By Jerry F. Schimmel
TWO BLOCKS EAST of the Presidio, near the Lombard Street Main Gate, the swinging doors of Headquarters, 24th Infantry, saluted the neighbors of peaceful Cow Hollow. The name suggests a command post, although the establishment's value to the Army was best argued over several foaming glasses.
The "HQ" was one of a half-dozen unruly premises called "Presidio saloons." But it's been forgotten even during Black History Month despite its role as the first of the notable honky tonks owned by two enterprising men who would become major players in the Barbary Coast in the early years of the century.
Old maps show the bar at 2700 Greenwich St. on the northwest corner of Broderick Street. No directory ever listed the Headquarters, but it must have opened in 1898 when large numbers of troops moved through town en route to the Philippines Insurrection.
Lew Purcell and Sam King, men from Iowa, tired of lugging suitcases. Born during the Civil War, their career opportunities as Black men led them to jobs as Pullman car porters, or so the story goes. By the mid-1890s, and in their 30s, they had to make something happen or stay forever on the Chicago run.
Frisco beckoned. Every skin color, physiognomy, language, accent and nationality mixed here. How you looked on the street did not much matter if you had money. Of course, it sounds easier than it must have been. Bleak laws limited the civil rights of anyone not white, and The City's turn-of-the-century ambivalence over Chinatown made weekly news copy.
Even so, San Francisco was not the Midwest or South. From somewhere, the two got money together and opened the Headquarters, their first 24-hour adult amusement palace. Saloon men knew that soldiers had heavy pockets. Black and white troops were indistinguishable in two respects. Both were suckers for cheap liquor and Frisco dance hall girls.
The Army's 24th Infantry Regiment, and later the 25th, were units of Black enlisted men, ready-made starter markets for the partners' brand of the local stock-in-trade.
All that survives from the once-bustling saloon are brass tokens, one for 10 cents, the other for 25 cents. The smaller bought a drink or the spin of a slot machine; the larger, a dance. Frisco saloonkeepers who issued two tokens usually employed women called "Percentage Girls." The title was applied regardless of age.
Every time a drink was sold or a dance was stepped, the woman got a token. At the end of a night, her pieces of stamped metal were redeemed for cash. The fate of the HQ isn't clear, but by 1899, the partners had moved downtown to open the Arcadia Club at 23 Stockton St. just off Market Street. By the late '90s, downtown was dominated by family-oriented merchants and corporation leaders uncomfortable with our city's pastimes.
The heat was on to close white-owned Market Street dives like the Cafe Royal, Midway Plaisance and Thalia Cafe. The Maiden Lane brothels had been closed in 1892, although informal enterprises carried on there for years.
In 1900, the partners relocated to 316 Grant Ave. near Harlan Place, a smaller version of Maiden Lane. However, by 1901, even lower Grant Avenue was too close. They moved into 520 Pacific St. on the Barbary Coast. Business took off.
Blacks have been part of San Francisco since the first whalers jumped ship in the 1840s, but numbers were small. They lived mainly near the north waterfront and on the Barbary Coast, that is, Frisco's Old Town. The Berkeley and Oakland black communities grew up after the railroads came. By the 1890s, "colored" Odd Fellows Lodges were holding statewide conventions in Sacramento with representatives from all major California cities, including San Francisco.
SEVERAL BLACK PUBLICANS and general entrepreneurs did notably well. William A. Leidesdorff succeeded in the 1840s by selling hides, tallow and general merchandise, held several civic positions and operated the first transbay ferry with room for nine passengers. The Broadway Exchange, a hotel and saloon in the 1880s at 5 Broadway, was run by John T. Callendar, a ship's chandler and supplier to merchant sea firms. James W. Gordon provided one of the few hostelries, the Dixie Hotel, for single, working-class Black men at 750 Pacific St.
Anything went on the Barbary Coast. As a part of The City, it was something apart. It was both seductive and repugnant to the white middle class. Forty years before sailors had christened the district after pirates who plied North African waters, Frisco's buccaneers were saloonkeepers, dance hall girls, crimps, prostitutes, junk dealers and small hotel managers who infested Pacific Street from the water up the hill to Stockton Street.
("Pacific Street," which had become a synonym for vice, was renamed "Pacific Avenue" in 1929 at the request of reformists.)
Black-owned saloons and terpsichorean parlors imparted vigor to the district. In 1894, the Crow's Nest provided women of every race for customers of just as many. William Wheatley, a ship's steward, opened a saloon on Broadway in 1903. Louis Gomez, a Portuguese Black, opened the House of All Nations at 487 Pacific St. in 1912. Izzy Gomez, another Portuguese Black, ran a smaller place across the street. It was famous in the 1930s and '40s for Izzy's North Beach grappa.
The availability of women was the attraction of "the Coast." Dance hall women or "percentage girls" were paid when men spent money on drinks. Their main sales technique was a vague promise of sex, rarely kept.
Prostitutes worked in houses of varying quality, their services and income strictly controlled by the madams. The dance saloons and brothels were mostly on the east side of town. Pricey bordellos were situated near Union Square.
By late 1903, the partnership between Purcell and King had soured. Purcell stayed at 520 Pacific St., and King moved to 498 Pacific St. King's new place became the Needmore.
The April 1906 earthquake and fire wiped out both clubs. Neither stayed down. King had a new permit by July and reopened the second Needmore at 468 Pacific St. Purcell came back with the old street number.
The So Different came to be "Purcell's." Upstairs at 520, the 1910 Census counted seven young women with occupations listed as "waitress" and "entertainer." A smaller unit of females was listed on King's second floor.
Pioneer Black jazzmen from New Orleans sat in after hours at the So Different when they booked into Frisco. St. Louis ragtime composer Tom Turpin, a contemporary and acquaintance of Scott Joplin, warmed the piano bench at Purcell's in late 1906. Jelly Roll Morton came to town in 1913; King Oliver in 1923.
DANCES LIKE THE Turkey Trot, Texas Tommy and Bunny Hug were introduced to the beat of jazzed-up marches and ragtime. According to some, the word "jazz" first came into print here at that time.
Celebrities dropped in on "the Coast" and at Purcell's in particular. Prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, singer Al Jolson and publisher William Randolph Hearst were counted among the saloon's customers.
Purcell died just before Christmas in 1909 at his McGee Street home in Berkeley, the funeral supplied by his Odd Fellows Lodge. King collapsed at the Need-more two weeks later in January 1910, DOA at Central Emergency Hospital. Both were said to be victims of saloonkeeper's syndrome – kidney failure from too much drink.
Rosa Purcell kept shop until 1912, when she sold out to Lester Mapp, a sailor from Barbados and bartender for Purcell. Mapp then bought the Needmore from Lydia King and eventually owned a half dozen spots in the district. In the 1920s and '30s, he became known as an impresario for black community events throughout the Bay Area.
Nowadays, the partners' buildings make up part of the Jackson Square Historic District. Purcell's brick-walled dive stands unchanged and bears the address 550 Pacific Ave. Sue Monser's International Contract Furnishings takes up the ground floor dance hall.
Sam King's Needmore has become law offices, the structure gutted and remodeled several times over.
In what was Gordon's Dixie Hotel at 750 Pacific St., a Chinatown general store occupies the former saloon; upstairs, a low-budget rooming house makes space for urban survivors.
Purcell's name was revived in 1917 for a dance hall at Jackson Street and Columbus Avenue. During the short-lived Barbary Coast Revival of 1934, the name blazed in neon for a few short weeks over what is now Phil and Mona Malik's office furnishings store at 553 Pacific Ave.
Today, "Purcell's" can be seen on one wall of the Evergreen Hotel, a square, creaky building at the northwest corner of Columbus Avenue and Broadway. A large mural coils around the double-hung windows. The mural shows jazz musicians and Barbary Coast dance hall signs with names like Spider Kelly, The Thalia and The Bear. Each has its own story.
San Francisco Examiner
Feb. 24, 1995
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