>> So welcome to all of you.
I'm just thrilled to see so
many of you here to listen
to what I know is going
to be a wonderful address
by Kevin Starr, because I got
a little sneak preview of it.
My name is Debbie Masters
and I'm the university librarian
here at San Francisco State.
I'm thrilled too that we have
so many of our colleagues
from the Sutro Library and
the California State Library,
people who've been instrumental
in making this project happen,
including brining Sutro to our
library as its permanent home.
So have, of course, Kevin Starr
as our distinguished
feature lecturer
and I'll be introducing
him in a few minutes.
We have the California--
he was--
he is the California State
Librarian Emeritus among his
other titles.
We have the current
acting state librarian,
Jerry McGinty [phonetic],
who I will also introduce
in a few minutes,
President and Mrs. Wong,
other university representatives
and many generous donors,
some of our foundation board
members, the great-granddaughter
of Adolph Sutro,
and I understand some
other Sutro family members.
And we did have at lunch
Carol Migdon [phonetic],
who you may know as a
former state legislature
who was very instrumental in
brining additional funding
into the project to
actually make it happen
and we're very grateful to her.
She wasn't able to
stay for the lecture.
So what I would like to do
now is to introduce first,
Jerry McGinty, the
acting state librarian,
to give you his comments,
President Wong
to give you his comments
and then Kevin Starr
to give you this
wonderful lecture, so.
So Jerry McGinty has served
as acting state librarian
of California since
October of 2012.
Prior to his current position
he was the bureau chief
of library development services
at the California State Library
since 2008, having been
appointed assistant bureau chief
in 2005.
His previous positions
include coordinator
of the Sacramento based Mountain
Valley Library System from 1989
to 2005, assistant
county librarian in Fresno
for seven years and
other position
in the Solano County Library,
the Sara Cooperative
Library System
and the Lassen County Library.
He earned his master of
library science degree
from the University of Western
Ontario and his bachelors degree
in biology from Ohio
State University.
Please welcome, Jerry McGinty.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you.
What a wonderful day
for-- for libraries.
Great. I just want to give you
some brief points in the history
and then thank a few people that
were instrumental in getting us
to this point where
we're at today
with finally having
a nice permanent home
for the Sutro Library.
The Adolph Sutro
Collection was bestowed
to the California State Library
and the people of California
in May of 1913, almost
100 years.
The library opened to the public
in January 1917 in rented space
in San Francisco's
Lane Medical Library,
which at the time was part
of Stanford University's
Medical School
and it was located
in San Francisco.
The library's first
move was in August 1923
to the San Francisco
Public Library.
In the 1940s most of the library
was relocated to the basement.
The library's second move
was in 1960 when it moved
to the Gleeson Library
on the campus
on the University
of San Francisco.
And then in 1980, because of
space needs at the University
of San Francisco, the
Sutro Library again began
to look for a new location.
In 1983 the library
made its third move
into a far flung corner of the
San Francisco State University
in modular buildings that had
housed the state legislature,
very important buildings,
they had housed the state
legislature during the
renovation of the state
capital building in Sacramento.
And then in 2012 we have mow
hopefully-- did you hear that,
the final move, the final move,
the Sutro Library made
it's fourth and final move
onto the fifth and sixth floors
of the newly renovated
J. Paul Leonard Library
in the heart of this
great campus.
And then I'd like to recognize
a few people and I'm not going
to go in any particular order,
and please, my apologizes
if I leave someone out.
Dr. Wong, thank you very much.
This is a great day,
great week for you.
We're glad to be here.
Debbie Masters, the dean of the
San Francisco State Library,
and also the many planners
and facilities professionals
at San Francisco State
University who contributed
to the Sutro Library design,
construction, space planning
and relocation from
Winston Drive.
To also special thanks
and gratitude
to the faculty students of staff
of San Francisco
State University
who have welcomed the Sutro
Library with open arms.
And a special thanks to someone
who's here with us today,
Gary Strong, former state
librarian from 1980 to 1994.
He was instrumental in
relocating the Sutro to the--
from the University
of San Francisco
to San Francisco
State University.
Thank you, Gary.
Dr. Kevin Starr who's here
with us today, state librarian
from 1994 to 2004, and also to
President Dr. Robert Corrigan,
who they were instrumental in
getting the state legislature
to appropriate the funds
to renovate the J.
Paul Leonard Library
and to accommodate
the Sutro Collections.
Some of the other state library
staff, Cameron Robertson,
Sheila Thornton-- who I believe
is here with us today, great.
Thank you, Sheila.
Paul Smith and Si Silver, who
pushed this project forward,
Gary Kurtz [phonetic]
is here today,
our special collection's curator
emeritus for his tireless energy
to move the project forward,
also all current and past staff
of the Sutro Library,
and current
and past administrative staff
of the California State Library
who planned and executed the
2012 move from Winston Drive
to this permanent home.
Today we rightfully celebrate
on this grand and glorious day,
the Sutro Library finally
finding a permanent home.
The library and its collections
are finally housed in a space
that befits their importance.
The Sutro truly is a library
whose treasures belong
to all the people of California,
treasures that the California
State Library will hold
perpetually in trust for the
residence of this great state,
and for that matter,
for the whole world.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you, Jerry.
Our next speaker to welcome you
and make his own
comments is our very own,
President Leslie
Wong, known as Les.
Les Wong was appointed
as thirteenth president
of San Francisco State
University effective August 1,
2012.
Previously he served
nine years as President
of North Michigan University
in Marquette, Michigan.
Dr. Wong is actively
committed to student success
and to fostering an
institutional environment
that is adaptable to the needs
of 21st century students.
He encourages students
at San Francisco State
to "own their own minds"
by developing their ability
to independently
evaluate information.
Ah-ha. Information
literacy, good.
An increasingly partisan world.
As a leader of a campus
that is deeply invested
in its community, Dr.
Wong invites students
to find their voices though it
cautions it being remembered is
more important than being heard.
As president he leads a
talented group of faculty
and staff committed
to social justice,
equity and making public higher
education an essential asset
to our collective future.
His predispositions
before San Francisco State
and Northern Michigan
include vice president
of biochemic affairs at
Valley City State University
in North Dakota, as provost
and academic vice president
at the University of Southern
Colorado including serving
as interim president there,
and previous positions
at Evergreen State
College, Pierce College
in Tacoma, Washington.
He has his bachelors
degree is psychology
from Gonzaga University,
his masters in experimental
psychology
from Eastern Washington
University and his PhD
in educational psychology from
Washington State University.
Please welcome our
President Wong.
[ Applause ]
>> Welcome, everyone.
I made the mistake last week,
and I was still thinking
about it as I was reflecting on
what I would want to say to you
and everyone was congratulating
me on investiture week.
And one student turned to me
and said, well, what's going
to be the highlight
of your week?
And I said, well,
obviously Wednesday
when Dr. Starr is here.
Then he kind of gave me this
puzzled look and he said,
isn't it like your inauguration
or something like that?
But it's truly an honor.
I've been looking forward to
this lecture and I'm going
to be very brief because I'm
going to concede my time to him.
But as I was sharing with him
and others, the real heart
and soul of great
universities is the library.
And how you use the library
not only to support students
in their work, but how can a
library in today's centuries,
bring them together to think
better, to get through the data,
move it to information to help
them make intelligent, informed,
if not controversial decisions
about what it is they want
to learn and to advocate for.
And that's sort of the beauty of
having such a beautiful facility
and really, really
the great fortune
to have the Sutra Collection
in its final home here
at San Francisco State in
the J. Paul Leonard Library.
I was going to think of
something really snappy
and really library
sounding to say, but I--
you know, as a president you
get some latitude in that.
And I have to tell you, I've
been around movie stars,
professional athletes, some
pretty big named people,
two presidents of the
United States, etcetera
and I always measure status by
when you walk across campus,
how many people stop the guest.
And I'll have to tell you,
if I had not grabbed him
and got a couple people
to move Dr. Starr along,
we would have still been over
at the building trying to get
out to come over here.
And it's a testament to not only
his reputation but this sort
of knowledge everyone has of
his role in the Sutra Collection
and in the state library and
just in all of the support
and direct services that great
libraries provide citizens.
And so it was kind of fun
because my little fan meter
kept going like this, you know,
and I thought, this
is pretty good.
So I'm going to stop there
because I didn't want to refer
to him as a rock star
among librarians,
but certainly it is an honor to
welcome him and I look forward
to his comments about the Sutra
Collection and welcome everyone
to San Francisco State.
[ Applause ]
>> So let me just mention
because you're hearing the Sutro
Library, the Sutro Library,
the Sutro Library and you're
going to hear a lot more
about the Sutro Library.
But this beautiful
piece that was produced
by the state library and
the California State Library
Foundation that I hope each
and every one of you found
on your chair gives you
a wonderful, rich history
of Sutro Library and rich
descriptions of its collections
and treasures that you will have
an opportunity to see a sample
of following Kevin Starr's talk.
So I just want to
mention something
that Kevin Starr shared with
me in terms of his perspective
on the partnership
between San Francisco State
and the state library
and Sutro Library.
The partnership between
the J. Paul Leonard Library
of San Francisco State
University and the Sutro Library
at California State Library
embodies the kind of state
and local partnerships so
necessary for the revitalization
of public life in California.
Our featured speaker
today, Kevin Starr,
has expressed his
pleasure and honor
as California State Librarian
to have been part of the team
that assembled and
negotiated a partnership
that represent a milestone
in the library development
of our beloved state.
The fact of the matter
is, for many of us,
as President Wong has alluded,
Kevin Starr needs
to introduction.
He was profiled by
Carl Nolte in July 2010
in the San Francisco Chronicle
and Carl described him as,
without question the preeminent
historian of California.
Let me just share with
you a few highlights
of his distinguished career.
He is a university professor
and professor of history
at the University of
Southern California
and California State
Librarian Emeritus.
After graduating from the
University of San Francisco
in 1962, Kevin Starr served
two years a lieutenant
in a tank battalion in Germany.
He took his masters from Harvard
in 1965 and his PhD in 1969.
He also holds the
degree in master
of library science
from UC Berkley.
Kevin Starr has served as
Austin Burr Senior Tutor
at Elliot House at Harvard,
city librarian of San Francisco,
state librarian for
California and is currently,
as I mentioned, university
professor and associate dean
of libraries at the
University of South California.
His many articles in books,
including his Americans
in the California Dream series
have won him a Guggenheim
Fellowship, five honorary
doctorates, the gold
and silver medals of
The Commonwealth Club,
membership in the Society
of American Historians,
the Presidential Medallion
from USC, the centennial medal
from the Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences at Harvard,
and the Humanities medal
from the National
Endowment of Humanities.
His most recently books
are Golden Dreams,
California in an Age
of Abundance 1950-1963
from Oxford University Press,
Golden Gate, The Life and Times
of America's Greatest
Bridge from Bloomsbury, USA,
and Cleo on the Coast,
The Writing of California
History 1845 to 1945
from the Book Club
of California.
Kevin Starr's lecture today is
entitled, The Sutro Library,
Mirror for Global California.
Please join me in
welcoming Kevin Starr.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you.
What a pleasure to be
here and it makes me want
to return almost to years ago--
to me to see so many people
whom I've had so many happy,
wonderful relationships with.
Gary Strong, to whom
I owe the position
as being state librarian and
who when he decided to move on
and endorse my candidacy
and Gary Kurtz,
with whom I've worked with
so many years as the curator
of California Collection,
and Sheila Thornton
under whom's direction I
learned so much and did so much
to bring the library here,
the Sutro here in 1983.
Now as a fourth generation
San Franciscan,
as California State Librarian
Emeritus and as a historian
to California who's never
missed an opportunity
to chronicle the importance of
San Francisco State University
in the civic, educational
and literary development
of San Francisco and
California, to be chosen
as speaker this afternoon
constitutes a
tremendous pleasure.
It's a pleasure to be with you
celebrating the inauguration
of the university's thirteenth
president, Dr. Leslie Wong,
and what a charming
gentleman Dr. Wong is
and what a grand San
Franciscan he's already in route
to becoming and his
distinguished wife
who is also a American Study
Scholar in her own right.
And what more appropriate way to
celebrate Dr. Wong's appointment
than in the context of
also celebrating the equal
partnership between the
J. Paul Leonard Library
and the Sutro Library.
This partnership has, in our own
time, provided the Sutro Library
with its first permanent
quarters
since its establishment in 1913.
It is brought that J. Paul
Leonard Library triumphantly
into the 21st century.
The partnership between these
two libraries has created the
finest library in the California
State University system as well
as one of the most notable
university libraries
in the nation.
And that's a marvelous
thing to experience that.
This afternoon I
suggested incidentally
to the president a
discrete ad in the Chronicle
of Higher Education,
wouldn't cost that much,
announcing this great new
library and the Sutro Collection
and the other collections here
for scholars in the
years to come.
Now this afternoon, I would
like to suggest the development
of the Sutro Library
by its founder,
now so suitably established
the library at the heart
of this great university
and that wonderful
painting of Adolph Sutro.
Within the context of
Adolph Sutro's hopes
for the development of San
Francisco as a city unto itself
and a model for further
California development.
There's a number of
prominent scholars
of librarianship have pointed
out, Gary Kurtz for example,
the long time curator of
the California Collection
at the California State
Library, for whom incidentally
at the urging of the
California State Library
as civic service category
of one was created.
There was this one number
that was Gary Kurtz.
We did that at a time when
the Huntington was trying
to steal him away from us.
And most recently I read a paper
by a newly invented librarian,
Jonathan Ritter [phonetic],
who interned here
at the Sutro while
taking his library degree
from San Jose State University.
And from all the reading and
a lifetime of association
with the Sutro legend,
one learns that Adolph Sutro
loved books from his boyhood
to the final years of his life.
In fact, Mr. Ritter tells us
that when his father told him
to stop buying so many books
and spend all his time reading,
that Adolph at the at of 16,
jumped out of the window,
but I suspect it was
a first-floor window.
It was just for the
dramatic effect.
He loved collecting books.
But as a permanent resident of
San Francisco from 1879 onwards,
having unmasked a fortune in
the creation of the Sutro Tunnel
at the Comstock Lode,
Adolph Sutro read books
and collected books
with a purpose in mind.
He envisioned that his
collection would eventually be
organized as a research
collection of permanent use
to San Francisco and
California, as city
and state were developed
physically, socially, culturally
and in terms of moral meaning.
Adolph Sutro envisioned,
in fact, his collection
that he envisioned
it and hoped for,
that it would one day be a the
heart of a great university,
which happened on a
temporary basis in 1983.
And now thanks to the J. Paul
Leonard Sutro partnership
and the stuartship of Dr. Wong,
will last through the tenure
of Dr. Wong and all
those who pass
through this great institution
in the 21st century
that lies ahead.
>> Let's take a look
at cities for a moment.
Let's take a look at cities,
libraries, universities and try
and pull them together.
It's a natural fit.
Cities don't just happen.
They have to be founded and
directed in their growth.
Sometimes city's foundations
are obscure, like the way
that Athens grew up
around the shrine
of the Palace Athene some
700-800 years before the
common era.
Around the same time as
Athens was developing,
a number of tribes descended
from their hilltops settlements
to cooperate with each other in
draining the marsh land below.
And from this cooperation
arose the city of Rome,
which gave to itself a mythic
birth with the brothers, Romulus
and Remus, being nurtured there
on the main marsh
lands by She-Wolf.
This transition to mythic
foundation was common
in the ancient world.
At other times in
the ancient world,
ancient western world
foundings--
this holds true for the city's
of the east-- of Asia as well.
Foundings were more
deliberate as well as mythic,
such as the way in which the
Emperor Constantine deliberately
established Constantinople as in
the early 300s of the Common Era
as the capital of the
eastern Roman empire.
Few of our North
American cities have had
such choreographed
foundations as Constantinople,
although in many cases history
reveals the exact time and place
and attendance ceremonies
of the foundation.
I have always found it
interesting to look at maps
of the Atlantic Coast
of the late 18th century
and see the many, many
settlement scattered
up and down that shore.
Most of them, in one way or
another, connected to water.
And then to consider
just how few of them rose
to major municipal status.
On the other hand, Philadelphia,
with its documented foundation
as a Quaker city, was by the
1790s the second-largest city
in the English-speaking
world after London.
And this is when dozens
and dozens other Atlantic Coast
settlements equally promising
in their beginnings
remained villages
and townships or
even disappeared.
The more west we move into the
frontier in the 19th century,
the more deliberate become
the founding of cities
and the more rapid
becomes their development.
Thus we can trace Chicago as
William Cronon [phonetic] does
in his brilliant book, Nature's
Metropolis, to the grain trade,
or Salt Lake City to
Mormonism [phonetic],
or Denver to railroad traffic.
Here in California some
cities were inaugurated
as ethnic colonies
with utopian overtones.
The Mormon colony of San
Bernardino, for example,
the German colony at Anaheim,
the Italian-Swiss colony
at Asti, the Russian-Jewish
socialist colony at Petaluma.
Some cities were
speculations and survived.
Stockton, for example,
is deliberately developed
by Captain Weber and
Thomas Oliver Larkin
and Mariano Valeo [phonetic].
Other cities disappeared or
experienced only partial growth.
New York of the Pacific,
for example,
a grand metropolis
announced in the early 1850s
but resulting only in the
charming but let's say--
less than New York
scale city of Benicia,
which as a fine public
library built
by my predecessor, Gary Strong.
And where I, in the
used book section there,
acquired a three volume set
of the novels of C.P. Snow,
Strangers and Brothers.
In the case of San Francisco, we
have a merit time colony imposed
on a peninsula sketchingly
developed by Spain and Mexico
with a mission, a precidio
[phonetic], and a small--
very small civilian settlement.
Because of the Gold Rush,
that city was accelerated
into what the historian,
Herbert Howell Bancroft,
called a rapid monstrous
maturity.
Hurbert Howe Bancroft
who assembled his great library
simultaneous with Adolph Sutro
in these years, the 1880s and
'90s here in San Francisco.
In a few short years,
by 1870, San Francisco,
which had in its
American organization
of 1847, less than 400 people.
But in a few short years, it
had a population of 149,473
and it became the tenth largest
city in the United States.
That instant urbanism,
I've always been fascinated
by that instant urbanism,
how any of us together
would ever design and create
and build a great city.
Where do we find the
technical knowledge?
How would we learn to
cooperate with each other?
How would we sort out
the natural rivalries,
etcetera that are endemic
to the human condition
and create a city?
Those of you who know the
photographs of Edward Moibridge,
some of which are in
the Sutro Collection,
can see the documentation of
this city as it moves towards
that final, beautiful
panorama of what, Gary, 1870?
>> 1877.
>> He knows everything.
>> I have always
been then fascinated
by the instant urbanism
of San Francisco.
Here's a city, after all, that
didn't exist as I say in 1846
as an American entity.
A mere nine years later,
San Francisco is issuing an
800-page history of itself.
The Annals of San Francisco,
which I think says something
about a certain self-regard
verging on narcissism
in the DNA code of the city.
The more the San
Francisco history
in the 1850s is researched,
the more we learn
of this instant urbanism,
the rapid appearance that is
of synagogues, churches,
schools, a science academy,
a performance theatre
and so forth.
Each of them, size of Maritime
colony that did not have to go
through the patient development
of an agricultural frontier city
but was almost instantly capable
of a high degree of urbanism.
In city planning
terms, the grid,
which is to say the city plan
laid out by Josh Burrell Farrell
in 1847 accounts for such
an orderly progression.
That grid, of course,
is still with us,
the elegant Market Street
heading towards Twin Peaks
and the two grids
coming at an angle to--
to now it's departed in certain
areas of St. Francis Wood,
Ingleside Terrace [inaudible]
later departed from that grid,
but it always fights its
way back to the grid,
even in the newer
neighborhoods of the city.
Take a look at photographs
of the early 1850s
and you can see the city
advancing along the streets
[inaudible] Farrell laid out.
The streets and a
grid plan aligned
from what is now
the Ferry Building
to Twin Peaks intersected north
and south by angled streets
that has lasted to this day.
Now at the same time
however, the overnight success
of San Francisco, its
rapid monstrous maturity
in Bankcross [phonetic] phrase
was by the 1880s, it had begun
to be considered as a liability.
Visitors to San Francisco
such as the novelist
Anthony Trollop [phonetic],
whose marvelous Barchester
Towers and all the other novels,
The Way We Are Now, so many of
them have been so successful
as adaptations on
PBS television.
Trollop was here coming
up from Australia.
He was deputy director of the
postal services for the empire,
the historian, James
Anthony Froude visiting,
or even Oscar Wilde
who came as well,
noted that a certain ramshackle
frontier-like quality still
characterized San Francisco.
Oscar Wilde said that he
observed at San Francisco,
he said, well, thank God
I'm here finally, he said,
because in London
everybody who gets in trouble
and disappears is rumored to
have shown up in San Francisco.
There's a ramshackle-like
quality still characterized San
Francisco despite the
undisputed situation
as the imperial city
of the far west.
True, there were architectural
monuments of distinction,
the First Unitarian Church
on Franklin, Temple Emanuel
on Union Square, the spectacular
mansions atop Knobb Hill,
the Palace Hotel,
the largest hostelry
in the western hemisphere.
Still, visitors and
an increasing number
of San Franciscans were forming
a coalescence of sentiment
in the immediate
post frontier period,
the high provincial period
as California-born Harvard
philosopher and historian,
Josiah Rice, would put it,
revolving around the notion
that while it did not
exactly need to be refounded,
San Francisco did need to
be brought deliberately
to the next state
of its development.
Enter Adolph Sutro who
returned to the city in 1879
after raising some three million
dollars in venture capital
from the London banks organizing
a construction company
and building the air
and drainage tunnel,
working side-by-side with
his men when necessary,
that made the Comstock Load
possible, and once brought
into operation was earning Sutro
and his fellow investors some
$10,000 a day in revenues.
I'd have to ask Professor
Turner what $10,000 a day would
be today.
What would we multiply that by?
>> I guess at least ten.
>> Ten? That could
almost cover the tuition
at San Francisco
State University.
$10,000 a day in revenues.
Now there's a popular
song, I think it was sung
by Dionne Warwick,
What Are You Doing
With the Rest of Your Life?
I think it was sung
by Dionne Warwick,
but someone can correct
me if I'm wrong.
We can sing it now in retrospect
for Adolph Sutro, age 49,
in the best of health
with decades of life
that could be resumed
before him.
What would he do with
the rest of his life?
Adolph Sutro decided to devote
himself to the development
of San Francisco, and
equally the development
of his collection.
He invested in real estate.
Indeed at one point,
he owned 12 percent
of the San Francisco peninsula.
He watched over and developed
his financial assets.
He even served a term of reform
mayor on the populous ticket
of the city of San Francisco.
But his fundamental continuing
commitment, I believe,
as far as his public and
private life was concerned,
in the 21 years of
life granted to him
after he sold the Comstock
in 1879 was the social
and cultural upgrading of
San Francisco as a city
through a variety of cultural
institutions including a library
research institute
that he would create
as collector and philanthropist.
What kind of city did
Sutro have in mind?
And by implication, what kind of
California did he have in mind
for as late as 1909, 60
percent of the total population
of California lived around
the San Francisco Bay.
In my opinion, Sutro had
a model city in mind.
And in that model
city was embedded
and encoded a philosophy
of useful culture.
Adolph Sutro was a product of
German, Jewish civilization.
He was born in Akin [phonetic],
known also by his French name,
[inaudible], an ancient
and imperial city
in Rynish [phonetic],
Prussia skirted
by the historical Ryan River
lying in a fertile valley
and guided by mountains
and dense forest,
a city just about the
size of San Francisco
that eventually become Akin
[inaudible] origins as a city
to 1 to 25 of the common
era when it began to develop
as a Roman resort because of
its natural sulfur springs.
In 1800 of the Comodere
Charlemange [phonetic] made Akin
the capital of the newly
established holy Roman empire.
My wife and I remember
visiting that, and you have
to duck to get into the room.
Is it the lentle you
call the top of a door?
The lentil [phonetic]
is down Charlamange
as being approximately--
which is five, five feet tall.
Today you have to be
very careful going
into the throne room there.
There was not a time
over the next 1,000 years
that Akin was not in one
way or another thriving
as an urban center of resort.
Although he was forced to
leave school at the age of 16
to supervise one of his father's
factories, Adolph Sutro knew
by instinct urbanism-- knew
it on a scale small enough
to be assimilated by him
as a non-threatening model.
Has Sutro been raised in
Paris or London or Berlin
of a later era, he would have
experienced a metropolis,
a city bigger than he could
absorb perhaps has a unity.
But in Akin he grew up in
high provincial, capital H,
capital P in terms of
Josiah Royce's terms,
in high provincial
circumstances.
He absorbed the DNA code of a
city that was a Roman capital,
a resort, an imperial capital
in the early middle ages,
and while yielding
to the greater cities
that later developed, a
place that was integrated
and self-sufficient in its
cultural frame of reference.
After the death of his
father in 1847, Adolph Sutro
and his brother managed the
family's cloth-weaving company,
but the Revolution of 1848
destroyed their business.
Sutro's parents had
eleven children
and it was Mrs. Sutro
who, taking counsel
with her children,
decided to bring the family
to the United States
leaving, I think,
two of the brothers
behind temporarily.
They landed in New York
in the autumn of 1850
and subsequently
settled in Baltimore.
A year later, Adolph Sutro,
seeking further opportunities,
moved to San Francisco
at the age of 20.
>> Thus Adolph Sutro experienced
in November 1851 and thereafter,
the instant and developing
urbanism of San Francisco.
Adolph Sutro knew
what a city was.
He had been raised in a city
and perhaps this urbanism,
and here I'm only
speculating, was intensifying
by his Jewishness,
his Jewish identity
for the Jewish community
of German
and Mitteleuropa [phonetic] were
by and large an urban people
or in the process in
the mid-19th century
of becoming an urban
people, a business
and professional people
thriving despite outbreaks
of discrimination
in the urban matrix.
Coming into San Francisco in
its take off year of 1851,
the 20-year-old Adolph
Sutro, I can speculate,
experienced San Francisco
through the prism of Akin.
How did he know this city?
Well, we all carry
within ourselves the
city we were raised in
and the environment
we were raised in
and that provides us a prism
through which we see
whatever city we finally live
in or pass through.
Here was a city like Akin
founded precipitously emerging
into urban form.
In any event, returning
to San Francisco in 1879,
after a super successful career
as a self-taught mining engineer
of genius, Adolph Sutro inserted
himself into this process
of urbanization,
which in the 1880s
and 1890s assumed a
renewed intensity.
He would function in fact,
through the 1880s and '90s
as the leader of the movement,
both in terms of what he stood
for and spoke on on behalf
of a better San Francisco
and also what he did.
Now, as a native San Franciscan,
I grew up aware of Adolph Sutro
by a fragmentary legacy, the way
you experience a city growing
up in its increments.
I knew that he developed
the great Cliff House.
I knew that he built an estate
overlooking the Cliff House.
As a boy I swam in the
Sutro baths he created
and feeling the itch of
those wool bathing suits
from the 1890s, and
browsed in the museum,
and skated in the
rink he had put there.
When I attended the
University of San Francisco,
I knew that the Sutro
library was in the first floor
of the Gleeson Library
on campus.
As state librarian
for California,
I would later be privileged to
be responsible to the people
of California for this
bibliographical treasure.
But I never connected the
dots until I began to delve
into the question of this
refounding of the city
of San Francisco in
the late 19th century
and to put Adolph
Sutro in that context.
Now the dots are
connected in my mind.
Adolph Sutro was setting
in motion a pattern,
a paradigm for the next stage
of San Francisco's development.
Was much of the land
of San Francisco Peninsula
barren and sandy hills?
And he would plant those acres
with great groves of eucalyptus,
reminiscent of the mountain top
forest outside his beloved Akin,
which of course they
later donate that property
to the University of California.
He would also collect
the best books available
on forescience [phonetic]
and forestry management,
books that are today
in the priciest books
in the Sutro library.
Did San Francisco need
cultural institutions?
Then he would in one prong
of his attack assemble what
by the time of his death was the
finest library in North America
and one of the finest
private libraries
in the English-speaking world
and perhaps even beyond that,
perhaps you could
make an argument,
the finest private library
anywhere at that time.
Library experts are frequently
marveled at the diversity
of Sutro's collection.
This diversity of title was
not haphazard I now understand.
Sutro was assembling the
library, the information here
that San Francisco needed.
Was San Francisco a product
of colonial Spain and Mexico?
Then Sutro would collect in
this area acquiring among other
things, the first library of
the University of Mexico City
through which he
acquired, of course,
previous material relating
to the Native American past
that predated by centuries
colonial Spain and Mexico.
Was San Francisco part of
the age of Pacific Basin?
Then Sutro would
collect in this area
as well acquiring an astonishing
array of Japanese classics,
imprints and other
Japanese publications,
along with the papers of Sir
Joseph Banks, the famed explorer
and scientist of
the South Pacific.
The San Francisco and
English-speaking city then,
Adolph Sutro would acquire
the English classics as well,
to include a precious
first folio of the plays
of William Shakespeare.
Was San Francisco a city
with a flourish Jewish
population among its founders?
Then Sutro would acquire what
is today ranked as the third
or fourth most significant
collection of Judaica [phonetic]
in the United States,
including manuscripts
from the very strongly
possibility,
including a manuscripture
too from the hands
of the great Maimonides himself.
Did San Francisco need
parks, gardens and forests
to anchor its sandy beaches?
Then Sutro collected a world
class series books and pamphlets
and other materials in this
field of anchoring sand dunes
and shifting geological
formations.
Would it be a good thing
for San Francisco to emerge
as the center for
humanistic scholarship
that Sutro would acquired
the single largest collection
of incunables, more than 3,000
books published before 1501,
the largest such collection in
private hands on the planet--
private hands, but not for long.
Sutro planned to put this
library into a grand building
of the Music Concourse in Golden
Gate Park to make it available
to the public as a
center for scholarship
and applied knowledge.
That of course, same
concourse was built
in 1894 during the Columbian
Exposition of '93 from Chicago
out to San Francisco and used
as a development vehicle.
Now at the same thing was true,
the Sutro bath [phonetic] he
developed in the mid-1890s.
Roger Ritter tells us
that Sutro loved to bathe.
He even brought his own
bathtub along with him
when he traveled on business.
In the Sutro Bath, Sutro
created in the mid 1890s,
it could not only be enjoyed
for reasonable admission price,
the largest indoor
swimming pool,
five swimming pools actually
on the planet, but a museum,
an ice skating rink
and an amphitheater
seating up to 25,000.
So it was planned where
there would be staged musical
and dramatic presentations.
Now incidentally swimming
was a rather elite activity
in the 1890s.
Swimming, like golf and
tennis are lead activities
as Sutro created the
great public bath this
in effect extending
an elite style,
an amenity to ordinary
Americans.
Did San Francisco
require a model
for how Golden Gate Park
should be developed?
And Sutro developed his
estate atop Sutro Heights
as a garden resort and welcomed
the public free of charge
to visit it on weekends.
Did San Francisco require
public transit to Ocean Beach
and Sutro organized railroad
and cable car service
to that district.
And finally, was San Francisco
in need of political reform,
and Sutro accepted
the nomination
of the reform-oriented
populist party and served a term
as mayor, being succeeded
in that office
by a young James Duvol Phelan,
who like Sutro, was dreaming
as well of upgrading
the city and who
in 1904 would organize the
committee for the adornment
and beautification
of San Francisco.
Incidentally while Adolph
Sutro was a reformer,
he was not a stuffed
shirt to say the least.
He loved company and parties
and would frequently gather
the leading lights of the city
to his home for drinks,
dinner, wine and good discussion
in his library located in the
Montgomery Block, dinner parties
that would frequently last until
dawn as learned and engaged
and stimulating was
the conversation.
And I suspect President
Wong may want to--
and university librarians
may want to reestablish
that tradition, but I'm not
going to hold my breath.
During a-- dying in 1898,
Adolph Sutro left his name
on a mountain in the center of
the San Francisco peninsula,
but his legacy can be seen as
well in architectural terms
in those splendid survivors,
those great buildings
constructed before the
earthquake and fire of
April 1906 that make it
through the conflagration,
buildings that vividly
express the upgrading
of the city, Sutro
helped launch.
The Ferry Building for
example, or the Emporium
on Market Street, or the Saint
Francis Hotel on Union Square,
or the Fairmont Hotel
atop Knob Hill.
Sutro did not live to witness
the full architectural upgrading
of San Francisco, but each
of these buildings had,
at one point or another,
passed through the process
of development during his
mayoralty or in the course
of his real estate career.
He helped launch
this movement then.
Now so too does the flourishing
museum culture of San Francisco
and its performing arts
culture having symbolic origins
in his plans for Sutro Baths.
Matter of fact, I remember
as a boy you still had a kind
of quaisi-museum there
that lasted for a while.
John McClarren deserves the
credit for the upgrading
with Golden Gate Park, but
Adolph Sutro provided a model
of what that park could be.
Nor is it far fetched to link
the flourishing restaurant
culture of the city with the
Cliff House Restaurant Resort he
built on this site,
which remained a favorite vogue
[phonetic] for café society
and the sporting
set until it burned
down in-- Gary, I say 1905?
>> 7.
>> 7, 1907.
See-- that's why I was so
successful as state librarian.
I just asked Gary and he'd
tell me, then I would say it.
1907, thank you.
As a San Franciscan, I like
to see Sutro was well in terms
of the European Jewish
civilization he absorbed
and acquired as a young
man in Akin [inaudible]
and brought to his adopted city.
Adolph Sutro and the
other Jewish founders
of San Francisco knew
what a city was all about,
knew what a city was
in terms of culture
and cultural institutions
and also knew what a city was
about in terms of
responsibility to the community.
In the winter of
1893, for example,
when a depression thread
through the country,
Jack London [phonetic] was part
of this march in this Depression
of 1893, the collapse
of the banks in '93.
Adolph Sutro purchased
a block of tickets
from the Salvation Army
and distributed them
to the needed for food.
These tickets could
be redeemed for food
and clothing and shelter.
So absorbed in Adolph Sutro
become in his later years
in his many civic and
philanthropic projects he's said
to have neglected his business
interest, which is saying a lot
for he was one sharp
business man.
But he was a dreamer as well,
a German Jewish American
dreamer dreaming
of a city called San
Francisco riding like Rome
on his seven hills, but
resembling Akin [phonetic]
as well as a smaller city true,
but a city touched by the world,
a resort and pleasure-loving
city, but a city loving the life
of the mind and appreciating
culture,
a politically reformed city,
democratic and efficient.
Adolph Sutro dreamed these
dreams of San Francisco and some
of them came true
and others await us
and later generations
to realize.
>> In the last years of his
life, Adolph Sutro began
to connect this dream of a
great city with a useful--
to a dream of a useful
research library with hopes
for an equally useful urban
institution at the university.
The university itself of course,
founded in the 13th century,
our modern times
refounded in urban--
the great urban centers
to include
in the Islamic world,
Bagdad and Cairo.
As at that time, the 1890s,
San Francisco did not have
a university although Sutro
donated property atop
Parnasses [phonetic] Heights
to establish a medical campus
at the University of California,
which eventually happened.
He also considered donating
his collection the University
of California.
Interestingly enough, there were
two great research libraries
in San Francisco at that time--
the Bancroft Library founded
by book seller and historian,
Hubert Howell Bancroft,
and the Sutro Library, which
by the 1890s was beginning
to attract attention from
discriminating collectors
and librarians in the
United States and Europe.
Within a year of each other,
in fact 1912 and 1913,
the dreams of at least one of
these great library builders,
Hubert Howell Bancroft,
was fulfilled
when the Bancroft Library was
purchased by U. C. Berkley.
But the dreams of the other
great collector, Adolph Sutro,
were only partially realized
when the Sutro Library
became part
of the California State Library,
although required to remain
in San Francisco by
his Deed of Trust.
Adolph Sutro died in 1898 at
the age of 68, worn out in part
by his reform efforts as
mayor of San Francisco.
Fortunately, he did not live
to witness the great earthquake
and fire of April 1906 that
destroyed nearly one-third
of the 300,000 titles
Sutro Library,
the largest such library in
private hands in the world.
Some 90 percent of its
collection of incunables,
its been estimated,
has been lost.
Following Sutro's death, it took
another 15 years for his heirs
to agree among themselves
as to what exactly would
happen to the collection.
Some of the Sutro heirs
wanted the collection sold
and the money distributed.
During these years the
library was warehoused,
but seized operation
as a living entity.
Fortunately, the executor of
Sutro's estate, his daughter,
Emma Sutro Merit,
doctor of medicine,
prevailed in the controversy
and the library was kept intact
and transferred to the state.
Truth to tell, the State
of California did not do the
right thing by the bequest.
I won't rehearse what Jerry
McGinty [phonetic] has
rehearsed, but we'll
start at the beginning
when Governor Harem Johnson
vetoed the appropriation
for a permanent facility--
vetoed the appropriations
for the permanent facility
for the library-- the Sutro
Library in San Francisco.
In the years to come, the Sutro
enjoyed the services of a number
of talented and committed
librarians.
It still does.
I think on my own good
friend, Sutro librarian,
Richard Dylan, a
noted historian.
But the collection languished
in the unimproved basement
of the main library of civic
center until it was rescued
by the distinguished [inaudible]
librarian, William J. Monahan,
and housed for a quarter
of a century in cramped,
but safe quarters in the lower
floor of the Gleeson library
of the University
of San Francisco.
Now Jerry has already
suggested the great work done
and starting 1983 with
Gary Strong, Gary Kurt,
Sheila Thornton and President
Paul Ronburg [phonetic] setting
in motion the coming
of this library
to San Francisco
State University.
Now what sort of institution
was this university
when the Sutro library was
now finding its destined home?
Like the Sutro, San Francisco
State University had been
at two other places
until coming in 1945
into its magnificent campus
on gentle slopes
rolling into Lake Merced.
And there it soon developed.
To paraphrase Joan
Didian [phonetic]
on U. C. Berkley San Francisco
State University soon developed
into one of San Francisco's,
one of California's best ideas
of itself and the very essence
of a modern urban university.
By the late 1950s, for example,
thanks to its poetry center,
it become an epicenter
of a literary movement.
It cultivated an early interest
in classics and art history
and the Italian renaissance
and acquired notable
collections in this area.
In time it would become
an epicenter of astronomy,
a university whose faculty
gazed into the heavens
and discovered nine planets.
The president informs me
that its philosophy
department today is ranked
as second in the nation.
The university distinguished
itself in business, accounting,
biology, theatre, music,
history, literature.
Its faculty began
to include some
of the best literary critics
working in the country
and writers of fiction in the
nation, this in the 1950s,
1960s, into the early
1970s period.
Some of the most noted musicians
and composers of music,
some of the most
innovative teachers
and theoreticians of theatre.
Above all else, as part
of its total identity,
the university rose alongside
its host city, San Francisco
as a paradigm of the
ecumenical nature,
the global future not
only of San Francisco
and the San Francisco Bay
area, but the entire state.
San Francisco Bay area where
in 1909 was not only 60 percent
of the population,
but towards 60 percent
of the people were born
outside the country.
While remaining part
of the CSU system,
San Francisco State University
acquired its own distinctive
personality and reputation.
A mood and athos similar to the
mood and athos of city college
in the New York system or Hunter
College in the New York system,
or Brooklyn College
in the New York system
from the 1930s onward.
Something connected to an
energetic transforming hope
for education, for
expanded capacities
and opportunities,
for a better life.
It was at the core of the
American dream itself,
increasingly connected to a
distinctively global population.
>> Like cities and
universities across the nation,
San Francisco State University
had more than its fair share
of troubles in the late 1960s.
That, for me, is a
rare understatement.
And the troubles of 1968-'69,
considered in retrospect
by its now very senior
survivors,
will suggest a future
historians,
along with universities such
as UC Berkley and Kent State
of just how deeply troubled
our country was in those years.
But it survived and
became, as I pointed out,
one of San Francisco,
one of California's
best ideas of itself.
In 1988 one of the most
notable university presidents
of recent decades, Robert
Corrigan, arrived on campus
and the momentum of this
university doubled, tripled,
quadrupled itself as it will
continue under Professor Wong
as evidenced of the
academic development
that I've just sited
however haphazardly.
It was a university that had
made friends in high places,
especially among alumni who
had become elected officials.
As a state librarian of
California, I was delighted
to encounter the fields,
the pools, the peninsulas,
the archipelagoes of pro-San
Francisco State sentiment
in the department of
finance in the legislature
in a man whom you'll forgive me
for using a Catholic vocabulary
here, but whom I think
of as Saint John Burton.
Now that's an unusual--
that's an unusual designation
for Senator Burton
but to me all I had
to do was make a
novine [phonetic]
and the money would come down
into the state [inaudible].
And all of these
people put that together
to include state senator Carl
Mignon, all of those have put
that together and we see
the results all around us.
What a tremendous
sense of pride.
And that's why incidentally,
just to break off for a second,
if those of you who are worried
about California coming aback,
just a few short
years ago Gary Kurt
and Sheila Thornton will
remember this where I was afraid
to leave my office for fear
that Governor Greg Davis would
give me another multi-million
dollar program to run.
And that's certainly changed
very dramatically, let me say,
a little later on in
the administration.
But California is not that--
it's a little on the
ropes et ceteras.
But remember, Cashious
[claim] Mohammed Ali said
about the rope-a-dope.
You do the rope-a-dope, you're
up against the ropes from fall
and then you come back.
And I think we'll be back.
We'll be back.
For nearly 150 years,
if we go back
to the first teacher training
programs in the frontier city
of San Francisco State,
predecessor versions
of San Francisco State
University have been serving
that dream of a better life
that increasingly became
connected to this city.
For 100 years despite
difficulties of location,
the Sutro Library has been
serving the same ambitions.
The history of higher education
teaches us that there is no
such thing as the
president just reminded us--
that there is no such
thing as a great university
without a great library
at its center.
San Francisco State University
more than fulfills this mandate
and I think you'll see
a transforming affect--
an accelerating affect over
the years with this institution
at the core of this
greater institution--
the university hosting this
great research facility.
San Francisco State enjoys a
great central library as well
as a number of other
notable collections.
And now in this splendid
new facility,
the library of Adolph Sutro
finds a permanent home
in the university of
scholarship, teaching, service
and that sense of what
might be called the promise
of youth, the joy of youth.
So all you have to do is walk
across that great open space
and wish that somehow
it could be 1957 again
and I could be walking
across that.
But that's all right.
That's all right.
But that dream of a better
life, that link together,
that drama of the aspirations
of youth, that drama of cities,
that drama of cultural
institutions, that teaching
and formation work
of the university,
and that collection development
of great libraries to empower
that total integrated process.
That's what Adolph
Sutro was about.
That's what San Francisco
State University was about.
And if Adolph Sutro were
with us this afternoon
to shake the president's hand,
he would recognize to all
of this coalescence to his
delight and he would say
to President Wong, this-- this
is exactly what I had in mind.
Thank you so much.
[ Applause ]
>> Oh. Any questions,
commentaries,
disputes, annotations?
Sir?
>> Could you name some of the
challenges [inaudible]insurance
and financing [inaudible]
location of the library?
>> Say again, please.
I spent two years
inside of a tank
and so my hearing's
a little off.
>> I'm asking what some
of the challenges would be
in getting insurance and
financing for facilities
such as this, given your
experience as a librarian.
>> Oh, I'd have to defer
to the emerging librarian.
The question of insurance
for collections
and things like this et cetera?
>> [Inaudible] generally, the
university is self-insured.
I think somebody from
Sutro would have to speak
to how they deal
with the insurance.
>> We're self-insured too.
>> Sure.
>> [Inaudible]
>> I'm kind of self-insured
too but not by [inaudible].
Yes, please.
Sir?
>> Do you want to remind
[inaudible] difficulty you had
when the [inaudible].
>> No, I wasn't state
librarian then.
Jerry, were there difficulties
in 1983, or Sheila Carden,
or Gary Shaw can answer that?
There's never been
any difficulties
at the state library.
>> We had a great partnership
with Paul Ronburg who worked
with the CSU Board of
Trustees on our behalf
and if he experienced
something behind the scenes,
he certainly never
complained to me about that.
>> Kevin, may I add too, in 1978
a certain proposition was being
passed that caused a
little bit of trouble.
>> [Inaudible] say, Gary.
>> 1978.
>> [Inaudible] proposition 13.
>> Oh, prop 13.
Oh, yeah.
>> Yeah, and right
after proposition 13,
that's when USS said,
you find another home.
>> I see. I see what you mean.
Well, does that answer
the question of prop 13?
Of course, everything--
everything in California
you could say prop 13.
For instance, you can break
up with your girlfriend,
you can say, aw,
it was all prop 13.
We have a built in total.
You can't get a night's
sleep-- prop 13.
>> I hear the Sutro Library was
banned from [inaudible] library
and [inaudible] different
things did they have?
>> The Bancroft Library was
assembled to write the history
of the Pacific States.
And as I've just outlined here,
now this is just speculation
on my part but I think
what I've just outlined
for you is accounting
for the fact
that for many years the
diversity of the Sutro Library,
along these different
plains, they were looked upon
with these all separate
plains-- the English literature,
the Far East, the
South Pacific, Mexico,
Native American studies,
forest management.
Were all these things--
were they just Sutro
collecting along merrily
in different directions?
No, they were collected
because this was
to be a useful collection for
the development of this city,
according to what he remembered
and when moved forward,
incidentally, it's not as if
he didn't go back to Europe
to later life and see the
great cities of Europe,
which he would dream of
replicating in San Francisco.
He was a very wealthy man.
He traveled on book
tours, et cetera.
But, you know, remember
that old phrase,
is there life after high school?
This, the city he experienced as
a boy growing up until the age
of 16 is such a beautiful city.
I've looked at a lot of the--
preparing for this talk,
I've looked at different
etches and sketches of Akin
in the 1830s and
'40s, et cetera.
So the unity of the Sutro
library was the unity
of what San Francisco needed
to build up his civic culture.
The unity of the
Bancroft Library was the--
writing the history
of the Pacific States.
And can you imagine each
of those libraries
collecting simultaneously.
Could you imagine how popular
San Francisco must have been
among book sellers
in this country.
Sir, the gentleman
with the red--
yellow shirt right
there in front.
You had your hand up, sir?
>> No.
>> You had your hand up.
>> No.
>> Yes, you did.
>> No, I didn't.
But I'll ask a question
[Inaudible].
Thanks for--
>> I thought that
when I gave you
that five dollars you said you'd
answer me these few questions.
>> I am recalling a conversation
we had a couple years ago
when you were saying
[inaudible], what more can we do
to promote the teaching of
authentic history in our schools
and in our universities?
>> Well, the authentic
history is being excavated,
first of all, a whole generation
of historians, your age group,
have gone back-- are in
the process of going back
and excavating the proper
history of this state.
And our whole development
of California as an instance
in American civilization is
increasingly embodying what the
Spanish philosopher, Uno
Mundo, called "the tragic sense
of life", which is to say the
ability to look to the past
and see the mistakes,
injustices, et cetera,
et cetera and not use that--
>> [Inaudible] use the mic?
>> Pardon me?
>> Oh, use the mic, thank you.
My wife, Sheila, is here.
We've been married
50 years this June.
But any event, that whole work
in history Professor Turnican
[phonetic] can document this.
I mean, the whole question
of California history is now
a suunto [phonetic] of light
and dark and every color
in between as we look back.
And I think that that then has a
way of going into the classroom
in the fourth grade,
in the eighth grade,
and in universities, et cetera.
And we have a more sophisticated
sense of California
because we have a more
sophisticated California.
We have a global California.
We have a world accumenical
population.
There's nobody who's
not here now.
Doesn't mean everybody was
treated fairly in the beginning,
but there's nobody
who's not here
and I think that's an extremely
important thing to look forward
to the future of this
world commonwealth,
is global accumenical
commonwealth.
Someone behind there
had their hand
and then-- please, go ahead.
>> So have you had a chance
to, like, put your hands
on the Sutro Collections, and
maybe an impossible question
to ask, but if you
could identify one item
in that collection, which for
you rises above all the rest,
what would that item be?
It might be--
>> Well, I think-- you
know, there's an old ad
for Casanoff's [phonetic]
rye bread.
You don't have to be
Jewish to enjoy it.
And it shows an American
Indian having a big cole slaw
pastrami sandwich.
So I don't think you have
to be Jewish to say--
when Gary took me there
the first time and said,
this manuscript could
be at the hands--
could actually be
from the handwriting
of Moses Maimonides
himself, I was impressed.
I was impressed.
I mean, maybe one of the great
teachers of Jewish tradition
since Moses and the
great rabbi's
of the beginning
of the common era.
I was impressed that that
manuscript had survived being
taken out of Spain and it was
eventually brought by Sutro
in the Yemen, the
Ottoman Empire?
So I think that was the thing
that really impressed me.
>> Yeah.
>> Because the fragility
of a manuscript.
>> [Inaudible] of knowing
that something has passed
through the hands of other great
thinkers and other [inaudible]
of the world might be the
most interesting thing about--
>> Well, yes.
And just to carry onto
just a little bit,
I'm not a monarchist.
I'm an American.
But to hold the prayer
book that King Charles,
I held in his hand just
before his execution is also--
and of course, Shakespeare's
first folio.
And those are those
sort of weigh stations
of English history that we--
I mean, people my age absorbed
in high school and earlier, that
was very impressive as well.
Now again, since I'm an San
Franciscan of the Japanese
and the Ancient Pacific
collection,
suggests the Ancient Pacific.
But then again to have the
founding library of University
of Mexico City, the oldest--
that whole collection--
I'm just finishing a book now
called Continental Ambitions
for Alford A. Knopf about-- it's
topics that are very touched
to some of these things.
There's-- the Sutro
is a wonderful--
it's a wonderful
place for displays
and interests, et cetera.
And again, if you take this
idea of a useful collection
for the rise of the city, it
then begins to come together.
The spoke is-- the spokes
come out from San Francisco
and come back to San Francisco.
Yes, please?
>> The best thing about
the Sutro, you are proving
that libraries are not virtual.
>> No, libraries
have to be spatial.
>> There you have it.
>> Human beings are not virtual.
>> [Inaudible] tend
to think that.
>> Well, I know.
But when the digital
revolution first came in,
it looked for a while like
we would be these kind
of digital jellyfish just
floating in the cyber sea.
But it didn't happen that way.
The more things became global,
the more local it becomes.
The more we reach
out into the world,
the more important becomes the
institutions that surround us.
And that's why, just the
sheer physical beauty
of San Francisco State, the
buildings, the landscaping,
the Monterey Cyprus
trees, the weather,
except in August, right.
But see, San Franciscans,
we love that fall.
We love to breath
it in real deep.
Try it, Mr. President.
Try deep breathing in August.
Yes?
>> [Inaudible] you
build [inaudible]
like the Sutro [inaudible].
Why is it do you think
he was never able
to establish [inaudible]
for his [inaudible]?
>> It's because he
passed on at 68.
Was it 68 or 69?
He passed on.
His health deteriorated.
The Bancroft negotiations
[inaudible] success took from--
took from the late
1890s to 1912, '13.
It takes a long time--
>> We know that.
>> To see things through
governmental channels.
So we'd say, in fact, it
took about, Debbie, what--
about 13, 14 years
from the initial grant
to this great building.
We were worried for a while
about the rising price of steel
and concrete would
catch up with us.
And that, Gary, what was
it, $89 million would--
not evaporate, but would
at least be in the way.
[Inaudible] it was,
but it was made up also
by the university here.
And that's why the whole
thing is a cooperative.
So I would say that
Sutro Baths did stay on.
They were usable to us in
the 1950s in San Francisco.
I think it was 25 cents.
You could-- 10 to 15 cents or
25 cents you could swim there.
And that was the idea of
public recreation, public life.
And Sutro set up that point of
view that resulted ultimately
in 10 public tennis courts
at the Golden Gate Park.
What is it, two and a
half public golf courses
in San Francisco?
We even have a public polo
field in Golden Gate Park
so that our polo players can
have a nice municipal place
to play.
And Sutro initiated that
idea that a city has
to create those recreational--
and again, Akin [inaudible]
was a resort city.
People came there for
health, for pleasure,
for physical rejuvenation.
I think had he lived, he would
have negotiated something.
And I'm not sorry it
might have passed over,
say into the U. C. Medical
School, but I don't know--
I just don't know how it would--
what would have happened.
Yes?
>> [Inaudible] his term as
mayor really distracted him.
>> Yes. Well, it's a
very hard at city hall.
I was-- I was executive aid to
Mayor Joseph Aleota [phonetic]
for a year, 1973 and
'74 and he was talking
about San Francisco
State 1968, '69.
Yes, sir?
>> what world literature
did Sutro particularly love
to read [inaudible] and
how is that reflected
in the collection
besides the Shakespeare?
>> Well, I think he-- there's
a lot of German romanticism,
the great Skiller
[phonetic], Gerta,
classic German language text, if
I remember correctly and French,
French material and then
English classics as well.
So I would say he read-- for his
own personal pleasure he read
in those languages.
And don't forget, he was
a self-taught engineer.
He was an-- in fact, today
he'd be a civil engineer
and so we have a lot of the text
books that he used in education.
I remember seeing, in
the Library of Congress,
George Washington's copy when he
became general of our rebellion,
George Washington's copy and it
was signed George Washington--
Introduction to Military
Science and Tactics.
So Washington was a self-taught
general, did a good job.
And Sutro was self-taught
engineer.
And of course, accomplished
one of the [inaudible] forces
of civil engineering
in the 19th century.
But he read-- he loved
the incunable period too.
I don't know whether
he had Latin or Greek.
I don't know that because he
had to leave school at 16.
But he certainly
loved incunables.
Yes, sir?
>> What happened to the Sutro
Baths, the swimming pools that--
>> What happened?
>> Were they [inaudible]
on fire?
>> Well, yes.
They were-- [inaudible] went
bankrupt, the supporting company
and then they were fired
by an arsenous torch
about what-- '62, I think.
>> '66.
>> '66? '66.
So we lost them.
You can see the ruins of
them there below there.
But they were extraordinarily
successful and gee,
they were fun to
swim in as a boy.
Well, thank you very much
and thank you [inaudible].
[ Applause ]
>> Not oversold, do you think?
So I'm so grateful to
all of you for coming
and sharing this
afternoon with us.
Diana, I think the case
that you're showcasing
a few sample items
if right back there, right?
>> There's two cases.
>> Or two cases.
>> And one over here.
And then we have [inaudible].
>> Yeah. So I'm going to
talk about those in a second.
But for those of you who want
to just peruse what's
been displayed here--
a selection of sample items
from the Sutro Library
in the two cases at the back.
The Sutro Library is offering
essentially an open house.
You get there by going out
this door and to the right,
to the main elevator bank.
And take the elevators
up to the 5th floor.
Some of my colleagues are also
available if there are any
of you who haven't had the
opportunity to get a tour
of our own library, the
J. Paul Leonard Library,
we're more than happy to
show you around that as well.
And there is a reception that's
being set up right outside
and will be available shortly.
So I invite you to mingle with
each other, peruse the cases,
visit the Sutro Library and let
me know if you would like a tour
of J. Paul Leonard
and thank you so much.
[ Applause ]