The New Fillmore

“Fillmore Street Lights Its Lamps,” the Chronicle reported on December 24, 1896. “Crowds Throng the Walks,” the headlines announced. “Brilliant lights and colors abound — a dazzling spectacle with an accompaniment of music.”
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The Fillmore ski jump in September 2005.

In 2005 it snowed in the neighborhood on the hottest day of the year — and 15,000 people showed up to watch world-class skiers jump down the Fillmore hill.

The ski jump is back, but this year it won’t be on Fillmore. Organizers have announced that the event will move to AT&T Park, where a 100-foot ski and snowboard jump will descend from the scoreboard and be covered by 200 tons of snow.

Last year’s event — a kind of extreme 30th birthday party for local Olympic ski champ Jonny Moseley — was strenuously opposed by many neighbors, some of whom cited concerns over security and insurance coverage. But Mayor Gavin Newsom avidly supported the event, calling it “another chapter in San Francisco’s long history of oddity,” and eventually the opposition was overcome.

The Fillmore jump “was a novel event and it’s not going to look like that exactly again,” Moseley said. “It will be a different flavor, but the same excitement.”

Connie McCole, one of the opponents of last year’s event, said, “We maintained throughout the controversy last year that the ski jump could be a great event if held in an appropriate place. They have found the perfect location, and we wish them a successful event.”

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Calvary Presbyterian Church opened on Fillmore Street — its third location — with a community Thanksgiving service in November 1902.

The church moved to Fillmore from Union Square to make way for the construction of the St. Francis Hotel. Much of the Powell Street church — including all of the pews and over a million of the bricks — was moved and re-used in the church on Fillmore Street. An education building on the north side was replaced in 1980. Three of the large window arches from the old building were saved and mounted outside the floor-to-ceiling windows on the west wall of the new building.
 
Calvary’s first location, from 1854 to 1868, was downtown on Bush at Montgomery where the Mills Building stands today.

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Photograph by David Johnson

Then as now, the intersection of Fillmore and Post was also the intersection of two neighborhoods. Japanese-Americans had returned from the internment camps of World War II to find that, in their absence, African-Americans had arrived in record numbers as part of the war effort. What had been Japantown had been transformed into an all-night party of jumping jazz joints. This photograph captures the energy of the neighborhood in 1946. In the background, at Geary and Fillmore, stands the Fillmore Auditorium — then as now.

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June 1906. Fillmore & Sutter looking north.

Fillmore Street quickly became “the new Market Street” after the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906, which devastated most of downtown San Francisco. Businesses had to find temporary locations elsewhere, and Fillmore Street was largely untouched by the catastrophe. Businesses crowded into existing buildings, sharing whatever quarters they could find. This photograph, taken two months after the earthquake in June 1906 shows Fillmore Street looking north from Sutter.

The Chronicle opened its temporary office (right) on April 22 while the last embers of the fire were still smoldering. Real estate agents, jewelers, banks, insurance agents, typewriters (typists) and other businesses soon followed. Their temporary signs dominated the street. The Relay tobacco and liquor store on the corner undoubtedly experienced increased business.

— ROBERT OAKS, author of San Francisco’s Fillmore District (Arcadia, 2005)

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