Formation | 1901 |
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Type | Private Men's Social Club |
Purpose | Arts, politics, business |
Location |
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The Family is a private club in San Francisco, California, formed in 1902 by newspapermen who in protest, left the Bohemian Club due to censorship. It maintains a clubhouse in San Francisco, as well as rural property 35 miles to the south in Woodside. It is an exclusive, invitation-only, all-male club where new members are referred to as "Babies", regular members as "Children" and the club president as the "Father".
The Family conducts periodic social events among the redwood and oak trees and open meadows at its rural property on the San Francisco peninsula. The Family Farm entrance is along Portola Road in Woodside.
Among other charitable activities, The Family sponsors a hospital in Guatemala along with volunteer participation from many members. [1] Club rules forbid the use of its facilities or services for the purposes of trade or business. Each member must certify that he will not deduct any part of club payments as business expenses for federal or state income tax purposes. This practice allows for membership to step away from business entirely and instead pursue friendships and the arts.
The Family Club was formed in 1901 after Ambrose Bierce wrote a poem that seemed to predict President William McKinley's death by an assassin's bullet. The Hearst chain of newspapers including the "San Francisco Examiner" and others owned by William Randolph Hearst published the poem, and some of the Bohemian Club members took offense. When McKinley was assassinated shortly thereafter, opponents of Hearst created a fervor over the poem's publication and banned Hearst newspapers from the premises. A group of 14 reporters, editors, and other Hearst newsmen, in the spirit of true Bohemians and asserting freedom of the press, resigned in protest to the censorship, formed their own club, and called it The Family. [2]
Early public activities by the club included the sponsoring of a horse race called the Family Club Handicap held in Oakland in 1904. A racehorse named Fossil took first place, receiving a silver cup from the Family as well as US$1,000 from the California Jockey Club. [3]
The Family clubhouse was originally located at 228 Post Street, but the building was lost two days after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in the subsequent calamitous fire, though not before serving as a temporary rest station and meal place for earthquake victims such as the bereft Conreid Metropolitan Opera Company. [4] The club rebuilt at the corner of Powell and Bush Streets, and still conducts meetings at this site two blocks from the peak of Nob Hill.
The Family's clubhouse has been a venue for musical events, such as an annual benefit for San Francisco Sinfonietta, [5] and for black-tie dinner lectures by various experts and personages, such as Stanlee Gatti speaking to benefit horticultural programs, [6] and Charles M. Schulz appearing to promote the Cartoon Art Museum. [7]
In 1909, Family club members decided upon the Woodside location for their rural getaways. While summering there in 1912, club members of a variety of religious backgrounds including Judaism, Protestantism and Catholicism pooled their resources to build a Catholic church in nearby Portola Valley: Our Lady of the Wayside Church. Architect member James R. Miller assigned the design of the church to a promising young draftsman at his firm, Timothy L. Pflueger. This was Pflueger's first architectural commission, and was the start of his interaction with The Family. Pflueger would soon join The Family to become a member in good standing, [2] and ultimately designed "The Tavern" at the Family Farm as an indoor performance venue, and a new interior for the City Home clubhouse, both being still in use today.
The annual "Flight Play", as well as a number of other stage and musical performances, are written and performed by club members. Plays aren't published or performed outside of the club, and all original written materials are retained as the sole property of the club. [8] One handwritten musical score, Thine Enemy, composed by Meredith Willson for the 1937 Flight Play 20 years before The Music Man was staged on Broadway, will be donated by The Family to a museum in the composer's birthplace, Mason City, Iowa. [9]
Artists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco were guests of architect Timothy Pflueger's at The Family Farm in 1930. The two leftist Mexican muralists argued forcefully with one another about art during one visit. [10]
Portola Valley is a town in San Mateo County, California, United States. Located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the Bay Area, Portola Valley is a small, wealthy, mostly white community nestled on the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Woodside is a small incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It has a council–manager system of government.
The Pacific Exchange was a regional stock exchange in California, from 1956 to 2006. Its main exchange floor and building were in San Francisco, California, with a branch building in Los Angeles, California.
Julia Morgan was an American architect and engineer. She designed more than 700 buildings in California during a long and prolific career. She is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.
The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California, and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists, and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, the club has a membership of many local and global leaders, ranging from artists and musicians to businessmen. Membership is restricted to men only.
Arthur Brown Jr. (1874–1957) was an American architect, based in San Francisco and designer of many of its landmarks. He is known for his work with John Bakewell Jr. as Bakewell and Brown, along with later works after the partnership dissolved in 1927.
Bernard Ralph Maybeck was an American architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He was an instructor at University of California, Berkeley. Most of his major buildings were in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Ladera is a census-designated place (CDP) in southern San Mateo County, California, adjacent to Portola Valley. Primarily a residential community, it comprises approximately 520 homes, governed by the Ladera Community Association. The ZIP Code is 94028 and the community is inside area code 650. The population was 1,557 at the 2020 census.
Willis Jefferson Polk was an American architect, best known for his work in San Francisco, California. For ten years, he was the West Coast representative of D.H. Burnham & Company. In 1915, Polk oversaw the architectural committee for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition (PPIE).
Holy Names University was a private Roman Catholic university in Oakland, California. It was founded in 1868 by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary with which the university remained affiliated until it closed in 2023.
The Pacific-Union Club is a social club located at 1000 California Street in San Francisco, California, at the top of Nob Hill. It is considered to be the most elite club of the West Coast, and one of the most elite clubs in the United States, along with the Knickerbocker Club in New York, the Metropolitan Club in Washington D.C., and the Somerset Club in Boston.
Timothy Ludwig Pflueger was an architect, interior designer and architectural lighting designer in the San Francisco Bay Area in the first half of the 20th century. Together with James R. Miller, Pflueger designed some of the leading skyscrapers and movie theaters in San Francisco in the 1920s, and his works featured art by challenging new artists such as Ralph Stackpole and Diego Rivera. Rather than breaking new ground with his designs, Pflueger captured the spirit of the times and refined it, adding a distinct personal flair. His work influenced later architects such as Pietro Belluschi.
Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton is a private, Roman Catholic, co-educational school in Atherton, California, United States. It was established in 1898 by the Society of the Sacred Heart and is governed by an independent board of trustees.
James Rupert Miller was an architect active in San Francisco, California in the first half of the 20th century. Miller gained prominence after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake when his firm was one among many called upon to rebuild the stricken city.
Our Lady of the Wayside Church is a modest church built in 1912 for the then-growing Catholic parish of Portola Valley by a combined effort of Jewish, Protestant and Catholic members of The Family, a San Francisco men's club that owns a nearby rural retreat.
Ralph Ward Stackpole was an American sculptor, painter, muralist, etcher and art educator, San Francisco's leading artist during the 1920s and 1930s. Stackpole was involved in the art and causes of social realism, especially during the Great Depression, when he was part of the Public Works of Art Project, Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, and the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture. Stackpole was responsible for recommending that architect Timothy L. Pflueger bring Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to San Francisco to work on the San Francisco Stock Exchange and its attached office tower in 1930–31. His son Peter Stackpole became a well-known photojournalist.
Miller and Pflueger was an architectural firm that formed when James Rupert Miller named Timothy L. Pflueger partner. Pflueger, at the time a rising star of San Francisco's architect community, had begun his architectural career with architecture firm, Miller and Colmesnil sometime in 1907, under the tutelage of James Rupert Miller. Together, Miller and Pflueger designed a number of significant buildings in San Francisco, including the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building which was the city's tallest skyscraper for four decades.
Clarence William Whitehead Mayhew was an American architect best known as a designer of residential structures in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recognition came to him with a home designed in 1937 for the Manor family in Orinda, California; one which was included as an example of modern architecture's effect on the contemporary ranch house in California in several post-war published compilations of residential works.
Charles Stafford Duncan (1892–1952) was a San Francisco painter and lithographer perhaps best known for his mural in the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. He won the Benjamin Altman Prize from the National Academy of Design in 1937.