Los Angeles herald., 1906-04-29
Sandanettl's

When we dined at Sanganettis, up in
Frisco, on the bay,
That time we wandered thither at the
closing of the day.
You remmeber, love-twas risque, but,
delightful? Well, you said
You'd recall those luscious moments to
the hour that you were dead!
When we dined at Sanganettl's-no. st.
Francis glare for ours!
La Fiesta. it was gay, then, but we
craved not fashions bowers!
Down among the free and easy where a
few knew what was good,
You and 1, love. went wand'ring-
sought, and found, and understood
When we dined at Sanganetti's-you and
I--oh, what cared we
That the Palace Grill was gaudy, and the
band played frantically?
With our fish and old Chianu what
We're viands rich and rare
You and l about a table: nothing in the
world to care?
When we dined at Sanganetti's-fashio
might have lifted eyes,
Even hands in holy horror, and have
spoken in surprise;
But with you a-smiling at me, i'll the dim
and dngy room,
Twere a bit of heaven, sweetheart-you,
the angel in the gloom!
When we dined at Sanganetti's-where is
Sanganettis now?
Drop a tear, love, for Bohemid-put one
upon your brow;
For the wrath of God has fallen and
has swept the place away
Tears and love for Sanganetti's, up in
Frisco, on the bay
Wherein lay the fame of Frisco,
now food for flames? Why did it
hold the love and affection of hundreds
of thousands of its own people and mil
lions of earth's denizens?
Not its beauty, for San Francisco
was not a beautiful place. Its site, on
the hills, is superb, and could have been
made ideal. But aside from few in
stances, it neglected its opportunities.
Telegraph hill was a disgraceful as
of shacks. A few rich man
sions, mostly of awful architecture,
crowned Mob hill and exemplified the
crudity of birth and breeding of their
builders. Twin Peaks were bare, un-
kempt and unimproved. Pacific Heights
alone were adequately handled. The
superb glimpses of bay and islands
and far Contra Costa's shore were lost
to the great mass because of the pri-
vate monopoly of the view sites, and
the city was thus as if without these
charms. Its climate was admittedly
trocious-especially its foSs.
Nor was it a city of beauty i'll It's
building. Its streets in the main are
narrow; it's residence districts, raw and
unfinished, sprawled up and down steep
grades in unending rows of wooden
nightmares-block after block of frame
dwellings, as monotonous and nothlng
like as handsome or costly as the old
rows in New York, yet just
as forbidding. OF private grounds one
found almost none. The millionaires,
some of them, had skinny dooryards;
in extremely rare cases they had half a
block of ground frontage-perhaps a
dozen or so in all. Most of the houses
came to within a few feet of the street
line. and a tiny garden of struggling
flowers was their pitiful and only at
tempt at homeliness.
But San Francisco wasn't a city or
homes; the man who wanted a nome
and could afford it went across the
bay. 1t was a city of hotels and apart
ment and lodging houses. There were
square miles of apartments in the MIL
region north of Market street; all flush
with the street; all big and froWnlng
and scant of daylight, and ornate OF
name. In these San Francisco lived;
they were her characteristic dwelling
n,aces. the large majority of her popu-
lace so abided.
So it wasn't the home life, nor the
fine situation, nor the magnificence OIL
her outlook, that made San Francesca
Neither was it cheapness of life-for IL
was a costly place in which to live. Nor
was it beauty.
No. especially not beauty Golden
Gate park was beautiful think lhe
most lovely public grounds l ever saw
It's variety was infinite and its change
fulness enhancing. But that's all. Ihe
city's smaller squares and open spaces
we're few, conventional, ordinary.
Its business blocks and streets were
not architectural triumphs; quite the
contrary. A few buildings, like the
Ferry and the Call, the Flood and the
Fairmont hotel-these were frozen
music" truly. But most of the struc-
lures of greatest fame We're ornate
overloaded with filagree
work of the most banal sort. The Pal
ace hotel was a rococo nightmare;
the Grand was vision of ugliness;
the Phelan, the Postal Telegraph, the
Masonic buildings were sure to give one
the shivers. The streets We're curious
jumbles Of the magnificent Gin cost If
not design structure and the ram
frame shack. The towering
Call building itself was hanked by Il
wooden tumbedoWn, and the st. Fran