month: December 2009

SKATE CRAZY

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

By midsummer 1906, post-earthquake life in Santa Rosa was less about coping with crisis than it was enduring a hundred annoyances. Piles of construction materials had replaced the piles of rubble downtown, making 4th Street shopping difficult, and even dangerous, not to mention the inconvenience for farmers probably being unable to hitch their horse and buggy near the makeshift stores. Other merchants were dispersed to temporary locations on side streets, working from home, or at the business district shantytown thrown together on an empty lot near the corner of 5th and Mendocino.

The greatest disruption was probably social, however. Life before the earthquake was punctuated by endless get-togethers, dances, and card parties hosted by the fraternal lodges and ladies’ social clubs, and almost all of these gatherings were on hold since the disaster. The Athenaeum theatre and the Novelty vaudeville hall were both gone, so there was little to do at night, either. So after you’ve told your how-I-survived-the- disaster story to everyone you knew and tsk’d over their disaster stories, there was precious little to do in Santa Rosa. Maybe that’s why the town went crazy as a betsy bug over roller skating that summer.

But Santa Rosa’s roller mania wasn’t created by the quake. Roller skating was quite a fad that year nationwide, and the San Francisco Bay Area was a hotspot with the famed Idora Amusement Park in Oakland, said to have the largest and best rink in the world. Two downtown skating rinks were opened in Santa Rosa in the weeks before the quake to great success, and the Press Democrat noted that a popular salutation around town was, “Have you had a skate on?”

Then came the earthquake. The urge to put on wheeled shoes was quelled but not extinguished. Three weeks past the disaster, a rink was opened at the old Grace Brothers Park near the Macdonald Ave. and 4th street intersection. Frank Leppo, who had operated one of the pre-quake rinks announced that he was going to build a new one on Humboldt Street. And with no fanfare, Mr. Green and Bowers asked City Council for permission to build a pavilion that would cost about $15,000.

The Pavilion Skating Rink opened three months after the quake. Located in the middle of the A Street block between 4th and 5th (think of their front door as the menswear department at Macy’s), it was about 15,000 square feet of no-frill steel and wood construction – a standard warehouse, more or less. The owners instead spent a chunk of money on installing a quality maple skating floor, with two layers of felt underneath to muffle the roar of hundreds of skaters and to make it more springy. Every afternoon they polished the floor using a large slab of marble attached to the back of an automobile, which then “ran around the room at a lively clip.”

(RIGHT: “Professor” Franks and his 7 year-old daughter, “Baby Lillian.” The Franks toured California roller rinks in 1906, visiting Santa Rosa in late September. Other newspapers described their act including dad skating on 30-inch stilts. The finale of the act had him skating up a special 70-foot ramp and jumping thirty feet, landing with a pirouette. His daughter followed with a similar leap into her father’s arms)

It was immediately a terrific success. Santa Rosans packed the place; even if you didn’t skate, there was enough seating for a thousand to watch. Within days, the Santa Rosa Republican began running a “Skating Rink News” section on the front page to keep everyone up-to-date on the latest doings at the Pavilion, and the Press Democrat followed with its own front page column soon after. Here was news you really needed to know; that evening there might be a match between Santa Rosa’s “polo team” (roller skate hockey) and competitors from Healdsburg or Petaluma, or there could be a grand march where all comers would be given a red, white, or blue Japanese lantern to carry, or there might be an hour reserved for couples near closing. Professionals also came through regularly with “fancy skating” exhibitions. Every day there was something new to see, and you or someone you knew probably saw it.

But skating was just part of the fun. Two months later, Bowers and his partner opened Santa Rosa’s first swimming pool next door. At 40 x 100 feet it wasn’t modern Olympic size, but then again, competition pools usually don’t have a slide, trapeze swing, rings, or an attached skating rink. This likewise was a great success, and come November, they closed the swimming baths for the winter and placed a dance floor over the pool. Now it became “Bowers’ Hall,” Santa Rosa’s ballroom.

Together, the Pavilion and Bowers’ Hall became the town center that Santa Rosa never before had. The buildings even functioned as a convention hall for large gatherings, somewhat like the grand auditorium that architect William Willcox had recently hoped to build. in January 1907, more than 3,000 packed into the skating rink on a Saturday afternoon to hear William Jennings Bryan pontificate about America’s greatness and its destiny to lead the world.

Ideally Santa Rosa should have offered these venues at a public park, where admission would be free or nearly so (and which Willcox also tried to create here). Bowers charged up to 50ยข a person for some events, the equivalent of something around twelve dollars today. It was an expensive night out in a farm town. Still, gratitude was owed to Bowers and Green for providing a service that probably helped many escape their woes and mourning, at least for a bit.

And as the annus horribilis of 1906 came to an end, two dances at Bowers’ Hall helped close the year on a pleasant note. The week before Christmas there was a dignified “Grand Masque Ball,” and then on New Year’s Eve, a decidedly UNdignified “Sheet and Pillowcase Masquerade.” There dancers wrapped their bodies in a bedsheet and covered their head with a pillowcase with two holes cut for the eyes. “The amusing feature is that often it is hard to tell whether your partner is a gentleman or a lady, and times have been when men have had men for their partners, much to the amusement of all,” promised a blurb in the Republican. It’s another of those moments that make me yearn for a time machine; how fun it must have been to watch everyone in their boiled sheets struggling to dance like clumsy ghosts, while next door, others dressed in their Sunday best glided gracefully around and around until at last the new year came.

RINKS ARE MERRY
Large Crowds Patronizing Roller Skating Here

“Have you had a skate on?” is a popular salutation these days in Santa Rosa.

The skating rinks which opened Saturday evening at Ridgeway hall and Red Men’s hall are doing a land office business every night and in the afternoons many take the opportunity to become acquainted with the fascinating pastime.

– Press Democrat, March 28, 1906
“Billy” Cowan Shows Skaters How to Skate

Attorney Willaim Finley Cowan is nursing some strained ligaments of the arm and wearing one of these member is splints as he result of an attempt to use roller skates at a local rink Friday morning. He was formerly one of the best skaters in Santa Rosa… [when] he was something like twenty-three years younger and over a hundred pounds lighter…Those in the vicinity declare that an earthquake had occurred when “Billy” hit the floor, but their fears were soon dispelled.

– Santa Rosa Republican, March 31, 1906
FINE SKATING RINK SOON TO BE OPENED

The new skating rink which is being erected on A street in this city is one of the most pretentious affairs of the kind to be found in this part of the state. Messrs. H. A. Bowers and I. L. Green, who are financing the rink, state that they expect to have the place completed by the last of next week and will be ready then for their opening.

The rink is a splendid building, 74×200 feet, and is being constructed of rustic, [sic] with a pressed steel front in imitation of bricks. There will be room for some four hundred skaters on the floor, and seats will be provided for one thousand spectators, while the hall will be large enough for convention purposes and will hold fully 3500 people on such occasions. Already there is some talk of having the coming lecture of William Jennings Bryan in this building next fall.

One of the most interesting features of the ring is the manner in which the floor will be laid. Mr. Bowers stated this morning that he will have each of the floor joists covered with a thickness of felt before the roof floor is laid, and on top of this first floor there will be a complete covering of felt before the maple floor is placed in position. This will make the floor flexible, and also overcome the disagreeable noise of the skating.

Adjoining the rink Mr. Bowers is having his large public bath house erected. The excavation for the swimming tank is being rushed to completion at the present, and when completed will be 40×100 feet, while the building itself will be 60×120 feet. The baths will be fitted up in the latest manner, being equipped with slide trapese, rings, and the like and will be connected with the skating rink so that there will be an opportunity to pass from one to the other.

The feature of the swimming tank will be the incline floor that is to be laid, giving the bathers any depth of water they may desire. When completed the rink and baths will be the best to be found anywhere and no expense is being spared to fith them up right.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 12, 1906
UNIQUE MANNER OF DRESSING DOWN FLOOR

At the New Pavilion Skating rink in this city, the manager, H. A. Bowers, has contrived a very unique way to dress down the floor for the skaters. He secured a large piece of marble nearly two feet square and about four inches thick, and every afternoon just after the rink has been closed to visitors, an automobile is run into the building and hitched to the stone. Then the fun begins. The auto is ran around the room at a lively clip, dragging the stone, and giving the hardwood floor a splendid satin surface.

The marble grinds off all the rough and uneven places on the wood and gives the surface a smooth and pleasing finish. After the marble has been used, then there is a large pad, arranged nearly four feet square, which is faced behind the machine, and in a short time there is absolutely no dust to be found on the floor. Another advantage in the method is the doing away of all chalk and other applications. This makes it especially pleasing for the ladies, as there is no danger of soiling the white clothes while skating. Mr. Bowers’ plans is certainly a very unique one, and by test has been found to do its work to perfection.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 26, 1906

AUSPICIOUS OPENING OF SKATING RINK

The new skating rink of Bowers & Green opened as scheduled Saturday evening, and there was a perfect crush of visitors to the new place of amusement. The large pavilion was crowded, many visitors going into the galleries to witness the animated scene on the floor below. The management had provided generously for the opening night, but the attendance exceeded their expectations, and the number of skaters was greater than there were skates on hand. Many had to be turned away because all the skates were in use. More than two thousand persons were in the pavilion, and a more auspicious opening could not have been desired…

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 23, 1906
SKATING RINK NEWS

The attraction at the Pavilion Skating Rink this evening will be the presence of Joe Waldstein, the world’s champion skater…Waldstein will be present Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings, and for these three evenings the management has decided to charge an admission of 25 cents. On each of the evenings mentioned there will be a grand skating march led by Mrs. Bender and Mr. Waldstein and much interest is being taken in the event.

This afternoon there was a practice by the ladies preparatory to the march this evening.

[..]

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 31, 1906

SKATING RINK NEWS

Tonight a potatoe [sic] race will be the chief amusement. The one who gathers the most potatoes and covers the distance in the shortest time will be given a new pair of skates.

On Thursday night the rink will be run by the polo team, at which time there will be a polo game and possibly a ladies’ tournament. The entire management will be turned over to the polo boys, and Captain Burris will act as floor manager. The time for closing will be extended a half hour longer than the usual time for closing, and one and a half hours will be devoted to ladies and escorts only. The boys are desirous of making a good showing on that occasion, and have planned to make the evening a very interesting one for the spectators.

– Press Democrat, August 21, 1906

BATHS ARE OPENED WITH LARGE CROWDS

The opening of the baths at the Pavilion Rink yesterday afforded a large number of people no little amusement and pleasure in bathing. The night was filled with good water and just nicely warmed and long before the noon hour there was a large crowd in the water. Early in the afternoon every bathing suit was taken and many of the patrons of the place remained in the water for a long time. They seemed loath to leave the sport.

[..]

– Santa Rosa Republican, September 4, 1906

SKATING RINK NEWS

Last night at the Pavillion Rink, the grand march was presented in a very pleasing manner by a large number of the best skaters of the vicinity. There were many new and very pretty figures introduced, among which was a lantern march in which each skater carried a Japanese lantern of red, white, or blue, and as the march progressed they produced a very pleasing effect. Tonight there will be another grand march, and after the march plain skating will be the order of the evening.

Monday night will be mens and boys night and there will be many games played. The main feature of the evening will be a two-mile race for a purse of $25…

The new floor that has been laid over the big tank has been completed and there will be a first class dance given tonight. Butler’s orchestra will furnish the music for the occasion,

– Press Democrat, November 10, 1906

SHEET AND PILLOWCASE MASQUERADE BALL

Considerable interest is centering in the Sheet and Pillowcase Masquerade which is announced to take place at Bower’s hall next Monday night. The idea is something novel and there will be a large attendance. The reason the plan is proving so popular is that it is no easy to secure the costume for the event. All that is necessary to make it complete is to have a sheet wrapped around the body up to the arm-pits, and a pillowcase over the head, having cut two holes for the eyes.

The amusing feature is that often it is hard to tell whether your partner is a gentleman or a lady, and times have been when men have had men for their partners, much to the amusement of all.

Butler’s orchestra will furnish the music for the event, and the admission will be twenty-five cents for spectators and fifty cents for maskers.

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 26, 1906

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WHEN THE FAIRIES CAME FOR THOMAS LAKE HARRIS

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Jaded survivors of the 1906 Santa Rosa earthquake might have thought they’d seen everything, but five weeks after the disaster came astonishing news: The man who promised he would live forever hadn’t.

Thomas Lake Harris, Santa Rosa’s most famous adopted son prior to that guy named Burbank, had died at age 86 in New York. He’d actually died two months earlier, but his remaining followers hadn’t mentioned it just in case he was, you know, testing them or something. They announced his death in May, just as the weather began to warm up and presumably assured them that this was not a drill.

Harris is mostly forgotten now outside of his Fountaingrove connection, and in truth, he wasn’t well known in his own day except by the most avid fans of spiritualism. See Encyclopedia.com and the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica for good overviews of his life, but there’s much more to his story.

Some brief background: His utopian ideals built upon what he called “theo-socialism,” which was really a blend of two belief systems that were well-known in the mid-19th century: Fourierism, with its goal of social equality in a classless, gender-blind society, and the mystical christianity of Swedenborgianism, which viewed heaven as a kind of enhanced reality, and that anyone who was spiritually advanced could communicate with the angels who lived there. Harris also borrowed from Swedenborg the belief that certain breathing techniques could create a supernatural hotline.

But Harris did far more than serve from a buffet of warmed-over philosophies; he invented a cosmology that sounds like a great-great grandfather to Scientology. All planets in the solar system were peopled with highly spiritual beings, and the moon, which had Lunarians living on the far side, originally circled the destroyed planet Oriana, which was where evil originated. Harris also wrote (very, very bad) poetry about the spiritual “interspace” of the fairies called “Lilistan,” where he had a “counterpartal marriage” with the Lily Queen, who gave birth to their two celestial children. Seriously.

The year of crisis came in 1891, sixteen years after he began his utopian colony at Fountaingrove, when Harris suddenly fell into the media’s hot spotlight. Famed British writer Margaret Oliphant published a memoir of her late cousin Laurence, who in 1867 had walked away from a promising political career as a reformer M.P. in order to live in an American hayloft in service of Harris, joined by his mother, Lady Oliphant, who “washed the pocket-handkerchiefs of the settlement,” and later his newlywed wife. Harris was painted as an didactic cult leader who endlessly poked into every cranny of his followers’ lives. The Oliphants also donated something over $90,000, no small change in Victorian America.

Trouble also arrived in 1891 in the form of Alzire Chevaillier, a young woman who apparently imagined herself as among the new breed of muckrakers with a specialty in spiritualism, but was really a gadfly seeking celebrity for herself. Ms. Chevaillier – “suffragist, sociologist, spiritual scientist, philanthropist, nationalist, magazine writer, and reformer” – and her mother were guests at Fountaingrove for six months before she left in a huff, “thoroughly disillusionized.” She told reporters that she was going to present damning evidence of immorality and fraud to the President of the United States. (For a full account of the Alzire Chevaillier episode, read Gaye Lebaron’s rollicking good essay, “Serpent in Eden.”)

By coincidence or no, 1891 was also the year Harris declared that he had achieved immortality…sort of. He published no fewer than three pamphlets that year, two of them (Brotherhood of the New Life, The New Republic) proclaiming that his frail body now had been restored to youthful vigor, thanks to his “finding the touch of the last rhythmic chord that leads the harmonic vibrations into bodily renewal.” In “Brotherhood of the New Life,” he vowed “never to publish another word respecting my discoveries unless I should pass safely through this final ordeal.” There he also denounced the Oliphant memoir and “nasal purveyors of the Sensational Press, who prowl about the kitchen middens.”

Troubles peaked after the new year, as Chevaillier gave lectures in San Francisco and Santa Rosa where she melodramatically demanded that either she or Harris should be sent to state prison. Harris was a “vampire,” a lecherous fiend,” and a “horrible sensualist,” she charged. He was the “greatest black magician today” who had boasted to her that he had psychically murdered Laurence Oliphant.

The San Francisco papers ate it up (the Santa Rosa press, not so much) because her charges squared with assumptions that Fountain Grove was a “free love” commune – although the main complaint in the Oliphant memoir was that men and women were kept separated even if they were married. Harris said he personally had been celibate since 1855. But at the same time, most of his writings circled around different aspects of sexuality. Besides the clumsy odes he penned to his mystical fairy wife, Queen Lily, a core part of Harris’ belief system was that God was bisexual, not asexual, an “All Holy Two-in-One,” and Christ was the “second Eve-Adam” that he named “Divine Yessa-Jesus.”

But a week after Chevaillier denounced him at the Athenaeum theatre on Fourth Street, enough was enough for the immortal man. Harris fled Sonoma County, but not before marrying his long-time disciple and secretary, Jane Lee Waring. Predictably, the San Francisco Call headline sneered that Harris was “No More a Celibate,” slyly adding hypocrisy to their list of accusations against him.

Harris and earthly wife Jane moved to Manhattan, where he mostly retired. Nothing came of ideas to launch new communities in Florida, Canada, and one in Mexico that would be entirely Japanese. Gaye Lebaron uncovered architectural drawings that show he had fantasies about building a palatial complex on the Upper West Side that would also be called Fountaingrove and which would include a “hundred bowers of love’s repose.”

Even though he was no longer a local, Harris was still catnip to Bay Area newspaper editors, particularly at The San Francisco Call. That paper was dismayed that a Grand Jury wasn’t held to investigate the (apparently accidental) suicide of his teenage granddaughter at Fountaingrove in 1896, four years after Harris had left. The Call also produced a special Sunday section on Harris in 1901 seen at right (CLICK to enlarge) that portrayed him as a wild-eyed Svengali, and in 1908 – two years after Harris died – the Call reported that his old house at Fountaingrove had been lost to a fire with the headline, “‘Free Love’ Home Burned to Ground.”

There are two epilogues worth telling about the story of Thomas Lake Harris:

* At the end of 1906, 77 year-old widow Jane Lee Waring Harris – always affectionately called “Lady Dovie” by him – showed up at Fountaingrove for the first time in 14 years and announced her intention of living there for the rest of her life. Whether or not she stayed awhile is unknown, but she died in San Diego ten years later (cause of death: “Changes”).

 

* The notion that old Harris had unusual powers has found new life in the Internet age. Some write that his breathing techniques to reach a transcendental sexual state were a form of Tantric Yoga; others see his breathing to reach an intimate connection with the spirit world as part of ritual magic. Googling for “Thomas Lake Harris” and “sex magic” or “tantric” returns hundreds of hits.

 

Thomas Lake Harris Dead

A month ago Thomas Lake Harris died at his home in New York at the age of eight-six years. Our older readers will remember his coming to this county and the founding of Fountaingrove by him. He was a man of fine ability and culture and an author of excellent repute. Many years ago he received the orders of knighthood in Santa Rosa Commandery No. 1, Knights Templars, and continued a member thereof as long as he lived. Several years ago he removed to New York, which was the home of his later years. He had many warm personal friends in Santa Rosa.

– Santa Rosa Republican, May 23, 1906

 

BACK HOME AT FOUNTAINGROVE
Mrs. Thomas Lake Harris Returns to Santa Rosa After an Absence of Many Years

Mrs. Thomas Lake Harris, widow of the late Thomas Lake Harris of Fountaingrove, has arrived here from New York, after an absence of many years. Mrs. Harris made a very pleasant trip across the continent to Santa Rosa in four days, and is enjoying the best of health.

Mr. and Mrs. Harris left Fountaingrove for New York in 1892. Mr. Harris died on March 20 last. This is Mrs. Harris’ first visit since her departure in 1892.

Mrs. Harris, who is probably best known here as Miss Jane Waring, is a sister of Colonel Waring, the noted sanitary engineer. He was at one time a commissioner of New York and did much to reform sanitary measures there and in other great centers of this country and abroad.

Mrs. Harris’ friends here will be interested to know that it is her intention to make her permanent home in Fountaingrove. Her deceased husband was a member of Santa Rosa Commandery, Knights Templar.

– Press Democrat, December 6, 1906

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BUREAUCRACY AL FRESCO

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

It was a surreal little pocket of normalcy in the very heart of chaos. Work crews on 4th Street were still piling rail flat cars high with debris, even as shop keepers with horse-drawn wagons were jostling to bring in corrugated iron sheets and lumber to build ramshackle stores. And right next to it all, on the fringes of the grounds of the fallen courthouse, were men quietly sitting at desks in the open air, ready to collect your taxes, ready to stamp your deed, ready to marry you. Welcome to post-earthquake Santa Rosa, 1906.

The town’s city hall briefly operated from the ad-hoc business center cobbled together at a vacant lot on Mendocino, but soon moved to the sidewalk in front of their old digs on Hinton, across from courthouse square. Note the large jug under the table, which presumably held water. (Detail of image courtesy California Historical Society. Click to enlarge)

These casual arrangements were not without their benefits, as a couple discovered they could drive right up to a judge in their car and be married on the spot.

Temporary Courthouse

The Supervisors have decided to erect temporary county buildings on the plaza lawn. Permission was granted by the City Council very willingly yesterday afternoon. Work will begin at once. Plans will be prepared for new permanent buildings without delay.

– Democrat-Republican, April 25, 1906
AUTOED TO WEDDING
Pretty Ida Wassaman Rides to Altar in a “Chug Chug” Machine

An automobile whizzed up to Justice Atchinson’s court in the tent on Hinton avenue Monday afternoon bearing a pretty bride-to-be to her marriage. She was Miss Ida Wassaman and her wedding to Wesley Buleis was performed by Justice Atchinson in the presence of relatives and friends.

– Press Democrat, September 11, 1906

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