THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8160, 18 June 1906, Page 7

THE NEW SAN FRANCISCO.

Out of the desolate waste of ashes and the utter annihilation of all her glory, oat of the ruin and wreckage that cumber her sand fiats and rooky hills, a new San Francisco, pboanixlike, is to arise fairer and stronger tban before. In 1905 when never a thought of the present horror was present in the miuds of the citizens, plans ou a monumental scale had been prepared for still further beautifying the Californian metropolis. The plana were prepared by the famous architect JBurnham, of Chicago, collaborating with the foremost architects, artists, sculptors, and landscape gardeners of the "West. The project had been forme! fry the Civic League for the beautifying of San Francisco, ud organisation composed of the rrost prominent and woalthy citizens under the direction of James Phelan, former Mayor of San Francisco, pation of arts, and multi-millionaire; Clans Spreckels, the sugar kiug, and Nathan Dohrmann, president of the Merchants' Association, who had thoroughly studied the beauties of the world's fairest cities. The population of the oifey had steadily increased; her harbour, through ■which swept most of the traffic towards the Far East, was thronged with shipping; prosperity and progress marched hand in hand; a great stimulus lay in the inspiriug air. The entire reople with the light-bearted.spirit that distinguishes them from ali other Americans—due, perhaps, to the natural beauty and wealth of their envir onment, their ease of existence in the joyous climate, so like that of Italy, and their lack of a past beyond the classic days of El Dorado —bailed the groat soheme with delight. The municipality prepared to issue £10,000,000 in bonds, all of which would have been taken by the citizens. The huge labours were soon to begin—the building of Ibe City Beautiful, the Athens of Ameica, the future home of her arts and her muses. Considering her brief history, no State in the Union had achieved so much in art, music, and literature as California. Her people, lesa commercial by instinot, possess certain Greek and Latin trait?, and intense activity has been -displayed by them in fostering the nobler fruits of culture These plans, which 1 propose to describe, have now a vivid interest, since It is according to them that San fc'ran- • oisco is to be rebuilt. From the ferry depot with its graoeful tower patterned after that of La Giralda, in Seville, Market Street extended south westerly, diagonally, intersecting the streets to the north and stopping at right anales the streets to the south. At the far end of this main artery of the city are two impressive oonioal bills, the Twin Peaks. The magnificent City Hall was invisible from Market Street, hidden by rows of insignifloant business buildings which it was intended to clear away. Close by, at the junction of Market Street with Van Ness Avenue, a beautiful wide boulevard with fine residences, a vast oiroular cannonade was to be built, with fountains and allegorical groups of statuary. This will form the oore of the city, the hub from which many new streets will radiate, much like thsseof Washington or Vienna. Golden Gate Park, with its lawns, forests, flowers, p.nd drives, will be extended by means of its "panhandle" for miles into the city, close to this central point. Telegraph Hill was, It was proposed, to be tnrraoed with sloping walks and gardens with marble steps and overhanging galleries, and its ffamous castle, mediaeval in style, rebuilt in stone. The eminence of Russian,' Nob, and Rincon Hills, of Panassus and Pacific Heights, it was designed to crown with imposing masses, artistically reared to form one harmoious whole. A part of the Mission (so named from its (settlement by the Spanish Franciscan Fathers) ia according to the 1905 plan, to be embraced by the great loop, over twenty-five miles long, winding and rising and falling according to the ground. California Street, where it rises steeply from the heart of the banking district in Montgomery Street—which formerly marked the shore of the bay—to the summit of Nub Hill, it was suggested should be covered with an elaborate structure of winding inclined planes beneath which a tunnel was to run from the cable cars that glide up and down these soaring utreets, where no vehicle dare venture. Public spiritod millionaires signified their intention of donating land and buildings for the benefit of the people following the example of Mrs Phoebe A. Hearst, who had recently built a spacious opeu-air Greek theatre as an adjunct to the University of California, and of Glaus Spreckels, who had bestowed upon the city the gift of a colossal arched music-stand of sculptured stone, erected on Golden Gate Park at a cost of £16,000. The building of a magnificent new Opera House was likewise assured, which was to exceed in splendour and Bize anything in the Western Hemisphere, A new Continental railway line, the Western Pacifio, an enterprise of the Goulds, is under way, its terminons being ; at San Francisco. This young city, which has not yet attained to the average span of a human life since its founding in 1850, the capital of a State three and one-half times as large as England, Scotland, and Ireland, taken together, reached at the beginning of 1906 a population which the last local estimates proclaimed to be close on half a trillion souls. It was felt to be fitting that San Franoisoo should present in her external aspect that visible expression of beauty, wealth, and dignity worthy of her wonderful grbWth, her prosperity, and mighty future. San Francisco is now a "clean slate" upon which the genius and inspiration of her architects and artiite, the energy and ambition nf her citizens, and the faith of her moneyed men may ereot anew an incomparable city. Thrice triumphant over the devastation by former fires, once before levelled low by the earthen tides of the earthquake of 1868, San Francisco is to arise once more.