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The restaurant that started it all: the hidden heritage of San Francisco’s Fisherman's Wharf

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The restaurant that started it all: the hidden heritage of San Francisco’s Fisherman's Wharf

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Content THE RESTAURANT THAT STARTED IT ALL
THE HIDDEN HERITAGE OF SAN FRANCISCO’S FISHERMAN’S WHARF
by
Emi Takahara
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HERITAGE CONSERVATION
December 2023
Copyright 2023 Emi Takahara

ii
EPIGRAPH

Fresh cracked crab with Boudin’s round “dark bake” sourdough
and a well-chilled bottle of California Chardonnay
is still the quintessential S.F. meal.

Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, November 17, 1995

iii
DEDICATION

For my parents, Beau and Takeshi, for their tireless, and I mean tireless, encouragement.
And for Larry, I’m so glad you’re here.

iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not have been possible without the support of many people. I am filled
with such deep gratitude for all of the encouragement I received from my family, friends,
classmates, professors, acquaintances, and even strangers. I would first like to thank my thesis
committee. I am deeply indebted to my committee chair, Trudi Sandmeier, for being my relentless
cheerleader who kept motivating me to move forward and tirelessly guided me over the finish line
when she had so much on her plate. A huge thank you to my committee members. Jay Platt, for
your excellent suggestions, humor, and making time for me on short notice and Meredith Drake
Reitan for also making time for me and your thoughtful comments and kindness.
Special thanks go to all of the people I interviewed for this thesis: Dave D’Mato, Tom
Creedon, Dan Giraudo, Paul Capurro, Catherine Lazio, Randall Scott and especially Anthony and
Michael Geraldi, without whose help, this thesis would not have been possible. And to all of the
librarians and academics who took the time to speak with me and answer my many questions. I am
also extremely grateful to Ann Cromey for editing and patience; Lola Milholland for inspiration,
retreats, and talking through your process with me, many times; and Nancy Choi who got me
through to the end.
Lastly, an extra special thank you to my family and friends for your exceptional support.
Jan and Bryson, Ann and Robert, Ben and Karen, Adam and Larry were all instrumental in getting
me to graduate school. To my thesis buddies who helped me get through graduate school: Brannon,
Stacy, Dani, Masha, and especially Emily, who really cheered me on and helped me pull it all
together. To all of my dear friends for your endless encouragement. Thank you to Joe, for your
love, support and keeping me fed.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

EPIGRAPH .................................................................................................................................... ii
DEDICATION .............................................................................................................................. iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... iv
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... viii
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................. xi
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1
Italian Foodways and Tourism ........................................................................................................ 4
Foodways in Preservation ................................................................................................................ 4
Italian Food at Fisherman’s Wharf .................................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER 1 : EARLY LIFE IN THE BAY AREA ................................................................... 7
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 7
The Yelamu ..................................................................................................................................... 9
The Arrival of the Spanish ............................................................................................................. 12
They Came by the Boatload - The Gold Rush ............................................................................... 17
CHAPTER 2 : ITALIAN AMERICANS, FROM “ETHNIC” TO AMERICAN .................. 23
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 23
Leaving the Kingdom of Italy ........................................................................................................ 23
Settling into the City ...................................................................................................................... 29
Colombo Market ............................................................................................................................ 32
Fishing San Francisco Bay ............................................................................................................ 36
The Port and the Wharf .................................................................................................................. 36
Italian and Sicilian Fishermen ....................................................................................................... 37
Chinese Fishermen-The First to Fish Commercially ..................................................................... 39
The Fishing Fleet ........................................................................................................................... 41
Blessing of the Fleet ....................................................................................................................... 42
Italians During World War II ........................................................................................................ 45
Famous Italian American Food Businesses ................................................................................... 51
Ghirardelli Chocolate ..................................................................................................................... 51
Del Monte Foods ........................................................................................................................... 52
Rice-A-Roni ................................................................................................................................... 53

vi
Early Italian Restaurants ................................................................................................................ 55
1852-Tam O’ Shanter .................................................................................................................... 56
1859-Campi’s ................................................................................................................................ 57
1888- Sanguinetti’s ........................................................................................................................ 57
1886 -Fior d’Italia .......................................................................................................................... 58
Early 1900s-Coppa’s ..................................................................................................................... 59
CHAPTER 3 : FISHERMEN’S GROTTO NO. 9 .................................................................... 61
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 61
How the Restaurant Began ............................................................................................................ 63
Building and Site History .............................................................................................................. 66
Inside the Restaurant ...................................................................................................................... 75
Imported Giftwares Shop ............................................................................................................... 79
The Little Fisherman ...................................................................................................................... 80
Neon Signs ..................................................................................................................................... 82
Tourists and Fishermen’s Grotto ................................................................................................... 84
Working at Fishermen’s Grotto ..................................................................................................... 90
The Family ..................................................................................................................................... 91
Employees Over the Years ............................................................................................................ 95
Selling their Legacy ....................................................................................................................... 98
CHAPTER 4 :FISHERMEN’S GROTTO CULINARY HISTORY AND EVOLUTION . 101
Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 101
Menus and Food through the Years ............................................................................................. 102
Cioppino and Italian Dishes ......................................................................................................... 103
Wartime and the Mid-Century ..................................................................................................... 106
The 1970s ..................................................................................................................................... 107
Clam Chowder and the Wharf ..................................................................................................... 109
Crab Louis ................................................................................................................................... 110
CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... 113
Preservation Protections and Strategies ....................................................................................... 114
Local Protections ......................................................................................................................... 114
Landmark Designation Program .................................................................................................. 115
Legacy Business Program............................................................................................................ 116

vii
Cultural Districts Program ........................................................................................................... 118
Federal ......................................................................................................................................... 120
National Register of Historic Places ............................................................................................ 120
Traditional Cultural Property ....................................................................................................... 122
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 125
APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 144

viii
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: Map of Yelamu Villages .................................................................................................. 8
Figure 1.2: Tcholovonis Hunting in San Francisco Bayy ................................................................ 10
Figure 1.3: Bateau du port de San Francisco. ................................................................................... 12
Figure 1.4: “Birthplace of a Great City” Plaque ............................................................................... 15
Figure 1.5: View of San Francisco, formerly Yerba Buena, in 1846-7 ............................................ 16
Figure 1.6: "High and Dry" Frank Marryat, artist, 1855 .................................................................. 19
Figure 2.1: Map of Italian Regions .................................................................................................. 26
Figure 2.2: Map of North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf ............................................................... 29
Figure 2.3: “Home of the Hoodlums” .............................................................................................. 30
Figure 2.4: North Beach and the Golden Gate ................................................................................. 31
Figure 2.5: Map of Italian Settlements ............................................................................................. 33
Figure 2.6: Colombo Market, 1910. ................................................................................................. 35
Figure 2.7: Old Fisherman’s Wharf. ................................................................................................. 36
Figure 2.8: Feluccas at Fisherman's Wharf, 1908 ............................................................................ 38
Figure 2.9: Chinese Shrimping Village, 1859 .................................................................................. 39
Figure 2.10: Monterey Clippers. ....................................................................................................... 42
Figure 2.11: Queen and her Court .................................................................................................... 43
Figure 2.12: Blessing of the Fleet, ca. 1940 ..................................................................................... 44
Figure 2.13: Fisherman's Wharf, 1943 ............................................................................................. 48
Figure 2.14: “Fish is a Fighting Food: We Need More” .................................................................. 50
Figure 2.15: Rice-A-Roni and Kikkoman Advertisement, 1974 ...................................................... 54
Figure 2.16: Fior d’Italia Menu, 1886 .............................................................................................. 58
Figure 2.17: Fior d'Italia after 1906 Earthquake .............................................................................. 59
Figure 2.18: Mural inside of Coppa's ............................................................................................... 60

ix
Figure 3.1: Crab vendors on Taylor Street ....................................................................................... 62
Figure 3.2: Early Fishermen's Grotto Business Card ....................................................................... 65
Figure 3.3: F.E. Booth Packing House, ca. 1921.............................................................................. 67
Figure 3.4: F.E. Booth Building and Empty Lot .............................................................................. 68
Figure 3.5: Mike Geraldi, ca. 1934 ................................................................................................... 68
Figure 3.6: Crab pots at Fisherman's Wharf, July 28, 1934 ............................................................. 69
Figure 3.7: Fishermen's Grotto, 1935 ............................................................................................... 70
Figure 3.8: Fishermen's Grotto in Ducan Hines, 1941 ..................................................................... 71
Figure 3.9: Mike Geraldi with "Queen for a Day" Winner .............................................................. 72
Figure 3.10: Fishermen's Grotto, ca. 1940s. ..................................................................................... 74
Figure 3.11: Fishermen’s Grotto, ca. early 1950s ............................................................................ 74
Figure 3.12: Fishermen's Grotto, ca. 1958 ....................................................................................... 75
Figure 3.13: The Venetian Room ..................................................................................................... 76
Figure 3.14: Fireplace Cocktail Lounge, ca. 1950s. ......................................................................... 78
Figure 3.15: Florentine Dining Room, ca. 1950s ............................................................................. 78
Figure 3.16: Imported Giftwares Shop. ............................................................................................ 79
Figure 3.17: Painting the Little Fisherman ....................................................................................... 81
Figure 3.18: Vintage Little Fisherman Souvenirs ............................................................................ 81
Figure 3.19: Little Fisherman Tattoo ................................................................................................ 82
Figure 3.20: Fisherman’s Wharf Restaurants ................................................................................... 83
Figure 3.21: Universal Studios Japan ............................................................................................... 84
Figure 3.22: Vintage menus from Fisherman's Wharf ..................................................................... 85
Figure 3.23: Map of Restaurants and Attractions. ............................................................................ 85
Figure 3.24: Mike Geraldi with "Queen for a Day" and Crabs ........................................................ 86
Figure 3.25: Nino Geraldi with President Ronald Reagan ............................................................... 88

x
Figure 3.26: Geraldi Family with “Queen for a Day” Winner ......................................................... 91
Figure 3.27: Nino and Roberto Geraldi. ........................................................................................... 92
Figure 3.28: Anthony and Michael Geraldi. ..................................................................................... 94
Figure 3.29: Fishermen’s Grotto Staff. ............................................................................................. 96
Figure 3.30: "Raymond" (Man Fu Tse) ............................................................................................ 97
Figure 4.1: Early Fishermen's Grotto Menu, 1936. ........................................................................ 103
Figure 4.2: “Chioppino or Bouillabaisse” ...................................................................................... 105
Figure 4.3: Menu, 1971 .................................................................................................................. 107
Figure 4.4: Menu, Interior, 1971 .................................................................................................... 108
Figure 4.5: Recipe for Cioppino ..................................................................................................... 111
Figure 4.6: Commercial Fishing Boats ........................................................................................... 112

Figure C.1: Map of Selected Fisherman’s Wharf Restaurants............…...……...……............…...114
xi
ABSTRACT
San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf is one of the top tourist destinations in the United
States, making it a requisite stop for travelers exploring the city. However, for many, this part of
San Francisco has long been dismissed as just another tourist trap. At the heart of Fisherman’s
Wharf are the seafood restaurants that line the edges of the Wharf, having grown out of sidewalk
stalls where fishermen and vendors sold the day’s catch. Many of these restaurants have been in
business for almost a century, mostly run by the Italian American families who started them.
One family in particular, the Geraldi’s, paved the way for these other restaurants by
opening Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, the first full-service restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. In doing
so, the restaurants that followed became the building blocks for the area, shaping the landscape we
now recognize as Fisherman’s Wharf. Most tourists and San Francisco locals, despite the City’s
reputation for culinary innovation, remain unaware of the cultural and culinary heritage hidden
beneath Fisherman's Wharf's tourist-focused exterior.
This thesis explores the spatial and culinary history of this vibrant urban area, the threat to
its continuing vitality, and the ways in which historic preservation may be able to play a role in its
future.

1
INTRODUCTION

Fisherman's Wharf at Jefferson and Taylor streets is undoubtedly one of the most colorful
and pleasant places for any tourist open (or native) to go for lunch or dinner, no matter
what the weather or time of year. As you sit at one of the window tables, enjoying the
wonderful food and magnificent view, your curiosity will probably be aroused--where did
all this come from? What made this possible?

--Henry Evans, Fisherman’s Wharf, 1957

A number of years back, around 2009, I found myself at Fisherman’s Wharf. As a
longtime San Franciscan, who grew up in the city, this was perhaps a bit unusual. Many San
Franciscans I knew avoided the area, viewing it as a crowded tourist destination filled with
mediocre food and shops selling “I Left My In San Francisco” sweatshirts to freezing, ill-
prepared tourists who didn’t realize we have unusually cold and foggy summers. I had recently
started a job on Pier 17 on the Embarcadero, the waterfront street that traces much of the eastern
edge of the city. To travel the one-mile journey to Fisherman’s Wharf, I jumped on the historic
F- Market trolley car for the quick trip to the northeast corner of the city. I rode to the end of the
line, which terminates in the heart of Fisherman’s Wharf, and got off with all of the tourists. It
was a crisp, sunny day, which probably meant it was winter and our famous fog was on vacation.
The briny smell of the Bay mixed with that of boiling seafood, sugary treats and the not-so-
subtle whiff of pee. I walked along Jefferson Street, the area’s main thoroughfare, to Taylor
Street, where I wove past tourists and the sidewalk seafood vendors stationed under colorful
awnings, tending boiling crab in cauldrons - a culinary tradition that has existed on this street for
over a hundred years. The vendors, there are six in total, are all attached to their respective
restaurants whose entrances are on the other side of the sidewalk. The street these restaurants are
located on, is actually a pier. They are numbered for their spot on the pier: Guardino’s No. 1,

2
Sabella & La Torre No. 3, Alioto’s No.8. The last restaurant on the pier was Fishermen’s Grotto
No.9, and I walked into the entryway. To my right the staircase leading up to the dining room
was covered in wall-to-wall carpet, custom woven with the image of the restaurant’s mascot
“The Little Fisherman,” a pipe-smoking angler in a yellow sou’wester hat and slicker holding a
fishing pole, repeated across a field of dark blue pile. Straight ahead was a sign that pointed to a
gift shop, which I dutifully followed and found myself in one of the most puzzling shops I have
seen. It was packed full of knick-knacks piled on top of counters and tightly packed into glass
display cases. It looked more like an antiques shop filled with bric-a-brac than a souvenir store.
The contents were in sharp contrast to the many dozens of brightly lit souvenir stores around the
Wharf. Many of Fishermen’s Grotto’s items were San Francisco souvenirs, though not
immediately recognizable as such, since they appeared to be fifty or sixty years old, maybe older.
As I walked through the dimly lit space, I noticed the many hand-written signs that were placed
around the shop that pointed out that most of the items, especially the interesting ones, were
NOT FOR SALE. I wandered out, confused and very intrigued. It was because of this gift shop
that I returned to Fisherman’s Wharf a couple of years later, this time bringing a friend. When
we went in, the store had been almost completely cleared out and they were now selling all of the
vintage deadstock items, previously and pointedly not for sale, that they had accumulated over
the past seventy years. I bought a handful of items and then moved on from the gift shop to
discover the cozy fireplace bar upstairs, with bright blue vinyl swivel chairs and a long bar with a
bartender who had been working there for over twenty years. I would return again and again,
bringing friends with me who were perplexed as to why I was dragging them to a restaurant in
Fisherman’s Wharf but nonetheless curious. This was the period when I started digging a bit
more deeply and discovered that many of these restaurants were run by the same families who

3
had started them nearly a hundred years ago; an incredible feat given how difficult it is for any
restaurant to make it past five years. Which led to my initial question: why had so few San
Franciscans ever been to any of these restaurants, the cornerstone businesses of Fisherman’s
Wharf? How had such a place lost the interest of its own people and become only the realm of
the tourist? San Franciscans for the most part had forgotten or never known the rich history down
at the Wharf. At some point when the old ways and actual fishermen were disappearing, new
developments, including wax museums and schlocky stores, began to proliferate, obscuring and
then eclipsing a place rich with history and stories. Yet that history remained tangible in the form
of Fisherman Wharf’s restaurants, as families passed these businesses down from one generation
to the next. But that history wasn’t typically being promoted as part of the draw. One man,
Alessandro Baccari, did try to keep the area’s history alive. As founder and president of the
Fisherman’s Wharf Historical Society, he worked with the Port of San Francisco to have
interpretive signs, called Port Walk, placed around the Wharf, mostly on the piers, where people
could read about the history of Fisherman’s Wharf.
1

Though there is a fair amount of scholarship on the Italians of San Francisco, very little
documents the history of Fisherman's Wharf and the Italian immigrants who worked there. If
they do talk about the Wharf the discussion is about the fishermen and rarely do we hear about
the restaurants their fishing families developed and that became the cornerstone of tourism for
Fisherman’s Wharf. This dozen or so restaurants helped create the draw that would make
Fisherman's Wharf the fifteenth most visited tourist destination in the country.
2
It is here that I
direct my focus for this thesis. I will explore the importance of these restaurants which helped

1
For more information on locations please see this website https://www.fishermanswharf.org/plan-your-visit/wharf-
history/port-walk/.
2
Paulie Doyle, “The 25 Most Visited Tourist Spots in America,” Newsweek, August 10, 2021,
https://www.newsweek.com/most-visited-tourist-spots-america-disney-new-york-california-1616737.

4
create a destination for tourists from all over the world, how it evolved over time, and the state of
the restaurants of Fisherman’s Wharf today.

Italian Foodways and Tourism

Foodways: the total system of practices and concepts surrounding food and eating.
3

-Lucy Long, Food and Folklore Reader

Foodways in Preservation
The term “foodways” was first introduced in the field of folkloristics in the 1940s, but
didn’t really take hold until the 1970s.
4
The term has become more common within the food
community at large, using it to mean not only, “what people eat, but when, where, why, how and
with whom.”
5
Within the field of historic preservation, incorporating this concept into our
practice has slowly been gaining traction and becoming part of the equation when considering
intangible cultural heritage. In 2013, San Francisco Heritage, a San Francisco architectural and
cultural non-profit, launched the Legacy Bar and Restaurants program to help bring awareness to
some of San Francisco’s oldest and most beloved eateries and bars. This program was the first of
its kind and led to the creation of the of the city-run Legacy Business Program and has inspired
similar programs across the country.
6
As the idea of incorporating the importance of foodways
into the field of heritage historic preservation has grown, it perhaps reached mainstream
acceptance in the preservation field when in the summer of 2022, Stella Chase, the Black

3
Lucy Long, Food and Folklore Reader (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 14.
4
Long,13.
5
Long.
6
“Legacy Businesses,” San Francisco Heritage, June 7, 2022, http://www.sfheritage.org/saving-whats-
special/legacy-businesses/.

5
American owner of historic Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in New Orleans, was featured on the
cover of Preservation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s magazine.
7

Italian Food at Fisherman’s Wharf
The iconic food at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf has always been Italian or Sicilian
and the majority of fishermen were either Italian or Sicilian. (Some might argue that Italians and
Sicilians are the same. The Sicilians might argue otherwise.) When the fishermen became food
vendors on the sidewalks of the Wharf, selling “walk-away” crab or shrimp cocktails, they were
Italian. And when the first sit-down restaurant that offered table service on the Wharf opened,
the owner was Italian (Sicilian). Because of its scenic location and proximity to the water, these
early waterfront family-run restaurants always attracted people from outside the predominantly
Italian neighborhood. Even though San Francisco was already known for its culinary diversity
and enthusiastic epicureans by the 1890s, the Wharf catered to a broader, working-class
population on the bustling waterfront.
8
Because Italians and their food were considered ethnic
(non-white) into the mid-twentieth century, the restaurants at the Wharf placed less emphasis on
their Italian culinary traditions.
9
By using “menu selection,” choosing dishes that might appeal to
non-Italians, and “recipe adaptation,” utilizing ingredients and preparations familiar to
consumers, they were able to present less intimidating dishes to a wider group of people.
10

These restaurants, that would help form the structure for one of the most visited places in
the country, would mostly lose their Italian cultural identity over time and become more reliant

7
Lynell George , At Dooky Chase’s restaurant in New Orleans, layers of History run deep, Summer 2022,
https://savingplaces.org/stories/at-dooky-chases-restaurant-in-new-orleans-the-layers-of-history-run-deep.
8
Paul Freedman, Ten Restaurants That Changed America (New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation,
2018), 174.
9
Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno, eds., Are Italians White?: How Race Is Made in America (New York ,
NY: Routledge, 2003), 9.
10
Long, Food and Folklore, 444-445.

6
on tourists, as San Franciscans began avoiding the area and sought out culinary adventures
elsewhere.
This thesis begins with Chapter 1: Early Life in the Bay Area, introducing the earliest
inhabitants of San Francisco and their foodways, as well as a brief overview of the founding of
San Francisco. Chapter 2: Italian Americans, from “Ethnic” to American, provides early Italian
American history and their rich culinary traditions in San Francisco from farming to restaurants.
In Chapters 3 and 4 the focus is on one restaurant, Fishermen’s Grotto No.9. Chapter 3:
Fishermen’s Grotto No.9 focuses on the Geraldi family’s restaurant, four generations of running
the business, and what ultimately happened to it in the end. Chapter 4: Fishermen’s Grotto No.
9: Culinary History and Evolution looks at how the menu was presented to customers and how it
evolved over the decades.

7
Chapter 1 : Early Life in the Bay Area

I contend that food traditions are as much a matter of movement and emplacement, as
they are of roots.
--Krishnendu Ray, Migration, Transnational Cuisines, and Invisible Ethnics

Introduction
Before there was Pier 39, before there was the Wax Museum or Bubba Gump, before the
cable cars or dozens of souvenir and t-shirt shops, before Ghirardelli Square, the Cannery, crab
cocktails, or chowder-in-a-bread-bowl, or even Fisherman’s Wharf, there were the Indigenous
inhabitants who lived in the area. They were the original anglers and seafarers of the region, their
foodways largely forgotten after their population was severely wiped out after the arrival of the
Spanish and then the Americans.
11
The majority of Americans arrived during the Gold Rush.
And so did people from other parts of the world, looking to get rich. When gold mining didn’t
work out, sometimes cooking did and because of the numerous mouths that needed to be fed
with very little infrastructure in place, this created for some a willingness to expand one’s palate.
Standing on the pier off Al Scoma Way, watching large fishing boats slowly move into
the harbor, it takes some imagining to picture the first people to fish the now less-than-pristine
waters that flow around Fisherman’s Wharf. For over ten thousand years Indigenous people have
occupied the Bay Area, and the people who first lived and fished there were the Yelamu.
12

11
Only in the past decade or so, are a handful of Indigenous chefs opening restaurants centering native, pre-colonial
foods of the region. Café Ohlone and Wahpehpah's Kitchen are two restaurants to showcase specific, traditional
foods of the region of the Bay Area. For more information see: “https://www.makamham.com/cafeohlone or
https://wahpepahskitchen.com/.
12
The Yelamu are thought of as a sub-tribe or group within the Ramaytush Ohlone. The Ramaytush occupied the
lands of the San Francisco Peninsula. It is not known if the Yelamu were a distinct tribe or a tribal community. The
Ramaytush Ohlone website states, “ Like most California Natives, contemporary Ohlone peoples use linguistic
boundaries instead of local tribal boundaries to define their respective tribal territories.” The Yelamu and Ramaytush
Ohlone spoke a dialect of San Francisco Bay Ohlone/Costanoan. See the following website for more information on
the origin of the term Yelamu. “Terminology: On the Terms Costanoan, Ohlone, Ramaytush, and Yelamu,” The
Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, accessed September 17, 2022, https://www.ramaytush.org/terminology.html.

8

Figure 1.1: Map of the larger Yelamu villages with pre-1849 coastline, historical creeks, ponds, lakes and tidal
systems. Annotated by Author. Source: “Yelamu: The Native Peoples of San Francisco,” Arc GIS StoryMaps.
Hidden Nature SF / San Francisco Estuary Institute.

Current scholarship suggests that the Yelamu were an independent group, part of the larger
Ohlone/Costanoan-speaking peoples whose reach ran from San Francisco to Big Sur and whose
population was in the thousands.
13
The Yelamu are believed to have lived only in the northern
tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, occupying almost the same forty-nine square miles as modern
day San Francisco County.
14
Numbering about 200 people, the Yelamu occupied about five
villages, mostly on the east side, where it is warmer and the waters calmer.
15
[Figure 1.1]

13
“Costanoan” is the name English-speaking settlers gave to the Ohlone. Costanoan is an English mispronunciation,
derived from the Spanish word costaños,“coastal people,” which is how the Spanish referred to the Ohlone people.
14
Yelamu is the Native name for the City and County of San Francisco.
15 Randall Milliken, Laurence H. Shoup, and Beverly R. Ortiz, “2009 - Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San
Francisco Peninsula and Their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today ”(Government Documents and Publications. 6.,
2017), https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hornbeck_ind_1/6, 4.

9
The Yelamu
San Francisco’s compact seven by seven miles contains varied topography and
microclimates. Surrounded by water on three sides, the west side of the city, closest to the
Pacific Ocean, could be windy and blanketed in fog and at the same time, the east side, protected
by a group of hills, warm and sunny. With the area’s mild Mediterranean climate, the Yelamu
could harvest food year round, collecting what was seasonally available. Grasslands covered
much of the area and grass seeds made up a large portion of their diet, along with young greens
such as miner’s lettuce and clover, as well as tree nuts, bulbs, fruits and berries like wild
strawberries and grapes. They intentionally burned these areas periodically to clear out
underbrush and encourage new growth, maintaining the plants the Yelamu favored. The most
important sources of carbohydrates for early Native Californians were acorns and seeds such as
tansy-mustard, California buttercup, red maids, and chia.
16
As for protein, the Yelamu relied
mostly on hunting and fishing. Creation myths, as told by two Rumsen Costanoan women in the
early twentieth century, shed some light on the traditional foodways of the Yelamu:
17

Now Coyote gave the people the carrying net. He gave them bow and arrows to kill
rabbits. He said: “You will have acorn mush for your food. You will gather acorns and
you will have acorn bread to eat. Go down to the ocean and gather seaweed that you may
eat it with your acorn mush and acorn bread. Gather it when the tide is low, and kill
rabbits, and at low tide pick abalones and mussels to eat. When you can find nothing else,
gather buckeyes for food. If the acorns are bitter, wash them out; and gather “wild oat”
seeds for pinole, carrying them on your back in a basket. Look for these things of which I
have told you. I have shown you what is good. Now I will leave you. You have learned.
18

-Jacinta Gonzalez (b. 1838) and Maria Viviana Soto (b. 1823), Monterey, CA.
19

16
Randall Milliken, who has written extensively about Indigenous people in the Bay Area, states that for much of
the year, seeds may have been the predominant source of carbohydrates; Randall Milliken, A Time of Little Choice:
The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810 (Banning, CA: Malki Museum,
Inc., 2009), 17.
17
The Rumsen Coastanoans are Ohlone people from the coast of Monterey.
18
Alfred L. Kroeber, Shoshonean Dialects of California 4 (Berkeley, CA: University Press, 1907), 200-201.
19 Erica J. Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 15.

10
The story about Coyote, who in Ohlone culture is one of the three Creators, along with Eagle and
Hummingbird, helps create a vivid image of the foods and foodways that once existed for coastal
people. Though not specifically Yelamu in origin, this myth gives insight into how certain foods
may have been gathered and prepared in an area that is in close proximity to the San Francisco
Peninsula and shares similar natural resources.
Though Yelamu land was not expansive, there was much available to hunt. [Figure 1.2]

Figure 1.2:“Tcholovonis a la chasse dans le baie de San Francisco,” (Tcholovonis hunting in San Francisco Bay),
Louis Choris, 1822. Source Bancroft Library.
They would bring down ducks and geese that were migrating, and even employed decoys made
from straw to attract them, as well as quail, pigeons and ocean birds. Rabbits, mice and lizards
were also plentiful in the grasslands, as were black-tailed deer and elk in the oak and redwood
forests. Insects, such as grasshoppers, were at times plentiful and often collected into pits and

11
eaten roasted, or dried and saved for winter.
20
Fish and shellfish in the waters surrounding San
Francisco, ranging from the deep, nutrient-rich ocean to brackish estuaries in the Bay, not to
mention the many streams that intersected the land, were also important sources of protein. From
the ocean came abalone, mussels, clams, salmon, crabs, seals, and beached whales. San
Francisco Bay teemed with bay shrimp and Olympia oysters; the abundance of the latter made
apparent in the form of massive shellmounds created by Native people living on the Bay for
thousands of years. The shellmounds that ringed San Francisco Bay contained not only oyster
shells but all manner of food remnants as well as human burials. So prominent were these
shellmounds that in 1909, over four hundred and twenty-five shell mounds were documented
throughout the Bay Area, eighteen of which were in San Francisco.
21
Only about four
shellmounds remain today.
22

Yelamu relied upon fish from all of the water sources found in and around San Francisco.
Small fish like smelt, Pacific herring and sardines ran in abundance as well as larger fish like
salmon, sturgeon, trout, and the Sacramento sucker. They used many techniques to catch fish
including nets, seines, weirs, basket traps, harpoons and even poison made from soap plants to
stun fish.
23
The Yelamu were not restricted to the land. Boats made from tule rushes that grew in
marshes accommodated up to four people, allowing them to navigate the surrounding bay and
marshes, travelling to potential food sources on islands and across the bay.
24

20 Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography, 21; Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way, Indian Life in the San
Francisco-Monterey Bay Area (Berkeley , CA: Heyday Books, 1978), 24.
21
Gary Kamiya, Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco (New York, NY: Bloomsbury USA, 2014).; N.
C. Nelson, Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region (Berkeley, CA: The Univ. Press, 1909), 311.; Margolin,
The Ohlone Way,37.
22
Laura Klivans, “There Were Once More than 425 Shellmounds in the Bay Area. Where Did They Go?,” KQED
(Bay Curious, November 8, 2018), https://www.kqed.org/news/11704679/there-were-once-more-than-425-
shellmounds-in-the-bay-area-where-did-they-go.
23
Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography, 22.
24
Margolin, 37.

12
The lives of the Yelamu, and all Indigenous people of the Bay Area, changed dramatically in the
fall of 1769. The Spanish expedition led by Gaspár de Portolá arrived on horseback south of San
Francisco and encountered Quiroste Costanoans. This marked the first recorded meeting of San
Francisco Bay region people and Europeans, though other Indigenous Californians living along
the coast to the north and south had encountered European ships since the sixteenth century.
25

Figure 1.3: Bateau du port de San Francisco [C.1815], Louis Choris. Source: Bancroft Library.

The Arrival of the Spanish
The Spanish first sailed into the waters off Baja California in 1533. A few years later in
1542 they claimed the area to the north of Baja for the Crown, calling it Alta California, or
“Upper California,” adding it to the territories of New Spain. Though they had been exploring
various regions within the California territory for over two hundred years, they had missed the

25
Randall Milliken, A Time of Little Choice, 31.

13
entrance to San Francisco Bay as it was often shrouded by fog. It wasn’t until the late 1760s that
the Spanish finally decided to colonize California spurred by the encroachment of the Russians
and Americans from the North. After Portolá’s initial expedition in 1769, other Spanish parties
made their way up into the Bay Area, but not into Yelamu lands. It wasn’t until 1776 when
Spanish Army Colonel Juan Batista de Anza, along with Franciscan priest Pedro Font, led an
expedition into Ohlone lands, looking for a place to establish a mission and military base. This
trip resulted in the founding of Mission San Francisco de Asís, now known as Mission Dolores,
the sixth mission in California to be established by Franciscan priests. These Missions, spaced a
day’s journey on horseback up the California coast, were established to spread Christianity to
Indigenous people. Eventually there would be twenty-one Missions, spanning from San Diego to
Sonoma, California. To protect Mission Dolores, a military outpost was established by the mouth
of the San Francisco Bay, El Presidio de San Francisco, now referred to as The Presidio. The
priests enticed the Yelamu and other native people from the surrounding Bay Area into the
Mission with promises of food, material goods and spiritual salvation. After baptism, priests did
little to explain to the neophytes that they could no longer return to their homes or traditional
way of life, essentially becoming slaves of the Mission and doing the majority of labor needed to
maintain Mission Dolores.
26

Within just a few decades of the founding of the Mission, the native Californian
population in the Bay Area plummeted. Abysmal treatment of the new converts and denigration
of the traditional Indigenous way of life, along with diseases introduced by the Spanish,
devastated native populations around the Bay Area. By 1810, thirty-four years after the arrival of
Anza and his expedition, all the tribal territories in the Bay Area, except the most northerly, were

26
Milliken, 31-52.

14
empty.
27
In 1842, just six years before gold was discovered in the Sierra foothills, only fifteen
Ohlone native to the San Francisco Bay region were living at the crumbling Mission Dolores.
28

Soon the Spanish would be forced out of Alta California when in 1821 the former colony
of New Spain declared its independence and became known as Mexico. The next year
Englishman William Richardson sailed into San Francisco Bay on a whaling ship, the Orion. As
a ship’s captain who spoke some Spanish, Richardson was allowed to stay by the Mexican
government. He worked in the area’s growing Mexican hide and tallow trade and became the
first white European inhabitant in the Bay Area. In 1835 he was granted permission by the
Governor of California to establish a pueblo near the Yerba Buena Cove, which at the time,” was
nothing but sand dunes, covered with shrubbery and trees,” recalled Mariana Richardson,
daughter of William Richardson. “Wild animals were very numerous, such as bears, wolves,
coyotes,”

Richardson recalled. The pueblo was named Yerba Buena, Spanish for “Good Herb,”
so named by the Mexican settlers for the abundant and fragrant herb that grew in the area. There
Richardson erected a lean-to for his family from four redwood posts and an old canvas sail. In
1837, after he built the first wooden house in Yerba Buena, he built an adobe house known as
Casa Grande.
29
[Figure 1.4]

27
Milliken, 1, 219-226.
28
The Yelamu have no known living descendants. Of the Ohlone people who inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula,
only one lineage, the Raymatush Ohlone, is known to have survived. They maintain a strong presence within the
Bay Area. For more information see their website https://www.ramaytush.org/; “Yelamu: The Native Peoples of San
Francisco,” ArcGIS StoryMaps (San Francisco Estuary Institute, October 25, 2021),
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/56b1d134920d46c6ac2462c1344eeb3f.
29
K. Maldetto, “William Richardson and Yerba Buena Origins,” FOUNDSF, accessed October 7, 2022,
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=WILLIAM_RICHARDSON_AND_YERBA_BUENA_ORIGINS; Gary
Kamiya, “From Riches to Rags: How the Earliest San Franciscan Lost His Property,” San Francisco Chronicle (San
Francisco Chronicle, May 28, 2022), https://www.sfchronicle.com/vault/portalsofthepast/article/From-riches-to-
rags-How-the-earliest-San-17202523.php.

15

Figure 1.4: Tucked away in Chinatown at 823 Grant Avenue in San Francisco, there is a plaque to commemorate
the “Birthplace of a Great City.” It reads:
The birthplace of a great city. Here, June 25, 1835, William A. Richardson, founder of Yerba Buena, (later San
Francisco,) erected its first habitation, a tent dwelling, replacing it in October, 1835, by the first wooden house, and
on this ground, in 1836, he erected the large adobe building, known as “Casa Grande.” Photo: Chris Carlsson,
from “William Richardson and Yerba Buena Origins,” foundsf.org.

Perhaps spurred by Manifest Destiny, adventure or riches, by the early 1840s more
Americans and Europeans started to make their way to the West Coast by boat and even
attempted the treacherous overland route crossing mountains and deserts.
30
On May 13, 1846,
America declared war on Mexico, which began the Mexican-American War. Only months later,
on July 9, 1846, American Commander John Montgomery sailed into San Francisco Bay and
claimed the Pueblo of Yerba Buena for the United States. This was accomplished without any
military action, owing to the feeble state of the Mexican garrison. About six months later, the

30
Tom Cole, A Short History of San Francisco (Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2014), 13-20.

16
hamlet of Yerba Buena (there were about 459 residents, and it is unclear if this number included
Indigenous residents) was renamed San Francisco by the Americans.
31
[Figure 1.5]

Figure 1.5: View of San Francisco, formerly Yerba Buena, in 1846-7 before the discovery of gold. Bosqui Eng. &
Print. Co., 1884.
Source: Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650 USA dcu.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g4364s.pm000332.

31
Museum of the City of San Francisco, “From the 1820s to the Gold Rush,” San Francisco - Before the Gold Rush
- 1847, accessed November 2, 2022,
https://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/early.html#:~:text=During%201847%2C%20six%20trading%20vessels,Francisco
%20was%20then%20459%20souls.

17
On February 2, 1848, when the Mexican government eventually ceded to the United States and
California became part of the United States territories, there were approximately 900 residents
living in San Francisco. Gold had been found at Sutter’s Creek just a few days earlier and
everything was about to change for the tiny outpost of San Francisco.
32

They Came by the Boatload - The Gold Rush

If the Mexican War (1846–1848) was an expression of America’s sense of Manifest
Destiny, the California gold rush was in effect destiny’s reward.

-Mark Eifler, The California Gold Rush: The Stampede That Changed the World

Most Americans are at least vaguely familiar with the California Gold Rush. Even people
who are not football fans might know there is a football team called the San Francisco 49ers,
named for the miners who in 1849 descended by the thousands on the village of San Francisco to
hunt for gold. San Francisco’s population would explode and grow at an unimaginable pace.
From 1848 to 1854, over 250,000 people would migrate to California, many of them passing
through San Francisco on their way to the gold fields, some settling in San Francisco.
33

In January of 1848 James W. Marshall found gold in Coloma, California, while he was
building a mill for John Sutter. The property was nestled in the foothills of the Sierras about 130
miles Northeast of San Francisco. Sutter had acquired the land through a Mexican land grant and
hoped to make his fortune in lumber. Word got out quickly about the discovery and soon gold
seekers began arriving in droves to the sleepy trading village of San Francisco. As the news

32
K. Maldetto, “Why San Francisco??? City Origins: 1835-1849,” FOUNDSF, accessed November 2, 2022,
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=WHY_SAN_FRANCISCO%3F%3F%3F_CITY_ORIGINS%3A_1835-
1849.
33
Mark A. Eifler, The California Gold Rush: The Stampede That Changed the World (New York, NY: Routledge,
2017), 6.

18
spread throughout the country and then the world, all manner of people, the vast majority men,
came through the port of San Francisco before venturing on to see “El Dorado” for themselves.
San Francisco grew rapidly from about 900 people in 1848 to 35,000 in 1850, with as many as
1,000 people arriving per week. As the town tried to accommodate the thousands that came
mostly by ship, it grew from a tent city into a thriving metropolis in a matter of a few years. This
meteoric growth required that strict social mores, de rigueur elsewhere in the rest of the United
States, relax in order for the nascent city to function and quickly develop.
34

While the city was being built, people, primarily men, lived in canvas tents, boarding
houses and hotels. This meant that most people took their meals in restaurants. As a result, some
of the earliest businesses in San Francisco were restaurants. William Alexander Leidesdorff, a
mostly forgotten founding father of San Francisco, who was of Jewish and African heritage,
established the first significant public hotel in 1846 where food was served.
35
Bayard Taylor, a
writer hired by the New York Tribune to write about the gold rush, wrote about his time in 1849
in his book El Dorado. He described the state of buildings and construction as well as the ethnic
diversity he found when he arrived. “On every side stood buildings of all kinds, begun or half-
finished the greater part of them mere canvas sheds… with all kinds of signs, in all languages.”
He continues, “The streets were full of people, hurrying to and fro, and of diverse and bizarre a
character as the houses: Yankees of every possible variety, native Californians in serapes and
sombreros, Chilians, Sonorians, Kanakas from Hawaii, Chinese with long tails, Malays armed

34
Barbara Berglund, Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846-1906
(Lawrence, KS: University Press Of Kansas, 2007), 7; Maldetto, “Why San Francisco???
35
Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography, 36. Leisdesdorff is considered to be the first African American
millionaire. There is a small street in downtown San Francisco named after him. Other than a statue and a plaque,
there is little else left of his legacy.

19
with their everlasting creeses [short sword], and others in whose embrowned and bearded visages
it was impossible to recognize any especial nationality.”
36

In artist Frank Marryat’s 1855 illustration “High and Dry,” we are given a glimpse into
what the streets of San Francisco may have looked like in the early days of the gold rush. [Figure
1.6] The image conveys a seemingly fantastical street scene of beached ships transformed into a
hotel and warehouse, both nestled between newly constructed buildings housing such businesses
as a dentist and a liquor store, and an ethnically diverse population carrying on with daily life in
the foreground as if all of this were totally normal.

Figure 1.6: "High and Dry" Frank Marryat, artist, 1855. San Francisco street scene depicting abandoned ships and
transformed into buildings, and multi-ethnic inhabitants in the foreground. (Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection of
Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).

36
Berglund, 6.

20
William Shaw, an Englishman who arrived in SF in 1849, described the housing
conditions he frequented as miserable and cramped and were long “barn-like tenements” where
you slept on “bunks” that were in fact just wooden shelving. The food however he found to be
more favorable and was of the “most heterogeneous kind.” He described Mexican, Chinese and
European-American foods, “placed on the table at the same time: boiled and roast meats, fresh
and salt, potted meats, curries, stews, fish, rice, cheese, frijolis [sic], and molasses.”
37
With the
city in a constant state of flux and very little housing, restaurants became part of the daily ritual,
and gongs and bells would ring at certain times throughout the growing city, alerting people that
it was mealtime.
38

Though Chinese immigrants faced the most hostility and discrimination of any ethnic
immigrant group, considered the lowest on the rung in terms of racial and social order, they were
favored for their food by white San Franciscans in the early years of the gold rush.
39
Journalist
James O’Meara recounted that, “Chinese restaurants were largely patronized by the mass, where
one could purchase a package of 21 tickets, each kit for a meal, breakfast, dinner, or supper, for
$20, or get a fair single meal for $1.50.” James J. Ayers, an early editor of the San Francisco
Call, noted that, “the best restaurants...were kept by Chinese, and the poorest and dearest by
Americans.”
40
By 1852 Chinese ran most of the restaurants in San Francisco.
41

In the early days of the gold rush, racial and class mixing was tolerated, and many social
norms were all but cast aside as the need to survive outweighed the social stratification usually
imposed by American society during that time. This included white patrons eating at “ethnic”

37
Berglund, Making San Francisco American, 22.
38
Berglund, Making San Francisco American, 23.
39
Berglund, 26.
40
Berglund, 27.
41
Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography, 48.

21
restaurants. By the 1850s, as San Francisco grew more established and wealthier, and as more
women and children arrived, mixing of social classes was frowned upon again and social norms
of the time settled back into place. This affected eateries as well, as “ethnic” restaurants fell out
of favor and were no longer considered acceptable for white people to patronize.
42

Even after the gold rush had peaked, immigrants continued to arrive in San Francisco and
many restaurants opened to cater to all of these people arriving from around the world. Early on
Chinese and Mexican restaurants were the most common eating establishments along with
French and European-American based eateries, but soon came immigrants from South and
Central America, as well as Japan, Italians from Northern Italy, Jews from Eastern Europe, Irish
and Filipinos. Italians, though not the largest European immigrant group to arrive in San
Francisco (that title went to the Irish), would go on to dominate the food and agriculture industry
in the early days of San Francisco’s development.
43

In 1848, just before the world found out about gold in California, revolutions were
sweeping across European nations. In Italy, which was not yet a unified country, there was a
civil war brewing. Southern Italians and Sicilians, who were primarily peasants, had very few
ways to make money. When word of gold from California arrived on their shores, it soon became
obvious to many Southern Italians to use their life savings and board a ship to California, where
there was at least hope of making a living and maybe even getting rich.
Coming from largely agrarian and fishing communities on the west coasts of Italy and
Sicily, Italian immigrants found jobs working on farms, in greengrocers, fishing or in restaurants.
These San Francisco Italians and their descendants would go on to create food businesses known

42
Berglund, 27.
43
Berglund, Making San Francisco American, 10.

22
locally, like the family-run restaurants at Fisherman’s Wharf, and across the country with brands
that became household names such as Rice-A-Roni and Del Monte. Be they mom and pop
restaurants that started as a single crab vendor on the sidewalk near the water’s edge or a large-
scale fruit canning corporation, these businesses would help grow San Francisco and its economy
throughout the decades.

23
Chapter 2 : Italian Americans, from “Ethnic” to American

The secret of the success of North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf in winning the affection
of greater San Francisco was by appealing to its palate and taste buds. “Buon gusto!” and
“Buon appetito!” were the rallying cries…

--Richard Dillon, North Beach

Introduction
Italian food is some of the most popular food in the United States. We love pizza and
pasta and when we want to celebrate, we might seek out a sophisticated Italian restaurant. There
are four Italian restaurants in New York City that have been awarded Michelin stars as of August
2023, and both San Francisco and Los Angeles have two apiece.
44
Just over fifty years ago many
Americans thought of Italian food as “ethnic,” a term often applied to food that seems foreign,
and can sometimes suggest “a certain kind of inferiority.”
45
How was Italian food perceived
when it arrived in San Francisco in the 1800s and what happened to Italian food when it arrived
in San Francisco? In the following chapter I briefly discuss how Italians arrived in San Francisco
and once here some of the foods Italians introduced to San Franciscans through jobs they could
get such as farmers, fishermen and restaurateurs.

Leaving the Kingdom of Italy
In 1849 the country of Italy as we know it did not yet exist. It was a group of city-states
and kingdoms, swept up in the European revolutions that started in 1848. Economic conditions

44
One of the highest honors you can receive in the food industry is to be give a star by the Michelin Guide.
https://guide.michelin.com/us/en.
45
Lavanya Ramanathan, “Why Everyone Should Stop Calling Immigrant Food ‘Ethnic,’” The Washington Post,
July 21, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/why-everyone-should-stop-calling-immigrant-food-
ethnic/2015/07/20/07927100-266f-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html.

24
were dire in the rural areas, so large numbers of Italians left their villages in search of work and
some left the country entirely. As word of the San Francisco Gold Rush spread into the world, it
seemed to offer many poor Italians an opportunity out of poverty. They came to San Francisco in
waves, starting from Northern Italy and working their way down the western coast of the
country. The first influx of Italian immigrants that arrived in San Francisco, from about the
1850s through the 1880s, were primarily from the northern regions of Liguria and Tuscany, and
specifically from the cities of Genoa and Lucca respectively.
46
As the northern part of the
country rapidly industrialized, the south remained largely impoverished, uneducated and cut off
from industrialization, spurring the second wave of migration. In the 1870s, Italians from the
southern regions of Calabria and Sicily began to trickle into San Francisco, and by the turn of
the century thousands had come to the city. These southerners would end up supplying the
majority of Italian immigrants to San Francisco. One third of Italy’s population may have left
Italy during that time.
47
There were so many people leaving the country that there was regular
passenger service to the United States during the gold rush.
48

In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was formed, unifying most of the separate states. This did
little to solve the grim economic conditions for many of the poorer Italians, many of whom were
farmers or fishermen. Emigration to California continued owing to the social and political
dysfunction that plagued the newly formed country into the twentieth century.
Ligurians, primarily from Genoa, were the first Italians to arrive in San Francisco.
Liguria, a crescent-shaped region that abuts France to the west, is located in the northwestern

46
Deanna Paoli Gumina, “Provincial Italian Cuisines: San Francisco Conserves Italian Heritage,” The Argonaut,
1990,
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Provincial_Italian_Cuisines:_San_Francisco_Conserves_Italian_Heritage.
47
Sebastian Fichera, Italy on the Pacific: San Francisco's Italian Americans (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
2016), 34, 36.
48
Fichera, Italy,31.

25
part of Italy. It is covered mostly by mountains, but dips down to the water and runs along the
Ligurian Sea. Such rugged and mountainous terrain makes the land hard to farm, but allows
for herbs, especially basil, to be cultivated, along with citrus and olives grown in terraces
overlooking the sea. This is the region that is known for Pesto alla Genovese and Ciuppin, the
likely predecessor to San Francisco’s famed Cioppino, which will be discussed in Chapter 3.
The south of Italy, specifically Calabria and Sicily, supplied the most Italians to San
Francisco. [Figure 2.1] These areas suffered repression after Italy's unification, and their barely
surviving industry virtually disappeared. In 1901 Sicily and Calabria had an eighty percent
illiteracy rate. At that time only fifty percent of Italians could read, compared to the United
States, in which nine out of ten people were literate.
49
The local dialect was the only language
that mattered to the Italians. It didn’t matter if they were from “Italy” -- a name given to the
newly unified country that was not familiar to many Italians--if they could not understand one
another. Learning “Italian” was what people had to do after unification. Forty years after the
unification of Italy, in 1910, only fifty percent of teachers taught in Italian.
50

49
Fichera, Italy, 35.
50
Fichera, Italy, 38; Dino Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco : The Immigrant Experience (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1982), 22.

26

Figure 2.1: The Italian regions from which the majority of emigrants to San Francisco originated. Source: Cinel,
Dino. From Italy to San Francisco: The Immigrant Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982.

Carlo Dondero, an early Italian language journalist, states that in 1850 through 1853
about 300 Italians resided in San Francisco. About 200 of them came through New York and
the rest from South America. By 1860, he reported, they were in the businesses of boarding
houses, hotels, grocery stores, bakeries, and manufacturing foodstuffs.
51

51
Fichera, Italy, 16.

27
The Northern Italian community had been in San Francisco about forty years when the
majority of Southern Italians began arriving in the late 1800s. The “new” Italians were often
marginalized by the Northern Italians, who treated the newcomers as if they were from another
country. Fichera points out the challenges faced by both communities coming together in a new
country, “They had to learn a new language (Italian), upgrade their skills and acquire an
enlarged sense of the common good.”
52
It wasn’t until after the southerners’ arrival that most of
the Italian community’s important institutions were created, such as Casa Fugazi (Club Fugazi),
Saints Peter and Paul Church on Washington Square, and A.P. Giannini’s Bank of Italy, known
today as Bank of America. By the time migration from Italy had subsided, around the 1930s,
approximately half of Italian Americans in San Francisco were from southern Italy.
53

Between 1870-1930, over half and at times up to seventy percent of the population of
San Francisco had foreign-born parents. By the end of the 19
th
century Italians were the city’s
largest single immigrant group. In 1870 the Italian population was 2,345, which rose to 14,983
in 1900 and then peaked in 1930 with a population was 57,912, which was ten percent of San
Francisco’s population. The Italian American population has been declining ever since.
54

Prior to World War II, Italians were some of the least skilled and most exploited of the
white immigrants in the United States.
55
However, in San Francisco, Italians, as well as the
Irish, were drawn in more quickly to the “inclusive circle of whiteness” than in cities like
Boston or New York.
56
Even though the Italians came in larger numbers later in the great wave
of migration to San Francisco, and were not considered “white,” the Chinese, who had been in

52
Fichera, 39.
53
Fichera, 3.
54
Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco, 17-19.
55
Fichera,1.
56
Barbara Berglund, Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846-1906 (Lawrence,
KS: University Press Of Kansas, 2007), 10.

28
San Francisco in larger numbers since the Gold Rush, were considered the lowest on the social
totem pole, receiving the worst and lowest pay for jobs.
57
Italians were what David Roediger
calls “in between people.” “In between hard racism and full inclusion-neither securely white
nor non-white.”
58

According to Sebastian Fichera, “Rather than using schooling as a path to white collar
jobs, the Italian immigrant would more typically choose some sort of self-employment to get
ahead.” This makes sense. Owning your own boat, farm, shop, or restaurant gave the Italian
American a sense of accomplishment, as opposed to going into the white-collar work that most
other immigrant groups chose as paths to climbing society’s ranks. Being your own “padrone”
was the Italian idea of success.
59

Italy's economic depression and that country’s internal strife led to California's gain.
People fleeing poverty could find success in California, using their knowledge from the old
country. They knew how to work in the agricultural, fishing and food industries. Banks set up
by the Italian community helped finance businesses that weren’t otherwise able to get loans:
canneries, restaurants, truck farms, wholesale fish businesses, macaroni factories and garbage
companies.
60
Working in these different fields also affected where they lived. Working in the
canneries or as a fisherman would mean living near the water in North Beach or Telegraph Hill.
Farming meant moving further outside of the city. As the Italian American population grew,
people moved away from where they first landed.

57
Fichera, Italy, 48.
58
David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey
from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2018), 12. Quoted in Natalia Molina, A Place at the
Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022),
41.
59
Fichera,57.
60
Fichera,76.

29
Settling into the City
The earliest Italians to arrive in San Francisco settled along the base of Telegraph Hill
and an area called North Beach. [Figure 2.2] These neighborhoods housed the majority of
immigrants since the 1860s. Though there were other areas in the city where Italians would
settle, these neighborhoods housed the majority of the Italian population.

Figure 2.2: Map of North Beach, Telegraph Hill and Fisherman’s Wharf neighborhoods.
Source: ArcGIS Online, modified by Author, 2023.

Located near the edge of San Francisco’s northeast corner, Telegraph Hill is a few blocks
inland from the Embarcadero, or waterfront, and is comprised of impossibly steep hills and
narrow streets that are sometimes only accessible by long wooden staircases. [Figure 2.3]
Telegraph Hill’s western slope reaches down into North Beach, which expands out almost to the

30
base of Russian Hill to the west and to the Bay to the north. [Figure 2.4] North Beach is
generally thought to be defined as the area nestled between Telegraph Hill (east) and Russian
Hill (west), north to Francisco Street (sometimes Fisherman’s Wharf is included and when it is
that boundary terminates at the water’s edge), and south to Broadway.

Figure 2.3: Telegraph Hill residents described as “hoodlums,” perhaps due to the large population of immigrants.
Man and three boys on the eastern slope of Telegraph Hill looking north with the Bay in the background. Behind
them is 228 Filbert Steps a "carpenter gothic Philip Brown house,” built in 1869 and still extant.
Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp37.00903-R.

31
Italians had been living in the North Beach and Telegraph Hill neighborhoods since the Gold
Rush, but not until the turn of the century, just after the 1906 earthquake when many other
immigrants moved out of the area, did they begin to make up the majority of the population in
North Beach. There were Italian settlements in other parts of the city. A substantial settlement
was located in the Mission and smaller settlements developed further south in Potrero Hill,
Portola, Visitacion Valley, and the Bayview.
61
Moving from the cramped North Beach area out
to less populated areas further from the city center, allowed for a number of families who had
farmed in their homeland to attain land and start small farms.

Figure 2.4: Looking west at North Beach and the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands in the distance, taken from the
western slope of Telegraph Hill, ca. 1865. Sand dunes of White Point visible center right.
Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp37.00716-R.

61
Dino Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco: The Immigrant Experience (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1982), 106.

32
Colombo Market
As the Gold Rush died down, a number Italians turned to farming to make money. The
need for agrarian knowledge in California was a match for many of the Italians coming from
farming traditions based in a Mediterranean climate, one very similar to much of California.
62

The Italians who moved out of North Beach to areas more sparsely populated on the outskirts of
town and into San Mateo began growing produce for themselves, planting what they could not
find in the markets such as artichokes, basil, eggplants, bell peppers and broccoli.
63
Many of
these vegetables were novel to San Franciscans (and most of America) but would later become
ubiquitous to coastal California farms. The Italian farmers exposed Bay Area residents to
produce that had been grown in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years and helped create a rich
farm-to-table tradition that would eventually pave the way for the food movement that exploded
in the Bay Area in the early 1970s.
As early as 1863 the Italian consul in San Francisco noted that Italians had taken up
farming, “ when their dreams of becoming rich in the gold country vanished.”
64
Many became
tenant truck farmers in developing neighborhoods a few miles from the San Francisco city center
in the Mission, Visitacion Valley, Portola and the Bayview.
65
[Figure 2.5]

62
Fichera, Italy on the Pacific,49.
63
Dino Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco : The Immigrant Experience (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1982),106; Erica J. Peters, San Francisco: a Food Biography (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 59.
64
Cinel, 214.
65
Fichera, 57.

33

Figure 2.5: Map of San Francisco Districts of Italian Settlements.
Source: Map by Deanna Paoli Gumina. In The Italians of San Francisco 1850-1930. By Deanna Paoli Gumina.
New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1978.

A North Beach/Fisherman’s Wharf
B Marina District
C Hayes Valley
D Bernal Heights
E Black Diamond (Bay View)
F Outer Mission/Excelsior
G Gardens or Truck Farms
H Washerwoman’s Lagoon
N Nurseries of the “gardeners”

34
The farmers delivered fruits and vegetables by horse-drawn wagon to open air produce
markets on Sansome Street between Jackson and Sacramento, in what would now be considered
downtown.
66
There was little in the way of commercial farming at this time so the Italians, who
were mostly from Genoa, found success.
67
In 1874 these growers founded the San Francisco and
San Mateo Rancher’s Association and commenced to build the Colombo Produce Market that
opened in 1876.
68
Taking up a full block, bounded by Pacific Ave., Davis, Jackson, and Front
streets, the market was a large structure, lit with large gas lights for the early morning business
and divided into many stalls that could be rented out by members of the association.
69
[Figure 2.6]
A traveler from Italy who visited the market stated,” In the morning it is a handsome sight to see
the coming and going of the two-horse wagons with the names of the owners on the side.”
70

66
San Francisco Chronicle, August 27, 1876, 1. NewsBank: America's News – Historical and Current.
https://infoweb-newsbank-com.ezproxy.sfpl.org/apps/news/document-
view?p=AMNEWS&docref=image/v2%3A142051F45F422A02%40EANX-NB-
14D8A24E7145BA14%402406494-14D6A98A2E63DCB1%400-14D6A98A2E63DCB1%40.
67
Cinel, Italy, 214.
68
The Colombo Market eventually grew to include a couple dozen square blocks. It was torn down by the San
Francisco Redevelopment Agency in 1963 to make way for the Golden Gateway Apartments. The produce market
was moved south of Potrero Hill to an industrial area between the 101 and 280 highways. The only remnant of the
Market is the arch pictured above that serves as an “entrance” to Sydney Walton Square park. For more photos see
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Produce_Market
69
Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco, 216.
70
Giovanni Vigna dal Ferro, Un Viaggio Nel Far West Americano; Impressioni Di G. Vigna Dal Ferro. Estratto Dal
Giornale La Patria (Bologna: Stab. tipografico successori Monti, 1881), 42.

35

Figure 2.6: Colombo Market, 1910s.
Source: California Historical Society via FoundSF.org

As the city grew and the transcontinental railroad arrived in 1869, followed by the
refrigerated railcar in 1877 which allowed for California’s perishable bounty to travel back east,
business boomed for many that worked the land for a living and just two decades prior, had been
some of the poorest immigrants in San Francisco. By the early 1880s Colombo Market was the
center of the produce industry catering to wholesalers, grocers, hotels, restaurants, and
housewives.
71

71
Dino Cinel. 216; Sebastian Fichera, Italy on the Pacific: San Francisco's Italian Americans (New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 52.

36
Fishing San Francisco Bay

The Port and the Wharf
The Port of San Francisco, (originally called the Board of State Harbor Commissioners),
referred to hereafter as the Port, is a semi-independent governmental organization that controls
much of San Francisco’s waterfront and has been responsible for building seawalls and wharves
since the mid-1800s. In the early days of San Francisco, fishermen were scattered across the
northern wharves where Vallejo, Green, and Union Streets are now. Some were docked at
Meiggs’ Wharf, built in 1852, by Henry Meiggs, who eventually was run out of town. In 1872,
the state relocated all of the fishermen to the foot of Clay and Commercial Streets.
72
In 1885 the
fishermen, all 256 boats, were moved again to the Filbert Street Wharf, also called the Old
Wharf or Italy Harbor.
73

Figure 2.7: View west from Old Fisherman's Wharf near Union and Filbert Streets, looking towards Telegraph Hill
in the background. Masts of the feluccas peeking over the nets being mended.
Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp15.1663.

72
Michael R. Corbett, Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-2010 (San
Francisco, CA: San Francisco Architectural Heritage, 2011), 185.
73
Richard H. Dillon and Lynn L. Davis, North Beach: The Italian Heart of San Francisco (Novato, CA: Presidio
Press, 1985), 87.

37
Finally, in 1900, the fishermen and their boats were moved for the last time, to
Fisherman’s Wharf, where they remain.
74
The Port wanted to create a modern wharf and found
this new site at the terminus of Taylor and Jones streets well-suited for the fishing fleet. The Port
constructed a wooden wharf alongside Jefferson Street, which ran atop the seawall, and a 785-
foot stone breakwater to protect the fishing fleet, thereby creating what is now known as the
inner lagoon or Fisherman’s Lagoon.
75
By 1917, the Port began to build out the infrastructure of
the outer lagoon north of Taylor Street, which lead to further development of the area.
76

Italian and Sicilian Fishermen
Fishing requires little knowledge of English, and by 1900 half of the city’s fishermen
were Italian, or more specifically Sicilian. Sicilians came from coastal towns such as Trabia,
Isola delle Femina, Castellane del Golfo and Termini Imerese, Sciacca, and Porticello, where the
tradition of the annual celebration of the Madonna del Lume and the Blessing of the Fleet comes
from.
77
A few of the prominent San Francisco restaurateurs such as Mike Geraldi and the Sabella
family were from the village of Sciacca.
The Italians and Sicilians who were from the coastal towns brought both their knowledge
and the felucca, a small lateen sail-rigged boat with triangular sail used in the Mediterranean and
North Africa. [Figure 2.8] In 1864, the Fisher Dealers’ Cooperative was formed and in 1882 the
Italian Fisherman’s Association was formed. They became quite powerful in the fishing industry.
In 1907 the San Francisco Chronicle suggested that Italian fishermen were using violence and
intimidation to gain control of the fishing industry. “Many Chinese and Indians were driven out

74
Dillon, North Beach, p. 89.
75
Corbett, Port City, 180.
76
Michael R. Corbett, Port City, 181.
77
Fichera, Italy on the Pacific,54

38
of business by petty persecutions and physical intimidation. Boats have been scuttled, nets have
been cut, and sometimes the owners of the nets have been cut. Launches have gone out to sea
and neither launches nor owners have ever been seen again.”
78
It was hard for other immigrants
to gain a foothold in the fishing industry, especially for the Chinese.

Figure 2.8: Feluccas at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, CA, 1908 looking west.
Source: U.S. National Park Service https://npgallery.nps.gov/SAFR/AssetDetail/c913eb1c-8a6a-49e3-ad3d-
5277aeebf6db.

78
“How Price of Fish to Consumers Is Kept Up,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 8, 1907, 40.

39
Chinese Fishermen-The First to Fish Commercially
Though the Italians eventually ruled the fishing industry, the Chinese started commercial
salt-water fishing in 1850 or 1851. Due to discrimination and many laws created to thwart their
success, by the early twentieth century very few Chinese were fishing San Francisco Bay.
79

Like many men who arrived on the shores of San Francisco Bay during the gold rush, the
Chinese came seeking their fortune in the gold fields but came out empty handed, so they turned
to work they had done in their home country, in many cases fishing, to make a living. One of the
first fishing villages in San Francisco was located in Rincon Point, where the base of the Bay
Bridge stands today.

Figure 2.9: Chinese shrimping village at the foot of Rincon Hill, c. 1859. Painting by Mathilda F. Mott, California
Historical Society. Source: https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Chinese_shrimping_village.

79
L. Eve Armentrout-Ma, “Chinese in California's Fishing Industry, 1850-1941,” California History 60, no. 2
(1981): pp. 142-157, https://doi.org/10.2307/25158037, 142.

40
The Chinese were successful, and by the 1880s were contributing several hundred thousand
dollars annually to the fishing industry.
80
Their success, coupled with strong anti-Chinese
feelings, led to numerous racist laws that specifically targeted their fishing community.
In 1860, a monthly tax of four dollars was instituted by the State legislature, specific to
Chinese fishermen, who brought in about twenty to thirty dollars a month during the fishing
season.
81
State Senator Richard F. Perkins later initiated a repeal of this unfair tax. A meeting of
the all-Italian Fishermen of the Bay of San Francisco in 1862 resulted in the publishing of a
broadside that protested the repeal. The Italians stated that this tax was necessary to protect white
fishermen (not all Americans agreed that Italians were white at this time) from the
“encroachment of the Mongolians.”
82

Continuing to make things difficult for Chinese fishermen, the state legislature passed a
law in 1905 forbidding shrimping during the months when they were abundant, in addition to the
export of dry shrimp to China, where ninety percent of the catch was sent. Due to the restrictions
imposed on them, the population of Chinese fishermen began to decline even as the number of
Portuguese, and especially Italian, fishermen, was flourishing. Many Chinese were forced to
abandon fishing altogether.
83

One of the last Chinese fishing villages was located in Point San Pedro, nestled in a small
cove located in Marin County, across the Bay from San Francisco. In the 1880s at the height of
the shrimping industry, it was home to 500 Chinese residents. It is now part of the California
State Parks and is known as China Camp. The Quan family settled there in the late 1880s and

80
Armentrout-Ma.
81
Armentrout-Ma.
82
Richard H. Dillon and Lynn L. Davis, North Beach: The Italian Heart of San Francisco (Novato, CA: Presidio
Press, 1985), 84.
83
Armentrout-Ma, 144.

41
Quan Hung Quock built a general store on this secluded beach in 1895. The last shrimper and
last remaining resident of the historic fishing village, Frank Quan, died in 2016, at the age of
90.
84
As Chinese fishing declined, the Italian fishing population increased.

The Fishing Fleet
Around the turn of the century feluccas soon gave way to small boats with engines called
Monterey Clippers or affectionately, “putt-putts,” for how their engines sounded. Engines meant
that the fishermen could go out further past the Golden Gate to fish, fish longer days and provide
power to haul in nets.
85
In 1920 there were five hundred Monterey Clippers in San Francisco,
mostly built and maintained by the Italian American community in Fisherman’s Wharf.
86
These
are the boats in Fisherman’s Lagoon, mostly retired from commercial fishing, but lend the harbor
historic charm that the modern fishing fleet lacks. [Figure 2.10]

84
Joanna Lin, “Watch: Lone Resident of Abandoned Shrimping Village Faces Eviction,” HuffPost (HuffPost,
October 24, 2011), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/frank-quan-lone-resident-china-camp-state-park_n_935862;
“Friends of China Camp,” Friends of China Camp, January 7, 2021, https://friendsofchinacamp.org/.
85
Baccari, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, 28.
86
Carl Nolte, “San Francisco / Tiny Boats That Made the Wharf Are Sinking / Monterey Clipper Group Seeks a
Break in Rent to Stay Afloat,” SFGATE, January 12, 2012, https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-
FRANCISCO-Tiny-boats-that-made-the-wharf-2493664.php.

42

Figure 2.10: Monterey Clippers in the Fisherman's Lagoon. Many of these boats are owned by descendants of
Italian fishing families. Source: Author..

Blessing of the Fleet
The Madonna del Lume celebration occurs every year in October and was once the
biggest celebration for the Italian American fishing community, outside of Columbus Day.
The celebration originated in the Sicilian town of Porticello and is celebrated to honor the
Virgin Mary who, as the story goes, guided lost fisherman safely back to shore with a light that
appeared from a mysterious source. Put on every year since 1935, this celebration has a court

43
made up of teenage girls and their retinue and a procession that tarts from Sts. Peter and Paul’s
church makes its way down Columbus Avenue to the chapel in Fisherman’s Wharf.
On the first Sunday of October, with a few exceptions including the COVID pandemic,
the Blessing of the Fleet and the parade of the Madonna del Lume has taken place. This
tradition allows the community to acknowledge and pay respect to the fishermen who have lost
their lives at sea. Though the Italian American community has mostly moved away from the
North Beach area, this tradition has managed to hang on. Rooted at the Sts. Peter and Paul
Church, which overlooks Washington Square Park and is the religious center of the Italian
American community in North Beach, the event is now also frequented by the Latino and
Asian communities that live in the area. The Madonna del Lume tradition is kept alive by
selecting a queen and court of teenage girls every year.

Figure 2.11: The Madonna del Lume Queen and her Court, 2022. Source: Author.

44
The queen and her attendants, along with the Green Street Mortuary Band, floats,
church members, interested onlookers and tourists walk from the church down the wide street
of Columbus Avenue to the historic fishing fleet about a mile away. It is a once-a-year
experience and I was once able to join in, walking down a four-lane street with cable cars, all
the way to Fisherman’s Wharf. The procession lands at the diminutive non-denominational
Fisherman's Chapel that is tucked behind the piers in the Fisherman’s Wharf harbor. The
celebration used to draw thousands of people and on a sunny day in October 2022, there were
maybe a hundred and fifty or so people that walked slowly behind the band. By the time we
arrived at the chapel, chairs were set up outside for attendees, there were about seventy-five
participants and onlookers. The teenage queen gave her speech, a rushed and mumbled affair,
and there was the singing of the Italian anthem, but when it came time for what used to be the
whole point of the festival, the blessing of the fishing boats, just the priest and his helper
walked over to the handful of brightly painted, historic Monterey Clippers that are moored and
proceeded to bless them. [Figure 2.12]

Figure 2.12: Blessing of the San Francisco fishing fleet in a ceremony, Fisherman’s Wharf, ca.1940, looking north
from Jefferson Street. Note F.E. Booth in background, which later became part of Fishermen’s Grotto restaurant.
Source: California Historical Society and University of Southern California; https://doi.org/10.25549/chs-m9712.

45
This story shows how the Italian American community in North Beach and Fisherman’s
Wharf, though vastly shrinking, is still trying to keep their traditions alive and it shows how an
event that used to be so meaningful to a community is now just an event that goes through the
motions, a theatrical recreation of what once had deep meaning. As a spectator witnessing this
event, even participating in it, I can glimpse a community trying desperately to keep their
heritage visible to those willing to watch or take part in. What is the importance in these
events? What kind of value does it bring to the community at large even if the community is no
longer a majority stakeholder? Perhaps these events bring added value to the area, showing
what helped to build this community, making those witnessing the parade and the float and the
teenage court walking down the street in their fancy dresses and sneakers ask why this event is
occurring and what it all means. It is yet another way to engage the community in
understanding what helped build this place that they live in and love, and why they should care
about their neighborhood and city. Though the Blessing of the Fleet and the Queen and her
court are representative of the history of North Beach and do not convey some of the hardships
experienced by the community, they do help to remind those witnessing the event to delve
deeper into the community’s past.

Italians During World War II
Fishing had been going well at the start of the 1940s for the Italian and Sicilian American
community.
87
Sardines were plentiful and money was good. However, the United States was
about to enter into the World War II and life was about to change for many, especially a few

87
By this time, fishermen were a majority Sicilian, but for the sake of clarity I will be referring to both groups as
Italian unless otherwise required to differentiate.

46
immigrant groups. Immediately after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,
the United States declared war on Japan, and President Roosevelt signed Proclamations 2525,
2526 and 2527. These would, respectively, allow the United States to detain potentially
dangerous non-citizens, or “enemy aliens” of Japanese, German and Italian ancestry.
88
By this
time the majority of the Italian American population in San Francisco was American born or
naturalized citizens. However, there were a number of Italians with pro-fascist leanings, so along
with individual Japanese and Germans, Italians were also called in for questioning.
89
The next
governmental action to have grave consequences for these communities, and especially
devastating for the Japanese community, was Executive Order 9066.
Executive order 9066 was quickly drafted and signed by President Roosevelt on February
19, 1942, and though the order is loosely worded and does not name a specific racial group, it
allowed for the removal and incarceration of “any and all persons” that lived in areas that were
considered vulnerable to attack, which primarily meant the West Coast and specifically near the
Pacific Ocean. Due to racist hysteria, people of Japanese ancestry were rounded up within a
couple of weeks of the order being signed. Italians and Germans were supposedly headed for the
same fate but this action was blocked by Washington and only the Japanese population,
American citizens and non-citizens alike, were sent to camps.
90

In San Francisco there were 12,000 Italian non-citizens that were now considered “enemy
aliens.” By June of 1942, 1,500 Italians had been detained. The California coastline was deemed
vulnerable to attack and enemy aliens were required to register at the post office, carry a pink

88
“World War II Enemy Alien Control Program Overview,” National Archives and Records Administration
(National Archives and Records Administration), accessed March 15, 2023,
https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/enemy-aliens/ww2.
89
Sebastian Fichera, Italy on the Pacific: San Francisco's Italian Americans (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
2016), 134-138.
90
Fichera, 140.

47
booklet that held their photo and fingerprints, as well as adhere to a curfew that kept them in
their homes from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. They were also forbidden to go near the water. This meant that
if they were fishermen or worked near the water, such as restaurant workers or garbage
collectors, they were likely to lose their jobs.
91

Dave D’Amato, a San Francisco native and fourth generation Italian American, who still
lives in North Beach, spoke about his family’s own struggles during World War II. His
grandfather Onofrio D’Amato, whom Dave never met, was one of these fishermen who was
forced to give up his livelihood and his two boats, the Sea King and the San Pedro.
My grandparents were not naturalized citizens, they bought property and stuff, but they'd
never learned English or applied to be[come] naturalized citizens…When the war came
along, he, and Italy, was on the wrong side…in the war…If you were a fisherman, you
had to go out in a big group and you were chaperoned by the Coast Guard or the
Navy…If you weren't a citizen, you had to have a family member or somebody who was
a citizen with you on the boat, and if you didn't, you were not allowed to even go near
Fisherman's Wharf. So for him, he was basically shut out. And they were forced to
relinquish the boats at that point.
92

91
Fichera, 143, 146.
92
Takahara, Dave D'Amato Interview. Personal, October 31, 2022.

48

Figure 2.13: Fisherman's Wharf, September 1943. Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 in the background.
Photo: Ann Rosener, Library of Congress. Foundsf.org.

With the United States entering the war, Onofrio’s American-born sons, who fished with
him, joined the military to fight. This meant he no longer had the workforce of his family. Dave
stated that his grandfather wasn’t allowed to work, which sent him into a depression, “that might
have caused his… early demise. Unfortunately, I think he suffered [from] mental illness from not
being able to work or do anything, and having his whole livelihood, stripped from him.”
93

Requisitioning boats from fishermen had been part of the navy’s preparation for war.
They had put into place a contingency plan to defend the West Coast in case of an attack from

93
Takahara, D’Amato Interview.

49
Japan. By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor there were 1,500 fishermen of Italian ancestry in
the San Francisco port and they ran most of the fishing boats on the West Coast.
94
The navy had
hoped to use them for mine sweeping among other things. This quickly put an end to most
fishing on the West Coast and the lucrative sardine catch that was happening between San
Francisco and Monterey bays. Ironically, the United States government would soon initiate a
campaign to boost food production after hobbling both the agricultural and fishing industries by
placing Japanese Americans, many of whom worked in agriculture, in incarceration camps, and
stripping the primarily Italian American fishing industry of their boats. The Agricultural
Department put out a poster to help get the word out: “Fish is a Fighting Food: We Need More.”
[Figure: 2.14] The boat seizures crippled the canning and reduction fishery industries in both San
Francisco and Monterey.
95

Though the treatment of the Japanese American community was considerably more harsh
than what either the German or Italian American communities experienced, as the Japanese were
forced to leave their homes and businesses and put into incarceration camps, the effect on many
of the Italians who worked in the fishing industry or along coastal areas was devastating,
resulting in loss of jobs and community standing that created lasting emotional trauma for many
in the community.

94
Lawrence DiStasi, “A Fish Story,” in Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and
Internment during World War II, ed. Lawrence DiStasi (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2001), pp. 63-96, 64.
95
DiStasi, 80.

50

Figure 2.14: “Fish is a Fighting Food: We Need More,” 1943. U.S. Office of War Information.
Artist: Henry Koerner. Source: Hennepin County Library.

51
Famous Italian American Food Businesses
Not all Italians were farmers or fishermen; many worked in the food industry. From the
produce market, businesses emerged that catered directly to Italians and the San Franciscan
community at large. Italians often ran businesses as greengrocers, with corner produce stores in
storefronts on the first floor of apartment buildings. There were numerous Italian restaurants that
Italian and non-Italians alike patronized. Another area of employment that many Italians found
work in was food manufacturing. In Erica J. Peters’ “San Francisco: A Food Biography,” she
states that according to the Italian bureau of statistics, in 1886, about seven thousand Italians
were living in San Francisco and many were in the food industry:
The Bureau counted five Italian firms in wholesale imports, twenty-two food retailers, ten
fruit wholesalers, seventy-three fruit and vegetable shops or vendors, eighty-five vintners
or wine dealers, forty-eight wine and spirit shops, fourteen butchers, twelve trattorie,
seven pasta manufacturers, four confectionery makers, seven bakers, three delicatessens,
two dairies, and one dealer in chocolate and coffee.
96

Strange that there is no mention of fishermen among this list. Most were small mom and pop run
enterprises, but a handful became some of the most famous food companies in the country,
brands that became household names in the twentieth century: Ghirardelli Chocolate, Del Monte
Foods, and Rice-A-Roni.

Ghirardelli Chocolate
Born in Italy in 1817, Domenico Ghirardelli moved to Lima, Peru in his early twenties to
open a confectionary store. In 1847, Ghirardelli’s American neighbor, James Lick, decided to
move his piano business to San Francisco, taking with him six hundred pounds of chocolate he
bought from Ghirardelli and planned to sell. Upon his arrival the chocolate quickly sold, and

96
Peters, San Francisco: a Food Biography, 59.

52
Lick urged Ghirardelli to move to San Francisco. In 1849, in the early part of the Gold Rush,
Ghirardelli arrived in San Francisco and soon opened shops in Stockton and San Francisco. In
1893, Ghirardelli’s sons, who then ran the business, relocated the factory to the Pioneer Woolen
Mills building on 900 North Point Street in Fisherman’s Wharf, where they built a group of red
brick building that became icons of the neighborhood.
97
In 1963 the Golden Grain Company, the
producers of Rice-A Roni, bought the Ghirardelli chocolate business. When Ghirardelli moved
the factory out of the building, shipping heir William Matson Roth bought the property in hopes
of, “conserving the historic character of the city rather than just investment for profit.”
98

Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and architect William Wurster were hired to reimagine
the Ghirardelli property as a shopping destination. Opening in 1964, it is considered one of the
first successful adaptive reuse projects of a factory site in the United States.
99

Del Monte Foods
In the 1880s, Mark Fontana, born Marco Fontana in Genoa, Italy, saw all of the spoilage
that happened at fruit stores.
100
Knowing that fruit was not available on the East Coast during the
winter months, he thought that canning the fruit would be a good solution to both problems. By
the 1890s Fontana & Co. became the second largest cannery in San Francisco, and by 1909 the
cannery was the largest fruit and vegetable cannery in the world.
101
By 1917, Fontana & Co had

97
Pioneer Woolen Mills was an early business on the San Francisco waterfront. Built in 1862 by William Sebastian
Mooser, it is one of the city’s oldest buildings and on the National Register of Historic Places. For more information
see the National Archives Catalog https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123861254.
98
Douglas Martin, “William M. Roth, Shipping Heir Who Became Lifelong Public Servant, Dies at 97,” The New
York Times, June 16, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/business/william-m-roth-shipping-heir-who-
became-lifelong-public-servant-dies-at-97.html.
99
Fichera, Italy on the Pacific, 68; Johnson, Samantha Iverson. “Ghirardelli Square: The Best Piece of Urban Space
in the Country.” SJSU ScholarWorks, 2021. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/5181/.
100
“Marco Fontana,” The Cannery, accessed August 4, 2023, https://www.fishermanswharf.org/italian-history/the-
cannery/.
101
“Our History,” Del Monte®, accessed August 4, 2023, https://www.delmonte.com/our-story/our-history.

53
become the California Fruit Canners Association, comprised of many canneries and fruit packing
plants in half a dozen states under the new name, Del Monte, which had been one of the many
companies that joined the Association.
102
Peaches and other fruit were processed, largely by
Italian women, at the cannery until 1937.
103

After being used as a warehouse for many decades, the abandoned cannery was headed
for demolition. In 1967, as with Ghirardelli Square, the Cannery, as it came to be known, was
purchased and rehabilitated by a local investor, who turned it into a commercial space filled with
restaurants and shops.
104
The rehabilitation of the Cannery and Ghirardelli Square helped launch
the adaptive reuse movement in the United States.
105

Rice-A-Roni
Golden Grain Macaroni Company was founded in 1912 by two Italian American
families, the De Domenico and the Ferigno families. The De Domenico family was originally
from Sicily and the Ferigno family from Campania. This was a partnership formed by marriage.
Originally the company was called Gragnano Products, but the name was changed to Golden
Grain Macaroni Company during World War II to sound less Italian.
106
In 1958 they developed
Rice-A-Roni from an Armenian inspired pilaf dish learned from a neighbor, that was part rice

102
Fichera, Italy on the Pacific, 64-66; https://www.delmonte.com/our-story/our-history; Chris Carlsson,
FOUNDSF, accessed August 4, 2023, https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Del_Monte_Foods.
103
Cinel, From Italy to San Francisco, 232.
104
“Leonard Martin, 81; Turned S.F. Cannery into Shops, Eateries,” Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2002,
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jan-31-me-passings31.4-story.html.
105
Ghirardelli Square,” The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin (The Cultural Landscape Foundation),
accessed November 16, 2022, https://www.tclf.org/sites/default/files/microsites/halprinlegacy/ghirardelli-
square.html.
106
Fichera,68. The Golden Grain website states that they changed their name in 1934. See “Our Story,” Golden
Grain Pasta, July 16, 2021, https://www.goldengrainpasta.com/our-story/.

54
and part capellini pasta, or macaroni, hence the name Rice-A Roni.
107
Thanks to a very
successful nationwide marketing campaign and a very catchy jingle, this product became known
as “ The San Francisco Treat.”
108

Figure 2.15: 1974 Rice-A-Roni advertisement with Kikkoman soy sauce. Source:
https://clickamericana.com/recipes/fish-seafood-recipes/california-siesta-fiesta-rice-with-tuna-tomatoes-1976.

107
“Macaroni” was what most Americans, including Italian- Americans, called pasta until the 1970s. In the 1980’s a
rise in the usage of the word “pasta” occurs when Italian cuisine started to be viewed as more upscale. For more
information see this discussion https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/595185/when-and-why-did-the-word-
pasta-become-commonly-used, as well as The Italian American Table: Food, Family and Community in New York
City and How Italian Food Conquered the World.
108
In 1963 Golden Grain Macaroni bought Ghirardelli Chocolate. Fichera, Italy on the Pacific,68; The Kitchen
Sisters, “Birth of Rice-A-Roni: The Armenian-Italian Treat,” NPR (NPR, July 31, 2008),
https://www.npr.org/2008/07/31/93067862/birth-of-rice-a-roni-the-armenian-italian-treat;
https://www.goldengrainpasta.com/our-story/.

55
Early Italian Restaurants

In the lower part of the city are numerous Italian restaurants, few of which are really first-
class if prices indicate such grades…One of these Italian houses is famed for being the
place in which (it is said) the best macaroni outside of Italy is set before the guests. This
nourishing dish is here cooked in a great variety of ways; and traveled people, gourmands
and blasé diners-out go to the obscure little house to enjoy a new sensation…But for a
truly Apician banquet, give an infrequent guest the six courses of macaroni served in six
different styles, with one course of mushrooms, and red wine a discretion- and he may
truly say: “I have dined to-day.”

-Restaurant Life in San Francisco, 1868. Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine
109

Like many foods that arrive with a diasporic community, it is often a limited number of
dishes that come to represent the culture at large in its new country. This tends to erase the origin
and variety of foods that were developed over hundreds of years and allow the expression of
regional pride through providing the traditional dishes from immigrants’ homelands. It is
understandable that this happens. Countries can be large, complex and filled with many regions.
Often an immigrant group that settles in a new country is from a specific region or two, giving
precedence to foods from those areas, and then what becomes popular is self-selected by what
the host country finds appealing and how the immigrant cooks adjust for the new country’s
tastes, and this is how we, as the host country, come to think of the recently-arrived people’s
food. Such was the case for Italian food in America. Until the second half of the twentieth
century Italian food was thought of as foreign or “ethnic” food, a term that first appears in 1959
and is now considered a problematic way to describe non-Western European food.
110
In the
1980s Italian food started to transition away from the category of “ethnic” food and into the

109
“Restaurant Life in San Francisco,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine (1868-1935), November 1868, p.
465.
110
In 1959 Craig Claiborne used the term “ethnic restaurant” to refer to an Indonesian restaurant he was reviewing
in The New York Times. Paul Freedman, Ten Restaurants That Changed America (New York, NY: Liveright
Publishing Corporation, 2018), 171.

56
realm of what many would have considered elevated cuisine, climbing the ranks to surpass the
popularity of long-venerated French food.
The Italians who landed in San Francisco came primarily from four different regions in
Italy: Genoa in Liguria, Lucca in Tuscany, Cosenza in Calabria, and Palermo in Sicily.
111
This
meant that the food traditions they carried with them varied from region to region, bringing a
variety of cooking styles and ingredients. With more cream-based dishes and fresh noodles in the
north and more tomato-centric dishes and dried, tubular pastas in the south, foods that we think
of as “Italian food” hail from regions all over Italy. From the region of Liguria, the Genoese
brought pesto. Olive oil came primarily from Lucca in Tuscany. Calabria is known for its chili
peppers, and Sicily for its extensive use of seafood.
The early restaurants that started out as places for the Italian community to gather and eat
food that reminded them of home, eventually began to be discovered by outsiders, namely
bohemians, and in turn, by everyone else.

1852-Tam O’ Shanter
One of the earliest Italians to set up a restaurant in the growing town of San Francisco
was Frank Bazzuro from Genoa, who in 1852, opened a restaurant in the abandoned ship, the
“Tam O’Shanter.” Purchased for fifty dollars, the ship, one of the hundreds left in San Francisco
Bay during the frenzy of the gold rush, provided a novel setting to serve plentiful and cheap
Dungeness crab to a growing city.
112
This restaurant also may have been the first place to serve

111
Deanna Paoli Gumina, “Provincial Italian Cuisines: San Francisco Conserves Italian Heritage,” The Argonaut,
1990,
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Provincial_Italian_Cuisines:_San_Francisco_Conserves_Italian_Heritage.
112
Gumina, “Provincial Italian Cuisine.”

57
cioppino, San Francisco’s iconic stew.
113

1859-Campi’s
In 1859, Giacomo Campi, who was Swiss, and John Mauletti, who was Italian, opened a
coffee stand and restaurant on the corner of Sansome and Merchant (now Grant). They served
French and Italian food until closing in 1917. Food historian Erica Peters, states that the
restaurant “educated San Franciscans about the importance of olive oil in Italian cuisine.”
114

Considered to be the “most important” of early Italian restaurants and a gastronomic rival
to the French restaurant Maison Dore, it catered to a more socioeconomically diverse group,
enjoying “high repute among epicures as well as trenchmen.”
115

1888- Sanguinetti’s
Sanguinetti’s restaurant was located on Davis Street. Its chief clientele were fishermen
from the Union Street Wharf, which predated Fisherman's Wharf, and it was also popular with
bohemians. There you could get a bowl of minestrone, an entree and a bottle of wine for twenty-
five cents. Sanguinetti's was owned by Stefan Sanguinetti and had low ceiling beams, dark walls,
and sawdust on the floor, as well as musicians, all giving the place a special atmosphere. Artists
and intellectuals were drawn to the “exotic” and inexpensive food and it is suggested that they
introduced Italian restaurants to the middle and upper classes by portraying them in their
literature and artwork.
116

113
Doris Muscatine, A Cook's Tour of San Francisco: The Best Restaurants and Their Recipes (New York, NY:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963), 327.
114
Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography, 118-119.
115
Gumina; Dillon, North Beach, 134.
116
Gumina.

58
1886 -Fior d’Italia
Started in 1886 Fior d’Italia is, according to its website, America's oldest Italian
restaurant.
117
Founded by Angelo Del Monte, originally from Genoa, it has served the city’s
diners in numerous locations since its founding.
118
Its appeal extended beyond the Italian
community. In 1921, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that “plenty of good Americans, of
puritan or cavalier stock for generations, like Italian cooking as well as anybody else…”
119
Fior
d’Itlalia was considered the finest Italian restaurant in San Francisco from when it was
established into the early twentieth century.

Figure 2.16: The original 1886 menu.
Source: The Fabulous Fior-Over 100 Years in an Italian Kitchen.

117
“Authentic Italian Cuisine in San Francisco, CA: Fior d’Ítalia,” Fior d’ Italia - Northern Italian Cuisine, accessed
December 21, 2022, https://www.fior.com/about-us.
118
Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography, 128.
119
Peters, 130.

59

Figure 2.17: Fior d'Italia after 1906 earthquake. Source: fior.com.

Early 1900s-Coppa’s
Housed in the storied Montgomery Block Building, Coppa’s became the most popular
Italian restaurant in San Francisco before the 1906 earthquake. Built in 1853, the Montgomery
Block Building, fondly referred to as the “Monkey Block,” was the largest commercial building
west of the Mississippi, and came to be the center of bohemian culture, as it offered studios and
apartments for writers including Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Jack London, George Sterling, and Emma Goldman.
120
The restaurant’s popularity
was largely due to Giuseppe Coppa’s culinary skills and affordable pricing that attracted an
artistic clientele, which in turn attracted the rest of San Francisco. For fifty cents you could get
salad, pasta, entree, crusty sourdough bread, black coffee, and a bottle of wine. Most notably, the
interior was playfully decorated with frescoes painted by the artists in exchange for a table.
121

When the restaurant became too popular with the general public, the bohemians moved on.

120
Harvey Smith, “New Deals Arts and Programs During the Depression,” FOUNDSF, accessed March 6, 2023,
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=New_Deal_Artists_and_Programs_During_the_Depression.
121
Richard H. Dillon and Lynn L. Davis, North Beach: The Italian Heart of San Francisco (Novato, CA: Presidio
Press, 1985), 135;Gumina, “Provincial Italian Cuisine.”

60

Figure 2.18: Mural inside of Coppa's in the Montgomery Block Building. The Transamerica Pyramid now stands in
the same location. Source: FoundSF.org.

These and the many other Italian restaurants introduced the population of San Francisco
to Italian cuisine making it a staple and popular food whereas in many other parts of the country
at this time it would have been considered exotic. “Italian proprietors laid the groundwork for a
restaurant industry,” writes Deanna Paoli Gumina, “which contributed to San Francisco's
recognition as a gourmet city.”
122

122
Gumina, “Provincial Italian Cuisine.”

61
Chapter 3 : Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9

There is something about the smell of salt air in San Francisco that sets one's appetite off
on a wild chase that ends only at Fisherman's Wharf. No matter how hungry you have
become in hill-climbing, cable car riding or window gawking they can cope with your
hunger.
--Henry Evans, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf
123

Introduction
In February of 2022, when I was beginning my research into this thesis, I knew I wanted
to focus on one particular restaurant, Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9. It is known to be the first full-
service restaurant in Fisherman’s Wharf. Opened in 1935, it was in business for eighty-one years
and run by the Geraldi family until they were forced to sell the business in 2016. Though the
business was bought, and the name was changed to The Grotto, the iconic exterior remained
unchanged. The interior and the menu were mildly revamped, and the new owners maintained
that it was still the same business. I reached out to Anthony Geraldi, the fourth-generation
restaurateur and youngest family member to have co-owned Fisherman’s Grotto No. 9. Anthony
and his father Michael had run the restaurant up until its sale in 2016. I interviewed Anthony
three times between February 2022 through February 2023. I interviewed his father, Michael
Geraldi, once in 2023. Through my interviews I hoped to document a portion of the Geraldi
family’s cultural legacy and their contribution to the creation of Fisherman’s Wharf through their
restaurant. What follows is a summary of the interviews and is not meant to be a complete
history of the Geraldi family or of the restaurant, but insight into how the restaurant came to be
and its role in the creation of the Wharf, including who came to eat as well as who worked at the
restaurant through its eighty-one years in business.

123
Henry Herman Evans, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf (San Francisco, CA: Porpoise Bookshop, 1957), 21.

62

Figure 3.1: Crab vendors on Taylor Street looking north. F.E. Booth and Pier 45 buildings in the background ca.
1920s. Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp27.6313.

63
How the Restaurant Began
124

Born in 1890 in the small fishing village of Sciacca on the island of Sicily, Mike Geraldi
would come to San Francisco and eventually open the first full-service restaurant on Fisherman’s
Wharf, helping to create one of the most visited tourist attractions in the United States.
125
He
arrived in San Francisco in 1904, two years before the great earthquake, at the age of fourteen,
along with his eighteen-year-old brother. They had left Sicily and their family to escape poverty
that much of southern Italy was experiencing. Once in San Francisco the teenage Mike worked
for a number of years helping to maintain and repair the fishing boats that belonged primarily to
Sicilian fishermen, eventually saving enough money to buy his own fishing boat. He fished for
26 years and then transitioned to selling fish and crab on the sidewalk of Taylor Street which ran
north to south along the inner harbor of Fisherman’s Wharf.
126
[Figure 3.1] Mike occupied stall
number 9, which was the last of the stalls on the street. His stall, like all of the others, consisted
of a prep counter in a small building, a crab pot, a large cauldron on the sidewalk filled with
boiling sea water with a fire underneath, and wooden tables to lay the cooked crab and other
seafood out on. Stall number 1 was at the very corner of Jefferson and Taylor streets, where
Taylor Street becomes a pier. Salvatore Guardino operated stall Number 1 and was supposedly
the first fish monger to operate a fish stall on port property.
127
The fish stalls continued
sequentially up the street, with Cresci Bros. at number 2, A. Sabella at number 3, Alioto’s at
number 8, and finally, Mike Geraldi at number 9.
128

124
The majority of this chapter is compiled from interviews I conducted in 2022 and 2023 with the last owners of
Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, Anthony and Michael Geraldi, unless noted.
125
Paulie Doyle, “The 25 Most Visited Tourist Spots in America,” Newsweek, August 10, 2021,
https://www.newsweek.com/most-visited-tourist-spots-america-disney-new-york-california-1616737.
126
Fishermen’s Grotto Recipe Book, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
127
Alessandro Baccari, San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006), 129.
128
Presumably stalls 4-7 were occupied by other seafood vendors, but I was unable to determine who was on the site
at the time.

64
Visiting the Wharf, you could buy paper cones of crab meat to eat from fish vendors and
then walk along the wharf watching the fishermen mending their nets, working on their boats and
unloading their catch. Anthony’s cousin, Michael Sabella, whose family also opened a fish
market and a restaurant on the Wharf, recalls what the early scene down on the wharf might have
been like when vendors would sell the day’s catch on the sidewalks that ran along the Wharf.
The Sabella family had stall number three on Taylor Street that would later become the Sabella
& La Torre restaurant:
There were always plenty of wood scraps around that could be collected to cook the crabs
and shrimp at stall number 3. In fact much of the Wharf was still lumber yards and train
tracks. After filling the cauldron with seawater, Antonino set the fire underneath and
went back to see what Papa and the other fishermen had brought back from his bay, the
Marin Headlands, and Monterey Bay... By the time he returned to the stall, the water was
boiling in the cauldron. He started with the bay shrimp which only took a quick dip in the
pot to cook. Next went the crabs. The sound of the crabs hitting the scalding water
sounded like the crabs were screaming, but Antonino knew they couldn't because they
had no vocal cords. The whistling sound came from steam escaping their shells…The
streets filled with the intoxicating, heady aroma from the bright-orange cooked crabs as
they were removed from the cauldron. Antonino was careful to stack the crabs on their
backs to keep the water in and the crab moist.
129

Geraldi, like all of the other vendors, not only sold boiled crab and fresh fish to
housewives and curious locals, he made food for the fishermen. His grandson, Michael Geraldi,
recounted that more than one fisherman suggested he open a restaurant saying, “You’re feeding
us, why don’t you feed the public?” Encouraged, he decided to open a restaurant with table-side
service. This had never been done before in Fisherman’s Wharf.
In 1935 Geraldi, along with investor Art Belcher, built and opened the first full-service
restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. During the early years of the restaurant, Belcher, who the
Geraldi family believes was Jewish, was the only Fishermen’s Grotto proprietor referenced in a

129
Michael Sabella, Recipes Change: A Culinary Journey Through 5 Generations (Page Publishing, Inc. 2021), 32-
36.

65
newspaper article that mentions the restaurant and its “Annex” on Treasure Island, in 1939.
130

[Figure 3.2]

Running from February 1939 through September of 1940, the Golden Gate
International Exposition was staged on the manmade Treasure Island, to celebrate the building of
the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges.
131
Fishermen’s Grotto had a restaurant as well as two chowder
stands at the Exposition, that Belcher appeared to be overseeing.
132
There is no mention of
Belcher after 1940 and the Geraldi family states he was only involved in the early years.

Figure 3.2: Early Fishermen's Grotto business card ca. mid-late 1930s.
From the collection of Anthony Geraldi.

Mike Geraldi’s name first appears in the San Francisco Chronicle in a 1939 article, but
not attached to Fishermen’s Grotto, and is grouped with other “merchant or restaurant men” of
Fisherman’s Wharf.
133
Geraldi was not to remain just a “restaurant man.” He was soon to make a

130
San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, California), July, 1939: 23.
131
Gail Hynes Shea, “Treasure Island Fair: Golden Gate International Exposition,” FOUNDSF, accessed May 10,
2023, https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Treasure_Island_Fair%3A_Golden_Gate_International_Exposition.
132
San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, California), April 7, 1940: 80.
133
San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, California), September 23, 1939: 6.

66
name for himself with Fishermen’s Grotto restaurant and would come to be thought of as “one of
the most celebrated restaurateurs in the history of Fisherman’s Wharf,” and one of the founders
of today’s more tourist-focused Fisherman’s Wharf.
134

Building and Site History
Because the Port had built wharves, the migration of restaurants from North Beach to
Fisherman’s Wharf began as the wharves shifted from a solely industrial environment to place
where tourists and locals could buy and eat crab cocktails from vendors. The act of placing the
cauldrons for boiling shrimp and crab on the sidewalk of Taylor Street led to the Italians
situating themselves in a specific place, allowing them to be known for their food and to earn a
living and gain wealth. This accumulated wealth then allowed the once street vendors to build
permanent businesses, often in just a matter of ten to fifteen years. They created an environment
that changed the visual character of these wharves, from steaming cauldrons to small stores with
counter seating or you could grab and go. They eventually expanded those small stores into full-
service dining.
Built in 1918, The F.E. Booth Packing House, a two-story reinforced concrete building,
was built to be a fish packing house and market. It was constructed in the Italian Renaissance
style with a hipped, red-tile roof, and a curved arcade entryway on the building’s southeast
corner. [Figure 3.3] The building’s namesake and lessee, Frank Booth, was known to be the
“founder of the sardine industry in California.”
135

134
Baccari, San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, 136.
135
Corbett, 181.

67

Figure 3.3: F.E.Booth Packing House, ca. 1921. Accessed in Port City Publication.
Source: BSHC, Biennial Report, 1921.

By 1920, on the corner of Jefferson and Taylor Streets, a one-story wooden building was
built next to the harbor that lapped up against Taylor Street. It had five stalls for fish vendors. A
few years later, three more stalls were built.
136
Geraldi’s stall was on Taylor Street next to an
empty lot between the F.E. Booth building and the fish stalls in the one-story buildings. [Figure
3.4] He may have even moved his stall around on Taylor Street. In Figure 3.6., his cart can be
seen further down the block closer to Jefferson. It is not clear, even to his family, if Geraldi
always had a permanent spot on Taylor Street during his days as a vendor and perhaps he even
shared a kitchen in one of the eight stalls. [Figure 3.5]

136
Corbett, 180.

68

Figure 3.4: F.E.Booth building and empty lot where Fishermen's Grotto (arrow) would later be built. Looking east
from Jefferson Street. Source: San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf, Alessandro Baccari Jr.

Figure 3.5: Mike Geraldi ca. 1934 at his crab stand, looking south on Taylor Sreet. This same cart can be seen in
the photograph below just right of the lamppost. Source: Fishermen's Grotto Facebook page.

69

Figure 3.6: Crab pots at Fisherman's Wharf, July 28, 1934. Taylor Street looking southwest. Mike Geraldi's cart
(Local Crabs) is located right of center, closer to stall No. 6, indicating he may have moved around before settling
at stall No. 9. Source: San Francisco.
These fish stalls offered up prepared food to eat on the premises or to go, but the places
were small and casual. “There was mostly counter service where you could stand and spoon up
your crab or shrimp cocktail with a crisp oyster cracker or two and perhaps a bottle of beer,”
writes Henry Evans in his charming 1957 pamphlet, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf.
137
To
open the first full service restaurant, Geraldi and Belcher decided they needed to build a larger
space than what the stalls offered. As they were on Port property, Geraldi and Belcher did not
own the land, nor own the building, but leased it from the Port, as did everyone who had
businesses on Port property. Nestled between fish stalls and the F.E. Booth building was the
empty lot where Geraldi set up his crab stand and would become where he and Belcher decided
to build their restaurant.

137
Henry Herman Evans, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf (San Francisco, CA: Porpoise Bookshop, 1957), 20.

70
In 1935, Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 finished construction of its two-story, 155 seat
restaurant and opened its doors, offering “Fish Dinners,” a first on the Wharf.
138
From a
photograph dated 1935, the original two-story building is vaguely Mediterranean in style, and
has what appears to be an asphalt tiled side-gabled roof, with four arched French-door windows
and one double-hung window on the second floor. Because of the awnings on the first floor, and
the cropped photograph, it is hard to make out the window and entrance details. In front of the
restaurant are tables for cooked crab and other seafood, as well as the crab pots that seem to be
fixed in place and made out of brick or faced with tile, no longer the metal cauldrons from earlier
years. [Figure 3.7]

Figure 3.7: Fishermen's Grotto shortly after it opened in 1935. Source: Fishermen's Grotto Facebook Page.

Mike Geraldi’s restaurant became a very popular destination on the Wharf, with other

138
The number of seats is stated as 180 in the HRE for Fishermen’s Grotto. I have chosen to go with the number
provided to me by the original co-owner Anthony Geraldi. Knapp Architects, Draft Historic Resource Evaluation :
Fishermen’s Grotto, 2851 Taylor Street, San Francisco, CA (Prepared on behalf of tenant Chris Henry for Port of
San Francisco and the San Francisco Planning Department, 2017), 25.

71
Sicilian fish vendors such as the Sabella, Alioto and Castagnola families following suit and
opening up restaurants of their own. Not much is known about what happened to the business
relationship between Belcher and Geraldi other than Belcher’s name no longer appeared on
menus after a few years. Geraldi had only fourteen years to grow his business and establish his
legacy as he died suddenly at 58 years of age in 1949. During that time his restaurant made it on
to the esteemed Duncan Hines list of recommended restaurants, appearing in the 1941 edition of
Duncan Hines’ best seller Adventures in Good Eating: Good Eating Places along the Highways
of America.
139
[Figure 3.8] Fishermen’s Grotto even sold copies of his book for many years.

Figure 3.8: Review of Fishermen's Grotto in Ducan Hines' 1941 'Adventures in Good Eating.'

139
Duncan Hines, Adventures in Good Eating: Good Eating Places along the Highways of America, 8th ed.
(Bowling Green, KY: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1941), 47. Before Duncan Hines was known for cake mixes,
he was the first to write guides on where to eat while motoring across the United States-an American version of the
Michelin guide. For more information see Duncan Hines: How a Traveling Salesman Became the Most Trusted
Name in Food, or Nicole Jankowski, “Duncan Hines: The Original Road Warrior Who Shaped Restaurant History,”
NPR, March 26, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/03/26/520866833/duncan-hines-the-original-road-
warrior-who-shaped-restaurant-history.

72

Figure 3.9: Mike Geraldi with "Queen for a Day" winner, Carol Trotter, below the “Duncan Hines Recommends”
sign in 1947. Source: “San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf” and Fishermen’s Grotto No.9 Collection.

When Mike Geraldi passed away, his son Nino Geraldi, who was one of eight children,
took over the restaurant. Though many of Geraldi’s other children worked at the restaurant, he
made Nino the General Manager prior to his death. Nino married Beatrice Sabella, his cousin, in
1948. Her family had the fish market A.Sabella (now Sabella and La Torre) that was also on
Taylor Street and her father Antonino went on to open the restaurant also called A.Sabella, on the
southwest corner of Jefferson and Taylor Streets, not on Port property. I was not able to track
down the exact date the full-service A.Sabella restaurant opened, even though Michael Sabella, a
chef and Sabella family member, has stated it is 1929 in his book Recipes Change. His dates are
a bit loose, and he seems to be referring to the stall on Taylor Street and not the restaurant. After
a fire in 1964, the Sabellas rebuilt their restaurant from the ground up in the New Formalist
architectural style. It has three stories and when it was in operation had a dance club called the

73
Capri Room on the bottom floor and the restaurant on the top. After Mike Geraldi opened his
restaurant, many of the Sicilian fish vending families also opened full service restaurants.
According to Anthony and Michael Geraldi, the date of when Fisherman’s Grotto No. 9 opened
was 1935, but not when Mike Geraldi started his stall business. They claim that many of the
other restaurants put down the start date of their stall businesses as the founding of their
restaurants, and therefore it appears that many of these full-service restaurants are older than they
are. For the most part it appears that no other restaurants dispute Fisherman’s Grotto as being the
oldest sit-down restaurant on the Wharf. The families may argue over who was selling fish first,
but as there were few records other than the permits handed out to stall occupants, we may never
know who was exactly first to sell cooked crabs to passerby.
140

After Mike Geraldi’s passing, Nino carried on with the restaurant as the general manager
and decided that the building next door that had been the F.E. Booth fish packing house, and then
for a few years the Vista Del Mar restaurant, could be leased from the Port to expand
Fishermen’s Grotto.
141
[Figure 3.10] Merging the original two-story building with the F.E. Booth
building would more than double the size of his restaurant, eventually making it one of the
largest restaurants in San Francisco at 18,796 square feet.
142

140
Sabella, Recipes Change. 36.
141
The Vista Del Mar was the Alioto family’s other restaurant that they opened for a couple years until 1952 when
the Geraldis took it over. It was owned by Ignacio, Joseph, and Sal Alioto.
142
By the 1980s the restaurant was a massive 18,796-square feet. Zimmerman, Steven. “The Geraldi Family of
Fishermen’s Grotto #9 - San Francisco’s Largest Square Foot Restaurant.” Restaurant Realty Company, October 6,
2021. https://www.restaurantrealty.com/restaurant-realty-sells-fishermens-grotto-9/.

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Figure 3.10: Fishermen's Grotto ca. 1940s. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

Figure 3.11: Fishermen's Grotto ca. early 1950s, center. The F.E. Booth building, right, is now the Vista Del mar
restaurant. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

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Combining the two buildings that were stylistically different took finessing. [Figure 3.11]
The F.E. Booth building had a curved arcade at the southeast corner of the building and the
design solution that was employed to join the two buildings was to create a faux gable-front with
a bay window and chimney that bridged the two buildings. [Figure 3.12] The curve of the F.E.
Booth building remains but can only be seen from inside the building on the second floor. It is
hidden behind a false wall where the Geraldi family installed a fish tank. In order to feed the fish
and access the tank, they installed a door in the wall and behind this wall is where the curve of
the original building remains visible.

Figure 3.12: Fishermen's Grotto ca. 1958 after the two buildings were joined in 1953. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

Inside the Restaurant
The interior of the restaurant reflects the different decades it took to build over fifty
years and was an important aspect to the identity of the restaurant. As the restaurant consists of

76
two buildings that were connected together in 1953, the two interiors are distinct from one
another. The interior of the original two-story building that was constructed in 1935 and seats
155 guests has a Venetian theme with striped canal mooring poles or “Pali di Casada,” that frame
the built-in wooden booths, painted wooden plank ceiling and multi-colored quarry tile floors.
143

[Figure 3.13] The addition of the Pali di Casada motif was carried through to the exterior of the
building. Not originally on the exterior of the building in 1935, the mooring poles appeared
along the sidewalk that runs in front of the restaurant sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s,
and remain a visual hallmark of the restaurant. Though the family was Sicilian and not Venetian,
they used the widely recognizable striped poles to tie their restaurant to Italy and perhaps the
perceived romance of Venice.

Figure 3.13: The Venetian Room. The interior of the original dining room.
Source: Fishermen's Grotto Recipe Book.

143
Knapp Architects, Draft Historic Resource Evaluation : Fishermen’s Grotto, 2851 Taylor Street, San Francisco,
CA (Prepared on behalf of new Fishermen’s Grotto No.9 owner Chris Henry for Port of San Francisco and the San
Francisco Planning Department, 2017), 10.

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When the Geraldi family took over the lease of the F.E.Booth building in 1953, recently
the Vista del Mar restaurant, they added the Grotto Tavern on the first floor that filled in the
space between to the two buildings. This was a small room with a wraparound bar. Behind the
Grotto Tavern were office spaces and storage rooms accessible from the gift shop that was
located on the first floor of the F.E. Booth building, now the new addition to Fishermen’s
Grotto. The second floor of the building where the formal dining room and the Fireplace Lounge
are located, is a mixture of design styles; “The freewheeling, eclectic array of materials, colors,
finishes, and forms makes it appear the interior was remodeled in parts, multiple times, with an
eye to adding something new in each section or space instead of creating a unified whole.”
144

[Figure 3.14] Indeed, the family updated and added to the restaurant over the next sixty plus
years to accommodate the changes they needed to make. The lounge, located on the northeast
side of the building, is mid-century in style, and it seems it was part of the earlier 1953
renovation. Michael Geraldi says he can only remember it ever looking the way it still does. The
ceiling in the lounge has beams with wooden herringbone boards and diamond-shaped wall
paneling with padded vinyl insets, along with a brick fireplace on the east wall close to where the
fish tank used to be. The curved wooden bar runs along the south wall and stops just before an
archway the leads into the “Florentine” dining room. [Figure 3.15] The dining room has beamed
ceilings and large picture windows along the south and western sides as well as another smaller
bar half way into the dining room on the north side. In the 1980s, the dining room was extended
out over a one-story existing building, making the space significantly larger and as mentioned
earlier, one of the largest restaurants in San Francisco.

144
Knapp Architects, Draft Historic Resource Evaluation, p. 11-12.

78

Figure 3.14: Fireplace Cocktail Lounge ca. early 1950s. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

Figure 3.15: Florentine Dining Room, looking southwest, ca. early 1950s. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

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Imported Giftwares Shop
On the first floor of the building, next to the Tavern, was the Imported Giftwares Shop,
which was run until the late 1980s by Nino Geraldi’s sister Eleanor. After she died, the shop was
neglected and frequently remained closed and only opened up when customers would inquire
about it or needed access to the elevator, which was located in the gift store.
The shop sold many hundreds of souvenirs depicting Fisherman’s Wharf and San
Francisco, as well as items from other countries. [Figure 3.16]

Figure 3.16: Imported Giftwares Shop.
Source: Fishermen's Grotto Recipe Book.in about the early 2010s, removing old carpet and discovering painted
concrete floors and vintage deadstock items. He threw out a lot of “junk” that had accumulated, painted, cleaned,
bought shelves and added lightbulbs to the old fixtures. Anthony pointed out that there were collectors from Colorado
and as far away as New York who would come to the store once a year and buy many of the now collectible items.

80
There were hand-painted serving trays made in Japan, depicting familiar scenes of San
Francisco; cuckoo clocks from Germany; Murano glass from Italy; leather belts with whip
stitching and tiny colorful beads that spelled out “San Francisco”; highball glasses with
“Fishermen’s Grotto” stenciled in gold across the surface; mugs, keychains, notepads tucked into
a leather sleeve, combs and nail file sets, all stamped with the image of the “Little Fisherman,”
the Fishermen’s Grotto mascot. Anthony decided he wanted to bring back the gift shop after it
had languished for almost twenty years. He set about cleaning up the space in about the early
2010s, removing the old carpet and discovering painted concrete floors and vintage deadstock
items. He threw out a lot of “junk” that had accumulated, painted, cleaned, bought shelves, and
added lightbulbs to the old light fixtures. Anthony pointed out that there were collectors from
Colorado and as far away as New York who would come to the store once a year and buy many
of the now collectible items.

The Little Fisherman
The image of the “Little Fisherman” was synonymous with Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9.
The pipe-smoking fisherman whose large-nosed profile is topped with a Sou’Wester hat, wearing
a rain slicker, never without his fishing pole and dangling fishy catch, can be found painted on
the side of the restaurant and rendered in neon high above the building. [Figure 3.17] The
mascot, created by a friend of Mike Geraldi’s, was painted on the building in 1935 and found its
way onto menus, glasses, silverware, plates, coasters, matchbooks, saltshakers and the carpet.
[Figure 3.18] I even found that some people got tattoos of him. [Figure 3.19]

81

Figure 3.17: The Little Fisherman being painted on Fishermen’s Grotto, ca 1930s.
Source: Fishermen’s Grotto Facebook Page.

Figure 3.18: Vintage Little Fisherman souvenirs on eBay. Source: eBay.

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Figure 3.19: Little Fisherman tattoo. Source: Letitbleedsf Instagram.
Often, when Mike Geraldi would go to the Safeway market after work, he’d be wearing
his jacket that had the Little Fisherman embroidered on it, and people would stop and talk to him
and say, “Fishermen’s Grotto! Fishermen’s Grotto! You work at Fishermen’s Grotto!” and
proceed to tell him how much they loved his restaurant. Even though the restaurant is no longer
owned by the Geraldi family, is now called “The Grotto,” and there are no more items sold with
the Little Fisherman’s likeness, the neon signs of the salty mariner sit high above the roof of the
restaurant and glow visibly through the fog.

Neon Signs
One of the larger neon signs in San Francisco is the one atop Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9. It
spans the width of the façade and is made up of three signs and is held up above the roof line by
a metal armature. [Figures 3.13 and 3.20] The sign has changed over the years as the building
expanded. It appears to be the same sign as it was in the 1950s when the two buildings merged.

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The sign of the Little Fisherman that faces south was lifted up higher than it had been when the
Alioto’s No. 8 restaurant, directly south of Fishermen’s Grotto, added a second story and their
own neon signs. There is a sign on the west side of the roof that faces the inner lagoon as well as
a sign on the south wall that faces Jefferson Street.

Figure 3.20: Looking north on Taylor Street are restaurants including Sabella & LaTorre, Alioto's and Fishermen's
Grotto. Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp28.3582.
The family regularly maintained the signs understanding that they were a significant
feature of their restaurant as well as widely recognizable. The Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9
restaurant, along with a few other Fisherman’s Wharf signs and buildings, have been replicated
at Universal Studios in both Florida and Japan.
145
[Figure 3.21] The former executive director of
the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District pointed out, “Once you’ve been copied in a

145
Jamie Ferrell, “Universal Studios Japan Has a Mini San Francisco, and It’s Fascinating,” Secret San Francisco,
April 27, 2023, https://secretsanfrancisco.com/universal-studios-japan-san-francisco/.

84
theme park, I think you can pretty much say you’re iconic.”
146

Figure 3.21: Universal Studios Japan, accessed August 3, 2023.
Source: https://secretsanfrancisco.com/universal-studios-japan-san-francisco/.

Tourists and Fishermen’s Grotto
After Fishermen’s Grotto opened the first sit-down restaurant, the other Sicilian fish
vendors quickly followed suit, opening their own full-service restaurants on Taylor and Jefferson
streets: A. Sabella’s, Alioto’s, Castagnola’s, and DiMaggio’s. A little later came Sabella and
LaTorre, Guardino’s, Pompei’s Grotto, Exposition Fish Grotto, Tarantino’s, Neptune Fish
Grotto, the Franciscan, Cappuro’s and Scoma’s. [Figures 3.22 and 3.23] Many of these
restaurants survived into the twenty-first century.

146
Sarah Fritsche, “Historic Fishermen’s Grotto Restaurant to Get New Owners,” SFGATE, June 23, 2016,
https://www.sfgate.com/restaurants/article/Historic-Fisherman-s-Wharf-restaurant-to-get-8321866.php#photo-
10436868.

85

Figure 3.22: Vintage menus from Fisherman's Wharf: Alioto's, A. Sabella's, Castagnola Brothers and DiMaggio's.
Source: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Figure 3.23: Map of restaurants and attractions in Fisherman's Wharf ca. 1960s.
Source: Fisherman’s Wharf Merchants Assoc. pamphlet.

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As the Wharf became more of a draw for locals, a place people could stay longer to have
a meal, a more elevated lunch or celebratory dinner, as well as take in the picturesque sights of
fishermen mending nets, more and more tourists came to the area from out of town. Along with
Duncan Hines’ recommending Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 to his readers, in the early 1940s before
World War II, which likely brought in tourists, it was featured as one of the places where
winners of the “Queen for A Day” radio and television show dined for lunch.
147
[Figure 3.24]

Figure 3.24: Mike Geraldi with "Queen for a Day" winner Catherine Frye, 1948. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

According to Alessandro Baccari, author of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf and founder
and president of the Fisherman’s Wharf Historical Society, the restaurant was one of the first in
San Francisco to participate in a trade with local radio stations for airtime.
148

147
“Queen for A Day,” was a radio, then television show that ran from 1945 though 1957 on the radio and 1956
through 1964 on NBC and then ABC television. “Queen for a Day,” Wikipedia, June 30, 2023,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_for_a_Day.
148
Baccari, San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, 137.

87
The heyday of Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 was in the 1950s and 1960s. The wait was often
long to get in and the restaurant was open until two in the morning.
149
Most of the customers
were still locals during this time period, but there were diners from out of town, especially during
the summer months from June to October. Michael Geraldi, grandson of the founder Mike
Geraldi, started working the restaurant’s crab pots on the sidewalk when he was around twelve
years old. By the time he was sixteen he started working inside the restaurant helping his dad
Nino seat customers. “It was packed,” Mike recalled. “People would be waiting in line, you
know, so they’d have to wait in the bar. There was always a waiting line. A lot of people in the
bar, a ton of smoke…Everybody in those days smoked when they went to the bar. And it was
bad…if you don’t like smoke, it was bad.”
150
When Mike turned twenty-one he learned how to
tend the bar and did that job until he was about twenty-three, when he became a host and began
managing the restaurant alongside his father Nino:
The weekends were always packed. Really, really busy. I know because I had to work at
the desk. And they’d be waiting in lines and I had to take the person's name, you know,
on the list. And I’d go home crying every night because they would be so mean to me.
Because you know, they’d ask you, “How long do I have to wait?” I'd say,
“Approximately thirty to forty minutes,” and as soon as I went over the forty minutes
they’d come out yelling," You told me thirty to forty minutes! It's been one hour!" It was
hard for a young guy, you know, in his early twenties to get yelled at like that, all the
time. It was so busy. You did the best you could. And my father,… he said, "Don't ever
tell them it's going to be too long. I don't want them to leave."…But I remember people
waited an hour, an hour and a half sometimes.
151

The popularity of the restaurant attracted the attention of celebrities from the local to the
A-listers. Elizabeth Taylor, Perry Como, Ronald Reagan and Muhammad Ali were all guests at
Fishermen’s Grotto. [Figure 3.25] Ali even took time to joke with one of the employees who

149
The August 25, 1951 menu states that the dining rooms are open from 10am to 2am.
150
Emi Takahara, Interview with Michael Geraldi, personal, April 18, 2023.
151
Emi Takahara, Interview with Michael Geraldi, personal, April 18, 2023.

88
worked at the crab stand in front of the restaurant saying, “You look just like Joe Frazier!” while
putting up his fists up in a boxing stance, which amused everyone.

Figure 3.25: Nino Geraldi with President Ronald Reagan. Source: Fishermen's Wharf Grotto Facebook Page.
At its busiest, the restaurant would serve about a thousand diners a night, the dining room
turning over three or four times. These high numbers didn’t last for long. In 1978, Pier 39, an
outdoor shopping mall, was built a few blocks away from the restaurant and central Fisherman’s
Wharf. Where old docks once stood, Pier 39 was developed with the idea that it would revitalize
the Fisherman’s Wharf area and bring in tourists and more customers. It originally had fifty
stores, twenty-three restaurants, a diving pool, bumper cars and street performers to attract
people.
152

152
“History of Pier 39,” PIER 39, May 19, 2022, https://www.pier39.com/history-of-pier-39/.

89
Fishermen’s Grotto and other established businesses saw business drop off after Pier 39
opened, as Pier 39 advertised heavily on television and was seen as a clean, family-friendly
destination in an area that was perceived as neglected and worn out. Business for the Geraldis
eventually bounced back, but they never had the hour or hour and a half waits they had in the
1960s, although they could still fill the restaurant up, especially with the increase in tourism
starting in the 1970s and 1980s. After Anthony and Michael Geraldi sold the restaurant, Anthony
said he reflected a lot about the business and who their guests were over the years, how visitors
came mostly from San Francisco in the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. Then in the 1970s, more
people started to come from other countries as air travel became more accessible, and the
demographics were always changing:
I remember when I was a kid [in the1980s], you know, summer nights, were just all
Europeans and Japanese. But throughout the 90s, I guess the Japanese had an economic
crisis. Right? So, there's less and less Japanese tourists. Yeah. So, then it started to like,
the Japanese started to tail off. And then I think, kind of like, in line with 2000-ish, turn
of the century, turn of the millennium, maybe less European tourists as well?… And then
of course, the Chinese. So when the Chinese economy is booming. So early 2000s til’
now. Big, big, you know, tour groups and a big portion of our business was Chinese.
153

As the tourist base had become more international in the past fifty or more years, Anthony noted
that during the last few years they were running the business, he noticed another customer that
was becoming more frequent:
I really realized one of the huge demographics of people that were coming were like
[from] Central California. So it became like a big destination for like, you know, people
that were dying of heatstroke in the Central Valley in the summertime, and need to like,
take a weekend trip to San Francisco. And, you know, the fancy place on the water was
the Wharf. Right? Like, they didn't know so much… What are some of the big
[restaurants] nowadays? Aqua or Kokkari? Right? Real fancy type places. Their idea of
like a fancy weekend in the city was Fisherman's Wharf. So that was really, you know, a
big demographic, what you’d call weekenders, I guess, who would come in from drivable
distances.
154

153
Emi Takahara, Interview with Anthony Geraldi, personal, February 9, 2022.
154
Takahara, Interview with Anthony Geraldi.

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As food tastes changed and the decades-old restaurants’ menus and interiors remained
relatively the same, Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, along with many legacy restaurants, appealed to
those with long memories, who remember going as a child with their grandparents, or to a couple
who went on their honeymoon, or the very few diners seeking a certain nostalgic experience.
155

It has long been assumed that San Franciscans never go to the Wharf. The appeal was not there
for many of the younger generations who, especially in the Bay Area, the birthplace of Chez
Panisse and the California Food Revolution, are obsessed with elevated food experiences. The
bar has been set very high. But had locals really stopped going to the Wharf? “You always sort
of hear this idea that locals don't go to the Wharf,” said Anthony reflectively. “But, you know --
it has such a history and reputation -- that if one person from the City went to the Wharf once per
year, that added up, you know. It's like every day, it's locals, every day. Every single day. You
know, having spent my entire life there up ‘til the age of 38. Every day, it's locals, locals, locals.”

Working at Fishermen’s Grotto
Fishermen’s Grotto, like most of the early restaurants on the Wharf, was a family affair
with family members always working. When Mike Geraldi died and his son Nino took over the
restaurant, family members helped run the business – including Nino’s four siblings. When the
third generation was old enough, they all got jobs at the restaurant too. Michael worked
alongside his father Nino, running the dining rooms, while three of his cousins preferred to work
the crab pots outside. Anthony, who started at the restaurant when his grandfather Nino was still
running it, was the fourth and last generation to work the restaurant. The family was aided by a
dedicated crew of cooks, servers and bartenders, many who worked at the restaurant for decades.

155
A discussion of legacy businesses is included in the Conclusion.

91
The Family
Nino Geraldi, the founder’s son, nurtured Fishermen’s Grotto until the very end of his
life. “I can remember him just sitting there eating sand dabs the day before he died.” said his son
Michael. “He loved it. He loved the business.” Nino waited on tables and sometimes even bussed
and cleaned tables until he no longer could. Suffering from both heart bypass surgery and a leg
amputation, he still managed to go to work. “As soon as he recovered, “Michael recalled, “and
when he learned how to walk with a prosthesis, he came back to work and he did his best. It was
a little bit sad because a couple of times it fell off when he was walking.” He ran the business,
with help from his siblings, for fifty-two years, but outlived them all.

Figure 3.26: Clockwise: Eleanor Geraldi, Nino Geraldi, “Queen for A Day” winners Ellis Brooks, Mrs. E. Brooks,
Elise Bransford, Fishermen’s Grotto owner, Mike Geraldi, and winner Geraldine Swigart, September 27, 1947.
Source: Anthony Geraldi.

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Some longtime employees affectionately called him “grandpa,” as a number of his workers
stayed with him for decades. On the day of his funeral, the obituary noted that the funeral party
drove by Fishermen’s Grotto and paused to, “let Nino spend a few more minutes at the place he
devoted his life to.”
156

Figure 3.27: L to R: Hugh Williams, Marie Williams, Nino Geraldi, Roberto Geraldi - the older brother of Mike
Geraldi who came over on the boat. October 13, 1947. Likely another publicity photo.
Source: Anthony Geraldi Collection.

When Nino died, Michael, along with his son Anthony, took over running the three
dining rooms that made up the bulk of the business. Michael’s three cousins remained in charge

156
“Nino Geraldi,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 2000, . https://infoweb-newsbank-
com.ezproxy.sfpl.org/apps/news/document-
view?p=AMNEWS&docref=image/v2%3A142051F45F422A02%40EANX-NB-
16577EEC09FDB61A%402451777-1655970EF2D1BEAF%4027-1655970EF2D1BEAF%4.

93
of the crab pots out in front of the restaurant. These family members worked different shifts,
overlapping for just a few hours each day.
Arriving at around six in the morning, the cousins would set up the crab stands that were
located underneath the restaurant’s awning. There were cauldrons for cooking crab and shrimp as
there had been for over a hundred years, but now were made out of stainless steel. Counters,
sinks and refrigerated display cases where seafood was on display was the domain of the cousins.
In the morning they would meet with the cooks and the purveyors and then do the buying for the
restaurant, ordering fish, shellfish, and crab from the seafood wholesalers, as well as the produce.
After that they’d go out and work at the crab stand until about two in the afternoon. Though the
crab stands are an iconic fixture of the Wharf, for Fishermen’s Grotto they only made up about
ten percent of its revenue. Their profit was primarily driven by the dine-in customer, serving
approximately 400,000 meals a year.
Michael and Anthony would come in around eleven in the morning to manage the dining
rooms, working with both the front- and back-of-house staff. Father and son had both grown up
at the restaurant, spending a lot of time there when they were kids and then working as young
teenagers. Anthony started around fourteen or fifteen as a host, wearing an ill-fitting, oversized
men’s blazer to help him look the part. He waited tables throughout college and eventually came
to co-manage the dining rooms with his father once he inherited a portion of the business and
became a partner. As a digital native, he introduced and took on jobs that no family member had
done before, including internet marketing, website design and programming the point-of-sale
system. Once Anthony was helping run the dining rooms, his father felt free to spend more time
greeting and talking with customers on the front patio located next to the crab stand. The patio
had once been a “neglected” area where there were racks of postcards and souvenirs. Anthony

94
explained why around 1995 they decided to remove those items:
When San Francisco banned smoking indoors, people who wanted to smoke had to sit
outside. So, we took out the card stands and built the outside dining area. And we were
actually the first restaurant on the Wharf to do that. Because we wanted to give the
smokers a place to do that. In those days, I mean, Europeans were such a big part of
business, and they were all smokers.
157

Michael spent a lot of his time socializing with customers, paying special attention to regulars
and being “the face” of the restaurant. Michael lit up when he talked about being with familiar
patrons. “The most important thing is that I was up in front and people recognized me…With me
it’s you know, ‘Come on, sit down with me! Let's talk.’ Almost every night I had two or three
different parties that wanted me to talk to them, sit down with them. They loved that, to be
recognized by the owner, you know. They’d bring their friends and introduce 'em to me.”
The Geraldi family created lasting bonds not only with customers, but with also their workforce,
many of whom stayed with them for decades.

Figure 3.28: Left, Anthony Geraldi with Dungeness crab. Right, Michael Geraldi and his friend, Major League
pitcher Gaylord Perry. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

157
Takahara, Interview with Anthony Geraldi, February 24, 2023.

95
Employees Over the Years
Working in a restaurant kitchen is very hot and very hard. You’re on your feet, often
eight to twelve hours a day with few breaks, and the pay is usually minimum wage, if you’re
lucky. It has long been the space of recently arrived immigrants needing minimal language skills
to earn money. Kitchens are one of the places where undocumented workers and those willing to
do work Americans will not do can be found. In urban areas as many as 40 percent of restaurant
workers are undocumented.
158
Staff can be easily mistreated and taken advantage of by
unscrupulous employers who know it is hard to find work elsewhere. Perhaps it says something
about the employers at Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 that their staff stayed for many decades.
When Mike Geraldi opened his restaurant, the kitchen staff was primarily Italian. By the
time Michael started working at the restaurant in the early 1960s, Frank Pipia, who was
respectfully referred to as Chef, had been hired by his grandfather, and was still working in the
kitchen. Michael never got to meet his grandfather as he died before Michael was born,
something he says he always really regretted. Chef worked for Michael’s dad Nino as well,
finally retiring when he was about eighty years old. “Kind of strange,” Michael observed, “we
have a burial plot in a cemetery. It has like four or five different stalls. And right across is Chef.
He's right across from my father. So they're still together.”
After Chef retired, most cooks, came from the Guangdong (formerly Canton) region.
Anthony, who was born in 1978, said that almost all of the cooks were Chinese, from his earliest
memories until he was well into his twenties. He told me that they were like family to him. “I
grew up with these people,” he said emphatically. “They are like uncles to me, you know?”

158
Esther Tseng, “Undocumented Restaurant Workers Have Held the Industry Together. Now They Stand to Lose
the Most.,” Civil Eats, June 2, 2020, https://civileats.com/2020/05/28/undocumented-restaurant-workers-have-held-
the-industry-together-now-they-stand-to-lose-the-most/.

96
[Figure 3.29] When he was around seven or eight years old, he started to go into the kitchen and
“boss everybody around.” In return they taught him swear words in Cantonese. Paul Chung, Mr.
(Tit) Lee, and Bobby were some of the cooks with whom Anthony was closest.

Figure 3.29: “Tommy” (Ty Tam, server), “Hoss” (Khossrov Shustar, Bartender), Tito Quezada (server), Michael
and Anthony Geraldi, “Nang” (Alex Giang, bartender), Romeo Rivas (Host). Anthony stated that everyone pictured
worked at the restaurant for over thirty years. Source: Anthony Geraldi.
These cooks were there for over thirty years, eventually retiring in their late sixties or early
seventies in the early 2000s. Anthony pointed out that many front of the house staff stayed even
longer. “I mean, we had waitstaff, and bartenders, and busboys, even-- they were there for thirty,
forty, even fifty years. I mean, it was incredible.”
159
One bartender, Nang, who I met while
having a drink at the Fireplace Lounge, was there for over thirty years. He worked as a postal

159
Takahara, Interview with Anthony Geraldi, February 24,2023.

97
worker during the week and would bartend at Fishermen’s Grotto on the weekends. While
working at one place for the duration of a career is far less common today, there were more
waiters and restaurant workers who made restaurant work specifically at one restaurant their
career, and many immigrants still make restaurant work their career. Though the restaurant
retained the employees they had hired years earlier, things started to shift. The last fifteen to
twenty years at Fishermen’s Grotto, the kitchen staff became predominantly Latino, primarily
from Mexico, and to the puzzlement of the Geraldis, never stayed at the restaurant for very
long.
160
There were to be a lot of changes for the family and staff.

Figure 3.30: "Raymond" (Man Fu Tse), busboy for thirty plus years, with customer. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

160
I use “Latino” as the identifier as I am specifically speaking about at an all-male staff. See Ana María Del Río-
González, “To Latinx or Not to Latinx: A Question of Gender Inclusivity versus Gender Neutrality,” American
Journal of Public Health, June 2021, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8101597/.

98
Selling their Legacy

I’ve seen it firsthand now. You know, there's the saying, “that most family businesses
don't make it past the third generation.” And I guess you kind of see why. [You] get the
founder, and he's motivated, works his butt off. And then the second generation [saw]
that and carried that on. And the third generation is just kind of spoiled and takes it for
granted.

--Anthony Geraldi, fourth generation Fishermen’s Grotto restaurant
owner
161

The most dramatic changes occurred during the last sixteen years of Fishermen’s Grotto
No. 9 was open. Nino’s death, along with economic challenges, changes in tourism and
especially challenges within the family were significant contributors. Having spoken with a
handful of restaurant owners in Fishermen’s Wharf, the latter issue seemed to be a common
thread among family-owned restaurants, many of which were or are presently run by fourth,
third- or second-generation owners. There was a lot of in-fighting that made running a business
challenging, especially with so many descendants involved. Fisherman’s Grotto was no
exception.
Nino's not having designated his son Michael as the general manager before he died
resulted in lack of clear leadership and led to numerous challenges and power struggles among
the family members. “The restaurant kind of lost its way,” lamented Anthony. “…After my
grandfather died. It kind of lost its way.”
162
As Nino got on in years, Michael did most of the
heavy lifting and running of the dining rooms, which brought in the majority of the income to the
restaurant. Michael assumed he would be named the general manager of the restaurant, but it was
never made clear by his father. When his father died suddenly, no one had been appointed to be

161
Takahara, Interview with Anthony Geraldi, February 24,2023.
162
Takahara.

99
in charge. For sixteen years the family carried on. Through the dip in tourism resulting from the
effects of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, through the economic downturn of 2008, and through Port
construction in 2010 that made it hard for customers to access the restaurant for two years. The
desire of one of the owners to sell the restaurant, while the others did not, led to the 81-year-old
Fishermen’s Grotto closing its doors.
The restaurant was owned by three parties: One third was Anthony and his father; another
third was the three cousins who ran the crab stand out front; and the final third was a cousin, who
wanted to sell. This cousin, someone who was involved with the restaurant sporadically, pushed
hard for the sale. Anthony, the youngest of all the owners and the only fourth generation Geraldi
running the restaurant, emphatically did not want to sell, telling his parents, “We can’t sell our
legacy!” He would wake up nights in a cold sweat:
My father and myself,…we didn't want to sell the restaurant. We had no interest in
selling the restaurant. We wanted to do it forever. I wanted it to do forever…My three
cousins did not want to sell the restaurant. They just sort of assumed that that's what they
were doing their whole life. They would just die [there], essentially[laughs]. You know,
nobody ever talks about retiring or anything like that. It's like, “We just go run the
restaurant. That’s what we do.”
163

Anthony went so far as to secure a loan, thinking he might be able to buy the business from the
other family members. In the end, he decided against it. His dad Michael and his three cousins,
who were in their sixties, did not want to get mired in an expensive legal battle with the cousin
who wanted to sell. In June of 2016, the Geraldi family sold their restaurant.
Significant financial investments had been made over the many years the Geraldi family
was in business at 2851 Taylor Street. All of the additions to the buildings, renovations, signage
and maintenance could not necessarily be recouped in the sale of the business as it, as well as all
of the businesses on Port property, leased the buildings from the Port, paying monthly rent plus a

163
Takahara, Interview with Anthony Geraldi, February 09, 2022.

100
percentage of sales.
164
Most of the historic restaurants on the Wharf are run by multiple
generations of families, and disputes amongst family members, common in any family-run
business, seem to bring about the end of the businesses. Six years after selling Fishermen’s
Grotto, Anthony was somewhat at peace with the decision the family had made, especially after
the COVID pandemic struck and he saw the devastation that befell many of the Fisherman’s
Wharf restaurants. He was reflective of the impact his family had made and the hand they had in
creating the Fisherman’s Wharf we know today:
I think to …be part of such an important family with such an important history, in such
an impactful city… I think I didn't realize that throughout my younger years. But now, it's
like, wow, this is this is really special…I want to be able to contribute to keeping that
story [of Fishermen’s Grotto] alive...I think people don't realize that…there was nothing
here [ in San Francisco] until 1850. And, you know, fast forward 1850 to 1935. That's not
that much time, like 80-85 years. The city was only 85 years old when my …great
grandfather started this restaurant. When he got here, the city was only 55 years old.
Like, I'm almost 55! …What a small city it was…what the atmosphere was like when he
arrived, and how far it's come from that point to now…Like, it really isn't that long of a
time in the grand scheme of things. But yet, you know, history can get lost.
165

He wanted to make sure the story of his family and what they had built was told so people, and
San Francisco, did not forget.

164
Minimum rent in December of 2015, shortly before the Geraldi family sold the business, was $27,990/mo.,
according to the Port of San Francisco’s Monthly Sales & Rent Report. Port of San Francisco, Monthly Sales and
Rent Report December 2015, 1. sfport.com.
165
Takahara, Interview with Anthony Geraldi, February 09, 2022.

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Chapter 4 : Fishermen’s Grotto Culinary History and Evolution

[F]oodways can help to ground tourism in the everyday. By turning normally routine
activities, such as shopping, cleaning up, and storing foods, into tourist sites, we can
more easily contrast and negotiate the sense of difference with the familiar.

--Lucy Long, The Food and Folklore Reader

Introduction
In the 1920s and 1930s, while cuisine was helping to define who most Italian Americans
were in America, the Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant proprietors knowingly skirted this
development.
166
This choice was likely made to succeed in the restaurant business catering to a
burgeoning tourist spot, and a way to set themselves apart from their fellow Italian restaurateurs
in North Beach. Though San Francisco had a relatively long history of having Italian restaurants,
some of the earliest in the country, the Italian-run restaurants that opened on the Wharf in the
1930s did not outwardly promote themselves as Italian, or Sicilian; instead, they were advertised
as seafood restaurants. Perhaps it was because the Wharf was just outside the main area of North
Beach, the predominantly Italian area of the city, it attracted a more diverse group of people who
came to the water’s edge to buy seafood and watch the ships come in. Most Americans were not
that familiar with Italian food in the 1930s, as it was still considered “ethnic,” and made more
sense to the restaurants to cater to a broader American palate. In this chapter I will examine
Fishermen’s Grotto menus through the years, looking at what food was offered customers and
how the family presented, or refrained from presenting, their Italian/Sicilian heritage through
their food. I will also discuss a few classic dishes that have their origins in San Francisco that
gained popularity largely at Fisherman’s Wharf.

166
Simone Cinotto, The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City (Urbana, Chicago
and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 3.

102
Menus and Food through the Years
In the beginning, menu inserts were hand typed daily at Fishermen’s Grotto. The
November 18, 1936, menu, the year after they opened, was strictly seafood, the exception being
a choice of an egg or cheese sandwich in the sandwich section. Most of the fish and shellfish was
locally caught or came from the California coast. “Our fish and shellfish is always fresh,” the
1936 menu stated, “directly off the boats and kept alive in our own traps.” [Figure 4.1] In later
menus they would advertise that the fish was caught off their own boats. Only lobsters and some
oysters came from the East Coast. The dishes that were offered were prepared in a fashion that
was popular across the country at the time. Most dishes leaned French or sounded French, as
French food was considered to be the highest expression of cuisine, even if the dishes were not
necessarily of French origin: à la King, à la Newburg, à la Creole and à la Meunière. These
preparations consisted of butter and cream mixed together with different ingredients. Other
popular items such as clam chowder (both Boston, cream-based, and Coney Island, tomato-
based), abalone and frog legs (technically not seafood), as well as other dishes that likely
originated in San Francisco, the oyster “cocktail” and Crab Louis Salad, were on the menu.
The only mentions of an Italian preparation are the “New York Scallops, Italian Style,”
the “Fried Crab Legs à la Italiano,” and “Chioppino,” the latter, understood (at least locally) to
come from local Italian fishermen. “Chioppino” (early on spelled a few different ways, is
currently spelled “cioppino”) already appears to be a well-known local dish as it has its own
section on the menu and could be ordered four different ways: Fisherman’s Special, Crab and
Clams in Shell, Rock Cod and Shellfish.

103

Figure 4.1: Early Fisherman's Grotto menu from November 18, 1936. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

Cioppino and Italian Dishes
One of the richest gastronomic experiences a person can have, and few aside from
fishermen are ever lucky enough to have it, is to be treated to a cioppino made on the
boat, as the fish are caught. Fresh? Almost still wiggling. Break off a piece of good bread
(fine for sopping up that last bit of juice) and pour yourself a glass (or more likely a mug)
of some good white wine and you have a feast that will never be forgotten.

--Henry Evans, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf
167

167
Evans, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, 30.

104
Cioppino feels like celebration food. Consisting of fish, Dungeness crab, shellfish and
shrimp in a robust, tomato-based broth, this dish is considered a San Francisco creation born
from the diasporic culinary traditions of Italian fisherman. There is much lore surrounding the
origins of cioppino. The most popular, and apocryphal, is reminiscent of the “stone soup”
folktale, where each fisherman contributes a fish or a crab they have caught, perhaps some
shrimp, clams or vegetables, all with the urging call of “Chip in! Chip in!” Coming from native
Italian speakers, the story goes, a vowel was added to the end and “chip in” became
“cioppino.”
168
However, in the Ligurian region of Italy, where most of the early fishermen in
San Francisco were from, there is a fish soup called “ciuppin” that is the likely predecessor of
cioppino. Erica Peters, a food historian and author of San Francisco: A Food Biography, points
out that it was the San Francisco fisherman’s addition of spicy chili peppers that makes cioppino,
though a food of the Italian diaspora, distinctly San Franciscan.
169
Peters discovered the earliest
printed recipe in The San Francisco Call, published in 1901 and written by Harriet Quimby,
journalist and future aviation pioneer:
Whoever goes out in a fishboat, if they have the good fortune not to be sick, you should
insist on having a dish of “Chespini.” This is the way to make it. My authority is a scrap
of soiled paper written in Italian. Translated, it says: “Put into kettle half glass of sweet
oil, one clove of garlic, two large tomatoes, two chili peppers, one glass of white wine;
Prepare fresh fish, cut in small squares, drop into the sauce and cook 3 minutes; Serve
hot.” It really tastes much better than it sounds.
170

According to Peters, the last line suggests that this was a dish unfamiliar to anyone who was not
a fisherman and therefore this was the “moment of invention.”
171
A few years later in 1906 the
first “formal” recipe could be found for “Chippine” in the post-earthquake Refugees’ Cook Book.

168
Bianca Taylor, “Golden State Plate: The Fishy Origins of Cioppino,” KQED, October 26, 2018,
https://www.kqed.org/news/11695791/the-fishy-origins-of-cioppino.
169
Taylor, “Golden State Plate.”
170
Erica J. Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 182.
171
Taylor, “Golden State Plate.”

105
As the dish’s popularity spread, and appeared on menus in most of the Italian run
restaurants along the Wharf, recipes for cioppino popped up in more and more cookbooks. In
Helen Brown’s, 1953 West Coast Cook Book, she ends her recipe for cioppino with a note that
hints at the actual origins of the dish, “One story says that San Francisco's fishermen did not
introduce cioppino to California, but that an Italian named Bazzuro, who ran a restaurant on a
boat anchored off Fisherman's Wharf, is responsible. What's more, it was supposed to have been
an older recipe, well known in Italy. This back in the 1850s. I refuse to believe it!"
172

Figure 4.2: From the 1936 Fishermen's Grotto menu. Source: Anthony Geraldi.

Cioppino was one of few dishes that represented the Italian or Sicilian heritage of the
Wharf-side restaurateurs on the menu. There were a couple of dishes that were called “Italian” or
“Italiano” (mentioned earlier), and likely included tomatoes and garlic, the latter ingredient used
sparingly in most “American” foods until later in the second half of the twentieth century for fear
of being odiferous and marking food too “ethnic.”
173
Michael Geraldi spoke about a dish on the
menu that referenced his family’s Sicilian roots. “There was one recipe,” Geraldi remembered
fondly, “for a sauce called Siciliano sauce. It was basically chopped tomatoes, and olives, garlic,

172
Helen Evans Brown, West Coast Cook Book (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1952), 174-175. Brown
is referencing Bazzuro’s restaurant on the “Tam O’Shanter” ship which I wrote about in Chapter 2.
173
Cinotto, The Italian American Table), 94-95.

106
onions. It was a really, really good sauce…[I had it] mostly on like halibut or sea bass. Like
thirty or forty years ago. I used to eat that at least two or three times a week.”
174

Wartime and the Mid-Century
Six years after the 1936 menu, by October 11, 1942, when the United States had been in
World War II for almost a year and San Francisco had become a major wartime port, the menu
looked much the same. During the war there was some anti-Italian sentiment and immigrant
Italians who were not naturalized citizens were considered “enemy aliens” and were banned
from going near the shoreline along the West Coast. Perhaps surprisingly, there is one item,
“Crabmeat Cakes, Italienne” on the menu during this time. Non-seafood entrees appear: Steak,
ham and pork chops. These meats are listed under the “Victory Dinners” section and include a
choice of local fish, with french fried, shoestring or boiled potatoes and a “Grotto” salad, for
eighty-five cents. California wines, an industry being led by Italian Americans at this time, are
also being suggested,“ WINE..Adds to the pleasure of good food.” Gin Fizzes are so popular
they have their own section in the drinks menu.
By 1951, the war over almost six years, not much had changed with the menu. “Victory
Dinners,” that were probably introduced during World War II, remain. Cioppino seems to have
moved away from center stage with only one offering of “Crab Chioppino,” though there is also
“Bouillabasse a la ‘Grotto’,” which was likely cioppino.

174
Helen Evans Brown in her 1952, West Coast Cook Book, waxes enthusiastic about the glories of garlic, politely
portraying West Coasters as ahead of the curve when it comes to the bulb, and acknowledging the non-white,
immigrant community for introducing this potent allium: “Few West Coast cooks can get along without garlic…This
love of garlic comes to us naturally, for we inherit it from the Mexican in us, and from our Italian and Chinese
ancestors as well. Blessed, we think, is garlic.”

107
The 1970s
Though abalone and frog legs still remained on the menu until 1971 and the menu
remained relatively the same since 1936, there were few additions that point to what people were
consuming in the early 1970s. Chicken finally appears on the menu, next to the steaks and the
chops. “We didn’t have a lot of steaks and stuff like that,” Michael Geraldi recalled. “Hardly any
chicken or steak. Mostly just seafood. Seafood and Italian food…They wouldn’t hardly ever ask
for steak or chicken. We had that in the later years…if you sold two or three a day, you’d be
lucky. People didn’t come down here for that.”
175

Figure 4.3: Cover of 1971 Menu. Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.

175
Emi Takahara, Interview with Michael Geraldi, personal, April 18, 2023.

108

Figure 4.4: 1971 Menu. Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.

Another addition, signifying a cultural shift, was the introduction of the “Child’s Plate,” which
consisted of either Filet of Sole, Spaghetti with meat sauce or Hamburger Steak.
176
The cocktail

176
Jan Whitaker, “Children’s Menus,” Restaurant-ing Through History, May 7, 2018, https://restaurant-
ingthroughhistory.com/2018/04/22/childrens-menus/.

109
section expanded significantly and offered a multitude of colorfully named drinks including the
Gold Cadillac, Pink Squirrel, Blue Fog and the Grasshopper.
177
The “Victory Dinners” were
renamed “Fishermen’s Dinners” but still offered the same fish, potato and salad combinations for
$4.50.

Clam Chowder and the Wharf
Fishermen’s Grotto had stiff competition in the clam chowder department. Every
restaurant, café and even some bars on the Wharf, served clam chowder. This New England
cream-based staple has become synonymous with being eaten near the ocean, even if it isn’t the
Atlantic Ocean. Fishermen’s Grotto sold clam chowder from the very early days and took
immense pride in the family’s popular creation. Michael spoke of the chowder with gusto:
[Our] clam chowder was different from anybody else's. [My grandfather] had his own
recipe and we never gave the recipe out, even when we had to sell the restaurant. We still
have it. Anthony still has that recipe. It was locked in a safe and then he took it when we
left. Many, many, many, many times, thousands of people would say how good it was, “It
was the best!”
178

Even though clam chowder is especially popular in the United States, on both coasts,
people come from all over the country, and the world, specifically to San Francisco’s
Fisherman’s Wharf to have a relatively new San Francisco treat: chowder-in-a-sourdough bread
bowl. Almost every restaurant on the Wharf gives the option of ordering chowder in a regular
bowl or a sourdough bread one. “We did it,” claims Dan Giraudo, owner and CEO of the 174-
year-old Boudin Bakery, when asked where this creation might have come from. “I know it was
[created] in the early [19]80s or late 70s. In that time frame because we opened up [a café in

177
Simon Difford, “1970s Cocktails and Disco Drinks,” 1970s Cocktails and Disco Drinks, August 25, 2017,
https://www.diffordsguide.com/encyclopedia/1277/cocktails/1970s-cocktails-and-disco-drinks.
178
Takahara, Interview with Michael Geraldi.

110
Fisherman’s Wharf] in 1974,” he explained.
179
Though the Boudin Bakery is famous for its
sourdough bread, and also considered the oldest continuously running business in San Francisco,
it had not been making clam chowder for nearly as long as Fishermen’s Grotto, which had its
champions. “The chowder,” Michael Geraldi pointed out, “was one of the two things that people
came down here for. That and the Crab Louis were the two most popular dishes.”

Crab Louis
Crab Louis (also, Louie) like Cioppino, has its origins in San Francisco and had been on
the Fishermen’s Grotto menu from its earliest days. This seafood salad pairs local Dungeness
crab with a spicy, creamy dressing atop a bed of iceberg lettuce. It is thought to have originated
in 1908 at Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog, a famous restaurant that had origins in the late
1850s. The dish was apparently named after chef Louis Coutard, who was a partner in the
restaurant and created a special of crab legs with chili sauce.
180
Versions of the salad spread
throughout the city. I found it on every Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant menu I had access to, from
the 1930s through the 1970s, and it remains a popular menu item at most classic restaurants in
San Francisco. Louis dressing, a spicy cousin to Thousand Island dressing, proved to be popular
enough that Fishermen’s Grotto, in the early years, offered the dressing “To Take Home” by the
pint or half pint. Fishermen’s Grotto offered shrimp and lobster salads with Louis dressing as
well, but Dungeness crab was the traditional favorite.
For much of the twentieth century, it wasn’t uncommon for restaurants, especially those
of some renown, to create souvenir booklets that showcased some of their signature recipes.
Though Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 never shared their recipe for clam chowder, they did give up

179
Emi Takahara, Interview with Dan Giraudo, personal, March 14, 2022.
180
Peters, San Francisco: A Food Biography, 182-183.

111
the recipe for their Louis dressing but called it “Chef’s Special Salad Dressing” instead. Also in
the booklet is the recipe for their “Cioppino Sauce.” [Figure 4.5] The only thing that changes in
the recipe from the late 1940s version to the late 1990s version, is “Chippino” loses the “h.”

Figure 4.5: Recipe for Cioppino. Source: Fishermen's Grotto Recipe Book.

Most of the menu remained the same for the eighty-one years the Geraldi family ran
Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9. They stayed true to Mike Geraldi’s original vision, and rarely
wavered. “People like a certain item,” Michael Geraldi explained, “you never change it. Never.”
Keeping true to the menu meant keeping the same or similar seafood on the menu even as
availability for products changed due to overfishing or challenges related to climate change.
Even after they no longer used their own fishing boat for catching Dungeness crab and fish, they
got a majority of their seafood from local seafood wholesalers who work out of Pier 45, located
right behind the restaurant, and allowing for almost always fresh ingredients. “Eighty to ninety

112
percent of the fish we sold was always local,” Anthony Geraldi pointed out. “Those boats at the
Wharf are still operational,” he continued, referring to the boats in Fisherman’s Harbor. [Figure
4.6] “A lot of people don't think they are, but there's a lot of commercial fishing that goes on in
this area.”

Figure 4.6: Commercial fishing boats in Fishermen's Lagoon. Source: Author.

113
CONCLUSION

On March 16, 2020, London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, issued a shelter-in-place
order for San Francisco. The COVID-19 pandemic had arrived in Northern California, and the
Bay Area was the first region in the nation to order residents to stay home.
181
Many businesses
closed for weeks, even months. Restaurants were hit especially hard, chiefly those that focused
on experiential dining, did not offer take-out service, or have any outdoor space to serve
customers when they did re-open. Restaurants that catered to tourists were totally devastated.
Their customer base disappeared, as no one was able to travel. Fisherman’s Wharf, before the
pandemic, typically saw fifteen to sixteen million tourists a year, and of those millions only
about twenty percent were locals from the Bay Area.
182
When restaurants were allowed to re-
open again during the pandemic, many of the historic, family-run Fisherman’s Wharf restaurants
remained shuttered. As I write this, almost half of these restaurants, the majority in business for
over fifty years, have permanently closed. [Figure 5.1] These restaurants, the anchor businesses
of Fisherman’s Wharf, are the physical framework upon which one of the most visited
destinations in the country was built. As Randall Scott, Executive Director of the Fisherman’s
Wharf Community Benefit District said, “Food built Fisherman’s Wharf!”
183

181
“The Bay Area’s Battle against Coronavirus,” The San Francisco Chronicle, June 19, 2020,
https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/coronavirus-timeline/.
182
Liz Kreutz, “Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf Comeback Underway after 87% Drop in Visitors during Pandemic,”
ABC7 San Francisco, June 1, 2021, https://abc7news.com/pier-39-fishermans-wharf-things-to-do-in-sf-covid-
19/10695360/.
183
Emi Takahara, Interview with Randall Scott, October 24, 2022.

114

Figure C.1: Map of Selected Restaurants in Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, CA.
Map Source: Author, 2023.

Though it is too late for the restaurants that have already closed, the remaining businesses
and the Fisherman’s Wharf community can utilize existing preservation tools, ranging from local
to federal protections, to both help maintain the cultural integrity of the area and more clearly
illuminate the tangible and intangible heritage of the neighborhood.

Preservation Protections and Strategies
Local Protections
San Francisco stands at the forefront of the historic preservation movement. A
progressive planning department working closely with a robust non-profit advocacy sector has
allowed the city to develop tools to help safeguard San Francisco’s cultural heritage. There are
currently three programs funded by the City that could help protect Fisherman’s Wharf or

115
qualifying businesses that reside in the neighborhood: the Landmark Designation Program, the
innovative Legacy Business Program, and most recently the Cultural Districts Program.

Landmark Designation Program
To help maintain the “unique and irreplaceable” assets of the city, San Francisco has
adopted into their planning code the Landmark Designation Program (LDP), under Article 10
(Preservation of Historical Architecture and Aesthetic Landmarks), and is overseen by the
Historic Preservation Commission (HPC).
184
The aim of Landmark designation is to, “protect,
preserve, enhance and encourage continued utilization, rehabilitation and, where necessary,
adaptive use of significant cultural resources,” with the hope that these landmarks will help
foster knowledge of the past.
185
Under this initiative the city is given the authority to designate
Landmarks or Landmark Districts in order to protect buildings, districts, places, or objects. These
designations can offer two notable protections for resources. The first disallows any exterior
alteration of a building without review and approval of the HPC. The second allows for the HPC
to hold demolition permits for known cultural resources up to six months to allow for
alternatives for demolition.
186
Along with these protections there may also be the opportunity for
owners of buildings take advantage of tax benefits such as the Mills Act, the California Historic
Tax Credit Program or the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program.
187

184
“Landmark Designation Program,” Landmark Designation Program | SF Planning, accessed August 25, 2023,
https://sfplanning.org/landmark-designation-program.
185
“Landmark Designation Program;” “Article 10: Preservation of Historical Architectural and Aesthetic
Landmarks,” American Legal Publishing, accessed August 25, 2023,
https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/sf_planning/0-0-0-27871.
186
San Francisco Preservation Bulletin No.10: HISTORIC AND CONSERVATION DISTRICTS IN SAN
FRANCISCO, January 2003, chrome-
extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://sfplanning.org/sites/default/files/documents/preserv/bulletins/
HistPres_Bulletin_10.PDF, 3.
187
“Preservation Incentives,” Preservation Incentives | SF Planning, accessed August 26, 2023,
https://sfplanning.org/preservation-incentives.

116
An excellent candidate for Landmark designation is the iconic Fishermen’s Grotto
building (now The Grotto). As the first full-service restaurant in Fisherman’s Wharf that brought
more people to the area and prompted many of its fish vendor neighbors to also open restaurants,
it led the way in helping to create a world-famous tourist attraction.
Utilizing the Landmark Designation Program could be a steppingstone to help garner the
support and awareness required to have the community and the city pay closer attention to an
area which is not only a revenue producing powerhouse, but rich in cultural heritage.
188

Fisherman’s Wharf could also be considered for designation as a Landmark District to
maintain the historic aspects of its appearance, help find creative uses for the existing historic
buildings without destroying the character of the Wharf, and bring awareness to its rich
Italian/Sicilian and culinary heritage.

Legacy Business Program

This is our homemade angel hair pasta with fresh local crab, that we pick
ourselves. The boat pulls in the back there. They call me. I go down and pick
them up. Throw them in the water. Put them on your table.

-Paul Capurro, Capurro’s Restaurant

Among the City-led preservation programs discussed, the Legacy Business Program
(LBP) is the most accessible and the first of its kind. The LBP caters to both Legacy Business
owners and the communities they serve. The City recognized that Legacy Businesses are cultural

188
As the Fishermen’s Grotto building, and all of the buildings on the north side of Jefferson Street, are considered
Port property, it is likely that some of the protections listed above may not apply. However, the Port has its own set
of guidelines for Historic Preservation and has three National Register Historic Districts that have utilized Federal
Rehabilitation Tax Credits; “Port Historic Resources,” Port Historic Resources | SF Port, accessed August 26, 2023,
https://sfport.com/node/4965.

117
institutions that maintain San Francisco's unique character and living history as it has prioritized
promoting the visibility of these businesses successfully through its dedicated website.
189

The LBP was founded in 2015 and is run by the Office of Small Business. To qualify as a
Legacy Business applicants must meet the following criteria:
• Nominated by the mayor or city supervisor.
• Demonstrate that they have operated for thirty years.
• Contributed to San Francisco’s history and identity.
• “Committed to maintaining the physical features or traditions that define the
business, including craft, culinary, or art forms.”
190

The Legacy Business Registry soon followed. Serving as a valuable resource, the Registry offers
Legacy Businesses tools to sustain their enduring presence with promotional support, strategic
marketing assistance, grants for small businesses and rent stabilization, as well as educational
programs.
191
Understanding that local businesses “are the bedrock of local neighborhoods and a
draw for tourists from around the world,” the City would do well to encourage qualifying
businesses in Fisherman’s Wharf to apply for Legacy Business status.
192

Though Fisherman’s Wharf has some of the oldest-running businesses in San Francisco,
very few have joined the LBP. With the recent spate of restaurants closing in the Wharf, Scoma’s
and the nearby Buena Vista Café are the only remaining Legacy Businesses restaurants. It is not
clear as to why so few restaurants have applied. Perhaps their hesitation is due to the significant
application process or, pre-pandemic, it might be attributed to their location within the City's
tourist epicenter. Making this point, Paul Capurro, a fourth generation Sicilian American and
owner of Capurro’s Restaurant stated, “I always used to say, ‘Well, you know, I've been here a

189
“About,” San Francisco Legacy Business, accessed August 27, 2023, https://legacybusiness.org/about.
190
“Legacy Business Registry,” Legacy Business Registry | SF Planning, accessed August 27, 2023,
https://sfplanning.org/project/legacy-business-registry.
191
“Rent Stabilization Grant,” Rent Stabilization Grant | San Francisco, accessed August 27, 2023,
https://sf.gov/information/rent-stabilization-grant.
192
“About,” San Francisco Legacy Business.

118
long time. I got a lot of locals that come to my restaurant. A lot of locals.’ I was only kidding
myself…I can't survive without tourism. I am a tourist based business. Period!”
193

Nevertheless, there are several restaurants that could qualify for the Registry, including
Capurro’s, Sabella & LaTorre, The Franciscan, and Cioppino’s. Seeking Legacy Business status
would be a wise choice for these establishments. This recognition could potentially raise
awareness of Fisherman’s Wharf's Italian/Sicilian cultural heritage and culinary traditions.

Cultural Districts Program
A recently formed program whose purpose is centered specifically around cultural
heritage is the Cultural Districts Program (CDP). Established in 2018, the CDP serves as both a
place-making and place-keeping initiative, dedicated to the preservation, reinforcement, and
promotion of cultural communities.
194
Shaped collaboratively by the Board of Supervisors and
the community, a Cultural District is defined as, “A geographic area or location within San
Francisco that embodies a unique cultural heritage."
195
The program currently has ten Cultural
Districts in San Francisco:
1. Japantown Cultural District - Est. 2013
2. Calle 24 Latino Cultural District - Est. 2014
3. SoMa Pilipinas - Filipino Cultural District - Est. 2016
4. Transgender Cultural District - Est. 2017
5. Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District - Est. 2018
6. African American Arts & Cultural District - Est. 2018
7. Castro LGBTQ Cultural District - Est. 2019
8. American Indian Cultural District - Est. 2020
9. Sunset Chinese Cultural District - Est. 2021
10. Pacific Islander Cultural District -Est. 2022

193
Emi Takahara, Interview with Paul Capurro, personal, March 14, 2022.
194
“The San Francisco Cultural Districts Program,” The San Francisco Cultural Districts Program | San Francisco,
accessed August 28, 2023, https://sf.gov/san-francisco-cultural-districts-program.
195
“San Francisco Cultural Districts - Sfmohcd.Org,” Cultural Districts Program, January 26, 2022,
https://sfmohcd.org/sites/default/files/2020-2021%20Cultural%20Districts%20RFP%20-
%20Community%20Building%20and%20Impact_0.pdf.

119

The program is a partnership between the community and the City, overseen by the Mayor's
Office of Housing and Community Development, the Office of Economic and Workforce
Development, SF Planning and Arts Commission. The mission of the CDP is to:
• Stabilize: Preserve and promote diverse communities' cultural assets, events, and
way of life.
• Strengthen: Amplify and support the communities' cultural traditions and improve
the quality of life for its members.
• Streamline: Coordinate City and community information, partnerships, and
resources.
196

As previously discussed in earlier sections, Fisherman’s Wharf has many aspects of
cultural heritage. And though I have focused on its historic restaurants, it is an area worthy of a
Cultural District designation on account of early and substantial Italian/Sicilian presence. Under
the CDP’s plan are “stabilization strategies that fall within six focus areas.” One of the six focus
areas is Cultural Heritage Preservation. This protection states that the strategy is to “Preserve and
develop cultural and historic buildings, businesses, organizations, traditions, arts, events and
district aesthetics.”
197

There is no current nomination underway for Fisherman’s Wharf to become a Cultural
District.
198
However, this does not mean that Fisherman’s Wharf stakeholders, along with the
help of the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District, could not begin the process, and
eventually succeed in creating the recognition this area deserves.

196
“The San Francisco Cultural Districts Program.”
197
“San Francisco Cultural Districts - Sfmohcd.Org.”
198
Frances McMillen, Correspondence to Author, August 22, 2023.

120
Federal
At the federal level, Fisherman’s Wharf could attain protective status through inclusion in
the National Register of Historic Places, potentially as a Historic District or, more significantly, a
Traditional Cultural Property. Such designations could make a formidable impact, not only on
the national (and local) perspective of Fisherman’s Wharf, but also the implementation of
safeguards that would maintain its visual identity and distinct cultural heritage.

National Register of Historic Places
Enacted in 1966 under the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Register of
Historic Places (NRHP) is a list of buildings, structures, objects, sites, and districts that are
considered worthy of preservation.
199
The purposes of the Act, as stated by the California State
Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) are, “to insure that properties significant in national, state,
and local history are considered in the planning of federal undertakings; and to encourage
historic preservation initiatives by state and local governments and the private sector.”
200
Though
a listing on the Register is primarily honorary, there can be economic incentives like tax credits,
a reduction in property taxes, access to grants, as well as an opportunity for the State Historic
Building Code.
201

Fisherman’s Wharf is sandwiched between two Historic Districts included in the NRHP.
The Aquatic Park Historic District lies directly west of the last building on Jefferson Street--
often considered the informal boundary of Fisherman’s Wharf. Starting at the end of Taylor

199
Julianne Polanco, “National Register Of Historic Places Fact Sheet ” (Sacramento: Office Of Historic
Preservation , March 5, 2019), 1.; “What Is the National Register of Historic Places?,” National Parks Service,
accessed August 26, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/what-is-the-national-register.htm.
200
Polanco, “National Register.”
201
Polanco, “National Register.”

121
Street, the Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District appears to include the majority of
the Fishermen’s Grotto building within its boundaries before moving north to include Pier 45,
and east along the waterfront.
202
The section that constitutes Fisherman’s Wharf is the only break
in Historic Districts along the northeast waterfront. Perhaps this anomaly can be attributed to its
reputation as a tourist trap, and might explain why it has been overlooked for a nomination.
203

But the Embarcadero Historic District, the more logical choice between the two districts, could
be amended to include Fisherman’s Wharf, thus allowing it this federal protection. However,
Fisherman’s Wharf embodies enough significance to be nominated for its own Historic District.
Additionally, I would recommend, as I did earlier with the City of San Francisco Landmark
Designation Program, that the Fishermen’s Grotto building be nominated to the National
Register of Historic Places as an individually listed resource.
Designating either Fisherman’s Wharf as a Historic District or the Fishermen’s Grotto
building as a building on the National Register, would offer a degree of protection, but more
likely its primary effect would be to illuminate the cultural heritage residing in these important
places.
204
There is, however, another designation within the NRHP that centers on a location's
ties to cultural practices, and traditions known as a Traditional Cultural Property.

202
“Map of Historic Districts: DataSF: City and County of San Francisco,” Map of Historic Districts | DataSF | City
and County of San Francisco, accessed August 28, 2023, https://data.sfgov.org/Geographic-Locations-and-
Boundaries/Map-of-Historic-Districts/y75h-nbt2. The boundary appears to cut off the L-shape portion of the
building but that may be a mapping error and not completely accurate.
203
This recent article states that by using data from TripAdvisor, it was revealed that Fisherman’s Wharf is
considered the number one tourist trap in the United States.; Devan McGuinness, “Are These Really the Biggest
Tourist Traps in the United States?,” Fatherly, August 23, 2023, https://www.fatherly.com/news/are-these-really-
biggest-tourist-traps-united-states.
204
In 2016, the Embarcadero Historic District was included on the list of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in the
U.S. “Embarcadero Historic District,” Embarcadero Historic District | SF Port, accessed August 28, 2023,
https://sfport.com/node/6543.

122
Traditional Cultural Property
The National Park Service defines a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP) as:
A property that is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places
(NRHP) based on its associations with the cultural practices, traditions, beliefs,
lifeways, arts, crafts, or social institutions of a living community. TCPs are rooted
in a traditional community’s history and are important in maintaining the
continuing cultural identity of the community.
205

What sets TCPs apart from other types of historic properties on the National Register is the
recognition of the living cultural heritage of a community. It acknowledges the importance of
preserving not just the physical aspects of the property, but also the cultural traditions, stories,
and practices associated with it. These properties might not always have traditional architectural
or physical features that are typically associated with historic places, but they are valued because
of their intangible cultural aspects.
206

While historically associated with Native American and Native Hawaiian sites, TCP
designations are now extending their reach to a broader range of places.
207
This expansion is
evident through the inclusion of new sites such as the Tarpon Springs Greektown Historic
District (Florida, 2014), and the Fishtown Historic District (Michigan, 2022). Both of these TCPs
provide nomination examples that are for non-Native resources, and could be used as a template
for Fisherman’s Wharf. The Tarpon Springs TCP was instrumental in “understanding the
importance of use in a TCP: All properties having any direct connection to persons of [Greek]
descent, culture, or activities are considered contributing regardless of the date of construction or

205
“Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) -A Quick Guide for Preserving Native American Cultural Resources ”
(National Register of Historic Places/ NPS, 2012).
206
“Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) -A Quick Guide for Preserving Native American Cultural Resources ”
(National Register of Historic Places/ NPS, 2012).
207
Laurie Kay Sommers, “Integrating Folklore and Historic Preservation Policy: Toward a Richer Sense of Place,”
The American Folklore Society, November 2016, https://americanfolkloresociety.org/our-
community/sections/folklore-and-historic-preservation/integrating-folklore-and-historic-preservation-policy-toward-
a-richer-sense-of-place/.

123
physical integrity as usually applied in historic district National Register nomination
proposals.”
208
The nomination also states, in regards to architecture, “Alterations over time that
reflect or reinforce the cultural values of the Greek residents are considered significant.”
209
The
Fishtown Historic District bears numerous resemblances to Fisherman’s Wharf, except that it has
a population of around 400 residents. There is a working waterfront with an active commercial
fishery and fishing vessels. Tourism is the driving force behind the local economy and there is a
collection of both mid-century and vernacular wood-clad buildings.
210
A TCP designation for
Fisherman’s Wharf would emphasize its value by looking at its historic resources differently and
shifting focus to the lived experiences and cultural practices of the past and present communities.
The City and the Fisherman’s Wharf community need to come together if they want to
keep Fisherman’s Wharf as a vital draw for tourists and locals alike. The Wharf has always had
its challenges, and there will always be a developer looking for a way to revitalize the area. Prior
to the pandemic, both the City and business owners seemed to take for granted that their cash
cow was infallible. Somewhere the Port and the city lost sight of what Fisherman’s Wharf could
be. “No one is curating the Wharf. And I think it needs some curation,” said Randall Scott,
current president of the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District. The City needs to start
thinking of Fisherman’s Wharf as not only a money maker, but as a cultural draw.
The protections I have discussed, if implemented, will help raise awareness for both
locals and tourists, so that the Wharf is not just a tourist trap but a potentially vibrant, culturally
rich area full of historically significant restaurants and bars, businesses, and cultural events. If
implemented, these tools might solve part of the problem, revealing that there is so much more to

208
Sommers.
209
Sommers.
210
National Park Service and Laurie Kay Sommers, Fishtown Historic District Traditional Cultural Property §
(2021), 5-6.

124
the Wharf than t-shirts and the left-over chowder in a bread bowl that the seagull is stabbing at.
Creating inviting reasons to come to the Wharf would be in everyone’s best interest.

125
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“Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) -A Quick Guide for Preserving Native American
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APPENDICES

145
APPENDIX A

146
Fisherman's Wharf Timeline
2
Date What Happened
Winter of
1848-1849
California Gold Rush begins!
1848-1849
First Italian War of Indepence, along with
revolutions sweeping other European nations
1849
February 24 / Domenico Ghiradelli arrives
from Peru
1850
Italians and Sicilians arrive in SF, bringing
with them their knowledge of building and
sailing feluccas
1850s
Black Point Cove, later to be called Aquatic
Park, becomes an industrial area
1850s-1860s
San Francisco Woolen Mill built (this is where
Ghiradelli now stands). First woolen mill in
California. Made uniiforms for armies in
Europe and blankets for the Union army
during the Civil War.
1852
Frank Bazzurro, from Genoa, opens
restaurant inside abandoned ship Tam O'
Shanter-serves crab
1853 Meiggs Wharf is built
1859 One of SF's early restaurants, Campi's opens
1860
Achille Paladini started felucca fishing in San
Francisco??
1859 Campi's restaurant opens
1860s
Crab began to be boiled in pots outside and
eaten "al fresco"
1863 State Harbor Commission established
1865
Smelting operation + sulphur processing
plant, as well as box factory and sardine
packers opens in Aquatic Park area
1873
First Cable Cars invented by Andrew Hallidie.
In 1888 the Powell-Mason Line; by 1891, the
Powell-Hyde line
1874
The Colombo Market, one of the city's first
produce markets, established by Italian
American vegetable gardeners on Davis
St-becomes main produce district
1874
Original Fisherman's Wharf at Clay and
Commercial
1880
Fisherman's Wharf is moved to the India
Docks at Union St
1885
Caito Fisheries is established. Today John
Caito runs the business
1886 Fior d' Italia restaurant opens
1888 Sanguinetti's restaurant opens
1890 Area on the Wharf becomes "Italy Harbor"

147
Fisherman's Wharf Timeline
3
Date What Happened
1892
What would become the Red & White Fleet
Ferries founded by Tom Crowley
1893
Panic of 1893. Economic depression sweeps
through the nation and lasts until 1897
January 27 - July
4, 1894
The California Midwinter International
Exposition-created to boost economy/Jan
27-July 4
1894
Ghiradelli purchaes the Woolen Mills and
builds chocolate factory
1895 Buena Vista Cafe opens
1898
Nunzio Alioto leaves Sant'Elia Sicily for San
Francisco
1900s
Monterey Clippers or "putt putts" begin to
replace feluccas
1900
Fisherman's Wharf moves to current location
between Taylor and Hyde Streets
1902
A. La Rocca & Sons Wholesale Fish Co. Leo
La Rocca is known as the "Crab King"
Early 1900s Coppa's restaurant opens
April 18,1906
1907 Del Monte Fruit and Haslett Warehouse built
1908
Chinese shown launching from Wharf in
Whitehall boats
1908
Giuseppe Alioto starts fish brokerage firm SF
International Fish Co. He had 6 bothers and
2 sisters who all came to SF and work in the
business
1910s
Salvatore Guardino sets up first stall on port
property
1913
Crab Fisherman's Protection Association
formed
1913
Antonio Farina brought in to organize
independent crab fishermen and establish
Crab Fisherman Protection Association and
go up against the Fish Trust . Also served
cracked crab on boats during the Panama
Pacific
1914
Stone seawalls built by Sate Harbor
Commissioner to hold back mud and to use
as wharves
1914
Pier 43 Archway for ferries and Belt Railway
built
1914 Joe DiMaggio born to Sicilian parents
1914 Wedding of Ignazio Alioto and Frances Lazio
1915
Panama Pacific Exposition. Runs Feb
20th-December 4th

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Fisherman's Wharf Timeline
4
Date What Happened
1915
Ghiradelli sign mounted for 1915 Panama
Pacific, so people on the train that ran past
the waterfront could see
1915
Achille Paladini was the first to commercially
can tuna, smoke fish and operate cold
storage in California
1915 Rose and Nunzio Alioto marry
1915
Belt Railroad trestle is built across Aquatic
Park for the Panama Pacific
1919
J-Wharves built. J-9 and J-10 built for fishing
industry that are still in use today. A "way" or
ramp, was built to help fishermen repair
boats
1920
Stalls for fish vendors are built on Taylor
Street
1920
A. Sabella Fish Market opens ( Antonino
Sabella)
1925 Nuzio Alioto opens Stall #8 on the Wharf
1926 Pier 45 is built
1932
Nunzio Alioto builds first building, "Alioto's
Fish Co" stand on Wharf that combined a fish
stand and seafood bar
1933
Nunzio unexpectedly dies and leave his wife
Rose to run the business, becoming the first
to work on the Wharf
1935
Mike Geraldi opens No. 9 Fisherman's Grotto
Restaurant. First sit-down restaurant on the
Wharf.
1936 San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens
1936
The Blessing of the Fishing Fleet begins.
Held first weekend every October
1937 Golden Gate Bridge opens
1938
Rose Alioto installs a kitchen and Alioto's
restauant is born. The Alioto history claims
that Rose is the originator of "Cioppino"
1939
Aquatic Park and Bath House (later Maritime
Museum) open
1939
Golden Gate Internation Exposition opens.
Runs Feb-Oct 1939 + May-Sept 1940
1940s
Vista Del Mar Restaurant is opened by
Ignazio Alioto along with Pietro Pinoni, one of
SF's leading restauranteurs
woman

149
Fisherman's Wharf Timeline
5
Date What Happened
December 16,1941
Fishing boats on West Coast belonging to
Italian Americans, requisitioned by the U.S.
Navy
February 23, 1942
Purse seiner (fishing boats) are requisitioned
from Monterey and San Francisco which
devastates the sardine industry
1946
Antonio Tedesco and Linda Franceschi open
"Sausalito Cafe." Later it becomes
"Franceschi's" and then "Capurro's"
1946
Pompei's Grotto opens. Frank and Marian
Pompei. In 1913, Frank's father Mario, at the
age of 16, arrived in San Francisco from San
Benedetto d'Ancona, Italy
1946 Fisherman's Wharf Merchants Assoc. formed
1950 Original Wharf comes to and end(?)
1951
Bath House becomes the Maritime Museum
and starts the country's first senior center
1953
Fishermen's Grotto No. 9 adds the F.E. Booth
(Vista Del Mar restaurant) building to the
restaurant
1959 Longshoremen's Memorial Building built
1962-1968
Ghiradelli Square considered the first
commercial adaptive reuse project in the
USA, spearheaded by Lawrence Halprin and
William Wurster
1967
The Cannery, formerly the DelMonte cannery,
is transformed into a shopping and dining
destination. Designed by Joseph Esrick
1973
"Mayor's Citizen's Committee for the
Preservation and Beautification of
Fisherman's Wharf" formed due to neglect of
the fishing industry
1978 Pier 39 opens
1981 Fisherman's Chapel built
1982 F-Line historic trollies established
2005
Fisherman's Wharf Community Benefit
District founded
2016
Fisherman's Grotto No.9 sells restaurant to
Chris Henry
March 17, 2020
Mayor London Breed declares a citywide
shutdown in San Francisco due to Corona
virus pandemic

150

Fisherman's Wharf Timeline
6
Date What Happened
2023
Alioto's, Nick's Light House, Pompeii's
Grotto, Gaurdino's, Castagnola's, Tarantino's,
Lou's all permanently closed

151
APPENDIX B
HISTORIC RESOURCE EVALUATION
Fishermen’s
Grotto 2851
Taylor Street
SAN
FRANCISCO,
CA

January 17,
2017 DRAFT
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PART 1 SIGNIFICANCE EVALUATION: TABLE OF CONTENTS
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PART 1: SIGNIFICANCE EVALUATION

1. Introduction

This Part 1 Historic Resource Evaluation (HRE) for Fishermen’s Grotto, a restaurant at 2851
Taylor Street (lot 049 on Block 9900), was prepared by Knapp Architects on behalf of the tenant,
Chris Henry, for the Port of San Francisco and the San Francisco Planning Department.
1
The HRE
evaluates the potential historical and architectural significance of this commercial building on
Taylor Street on Fisherman’s Wharf. The building is listed in the San Francisco Property
Information Map as B – Unknown/Age Eligible and therefore it has not yet been determined
whether it is a historical resource for the purposes of the California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA). This HRE concludes that the building at 2851 Taylor Street, Fishermen’s Grotto, is
significant under Criterion 1 of the California Register of Historical Resources, but does not retain
sufficient integrity to convey its significance and is therefore not eligible for listing.

The subject property is not located within a designated or identified historic district. A National
Register Historic District, the Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District, and a potential
historic district, the Fish Alley Historic District, were identified in the vicinity of the subject
property. This property was evaluated within the context of these districts, but it was concluded
that it was not a contributing resource to either district.

This HRE, therefore concludes that the subject property neither appears individually eligible to the
California Register nor is it a contributing resource to a designated or potential historic district. On
this basis, this HRE does not evaluate impacts on historic resources that would be caused by the
proposed renovations to the existing building.

Basic Property Information

a. Location: Address, Cross Streets, and Neighborhood

The subject property, Fishermen’s Grotto, is located at 2851 Taylor Street on the west side of
Taylor Street between Jefferson Street and the Embarcadero. The property is located in the
Fisherman’s Wharf portion of the North Beach neighborhood. The North Beach neighborhood is
bounded by Broadway Street on the south. On the west, the neighborhood is bounded by Columbus
Avenue, jogging west on Beach Street, then continuing north on Hyde Street. The neighborhood
is bounded by the San Francisco Bay on the north and east sides.
2

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1
Multiple buildings are listed under this parcel number and address according to the San
Francisco Property Information Map. The building historically known as Fishermen’s Grotto is
the only building being evaluated within this report.
2
City and County of San Francisco Planning Department. Neighborhood Groups Map.
Website: http://sf- planning.org/neighborhood-groups-map. Accessed 01/04/2017.
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b. Assessor Parcel Number

The property is comprised of lot 049 located on Block 9900 in the San Francisco Planning Map.
3

c. Zoning District

The district is zoned C-2—Community Business. It is in a 40-X height and bulk district.

d. Current Historic Status

i. Previous historic designation or historic resource survey

According to the San Francisco Property Information Map, the property is not listed in:
The California Register of Historic Resources
The National Register of Historic Places
Article 10 of the Planning Code
Article 11 of the Planning Code
A California Register district
A National Register district

The California Historic Resources Information System (CHRIS) at Sonoma State University in
Rohnert Park does not contain information about the subject property. The property was not
included in the San Francisco 1976 Architectural Survey. The San Francisco Property Information
Map indicates the property was included in the San Francisco Architectural Heritage Here Today
Survey conducted in 1968. This building address was not listed in the survey index at the San
Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library.

ii. Eligible historic district and nearby HRERs

The property is not in a designated historic district or a previously-identified potential historic
district. Nearby HRERs reviewed included: 2951 Hyde Street (2011.0282E) and Pier 47 Seawall
Repair (2006.0476E). The HRER for 2951 Hyde Street was included in the Fish Alley Historic
Resource Evaluation and Design Recommendations report by Architectural Resources Group
(ARG) completed in 2001. The report identified a potential California Register historic district and
an architectural character district within the vicinity of the property. The HRER for Pier 47 Seawall
indicates the seawall is located near the potential Fish Alley Historic District.

The subject building is evaluated within the context of the potential Fish Alley Historic District later
in Section 6 of this report.

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3
City and County of San Francisco Department of City Planning. San Francisco Property Information
Map. Website: http://propertymap.sfplanning.org/. Records for 9900049. Accessed 01/13/2017.
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2. Building and Property Description/Site History

a. Exterior Architectural Description

i. Site, Exterior Description, Construction Method

The subject building is located on the west side of Taylor Street, on the northern half of the block
between Jefferson Street and the Embarcadero. The building is located in a commercial area on
Fisherman’s Wharf in the North Beach neighborhood.

The building is comprised of two historically separate buildings, the original Fishermen’s Grotto
and the F.E. Booth building, that were connected to form the present L-shaped building. The main
façade of both buildings originally fronted Taylor Street. The original Fishermen’s Grotto building
was rectangular with the long face fronting Taylor Street. The F.E. Booth building was also
rectangular, but its long face fronted the Embarcadero. In 1953 the buildings were connected,
forming the L-shaped building with its outer corner at the intersection of Taylor Street and the
Embarcadero. The original Fishermen’s Grotto building formed the north-south leg of the building;
The F.E. Booth building formed the east-west leg of the building. A one-story rear addition projects
from the west façade of the north-south leg.

The building is bordered by
a wide sidewalk on all sides
with the exception of the
north façade that directly
abuts the Embarcadero and
the south façade of the
north-south leg that abuts
Alioto’s Restaurant. On the
east façade, a concrete
sidewalk separates the
building from Taylor Street.
The inner (rear) portions of
the building face the inner
lagoon and are bordered by
wood docks.

The two-story building has a combination roof. The roof over the north-south leg is flat with a
mansard-like face covered with wood shingles on the east façade. The east-west leg features a
truncated hipped roof covered with red clay tiles. The building features an outdoor dining area
extending the length of the main (east) façade. The dining area is covered by fabric canopy
supported by striped Venetian-style mooring poles. The canopy is divided into five alternating
sections: gently sloped blue and yellow striped planes, and arched blue portions denoting the

Image 1 View looking southwest at the intersection of Taylor Street and the
Embarcadero.
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building entrances. The building features two illuminated signs. On is extends above the roof line
on the east façade featuring the restaurant’s name, Fishermen’s Grotto, flanked by a large no. 9
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and the restaurants weathered fishermen icon. The second sign is located on the south façade of the
east-west leg of the building. The sign features the restaurant’s name and no. 9. There are two
exterior staircases leading to the second floor. One is located on the northwest corner of the east-
west leg; the other is located on the west façade of the north-south leg. There is also a fire escape on
the north façade.

Image 2 View looking west at the main facade. Faux mansard roof covered with wood
shingles is visible on the left. The truncated hipped roof with red clay tiles is
visible on the right.

The east façade is asymmetrical with three distinct
zones. The southern zone features the most historically
intact portion of the building. The first story features a
covered corridor leading to the rear of the building and
inner lagoon. Three equally spaced rectangular
windows are located between the corridor and a large
picture window. North of the picture window is a
double-leaf door. On the second story, a small arched
window is centered above the corridor. Three larger
arched windows are centered directly above the
rectangular fixed windows on the first story. Another
arched window is centered above the large picture
window. At the northern end of the zone is a small
double-hung window. The narrow center zone of the
east facade is distinguished by a faux-gable front and Image 3 View looking north under the main
facade canopy.
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large bay window on the second story. On the first story
is a large picture window, and double-leaf doors. The
third (northern) zone consists of three, fixed windows
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with transoms at the lower floor and a shallow faux-balcony at the second floor with two windows.
A number of the windows on the east and north facades are blind, apparently because interior
renovations have blocked them with walls.

The north façade is loosely divided into 13 bays, based on the fenestration pattern on the first floor.
Starting from the east end, the first two bays are identical with a divided-light casement window
with a divided light transom on the first floor. On the second floor are eight-over-eight, double-
hung windows. Between the first and second bay on the first floor is a fixed, 2x3 divided- light
window. Between the second and third bay on the first floor is a fixed, 3x2 divided light window.
The next three bays on the first floor have openings that are centered within an arched frame. The
third and fifth bays are fixed, 3x3 divided light windows. The fourth bay is a roll-up overhead
door. On the second floor, an eight-over-eight, double-hung window is centered above the first
floor openings in the third and fourth bay. Centered above the fifth and sixth bays, there appear to
be previous window openings that have been filled in. A third filled opening is centered between
the fifth and sixth bays. The seventh bay consists of a double-leaf door with 2x6 divided light
transom window on the first floor, and a partially filled opening with a narrow fixed window on
the second floor. The eighth bay has a large vent opening on the first floor. On the second floor
are a double-leaf door leading to the fire escape and a large, fixed window. The next four bays are
denoted by a wood
arcade. The ninth bay does
not have any openings on the
first or second floor. The
tenth bay does not have any
opening on the first floor; a
group of three awning
windows are centered in the
bay on the second floor. The
eleventh bay is comprised of
a double-leaf door located
west of the center of the bay
on the first floor with a small
vent above. A second group
of three awning windows is
centered in the bay on the
second floor. The twelfth
and thirteenth bays feature
a roll-up overhead door with
Image 4 Image 5 View looking southeast at the
north facade.
a large vent above on the first floor. On the second floor the twelfth bay features a large picture
window; the thirteenth bay features a double-leaf door slightly east of center leading to the wood
staircase on the northwest corner of the building.
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The west façade of the east-west leg of the building does not feature any openings on the first floor.
On the second floor are four fixed windows. The outer two windows are square, while the inner
two are rectangular, approximately double the length of the square windows.
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Image 5 View looking southeast at the west facade of the east-west leg of the building.

On the south façade of the east-west leg of the
building the first floor is visually divided into three
sections. The westernmost portion is divided into
five equal bays by a wood arcade at the second
floor line. A single-leaf door with a small vent
above is located slightly east of center in the third
bay from the west end, and a single-leaf door is
centered in the fourth bay on the first floor. The
center portion of this façade does not feature any
openings on the first floor but does feature a large
sign below the second-floor windows. East of the
sign, there are two filled arch openings. A one-
story projecting wing with a flat roof is centered in
the second opening. The projection features a
single-leaf door. On the second floor is a series of
windows. The first five windows from the west end
are fixed rectangular windows centered above the
bays of the wood arcade. East of these windows is
a group of three closely spaced fixed windows.
These are followed by a group of six, closely
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spaced fixed windows alternating between square
and rectangular openings.
Image 6 View looking west along the south
facade of the east-west leg.
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The west façade of the north-south leg
of the building is divided into three
levels. On the lowest level, from north
to south is a large vent, two closely
spaced square fixed windows, and five
equally spaced fixed windows. On the
second level are four equally spaced
fixed windows. The two southern most
are centered above the square fixed
windows on the first level. A double-
leaf door is centered above the first of
the five fixed windows. Five equally
spaced windows are centered above the
remaining four fixed windows on the
first level with the final above the
corridor opening. There is a narrow,
cantilevered balcony the full width of
the third floor. On the third floor are

Image 7 View looking east at the west facade of the north-
south leg.
two rectangular windows slightly north of the center of the first two fixed windows on the second
floor. There is a single-leaf door above the double-leaf door on the second floor, slightly south of
the center. Two small rectangular windows are located above the first two tall fixed windows on
the second floor, and two fixed windows are located above the last two fixed windows on the
second floor.
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Image 8 View looking southeast at the one-story rear addition.
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ii. Architectural Style and Primary Materials

The exterior of the building has been heavily altered. The building is clad in stucco and features a
combination of wood shingle roofing, low-slope, and clay tile roofing. The windows are a
combination of aluminum storefront, wood divided-light, and fixed windows. The doors are a
combination of aluminum and wood with glass inlay, wood panel, and steel roll-up overhead doors.
The building is simply dressed with flat wood trim around some of the windows and doors. The
building features Venetian motifs, such as striped mooring poles and arched windows, but it does
not reflect Venetian Gothic architecture or other definable architectural style. The wood arches at
the second floor level on the west end of the east-west leg are difficult to characterize stylistically.

b. Interior Architectural Description

The interior of the building is divided into two zones: restaurant spaces which occupy both floors
of the north-south leg and the first floor of the eastern portion of the east-west leg in addition to
the entire upper level of the east-west leg, and industrial spaces which occupy the west portion of
the first floor of the east-west leg. The restaurant spaces of the east-west leg and the north- south
leg connect on the first floor, but they do not connect on the second floor. A service corridor
connects the restaurant spaces to the industrial spaces on the first floor.

On the east elevation, there are two public entries to the restaurant spaces. Double doors lead into
the north-south leg, where there is a small informal lobby which opens on its north side to the lobby
in the east-west leg. A stair to the second floor separates this informal lobby from the
balance of the first floor space in the north-south
leg. A dining area with built-in wood booths in a
Venetian style with spiral-striped mooring poles
(some topped by lanterns) occupies most of the first
floor, with a narrow leg extending east on the north
side in the one-story west addition. This dining area
has quarry tile flooring, in multiple zones with
differing patterns and colors suggesting previous
alterations of the space, painted walls in wallboard
or plaster, and a painted ceiling that is also divided
in sections of different heights with wood planks
and wallboard. A series of service spaces along the
north side occupies the remainder of the first floor
of the north-south leg of the building. The open
stair, with travertine treads and risers and
ornamental iron railings and pickets, leads to the
second floor, which has a dining room that is similar
to the one on the lower level. A stair in the service

Image 10 Lower level restaurant space in north- south
leg, looking west.
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spaces leads to additional service spaces on the
third floor.
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North of the entry on the east
elevation described above, there is a
second double door which leads into
the lobby of the restaurant spaces in
the east-west leg. This lobby opens to
the south to the informal lobby of the
north-south leg (described above); to
a small private room directly
opposite the entry, behind a four-
panel glazed metal storefront; to a gift
shop at the west end; and up five
risers to a large raised landing at the
northeast corner of the building
where the main stair leads to the
second floor. On the second floor, the
large hall at the top of the stair
adjoins a bar at the southeast corner of
the east-west leg. The stair hall and
the bar open at the west into a pair of
long dining rooms that stretch along
the south side of the east-west leg to
the west end of the building. A portal
with three openings defined by thick
square columns and beams separates
the two dining rooms, which are
similar spatially but appear to have
been remodeled separately because
of their different imagery and
detailing. A series of service spaces
line most of the north wall of the
building next to the dining rooms.

Images 11 and 12 Second floor hall at top of stair (above)
and bar (below).
The public spaces in the east-west leg make extensive use of stained wood finishes, paneled or
beamed walls and ceilings, and decorative motifs—but beyond that commonality, they present a
notable array of styles, images, detailing, materials, and fixtures. Motifs include nautical themes
(e.g. the wavy ceiling border in the dining room and the wave scroll molding on the portal between
the east dining room and the bar), Classical (e.g. fluted columns, column capitals in the stair hall
and dining room), mid-century contemporary (e.g. herringbone ceiling board and geometric wall
paneling patterns in the bar), and Victorian or Belle Epoque (e.g. padded, quilted leather/faux
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leather built-in upholstery, diamond-shaped wall paneling with padded faux-leather infill)—but the
interior of the building as a whole could not be characterized by any one style or design school.
The freewheeling, eclectic array of materials, colors, finishes, and forms makes it appear the
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Image 13. Industrial space in lower level of east-west leg
of building.
interior was remodeled in parts,
multiple times, with an eye to
adding something new in each
section or space instead of creating
a unified whole.

The interior of the west part of the
lower level of the east-west wing
includes more than a dozen spaces
which appear to be laid out purely
for functionality, all of them
utilitarian in design and materials.
Floors are unfinished concrete for
the most part, and walls and
ceilings are plaster, wood planks,
or sheet metal or impervious
laminates (at food-handling
stations and cold rooms). The building systems, including refrigeration lines and machines, are
mostly exposed. There are storage mezzanines or platforms over some rooms, and a conveyor belt
system, a glass-encased ship’s model, and multiple cold rooms attest to the space’s origin as part
of Fisherman’s Wharf.

c. Site History

i. Development of the Site

The northern waterfront has evolved with shifting centers of industry, as new shipping wharfs and
seawalls were constructed. Prior to the 1840s, the northern shoreline wrapped the base of
Telegraph and Russian Hills, with Black Point Cove to the west and North Beach Cove to the east.
4

The depth of the bay was too shallow near the coast, forcing the first major wharf in the area,
Meigg’s Wharf, to extend 1,600-2,000 feet into the bay. Most boats moored at Yerba Buena Cove,
but Henry Meigg constructed the long wood wharf to entice shipping and development of the
northern area where his landholdings were located.
5

In 1863, legislation was signed creating the Board of State Harbor Commissioners for San
Francisco. Part of the State Harbor Commissioners’ responsibilities was to regulate the
development of the port, and construction of wharfs, piers, and seawalls.
6
The first project

4
City and County of San Francisco Department of City Planning. Northern Waterfront Plan
Findings Report. On file at San Francisco Planning Department, 1987.
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5
Bevk, Alex. “The Fisherman’s Wharf Precursor Built by a Victorian Hustler.” San
Francisco Curbed, 2014. http://sf.curbed.com/2014/10/21/10033242/the-fishermans-wharf-
precursor-built-by-a-victorian- hustler.
6
Corbett, Michael R. “Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District.” National Register of
Historic Places Nomination Form, National Park Service, 2006.
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undertaken by the Board of State Harbor Commissioners was the construction of the great seawall
to stabilize the shore. A two-and-a-half-mile portion, extending from the China Basin Channel to
Fisherman’s Wharf, was completed by 1880.
7

The 1886-1893, 1889-1900, and 1905 Sanborn Maps show the area around the subject property
underwater.
8

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1886. Annotated to show approximate location of subject
building.

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7
Corbett, Michael R. “Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District.” National Register of
Historic Places Nomination Form, National Park Service, 2006.
8
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1886-1893; Sanborn Map Company.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1889-1900; Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance
Map, 1905.
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Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1905. Annotated to show approximate location of subject
building.

By 1908, the Board of State Harbor Commissioners had constructed 23 piers along the waterfront.
9

The 1913-1915 Sanborn Map shows the subject building was located on what historically was one
of two wharfs constructed by the Board of State Harbor Commissioners in 1914. These wharfs
created the inner lagoon, located directly behind the subject building.
10
The area remained largely
undeveloped, with the exception of the San Francisco Lumber Company located on the southwest
corner of Taylor Street and Jefferson Street. A large portion of the northern shore is still
underwater.
11
The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition resulted in the competition of the
in-fill of the waterfront.
12

9
Corbett, Michael R. “Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District.” National Register of
Historic Places Nomination Form, National Park Service, 2006
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10
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.
11
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1913. Volume 1, Sheet 64.
12
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.
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Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1913-1915. Annotated to show approximate location of subject
building.

Fisherman’s Wharf gradually developed after the construction of the wharfs. The United States
Custom House and Coast Guard Office was constructed in 1917. The F.E Booth building was
constructed the following year. In 1920, a one-story wooden building with five stalls for fish
markets was completed on Taylor Street. Within a few years, a second and third building were
constructed adding four additional stalls, resulting in a total of nine stalls extending the length of
Taylor Street from Jefferson Street to the F.E. Booth building. Pier 45 was constructed in 1924.
13

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13
Corbett, Michael R. Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-
2010.
San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Architectural Heritage, 2010.
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Image 94 1936 Historical Aerial. Annotated to indicate the location of the subject building.
Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, http://www.davidrumsey.com.

Image 15 1936 Historical Aerial. Cropped to show a detail of the subject building. F.E. Booth
building and Fishermen’s Grotto No. are visible as separate buildings. The remaining two
buildings containing the first eight stalls are visible below the subject building.
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Beginning in the 1930s, these stalls were converted into restaurants which adopted their names
from the number of their stalls—hence the name Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9.
14
The 1913-1949
Sanborn Map shows the area developed with a series of stalls, restaurants, and fishing industry
related buildings.
15

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map 1913-149.

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14
Corbett, Michael R. Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-
2010.
San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Architectural Heritage, 2010.
15
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1913-1949. Volume 1, Sheet 64.
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ii. Development of the Building

The subject building was historically
two separate buildings constructed on
Fisherman’s Wharf during the first
half of the twentieth-century. The
F.E. Booth building was a reinforced-
concrete building constructed in
1918, that operated as a fish-
processing plant. The building was
owned by Frank Booth of the F.E.
Booth Company, best known as “the
founder of the sardine industry in
California, and the first cannery on
Cannery Row.”
16
In 1951 the
building was converted into a

Image 10 F.E. Booth Building, circa 1920. Source: Port
City by Michael Corbett, pg. 181. Originally published in
the Board of State Harbor Commission 1921 Biennial
Report.
restaurant. Within two years, Michael Geraldi purchased the building and merged it with
Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9.
17

A large addition on the west end of the building was identified through comparison of the building
footprint based on aerial photographs. The exact date of the addition is unknown.

Image 11 1936 Historical Aerial Photograph of San Francisco (left). 2016 Google Earth aerial
(right). Annotated to indicate subject building and historical where the
building ended.

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16
Corbet, Michael R. Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-
2010.
San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Architectural Heritage, 2010.
17
Char Bennett, Lynne. “Grotto’s Ageless Appeal.” San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco,
CA), March 16, 2014.
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The original Fishermen’s Grotto building was a two-story building that was built on the site of the
eraldi family’s fish market stall no. 9.
18
Building permit applications prior to 1952 were not
available, but exterior alterations were documented through a series of historical photographs.

Image 127 Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, circa 1935. The iconic weathered fisherman is visible
painted on the façade.
Stall No. 8 visible on the left side of the photo. Source: Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, photo gallery.
http://www.fishermensgrotto.com/gallery/index.html.

Image 138 Inner Lagoon, circa 1937. Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 visible in the background with
gable roof and signage.
Source: Maritime Museum Library Photograph Collection. View looking northeast at the Inner
Lagoon.
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18
“History.” Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, San Francisco, California. Accessed January 2017.
http://www.fishermensgrotto.com/history.html.
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Image 149 Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, circa 1940. Visible alterations to the building include new
windows, new signage near painted fisherman, and a full-length canopy supported by striped
mooring poles. The left most window is smaller, while the four larger windows are arched
casement windows with railings. The F.E. Booth building is visible as a separate building on the
right. Source: Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, photo gallery.

Image 20 Fishermen’s Grotto, circa 1945. Visible alteration included the roof and fenestration on
the first story. In the circa 1940 photo the roof was a cross-gable roof. In this photo, the roof
resembles the faux mansard roof with wood shingles present today. The original entry was
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centered under the third window from the left, in this photo the door is converted to a window, and
an expanded entry is visible just right of the center of the building. Source: Fishermen’s Grotto
No. 9, photo gallery.
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Image 21 Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, circa 1955. This photo was taken after the original
Fishermen’s Grotto building and the neighboring F.E. Booth building were joined. The
alterations included the addition of a faux-gable front with a large bay window and new signage.
This is documented in the 1953 Building Permit Application. Source: Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9,
photo gallery.

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Image 22 Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, 2016. Minimal alterations include new canopy.
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Building Permit List

On File with City of San Francisco: Fisherman’s Grotto
Filing Date
Application
No.
[Permit No.]
Work Listed Parties Noted
9/9/1952 14922* Repairs to fire damage.
Remove all damaged
materials & replace with new
involving carpentry,
sheetrock, glazing, roofing &
painting. Fire damage to roof
& kitchen overhead.
Owner: State Harbor Board
[139367] Contractor: Ira W. Coburn
12/15/1952 151884 Install bar, terrazzo floors
decorate walls.
Owner: N.L. Geraldi
[137211] Contractor: R.H. Hausen
2/9/1953 152947
Remove concrete posts,
install steel- new front. See
plans. (Connect Fishermen’s
Grotto to Vista Del Mar
19
)
Communicating opening’s
Owner: N. Geraldi
[139107] Contractor: R.H. Hausen
2/21/1991 9102333
Remove Existing Roofing. 1
layer Owens Corning
insulation 3/4". 1 layer 28 lb
base sheet. 3 layers Perma
ply R 11 lbs. 1 layer
aluminum coating- surfacing.
Owner: Nino Geraldi
[665829]
Contractor: Barnes
Construction
7/15/2002 201507222103
Bathroom dry rot repair &
stucco
Owner: Geraldi/ City
Property
[1363829] Contractor: Yama
Construction
On File with City of San Francisco: F. E. Booth Building (Vista Del Mare)

9/05/1949
118329
Repair fire damage. Tenants
Improvement only. No
Construction work on
building.
Owner: Vista Del Mare
[107806] Contractor: Ira W. Coburn
1/3/1950[1]
133795

Alterations to Stairway.
Owner: Vista Del Mare
[122096] Contractor: State of
California

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19
Vista Del Mar was the restaurant that opened in the F.E. Booth building in 1951.
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On File with the Port of San Francisco
Filing Date Permit No. Work Listed
1972 [162] (n) Windows F.G.
1988 [2374] Flooring, dry rot $8,500
1989 [3421] Rem. (E) Roof (N) Manville $4000
1994 [4927] Dry Rot Exterior Stairs [pics] $320
1997 [5252] Garden Fence around Patio Area $4099

[4956] Walkway repair pier

3. Focused Neighborhood Context

a. North Beach Neighborhood
20

The subject building is located in the North Beach neighborhood. When the Spanish arrived in San
Francisco, the area was a valley of grass and sand between two hills, later known as Telegraph and
Russian Hill. Beginning in 1847, the area was surveyed into streets and blocks to facilitate the sale
of land. The North Beach neighborhood had been left nearly undeveloped at the time the street grid
and lots were established, but a substantial portion of the neighborhood was developed by 1853.
However, a direct route from the downtown business district was not established until 1873-1875,
with the opening of Montgomery Avenue, later renamed Columbus Avenue.

Due to the primarily wood residential structures that comprised the neighborhood, the area was
completely devastated by the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. The North Beach neighborhood is
acknowledged as the first neighborhood to be fully restored after the Earthquake and Fire, largely
due to loans provided by the Italian-American Bank. As soon as new building laws were passed
construction began in the neighborhood. The neighborhood was almost completely rebuilt by 1915.
With limited room for additional building, the neighborhood largely maintains its 1915 appearance.

b. Fisherman’s Wharf

Fisherman’s Wharf is located at the northwest corner of the North Beach neighborhood along the
northern waterfront area of San Francisco. The Fisherman’s Wharf area known today gradually
evolved from a primarily commercial fishing area to an eclectic mix of fishing-industry-related uses
and a tourist entertainment district. The area was primarily comprised of commercial fishing

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20
Corbet, Michael R. Historic Contexts for a Survey of North Beach. Prepared for Northeast
San Francisco Conservancy, 2009.
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manufacturing, warehouses, and maritime uses during the first half of the twentieth century.
During the 1950s, restaurants were limited to the Inner Lagoon area along Taylor Street.
21

Italian and Chinese immigrants made fishing an important industry in San Francisco, beginning in
the 1850s. Thousands of Chinese immigrated to California during a time of political unrest in
China and a promise of gold in California. During the 1860s California saw an influx of Italian
fishermen. The similar characteristics of the Californian and Italian coast and an abundance of
natural resources drew Italian fishermen to the area.
22

The water near Meigg’s Wharf at the northern shore was too shallow for large shipping vessels to
maneuver, but the area was always a thriving commercial fishing area. In 1872, the fishing industry
was recognized as a major resource of the state, when land was set aside by the Board of State
Harbor Commissioners for use by commercial fisherman.
23
The fishermen were moved to the foot
of Union Street during the seawall’s construction but returned when the Board of State Harbor
Commissioners set aside the present Fisherman’s Wharf area for commercial fishing use.
24
Crab,
salmon, and sardines were the major catches, but the fleet also caught shrimp, oysters, and clams.
25

During the early twentieth century, most fishing was within the Bay Area, with limited boats fishing
outside of the Golden Gate. Typical fishing boats were feluccas, based on Italian fishing boats.
Due to rising pollution levels in the Bay and the introduction of gasoline engines, fishing grounds
expanded beyond the Golden Gate, reaching as far south as Santa Cruz and north to Point Arena.
26

Along with gasoline engines came a new type of fishing boat, known as the Monterey Hull boats.
27

From the beginning, fishermen sold part of their catch directly from the boats, but by 1920, a series
of one-story wood buildings were constructed for fish markets. The stalls were numbered one
through nine. Fisherman Tom Castagnola expanded his fish market stall to include seafood
cocktails.
28

21
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.
22
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.
23
Corbett, Michael R. “Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District.” National Register
of Historic Places Nomination Form, National Park Service, 2006.
24
Corbett, Michael R. “Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District.” National Register
of Historic Places Nomination Form, National Park Service, 2006.
25
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.
26
Corbett, Michael R. “Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District.” National Register
of Historic Places Nomination Form, National Park Service, 2006.
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27
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.
28
Okje Erdmann, Anika. Fisherman’s Wharf: The Passing of an Era. Found San Francisco.
Accessed January 2017. http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fisherman%27s_Wharf
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In 1935, Michael Geraldi, left his twenty-six year fishing career to establish the first full-service
restaurant on the Wharf. Several other families, the Aliotos, the Sabellas and the DiMaggios, soon
followed suit and opened their own restaurants.
29

During the 1960s, the success of the conversion of Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory and the Cannery
row into a multi-use public oriented spaces stimulated additional tourist oriented development of
Fisherman’s Wharf. Today, the area continues to offer both commercial fishing and tourist oriented
uses.

4. Owner/Occupant History

a. Owners

The subject property is publicly owned by the San Francisco Board of Commissioners, historically
known as Board of State Harbor Commissioners. The Board of State Harbor Commissioners was
established in 1863 with the signing of the state’s “Act to Provide for Improvement and Protection
of Wharves, Docks, and Waterfront in the City and Harbor of San Francisco.” The Act established
that the Board of State Harbor Commissioners was to administer and develop the port. The Board of
State Harbor Commissioners was comprised of three elected representatives that served four- year
terms. In 1957 the Board of State Harbor Commissioners increased to five members and was called
the San Francisco Port Authority. In 1969, control of the port was transferred from the state to the
San Francisco Port Commission.
30

b. Occupants

This existing north-south leg of the building was constructed in 1935, by Michael Geraldi.
31

Michael Geraldi was born in Sicily, Italy around 1891. He moved to the United States about 1907.
32

Beginning at a young age, Geraldi sold baskets of fish that he earned helping fishermen unload
their catches. After earning enough money, he bought his own fishing boat and set up a corner
stand selling his catch of the day, and eventually crab cocktails and seafood chowder.
33
In 1935, he
left the fishing industry and built a two-story, 180-seat restaurant. The restaurant was the first full-
service restaurant on the wharf.
34
Michael Geraldi continued to own and operate Fishermen’s
Grotto No. 9, until his death in 1949, when his sons took over the business.
35

29
Okje Erdmann, Anika. Fisherman’s Wharf: The Passing of an Era. Found San Francisco.
Accessed January 2017. http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fisherman%27s_Wharf
30
Corbet, Michael R. Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-
2010.
San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Architectural Heritage, 2010.
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31
“History.” Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, San Francisco, California. Accessed January 2017.
http://www.fishermensgrotto.com/history.html.
32
Ancestry.com. 1940 U.S. Federal Census. Search: Michael Geraldi, San Francisco, CA.
33
Baccari, Alessandro. Fisherman’s Wharf. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.
34
“History.” Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, San Francisco, California. Accessed January 2017.
http://www.fishermensgrotto.com/history.html.
35
“History.” Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, San Francisco, California. Accessed January 2017.
http://www.fishermensgrotto.com/history.html. Port Article
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Image 23 1934, Mike Geraldi shown selling crabs in font of Stall No.9. Source: Fishermen’s Grotto No.
9, photo gallery.

5. Designer and Builder

Research and building permit records did not identify a significant designer or builder. The earliest
building permits available date to 1952; the original building permit was not found. Research
included various resources at the San Francisco Public Library History Center, California
Historical Society, and online research.

6. California Register Significance Evaluation

a. California Register Criteria
36

The subject property was evaluated to identify its significance under the Criteria of the California
Register of Historical Resources. The significance criteria allow listing of the following:

Criterion 1 (Event): Resources that are associated with events that have made a significant
contribution to the broad patterns of local or regional history, or the cultural heritage of California
or the United States.

Criterion 2 (Person): Resources that are associated with the lives of persons important to local,
California, or national history.
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36
“California Register of Historic Resources.” California Office of Historic Preservation.
Accessed November 2016. Website: http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21238.
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Criterion 3 (Design/Construction): Resources that embody the distinctive characteristics of a type,
period, region, or method of construction, or represent the work of a master, or possess high artistic
values.

The following section examines the significance of the subject property for listing in the California
Register under those criteria.

b. Individual Significance Analysis

i. Criterion 1

Under Criterion 1, Fishermen’s Grotto is associated with events that have made a significant
contribution to local history. It is significant as the first full-service restaurant on Fisherman’s
Wharf. The origins of the restaurant are tied to the early fish market stalls constructed around 1920.
The stalls began as fish markets selling the day’s catch. By the early 1930s, these stalls began
offering seafood cocktails and cracked crab. When Fishermen’s Grotto was constructed in 1935,
restaurants were limited to these small stalls. In the years following the construction of
Fishermen’s Grotto, other families began converting their stalls into restaurants. The construction
of Fishermen’s Grotto was a significant event in the transformation of Fisherman’s Wharf from a
primarily industrial area to a nationally recognized tourist entertainment district. The period of
significance is 1935, when the original restaurant was constructed.

ii. Criterion 2

Under Criterion 2, Fishermen’s Grotto is not significant for association with important persons.
The subject building represents Michael Geraldi’s active life, as a fisherman and restaurateur.
However, mere association with the first full-service restaurant does not make the Geraldi family
stand out as more significant than other pioneering families of Fisherman’s Wharf. Research into
Michael Geraldi and the Geraldi family provided limited results. The Geraldi family was not
found among biographical index in the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco
Public Library. In Historian Alessandro Baccari Jr.’s book San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf,
Michael Geraldi was identified in a photo caption as “one of the most celebrated restaurateurs in the
history of Fisherman’s Wharf”, but was not listed among the “legends, heroes and celebrities”
identified in the book.
37
Other resources were limited to census records, a few newspaper articles,
and the restaurant’s website.

iii. Criterion 3

Under Criterion 3, Fishermen’s Grotto is not significant for its architecture or as the work of a
master. The original Fishermen’s Grotto building was constructed in 1935. At the time of its
construction, it was not a notable example of a type, period, or method of construction; it did not
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37
Baccari, Alessandro. Fisherman’s Wharf. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.
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have high artistic values; nor is it the work of a master. The massing, façade composition, and
detailing do not reflect a specific style. A designer or builder was not identified for this property.
Since the building’s construction, it underwent several design alterations, including the addition
of Venetian motifs such as striped mooring poles and arched windows. These additions do not
transform the building into a representative example of Venetian Gothic Architecture, nor have
any of the alterations gained significance since their construction.

The F.E. Booth Building was constructed in 1920 in a Spanish Colonial Revival Design. The
building was constructed with smooth stucco walls, low-pitched clay tile roof with a semi-circular
arcade at the southeast corner of the building. Since its construction, the building has been altered to
the point it can no longer be considered the same building; it no longer conveys its original design
and style.

c. Historic District Analysis

i. Fish Alley Historic District

Fish Alley is located west of the subject property, between Hyde and Taylor Streets, north of
Jefferson Street. Fish Alley has historically been the center of San Francisco’s fishing industry. A
few resources were determined eligible as contributors to a California Register historic district
under Criterion 1. The district represents the boat building and finishing industries that developed
along Fisherman’s Wharf. The period of significance was defined as 1919 (date of construction)
to 1941 (estimated conclusion of boat building industry). The entire Fish Alley Study area was
recommended eligible as an architectural character district, with consistent construction methods
and building types.
38

The subject building is not directly associated with the boat building or fishing industry and
therefore does not appear to be eligible for listing in the California Register as a contributing
resource of the district. The extensive alterations after 1941 would make the building a non-
contributory property if it were included in the district boundaries.

ii. The Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District

The Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District was listed in the National Register of
Historic Places in 2006. The District was determined significant under National Register Criteria
A, B, and C. It is significant under Criterion A in the area of Government at the state level for its
association with the Board of State Harbor Commissioners, an agency of the State of California,
and Commerce and Transportation at the national level. The district is significant under Criterion
B in the area of labor at the national level for association with Harry Bridges, a labor leader. It is
significant under Criterion C in the area of Engineering at the national level as a surviving example
of a once common type of port.

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38
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.
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The subject building does not appear to be eligible for listing in the National Register as a
contributing resource of the district. This building is not significant for association with the Board
of State Harbor Commissioners, with Harry Bridges, or development of the Port.

7. Integrity

To determine if a building is eligible for listing on the California Register, the building must be
determined significant under at least one of the four California Register criteria and retain sufficient
physical integrity to convey this significance. Integrity is the evaluation of the survival of physical
features from the defined period of significance. The integrity of a building is evaluated under
seven aspects: location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. These
categories are defined as follows:

Location: the integrity of location refers to whether a property remains where it was originally
constructed.

Design: the integrity of design refers to whether a property has maintained its original
configuration of elements and style that characterize its plan, massing, and structure.

Setting: Integrity of setting refers to the physical environment surrounding a property that informs
the character of the place.

Materials: the integrity of materials refers to the physical components of a property, their
arrangement or pattern, and their authentic expression of a particular time period.

Workmanship: the integrity of workmanship refers to whether the physical elements of a structure
express the original craftsmanship, technology and aesthetic principles of a particular people, place
or culture at a particular period.

Feeling: the integrity of feeling refers to the properties ability to convey the historical sense of a
particular time period.

Association: the integrity of association refers to the property’s significance defined by a
connection to a particularly important event, person or design.

The subject building retains integrity of location, setting, feeling and association. The building
remains in its historic location, in an urban commercial setting. The building has strong integrity
of association. It has continued to operate as Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 at Fisherman’s Wharf since
its construction in 1935. The integrity of feeling is maintained by its proximity to the inner lagoon
with moored boats, other family-owned seafood restaurants and stalls, with views of the bay, but
has been compromised by significant alterations to the building itself. The integrity of design,
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materials, and workmanship, of the original Fishermen’s Grotto building (1935) that was
determined significant under Criterion 1, has been compromised through substantial alterations.
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Through building permit records, historical photographs, and property research, multiple
construction campaigns were identified. The Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9 website identifies five
construction campaigns but does not specify the extent of the alterations. Based on historical
photographs it appears the alterations to the building included new windows and doors, signage,
roof, and canopy support by mooring poles. The most significant alteration to the building
(documented in building permits) occurred in 1953 when Fishermen’s Grotto was expanded and
connected with the neighboring F.E. Booth building, identified as Vista Del Mare on the building
permit application. During the 1960s, a second expansion further increased the seating. These
alterations occurred after the period of significance, and due to the extent of the alterations, the
existing building does not contain the physical characterstics that convey the signficance of the
original Fishermen’s Grotto that Geraldi founded. The distinction between the original Fishermen’s
Grotto and F.E. Booth building is not readily distinguishable on the interior or exterior of the
building. Therefore, the building does not retain sufficient integrity to convey its significance.
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8. Bibliography of Works Cited and Archives Consulted
Ancestry.com. 1940 U.S. Federal Census. Search: Michael Geraldi, San Francisco, CA.
Architectural Resources Group. Draft Fish Alley Area Historic Resources Evaluation and Design
Recommendations. Prepared for Port of San Francisco, 2001.

Averbuch, Bernard. “Crab is King:” The Colorful Story of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
On file at California Historical Society, c. 1973.

Baccari, Alessandro. Fisherman’s Wharf. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.

Bolles, John S. A plan for Fisherman’s Wharf: comprising the Fisherman’s Wharf-Aquatic Park
area. Prepared for San Francisco Port Authority. On file at California Historical Society,
1961.

Bolles John S. Northern Waterfront Plan. On file at San Francisco Planning Department, 1968.

California Historical Resources Information System. Historic Property Data File for San Francisco
County. Northwest Information Center.

California Historical Society. Historic Photograph Collection.

City and County of San Francisco Department of Building Inspection. Records Management.
Permit Record for 2851 Taylor Street.

City and County of San Francisco Department of City Planning. Architectural Quality Survey,
1976.

City and County of San Francisco Department of City Planning. Northern Waterfront Plan
Findings Report. On file at San Francisco Planning Department, 1987.

City and County of San Francisco Department of City Planning. Fisherman’s Wharf Area Plan.
On file at San Francisco Planning Department, 1991.

City and County of San Francisco Department of City Planning. Neighborhood Groups Map.
Website: http://sf-planning.org/neighborhood-groups-map. Accessed 01/13/2017.

City and County of San Francisco Department of City Planning. San Francisco Property
Information Map. Website: http://propertymap.sfplanning.org/. Records for 9900049.
Accessed 01/13/2017.

Char Bennett, Lynne. “Grotto’s Ageless Appeal.” San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA),
March 16, 2014.
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Corbet, Michael R. Historic Contexts for a Survey of North Beach. Prepared for Northeast San
Francisco Conservancy, 2009.

Corbett, Michael R. “Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District.” National Register of
Historic Places Nomination Form, National Park Service, 2006

Corbet, Michael R. Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San
Francisco, 1848-2010. San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Architectural Heritage,
2010.
Evans, Henry. San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. On file at California Historical Society, 1957.
Google. Maps. Aerial. Google, 2016.
“History.” Fishermen’s Grotto No. 9, San Francisco, California. Accessed January 2017.
http://www.fishermensgrotto.com/history.html.

Okje Erdmann, Anika. Fisherman’s Wharf: The Passing of an Era. Found San Francisco.
Accessed January 2017. http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fisherman%27s_Wharf
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, various years.
San Francisco Architectural Heritage. Here Today. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1968.

San Francisco Department of City Planning. Environmental Impact Report: Amendments to the
Comprehensive Plan. On file at Maritime Museum Library, 1983.

San Francisco History Center. San Francisco City Directories Online. 1936 to 1982. San
Francisco History Center. San Francisco Historical Photograph Collections Online.
San Francisco History Center. San Francisco Restaurants Ephemera Collection: Fishermen’s
Grotto.

Skidmore, Owing & Merrill. Fisherman’s Wharf Development Program: Urban Design Plan.
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9. Appendices

a. Building Permit Application
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Asset Metadata

Creator Takahara, Emi (author)

Core Title The restaurant that started it all: the hidden heritage of San Francisco’s Fisherman's Wharf

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Heritage Conservation

Degree Program Heritage Conservation

Degree Conferral Date 2023-12

Publication Date 09/20/2023

Defense Date 09/08/2023

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag blessing of the fleet,cioppino,Colombo Market,crab,Crab Louis,culinary history,Dungeness crab,Fisherman's Wharf,Fishermen,Fishermen's Grotto,Fishermen's Grotto No.9,foodways,gold rush,heritage,Historic Preservation,Italian,Italian food,Italian restaurants,legacy business program,menus,OAI-PMH Harvest,Ohlone,Restaurants,San Francisco,San Francisco Cultural Districts Program,Sicilian,Sicilian food,traditional cultural property,Yelamu

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sandmeier, Trudi (committee chair), Drake Reitan, Meredith (committee member), Platt, Jay (committee member)

Creator Email emi.takahara@gmail.com,etakahar@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113378508

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Legacy Identifier etd-TakaharaEm-12398

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Rights Takahara, Emi

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