HISTORY AND PRESERVATION

Oral history is one of the ways we keep the spirit of Russian Hill alive. Instead of relying only on formal records, we listen to the memories and stories of neighbors who’ve called this hill home for many years. While the voices of the very first readers have been lost, we carry their tradition forward by recording and sharing interviews with longtime residents. These conversations let us pass along the everyday experiences, colorful anecdotes, and personal perspectives that make our neighborhood’s history feel alive and close to home. WHY DO WE NEED ORAL HISTORIES OF RUSSIAN HILL? Because if stories aren’t shared, they’re lost, and with them go the small details that give a community its soul. History isn’t just about famous names or landmark buildings; it’s about the people who shop at the corner market, chat with their neighbors on the sidewalk, and watch the neighborhood change year after year. These everyday voices give us a sense of belonging, of roots, and of how Russian Hill has grown and shifted over time. Libraries are full of San Francisco’s citywide history, but neighborhood stories are often missing — even though this is where life truly unfolds. Capturing these local memories helps us understand our past, stay connected in the present, and create a record future generations can lean on. Plus, the process itself is joyful: oral history invites conversation, sparks connection, and strengthens the fabric of our community.

This oral history was written in the summer of 1997, and Home Drug Company closed in July of 2000. (This history of a bygone Russian Hill institution was written by Russian Hill Neighbors VP Jack Casford in Spring, 1997. Home Drug Company has since closed, and the site is occupied by a gift and home furnishings shop. The stained glass signs have been preserved.) For historical longevity, Home Drug Co. rates second only to the celebrated cable cars that rumble through the intersection of Hyde and Union. Anchoring the northwest corner, this venerable and much-loved institution has provided hands-on, neighborly pharmacy and drugstore sundries since Merle C. Smith started it in 1911-1912. The Victorian-style shingled building was built quite soon after the Earthquake and Fire, about 1908. Three generations of the same family continued to operate it: first Merle Smith, known as “Doc” as many pharmacists in the U.S were known; then his nephew, Edwin Merle Glasgow (from the late 1920s until his retirement in 1953); and then his sons, Ted and Don. As boys (born in San Francisco and raised in Burlingame), they clerked and made deliveries for their father and great-uncle. Ted went to pharmacy school after obtaining his degree from Oregon State and took over Home Drug in 1956. His younger brother, Don, got a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy from the University of the Pacific in Stockton and joined his brother in 1969. The brothers retired quietly in 1995, but they still own the shingled building with a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor. The present pharmacist, Eugene Malmquist, who holds a pharmacy degree from the University of Colorado, leases the space from the Glasgows. Malmquist is very sensitive to the historic and traditional nature of Home Drug. He has done some remodeling and upgrading, particularly in the back, elevated area where the pharmacy operations take place. He recently removed signs that once held neon tubing and revealed the beautiful green, white, and amber-stained glass HOME DRUG CO. signs over each of the display windows. In the basement, fragments from the past remain. Boxes hold scores of brown glass bottles with original Home Drug Labels: Arsenic, Cinchona Bark (quinine), Mercury Bichloride, White Cyanide, and various bromides. Copies of old licenses and certificates remain, authorizing the store to sell prophylactic products; also, a Medical Spirits Stamp tax receipt; a document called Retail Dealer in Opium; a permit to sell coca leaves and to mix certain laxatives; a stamp authorizing the use of Cocaine, Quinine Sulfate, Oil of Wintergreen, and Pilocarpine Hydrochloride. Other boxes hold old prescription slips, back to 1917, from physicians all over San Francisco, who listed their home telephone numbers and addresses. They scribbled their orders using “apothecary indications,” or Latin abbreviations for amounts and directions on how to use, and symbols giving the quantities, expressed in grams, drams, grains, etc. A dusty, moribund Underwood portable typewriter tilts on the shelf above a number of old cash registers, from the oldest with keys, bell, and a pull-out drawer, to early electric versions. Several scales – shallow bowls of dull silver metal with hanging weights and counter-weights – accumulate dust and rust, while two sets of marble mortar-and-pestles recently made their way back to the pharmacy department for display. A venerable black machine called an “Automatic Electric Carbonator” sits forgotten in a dark corner. It was used to add the carbonation to the syrup for Coca-Cola. Home Drug Co. briefly had three stores: the original, at 1200 Hyde, a second called Home Drug Co. No. 2 at Hyde and Jackson, and Home Drug Co. No. 3, at Pine and Jones. “Doc” Smith was in partnership with a Mr. Seebold and a third man whose name is lost in memory. Smith bought out Nos. 2 and 3 at some point. Home Drug bought out Alhambra Drugs, which for many years operated at the northeast corner of Green and Polk. It even had a tiny branch post office in the back, manned by a cranky clerk who posted a large sign announcing the services it did NOT provide: “No Packages Accepted!” Home Drug used to be open seven days a week, and deliveries were made by motorcycle. Crime did not touch them, except for one remembered break-in (unsuccessful – the narcotics safe remained untouched) and one walk-in weaponless robbery. Two former customers, who once lived together on Greenwich Street, were O.J. Simpson and a pretty, slim girl in her teens named Nicole Brown. Don and Ted see each other frequently (one lives on the Peninsula and one lives in the East Bay). They don’t miss the commute and the pressure of work, but they do miss the customers and the neighborhood. Certainly, the neighborhood missed them when they “disappeared.” But Malmquist continues the tradition of personal, friendly service. Even his fluency in German comes in handy with the scores of tourists who pass the corner looking for “The Crooked Street” and Fisherman’s Wharf. And he says Home Drug now provides prescriptions at the low price allowed by insurance companies under most plans. He insists they are competitive with Walgreens! With Home Drug dating back to 1911-12, the venerable Searchlight Market (also dating back to 1912), Swensen’s (1948), and Vern’s Shoe Craft (in the 1950s), the intersection of Hyde and Union remains a historic center for Russian Hill.

This oral history was written in the fall of 1997 by Russian Hill Neighbors VP, Jack Casford. Do you know how many churches there are on Russian Hill? Within our boundaries (Van Ness, Pacific, Taylor and Bay) there are only two: the Norwegian Seaman’s Church and the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, popularly called Fellowship Church. Both churches are interesting historically and culturally. In this article we feature the Fellowship Church at 2041 Larkin Street near Broadway. Fellowship Church is unique in the nation, recognized as the first intercultural, interracial, interfaith and interdenominational church organized in the country. From its formal inauguration on October 8, 1944, it brought together, for the first time, races and cultures pledged to each other in a common commitment. World War II was raging in Europe, with no end in sight. There was in the United States much talk about the Four Freedoms, religion being one of them, and a celebrated poster by Norman Rockwell portrayed several people of different races and ages and in various attitudes of worship – with rosaries, breviaries, Bibles, Torahs, veils, and so forth – indicating the various faiths worshipping together in an idealized world. Fellowship Church’s origins lie in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, where an ordained Presbyterian clergyman and professor of philosophy at San Francisco State College (now University), Dr. Alfred Fisk, started a “Neighborhood Church” as a bi-racial institution. A group of about 40 persons, under the ministry of Dr. Fisk and the Rev. Manly Johnson, an African American (then “Negro”) student at the Berkeley Baptist Divinity School, began meeting in private homes in 1943. Later the Presbyterian Board of National Missions provided, rent-free, the use of a former Japanese Presbyterian Church, at 1500 Post. At that time, the Fillmore sector of San Francisco had been largely emptied of its majority – Japanese-American citizens – by the infamous Relocation Order of 1942, which sent some 100,000 Japanese-American residents to holding centers. The vacuum left by these residents was filled by large numbers of African Americans, drawn from Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, by promises of wartime employment in the Bay Area shipyards. In 1944, Dr. Howard Thurman, Professor of Theology and the Dean of Rankin Chapel of Howard University, was invited to serve as pastor of the Church. Dr. and Mrs. Thurman had studied nonviolent resistance to institutionalized race discrimination with Mahatma Ghandi in India in the late 1930s. Dr. Thurman and his wife moved from Washington, D.C. to take the pastorate. For a time the church held services in a former theater on Sutter Street. Dr. Thurman and Dr. Fisk wrote a formal set of guidelines and goals for the church, and the formal inaugural ceremonies were held in the First Unitarian Church, the only white church in the City that would lend its endorsement and its sanctuary for the event. From 1944 to 1949, Fellowship Church met variously on Sutter, Pierce, and then Washington Street. Its membership included an active congregation locally, but it drew support from national “associates” such as Eleanor Roosevelt, author Alan Paton, actor-singer Todd Duncan, and individuals in Japan, South Africa, India, Iran, Formosa, and the British Isles. In 1949, the congregation paid $35,000 to St. John’s Reformed and Evangelical Church at 2401 Larkin Street for its structure with church tower, sanctuary, meeting rooms, and offices. In 1951, Fellowship Church had 283 active and 62 associate members in the Bay Area. From the first, it drew Russian Hill neighbors, but that membership is now small, albeit welcome. Dr. Thurman was most active as pastor in the early 1950s. In 1953, he was pictured in Life magazine as one of the outstanding clerics in the United States. He wrote over 130 works during his lifetime, primarily books on theology, including The Renewing of the Spirit and The Negro Spiritual. He spoke worldwide and received formal tributes and commendation from many national and international religious, social, educational, and civil rights groups. Dr. Thurman contributed a considerable portion of his earnings from his U.S. lecture tours to the Fellowship Church building fund. Dr. Thurman left in 1954 for a tenured position as Dean of Theology at Boston University, but returned to serve as Minister Emeritus until his death in 1981. The widow of Dr. Thurman, Sue Bailey Thurman, herself an outstanding figure in African-American activities nationally, died at the age of 93 in December 1996. Her funeral services were held at Fellowship Church, and the music came from the historic, German-made organ still in use for services. The current presiding pastor is the Rev. Dorsey Blake. There are presently less than 100 members, many longtime, active supporters. The rather austere, off-white stucco façade is embellished with only an upper window, the church tower, and three street-level arched inset doors. Neighbors are familiar with its use as a polling place for local, state, and national elections. Russian Hill Neighbors has held meetings at the church, as have other groups. During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was an active theater group that performed here. Performances included I’m Not Rappaport and An Evening with Martin and Langston, with Danny Glover appearing as Langston Hughes. On October 12, 1997, the Howard Thurman Convocation was held at Fellowship Church, with a panel discussion called “The Luminous Darkness,” the name of one of Dr. Thurman’s many philosophical books. Bishop Chester Talton presided. On Sunday, October 13, the Convocation presented “An Unfinished Future: Rekindling the Search for Common Ground,” with featured speaker Dr. Allan Boesak from South Africa, where he was active in the struggle against apartheid.

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The Norwegian Seamen’s Church, perched high above the northeastern waterfront of San Francisco, is one of a network of 30 churches and 16 mobile services worldwide, established in 1864 to serve the moral and religious needs of Scandinavian seamen as well as a place to speak Norwegian with fellow countrymen in the faraway places their seafaring took them. Today, the churches serve about 7,000 Norwegians annually who are travelling abroad and want to read a newspaper from home, buy familiar food, and find general respite in a welcoming environment. In places where consular services are not available, the churches and traveling pastors can assist with such things as marriage and birth certificates, and general travelers’ aid services. Several institutions in San Francisco served Scandinavian sailors, beginning in the 1890s with the Lutheran Seamen’s Mission, open to Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish seamen, into the 1940s. In 1898, the Norwegian Club was founded to promote fellowship among the Norwegian-American communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Club still exists and is located at 1900 Fell Street. Serious discussions about establishing a Seamen’s Church in California began as early as 1936, as the Norwegian merchant fleet grew and more sailors were arriving here. The southern California location of San Pedro was chosen for the site of the first Norwegian Seamen’s Church in 1941. Six years later, in 1947, a San Francisco committee was formed with the support of then Norwegian Consul General J. Gable. They eventually located a suitable property at 2454 Hyde Street, a private residence built in 1937. Funds were raised, a loan was taken, and the property was purchased for $47,500. An additional $10,000 was spent on remodeling. The official opening came on October 15, 1951. In addition to its magnificent view of San Francisco Bay, the location had the important advantage of having easy access to the seamen whose mission it was to serve. The ground floor of the building features a chapel for weekly worship, weddings, and other celebrations. It is also available for nonprofit meetings, and RHN held its 2022 Annual Meeting there. The Francisco Park Conservancy held its meetings at the Church throughout the years of planning for the new park. The second floor has a terrace with a commanding view, a comfortable lounge, kitchen facilities, and a gift shop with Norwegian crafts and specialty foods. There are also on-site living quarters for resident pastors or location hosts who take multi-year assignments to oversee the activities and mission of the Church. Currently, Pastor John and his wife Julie are residing at the facility, and the newly arrived host couple, Hildegunn and Trond, live close by in the neighborhood. RHN was honored to have them attend our holiday party and get to know them better. If you are walking by the Church, consider dropping in and introducing yourself. On a Saturday, you might find yourself enjoying Norwegian porridge. There is a reading room, a variety of holiday activities, and Sunday worship services. You can find more information at the Church’s website, which is in Norwegian, but there is a tab for English translation: San Francisco | The Norwegian Seamen’s Church (sjomannskirken.no) . RHN has long recognized the importance of the Church to our neighborhood. In the 1980s, then RNH Newsletter editor Jack Casford wrote: “One of the most spectacular panoramas in any American City – San Francisco Bay, Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Hills, as seen from the corner of Hyde and Francisco Streets – there flies incongruously yet somehow wonderfully, the flag of the Kingdom of Norway. It has, since 1951, been the home of the Norwegian Seamen’s Church. Although it occupies a handsome, white neoclassical mansion and is passed by a multitude of tourists, it remains an undiscovered jewel in the neighborhood. A retaining wall, broken only by an iron grill and a brass address sign, obscures it from all who pass by – unless they look up – the Norse have, indeed, landed! Next time you climb the hill on Russian Hill, look up and note the flags.” Better yet, climb the stairs and find yourself welcomed in for a cup of coffee, a waffle, and interesting conversation. What a delightful resource that we as Russian Hill residents are privileged to enjoy!