[ In 010115 MMDigest Julie Porter reminisced about mechanical music
 [ sites in San Francisco. ]

There was a Mechanical Music Museum owned by Whitney's at the turn
of the bend in the highway between the Cliff House and down from the
entrance to Sutro's Baths.  It is this building that burned, taking
a fair number of instruments with it.  If memory serves the year was
about 1967.

This fire is not related to the torching of the Baths and was a
completely separate building.  There is now nothing to indicate where
the building stood.  The lesser instruments being stored in a warehouse
waiting repairs were dusted off and became the third rate Museum
Mechanique that is in the basement level of the present Cliff House.

The fire claimed a large percentage of the Whitney collection.  Early
in the suspicious fire the San Francisco Fire Department was going to
rescue some of the valuable instruments but were told by Whitney people
to just let them burn.  Later the insurance company for Whitney paid
through the nose for all of those irreplaceable music machines.  Go
down to the newspapers research rooms and read about it for yourself.
It will make you cry.

Good Grief!  I am ancient, as I actually swam in the baths then later
skated in the ice area that was put into the Bath building.  You are
correct in that Whitney's Playland at the Beach had one collection of
instruments, Sutro's had another, but the Whitney's Mechanical Music
Museum that burned was yet a third.  At one time you could drop
quarters in some 50+ mechanical music makers within a city block of
each other.

My favorite was the Double Mills Violano Virtuoso with piano, a big
Welte, and the big band organs on both carousels.  In the Sutro Baths
Museum there were some nice orchestrions located around the Tucker
Automobile and the Egyptian Mummies (it was more of a hodgepodge museum
than a formal museum).

When I grew up in San Francisco we did not have an inferiority complex.
Quite the contrary, we knew we were the luckiest people on earth to be
living in the most beautiful city in the world with the finest movie
palace, the best food, the cleanest air, the best water, the cleanest
streets, etc., etc.  Considering that The City is now a haven for
hobos, drunks, druggies, panhandlers, mentals, weirdoes, and misfits,
it should have an inferiority complex.  There is no sense of city
history, it is not being taught in the public schools, and there is no
sense of preservation.  The thirty+ years of one party rule has left
the city with no debate on city improvement.  If they ever clean the
place up I will move back into my home there.

As for band organs, there is a bright spot on the horizon.  A local
collector with a Wurlitzer 165 (I believe) wants to loan it to the
city for one of the carousels.  Certainly the carousel on the roof of
Moscone Center could use something besides canned music through bad
speakers.

Lastly, there is a continental shelf off of the coast, abyssal water
isn't reached until a quite a number of miles out.  Sutro's was built
into a cove not in the ocean but at the beach front.  San Francisco is
49 square miles of some of the most expensive land in the world.  Just
over from the Sutro cove homes sell in the multiples of millions.

Condos on the Sutro site meant money for the developer.  I don't think
Christopher, not being a native San Franciscan, had any sense of
history.  He wanted the city to become an economic powerhouse and his
dream, complete with skyscrapers, was realized.  His brother-in-law was
Cahill of Cahill Construction.  By clearing away structures on the 25
square miles that are buildable, Cahill had projects that would bring
profit.

The citizens of San Francisco share as much blame for the loss of city
history as anyone.  The FOX theatre was put on a ballot initiative to
save it for a mere million dollars.  Built for an original cost of 8
million 1929-dollars, complete with a Moller roll playing lobby organ,
the place was a bargain.  Herb Caen, the celebrated columnist, stabbed
the city in the back and advocated tearing down "that old barn on
Market Street."  He swayed the voters to let the theatre die and the
voters did.  Thus another example of San Francisco throwing away its
history.

Al Sefl --
San Francisco Native and ashamed of the sorry state of The City now...