The Friendly History Corner: 2010s

2010s

Showing posts with label 2010s. Show all posts

It may seem strange to write about murals in a local history blog, but murals have been popping up all around Redwood City this year, 2015, and they're of cultural and historic importance. Murals are not a new invention. They have been around since the beginning of time. We've seen them in caves from the Upper Paleothic times, to as recently as vintage advertizing signs and graffitti in World War I and II trenches. For as long as man has had a wall to draw on, we have painted and drawn our way through time leaving a mark of who we are for future generations.

So, the other day, while driving along Florence/Bay past Delucchi's Market (formerly the Key Market), at Marsh Manor, it was wonderful to come upon a rare scene of a field full of California poppies on the west facing wall of the building (looking out toward the Friendly Acres Water Company building).

The mural, painted by Nic Motley, shows a field of sunny yellow poppies and bluebells, camouflaging the utility box at the base of the wall. A standalone barn door (painted over an actual door) with no barn to go with it awkwardly borders the edge of the mural. Nonetheless it a friendly little vignette and it certainly brighten up a beige corner.

Redwood City's Cultural Commission have been working with the Peninsula Arts Council and city officials to reinforce the city’s role as a center of art and culture for the Peninsula. What started off as a small idea to transform those big ugly utility boxes that are eye sores on our streets, by painting them, has resulted in a wonderfully whimsical beautification project. The program has already been tested out in other civic centers since 2004, in Berkeley, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Emeryville, Oakland, San Jose to popular success - such that the utility boxes have become landmarks in some cases and incorporated into tourist walking tours.

The project's goals are to deter unsightly graffiti on the utility boxes, bring art to unexpected places and enhance the beauty and vibrancy of Redwood City for years to come. Interested sponsors and artists may contact the Project Coordinator, Sheila Cepero, ceperowall@yahoo.com or call (650) 303-0216 for more information. (Utility Box Mural Program, Redwood City Parks & Rec Dept., 1400 Roosevelpt Ave., Redwood City, CA 94061).

Probably the most beautiful mural in Redwood City at this time and, in my opinion, in the San Francisco Bay Area has to be the Crouching Tiger mural, on Commercial Street behind the Crouching Tiger chinese restaurant. Painted in 3 weeks by artist Morgan Bricca who finished it for the Chinese New Year Lunar celebrations this year, 2015. The trompe l'oeil style draws you into a chinese sreet village scene, where even the restaurant's actual chef is seen sitting on the front steps of one the buildings in the foreground. The mural not only draws you into the scene and into the restaurant but, again, cleverly disguises ....yes, a utility box.

When you see Ms Bricca's her work you'll agree that not all artists are made equal.

Commercial Street, home to the Crouching Tiger mural, is a back alley that runs from Broadway to Brewster. It is home also to another mural, a vintage advertizing sign, which was discovered in 2013 when renovation to the former Joy Meadow restaurant at the corner of El Camino and Brewster, (701 El Camino Real) revealed a wonderful handpainted Coca Cola mural.

With the discovery of the Coke sign and on the basis of Ms Bricca's work, it is not surprising to hear that most of the merchants with wall frontage on Commercial Street are now keen on being a part of the mural project.

An interesting evolution continues in the world of murals. New ones are continually being commissioned and created while old ones are constantly being rediscovered and restored.

Perhaps the oldest murals in Redwood City are the painted signs from the Holmquist Hardware Store on the corner of Stambaugh Street and Main (at 875 Main Street), and the Diller-Chamberlain Store at 726 Main Street. The Holmquist store clearly says 1895 as its date. The Chamberlain store signage, has no known date, but it is known that the store operated from around 1859 to 1911, as a Wells Fargo station office and General Store. The painted white lettering against red brick was discovered when the building was being renovated and preserved. It still maintains a somewhat legible script on the side of the build that reads,"P.P. Chamberlain General Merchandise".

Photo: Sanfranman59 - Wikimedia Common

Photo: Avi Morgan, on Flickr

Art is an expression of time and therefore of history. It is the presence of permanent murals, commissioned paintings and signage which connects us to near and distant memories of people who were here before us and allows us to understand what may have operated inside or outside of a given building, and what appealed to the artistic sensibilities of a given age.

So enjoy the art and utility boxes around you, and why not try your hand at painting a utility box. You may end up creating and preserving history at the same time.

Thumbs up to the city's Cultural Committee for sponsoring this project.

References:
1) Informational guide and form on the Redwood City Utility Box project, to apply as an Artist, or to sponsor a building or box.
2) Wikipedia Public Art project
3) Library of Congress: Diller-Chamberlain Store, 726 Main Street, Redwood City
4) Find-a-grave: Rudolf Carl Holmquist store, 875 Main Street, Redwood City
5) Coke Sign on Commercial Street: Building front on 701 El Camino Real.
5) Nic Motley website, Friendly Acres muralist for Delucchi's Market
6) Website for muralist Morgan Bricca
7) San Jose Mercury News: "Redwood City Pilot Program looks to transform infrastructure into art", Jan 12 2015

Probably one of the most interesting maps to come out in recent months is one created by Brandon Martin-Anderson who designed an interactive dot map plotting the 2010 census data for the United States.

His map consists of dots - each dot representing one person. And they are mapped, based on the location address given for place of residence at the time of the census. The dots are plotted at the lowest granular level of detail available publicly, which is at the block level, according to the census reports.

Scroll down to see what the S.F. Mid-Peninsula, Redwood City and Friendly Acres all look like. Despite the tag labeling on Brandon's map, the black and white images can be difficult to work with and navigate, so for the Friendly Acres Map I juxtaposed the most detailed level of the map on top of a colored google map to make it easier to distinguish streets.

Friendly Acres Dot Map of Population Density based on U.S. 2010 Census data

Summer is fast approaching when Groovy Thursdays are back on at Marsh Manor! And this year we apparently will have a few new shops moving in too, including a microbrewery taking over the spot formerly occupied by Anastascia's laundromat...

While some may feel bereft without a coin laundromat, there are a couple of others situated close by: The first is at 3106 Rolison Rd, in the heart of Friendly Acres, and the second, named the "Friendly Acres Laundry", is located at the MidPoint Plaza shopping center on the corner of Fifth and Bay.

While real estate advertising for Friendly Acres of the 1930s and 40s pitched the opportunity of raising chickens in your new plot of land - chook farming seems to have been something that has ebbed in and out of fashion - but nonetheless continued to appeal to successive generations.

I didn't realize how much of a marketing factor raising chickens was to the purchase of buying a home in Friendly Acres back in the day, until I came across some old real estate ads for the district. It really was part of the sales pitch for the middle to working classes. The depression of the 30s had made self-sufficiency a buzz word. And in the 40s it was very much part of the War Dept.'s homefront strategy of thriftiness tied in with the Victory Gardens program.

March 28, 1938. Burlingame Times and Daily News.

We had a rare treat in Redwood City this week: a visit from a member of the Kennedy family no less.
Caroline Kennedy spoke before a packed house at the Fox Theater this week. All tickets apparently sold out several days in advance. The people in the audience looked to be mainly those who had lived through and grown up with Camelot.

The purpose of her visit, sponsored by Kepler's bookstore of Menlo Park, Cargill (surprise!) and the Fox Theater (who look to be under new management and/or adopting a new strategy by including lectures as part of their offering), was to hawk a book on her mother, "Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy" by Michael Beschloss, to which Caroline had provided a foreword.

Fiddler on the Roof, the movie, just happens to be on the box this evening. Timely since the story is very evocative of the political background that Harry Friend, the developer of Friendly Acres, left behind when he left Prussia-Poland with his wife in 1901.

The movie, a musical, is based on the stories of Tevye the Milkman, by Sholem Alecheim, and set in Russia in 1905. Topol stars as the main character. The original stories were published in 1894, so its quite possible that Harry Friend had read them or heard of them. But its more likely that Art and Life converged.

The pogroms and unrelenting Tsarist persecutions of the Jews, and brewing Bolshevik revolution, sent many fleeing to England and America at the end of the 19th century.

When I first moved to this Redwood City neighborhood, one of the things that appealed to me was its name, "Friendly Acres" (not to be confused with the Friendly Acres Ranch in Half Moon Bay). Our neighbor and a real estate agent had mentioned that there was a indeed a man behind the name. A man by the name of Friendly who had been the developer of the neighborhood we had bought into, and that he had possible lived on Marsh Road. That's about as much as the real estate agent knew.

There was nothing online about Mr. Friendly. But the Redwood City archives yielded a little bit more information, as did Ancestry.com, and some venerable Polk directories.

Harry Friend was his name - a "friendlier" anglicized version of his real name, Abraham Freund, which he adopted after arriving at Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century.

His story begins back in 1880 in Prussia, (or Poland in today's geo-political maps). Landing first in New York then he moves west to San Francisco, making a series of property acquisitions south through the Peninsula - residing in Burlingame, San Mateo, and Sweeney Ranch (south of Redwood City) where he purchased some acres, subdivided it, and settled in - calling his settlement "Friendly Acres", before retiring with his wife to San Carlos.

He left us with his name. But then he's not the only one to have done so. The entire neighborhood is threaded with names from the past, some of whom were earlier developers and landowners of the area, and others simply civic employees who by their contributions to the city were awarded the honor of a street sign in our vicinity.

It is Tuesday, October 19, 2010 and Senator Barbara Boxer is paying a visit to Taft Elementary School in Friendly Acres, talking to the 3rd grade in an after school program she helped secure funding for.

Expecting the Senator to finally leave, the classroom teacher isn't sure exactly what's going on as more people seem to be arriving instead of going, and helicopters are flying overhead. Next thing she knows, in walks Vice President Joe Biden.

In a bid to retain her State senate seat, Ms Boxer, who was running against Republican rival Carly Fiorina (former HP CEO), had decided to bring in some big guns to help her campaign's fundraising event in San Francisco - and while he was here, sneak in some warm and fuzzy, kid-friendly P.R. Apparently Biden's visit was a surprise even to the school district.