City’s top ‘pleasure garden’ created by hotelier who banned women

December 18, 2015 Updated: December 19, 2015 2:27pm
Woodward's Gardens was a combination of park, museum, zoo and circus. / ONLINE_YES

During the city’s early years, before it had public parks, San Franciscans flocked to privately owned “pleasure gardens” for fresh air, greenery and entertainment. Last week’s Portals described the two earliest such resorts, Russ’s Gardens and the Willows.

But the biggest and most famous of the pleasure gardens was Woodward’s Gardens. An irresistible combination of park, museum, zoo, amusement park and circus, Woodward’s Gardens was San Francisco’s most popular destination for a recreational outing for 25 years during the late 1800s.

Woodward’s Gardens was created by Robert B. Woodward, who started as a grocer and became wealthy as the proprietor of one of the city’s most successful hotels, the What Cheer House on Sacramento and Leidesdorff. The What Cheer, which opened in 1852, offered simple, clean rooms at reasonable prices and, famously, did not serve alcohol. It also had a blanket prohibition against women. In a March 14, 1897, Chronicle piece titled “San Francisco as it was and may be,” author John Bonner explains the reason for this ban.

“Woodward was a gentleman who combined strict morality with a remarkable aptitude for money-getting,” Bonner wrote. “He had been shocked by examples of depravity which had fallen under his notice, and he made a rule at the start that no petticoat should ever be allowed to enter the What Cheer House. This rule is in force to this day. The beds are made by men; the house maids are of the same sex; the torn garments of guests are mended by apprentice tailors.”

Women banned

Woodward banned women but offered other features, including a 2,000- to 3,000-volume library, a clipping file of California and national newspapers, and a small museum, filled with curios his guests brought him from all over the world, including 700 stuffed birds (the Bates Motel in “Psycho” had not yet created an unpleasant association between stuffed birds and hostelries), walrus tusks, whalebone, scrimshaw, and wampum. (Richard Simmons, a.k.a. Specs, proprietor of the beloved Adler Museum Cafe bar in North Beach, carries on this ivory-curio tradition.)

With the fortune he made from the What Cheer, Woodward moved from swanky South Park and bought a plot of land covering nearly two square blocks between 13th and 15th streets and Mission and Valencia, which had been owned by explorer and U.S. Senator John C. Fremont. Woodward built a new house and laid out extensive grounds, with fountains, a lake (a stream flowed through the property), lawns, flowering bushes, a conservatory, and various grottoes and rustic nooks. In 1866, he hired landscape painter Virgil Williams to tour Europe and acquire statues and paintings for him.

Woodward apparently intended his 5-acre estate to remain private. But when the grounds were finished, he agreed to allow a large group of Civil War veterans to use his gardens for a fundraiser for the Sanitary Commission, the precursor of the Red Cross. The gathering was a success, word spread, and other organizations began asking if they could use the grounds. Woodward, who was both public-spirited and a savvy businessman, moved his family to Napa and opened his gardens to the public.

Gardens open in 1866

Woodward’s Gardens opened on May 1, 1866. Admission was a quarter for adults, 10 cents for children. Oddly, it served beer and wine but not “intoxicating liquors.” It was an immediate success, packing in huge crowds who rode from Sutter and Larkin on his own line of horse-drawn “balloon cars.” On May Day children were admitted free. Although the resort only occupied 5 acres, it was so cleverly laid out that it appeared twice as large. The grounds were divided into two parts by 14th Street, with a tunnel allowing visitors to easily access both parts. After visitors entered on Mission Street, they came to the museum, the city’s first, which occupied Woodward’s former home. Seashells, a whale jaw, stuffed mammals, coins, stamps and mineral specimens, including a 97-pound gold nugget — many from the What Cheer collection — were displayed, along with the fine art Williams had collected in Europe.

Another big draw was the zoo, which featured lions, tigers, grizzly bears, leopards, ostriches, oxen, camels and elk. As Marilyn Blaisdell notes in “San Francisciana: Photographs of Woodward’s Gardens,” “Woodward loved animal curiosities and featured a tail-less horse, a two-headed pig, a five-legged dog and an eight-legged lamb.” There was also a “Zoographicon” which displayed rotating dioramas of nature scenes from around the world. In 1873, Woodward added America’s first aquarium. The 16 large tanks contained both local and exotic fish.

A large octagonal pavilion was used as a ballroom and a roller-skating rink. Dancing to bands was extremely popular, and big shows like Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” were regularly performed. Behind the pavilion was an aquatic merry-go-round ride that seated 100 in little boats with sails.

Amusement section

Across 14th Street to the south was the open part of the Gardens, the “amusement section” whose 1,000-seat amphitheatre featured Roman chariot races, footraces and hurdles. Gymnasts and acrobats performed here: Woodward’s granddaughter recalled that “the Famous French tightrope walker, Blondin, cooked and ate his omelet while balanced over the heads of the awestruck.” This section also contained the zoo, a camera obscura, and a space where famous aerialists took hot-air balloon rides. One ascension in 1873 was witnessed by 12,000 spectators.

Woodward was sometimes called “the Barnum of the West” — Barnum himself visited the Gardens — and there was a definite circus component to his resort. He presented midgets such as “General Tom Thumb” and an 8-foot-3-inch Chinese giant, as well as Major Burke’s Rifle Drill, Japanese acrobats, clowns and trained animals. In May 1874, after the Modoc Indian War, Woodward invited the half-Indian, half-white scout Donald McKay and other Warm Springs Indians, who had fought on the side of the U.S. in the war, to appear in an Indian show at the resort.

One of the Garden’s eerier attractions was the “Ghost Window,” a pane of glass on the north side of the museum. According to a 1913 article in The Chronicle, “It was the tradition in North Beach that a female householder had spent most of her last years at a window gazing at the passersby. On her death the outline of the head, it was said, began to be seen by the superstitious and it was explained on the assumption that the deceased had come to earth in spirit.” Woodward bought the window for $500 and installed it in his museum.

Porn films site

Woodward’s Gardens’ popularity began to decline when Golden Gate Park opened in the early 1870s, and when Woodward died in 1879 it fell on hard times, finally closing in 1891. Adolph Sutro — whose baths at the ocean did for early and mid-20th century San Franciscans what Woodward’s Gardens did for their 19th century counterparts — acquired most of the artifacts from the Gardens.

Ironically, part of the site made famous by a man so puritanical that he would not allow women into his hotel is today occupied by the Armory, whose most well-known tenant is the pornography movie production company


Trivia time

Last week’s trivia question: What famous jazz club allowed underage patrons, who sat behind a chicken-wire screen separating them from the drinking section?

Answer: The Blackhawk, at Turk and Hyde.

This week’s trivia question : Where was the artist’s colony frequented by Jack London, George Sterling and other writers?

Editor’s note


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