IMPRESSIONS OF SAN FRANCISCO.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12484, 21 April 1906, Page 10

IMPRESSIONS OF SAN FRANCISCO.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY

San Francisco is thus described by the editor of the "Outlook :''— "The first imriression of the tourist on entering San Francisco, whether ho comes, as we did, by train, or whether as mora tourists come, across the harbour by ferry, is one of disappointment. In might have been made the most beautiful city in America, if not in the world. It is built on a series of liills, bordering a harbour which may ho truly designated as superb, and looking on the on© side upon tho Pacific, on tho other upon the harbour and tli© mountains beyond. If it only could have had time to grow! Then theso hills would havo been terraced, the reads would have wound back _id forth up their steep sides, the residence-, would hAvo overlooked one another, and would.have been embowered in the trees whick the fertile soil would so easily have produced, awl San Francisco would have been the Naples of tho New World—the garden city of America. But it had not time to grow. Hurriedly built by immigrants crowding to the State, burning with th© painful exhilaration of the gold fever, a city at first of house boxes and touts, it lias never recovered from tlie misfortune cf its early too great commercial prosperity. "it was laid out by some architectural genius from the flat plains of the West, who knew no way to lay out « town except in straight slreets at right angles tb each other. This necessitated climbing acclivities too steep for steam, electric, or horse power, and rendered necessary the invention of the cable-car, and up "these hills you are pulled, and down them you are* lowered, sometimes at a pace which takes away your breath, until you become accustomed to the motion." Then it grows curiously exhilarating. "The centre of San Francisco is well built upon level land. largely, I suspect, made by the enterprise "of its inhabitants. Its business blocks are dignified, and it has not as yet reared thoso enormous narrow boxes, set on end, which disfigure the streets of New York and Chicago. Outside this business centre tho buildings are rnos-tly wood. It is by all odds tbe most wooden city I have ovt-r been in, anel its re-idrnco* curiously follow one model. They aro ornamented with beads and scroll work, in which the designs are repeated with so little variation that one might imagine that the great majority have been produced by thesame planing and sawing mill, and designed by the same carpenter. Even many of the newer houses follow this fashion, which must have been set nearly lialf a century ago. I should, perhaps, hesitate to offer this criticism on the domestic architecture of San Francisco, had it not been tersely expressed to mo by a loyal San Franc scan, who said that if the San Franciscans would plane the ornaments off their

bouse- they irould bdvery good-lookui* structures. Th« continuance of thin fashion in San Francisco ia * „" tu< J more curious because it _• not followed in tho suburbs. Aoro-W the bay Jroni the city aro Berkoloy, Oakland, and A*v meda, and a little way down tho peninsula on which San Francisco eUnda aro other suburbs, chief of them San Mateo. These residential districts might bo compared to tho Newtowns at Boston, *_onkers and Montlair at New York, Germautowu and Bryn Mawr at Philadelphia. The residences are modern in "-heir structure, individualistic in their character, and, both in tho landscape architecture and in the house architecture, make as attractive homes and turnish a.-, unmisukeable evidences of taste and culture as are to be found in the suburbs of any modem city. One s first impression is that a city so almost wholly constructoHl of wood as San _ noncisco "would be particularly subject to devastating fires. Some such fires it has known in its history, but they have not compared in the extent oi thendevastation with those experienced in recent times by Bcston, Chicago, and Baltimore. It is said that the houseeare built of redwood, and that the redwood is a slow-burning fuel. Most of tho houses are not more than two stories, or three at the utmost, in height, and these facts, together with a little space between the houses, perhaps render the city quite as fireproof a* are those cities which appear to bo more substantially constructed, but in which a fire, once started, is more difficult to control."