The Bella Union Theatre

720 Washington St. | map | Later address: 805 Kearny | map |

Opened: October 22, 1849. The Bella Union has the reputation of being San Francisco's first theatrical operation. The original entrance was on the north side of Portsmouth Square, the second building west of Kearny St. The auditorium was deeper into the middle of the block. Nearby, for a couple years anyway, was the Jenny Lind Theatre, on the east end of the Square.

Closing: The theatre burned May 4, 1850 and was immediately rebuilt. 

 

 

Bella Union version #2:

The second version of the Bella Union is the 4-windowed building with the dark shutters, the second building in from the right. This is an 1851 Daguerreotype by Sterling C. McIntyre. We're looking north across Portsmouth Square to Washington St. with Kearny off to the right side of the photo. That's Telegraph Hill in the background.

Left to right the buildings are: California Restaurant / Aaron Holmes Chronometer & Watch Maker, Alta California Newspaper / Book & Job Printing, Drugs & Medicines Wholesale & Retail / Henry Johnson & Co., unnamed building - no signage, Louisiana, the Bella Union, Sociedad.

The photo is in the Library of Congress collection. Thanks to Demetri Papadopoulos for his post of it on the San Francisco History Facebook page, where it got many comments. The photo also appears on the Wikipedia article about the Barbary Coast. An annotated version of the photo from "The Annals of San Francisco, 1855" appears on "Portsmouth Square: The Plaza," a page on the website Found SF.

A c.1851 photo looking east. Over to the left on Washington St. the Bella Union can be seen as the second building up from the corner. It's above the "Meat Market" sign seen in the lower left. Kearny St. is running left to right. The large white building right of center is an early version of the Jenny Lind Theatre. Thanks to Nick Wright for sharing the photo from his collection, added as a comment to a post on the San Francisco History Facebook page.

 

 

A look north across the square to Washington St. taken in June 1855 by George R. Fardon. Thanks to Art Siegel for locating it on Calisphere. It's in the UCB Bancroft Library collection. The City Hall, formerly the final version of the Jenny Lind Theatre, is on the right. 

 

Hamilton Henry Dobbin has a version of this view in one of his scrapbooks in the California State Library collection. In a discussion on the San Francisco History Facebook page Emiliano Echeverria identified this as one taken in 1856 by Fardon. Nick Wright countered: 

 

"This is supposed to have been taken by Watkins, one of his first paper prints. Taken from his room when he was staying at Brown's Hotel, according to his biographer Charles Turrell. I even suspect that some of Fardon's photos were taken by Watkins."

An 1850s photo from Shaping San Francisco that appears on "Portsmouth Square: The Plaza," a page on the website Found SF.

 

Closing: Version #2 closed, presumably in 1867, due to a widening project along Kearny St. The auditorium was along Kearny and its east wall was in the way of the project.   

Bella Union version #3:  

 

The project for building a replacement theatre was announced in this October 5, 1867 item in the San Francisco Daily Dramatic Chronicle:

 

 

Thanks to Art Siegel for locating the story.

 

On August 15, 1868 the Chronicle reported progress: 

 

"The walls of Sam Tetlow's new Bella Union, on Kearny street, are completed and the roof on."

Parts of the old auditorium were still up in October. Art Siegel found this mention in the October 8, 1868 Daily Alta California:

"Coming Down.— The last of the obstructions to the complete widening of Kearny street is in process of removal. That portion of the east wall of the Bella Union Theatre, which juts on the contemplated widened sidewalk, is being torn down, so as to make the main building on a line with the street."

 

Opened: The "Temple of Pleasure" opened on December 14, 1868 using an 805 Kearny address, just around the corner from the entrance to the earlier theatre.

 

An ad from the December 13, 1868 Daily Alta California. Thanks to Art Siegel for locating it via the California Digital Newspaper Collection.

 

This was a new building facing on Kearny with the Portland House hotel on the upper floors. There was a totally new auditorium behind that. Hamilton Henry Dobbin commented that at the time of the reopening the large building on the corner was a drug store and the Kearny entrance to the theatre was just one door beyond. 

 

The theatre was run by Sam Tetlow. Sam is best known for killing his partner, William Skeantlebury, on the boardwalk in front of the theatre. Or perhaps it was in the theatre's bar. This was allegedly after stabbing him in the leg with a sword inside the theatre earlier.

 

The rebuilt Bella Union was included in the 1868 city directory on a list of buildings completed that year. Thanks to Art Siegel for spotting this copy: 

 

"The New Bella Union Theater — Near the corner of Kearny and Washington streets, in the rear of the old establishment, covers an area of forty-eight by one hundred and fourteen feet. It contains a parquet, dress-circle, and galleries; has a stage thirty-one feet deep, supplied with a handsome drop-curtain, scenery, etc. — being well adapted for the representation of light pieces for which it is intended. The galleries are subdivided into boxes — the whole numbering twenty-three, of which four are proscenium boxes. The place is well ventilated, and the entrances easy and capacious. The cost of the house has been about $23,000, besides stage-fixtures, etc."

 

It's listed with the address as Kearny near Washington in the 1871 city directory. The address is listed as 803 Kearny in an 1882 Guide Book and Street Manual, and as 805 in the 1896 city directory.  

 

James Madison, writing in a 1925 piece "San Francisco Theatrical Memories" that appears on a page from The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, noted: 

 

"The first regularly established variety theater was the Bella Union, located on Washington Street above Kearny. When the latter thoroughfare was widened in 1869, the house was rebuilt and the entrance shifted to 805 Kearny Street. This house had a career of over forty years and among the top-notchers that performed there were Lotta Crabtree, Ned Harrigan, Elise Biscaccianti, Charley Reed, Thomas C. Leary, Elias Lipsis, half brother of Adah Isaacs Menken, James A. Herne, Pauline Markham, Patti Rosa and Bob Scott, Charles Ross and Mabel Fenton, Johnny Ray, Harry Montague, Junie McCree and Weber and Fields." 

 

By 1887 Tetlow was gone and Ned Foster was the proprietor. In August 1887 Foster had also taken over the Fountain Theatre at Sutter and Kearny.  

 

 

An image of the theatre's Kearny St. facade from an 1887 flyer in the collection of the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library. The 1887 flyer:

 

Thanks to Art Siegel for locating this.

A detail of an 1887 Sanborn map on the Library of Congress website. That's Washington on the left and Kearny across the bottom. Here the new entrance is seen between 805 and 807 at the bottom of the image. Thanks to Sam Siegel for locating the map. Note other entrances to the auditorium through the spaces at 805 and 815 Kearny plus a stage entrance at 819. 

 

 

"Compliments of Ned Foster." Thanks to Jack Tillmany for locating the image in the New York Public Library collection. They give us no hints about how the image was used or its size.

Art Siegel was researching early variety theatres and found "an amusing article written by an intrepid reporter who was 'shocked, shocked' to find these 'theatres' in our fair city." The story in the April 4, 1892 San Francisco Call that he located via the California Digital Newspaper Collection website mentions a number of 'dives' by name and offers a discussion of that new usage of the word:

"CRIME HATCHERIES. Life in San Francisco's Dens of Depravity. PLACES WHERE VICE RUNS RIOT... Vile Resorts in This City Where Youth Is Corrupted and Women Slowly Slain... Life In the dives of San Francisco: What is it like? Tell us not that it is picturesque. Say not that it is permissible; that the low and vulgar will be low and vulgar, no matter what is said or done. Say that it is vile, and you have spoken of it in fit terms— sharp, short and to the point. Vile is the word. 

"There are different kinds of dives. There is the underground hall, where the fetid air reeks with a stench that never leaves the place night or day; where young maidenhood is debauched; where innocent youth becomes laden with foulness; where robberies are concocted; where men are slain; where licentiousness rules supreme. There is the hall just off the street, perhaps a step or two up from the sidewalk, which is just so many steps downward into Hades for those who go in as participants. Here, possibly, it is a little cleaner in a physical sense, though morally it is just as foul and loathsome as the dive-cellar. Then there are a few places where one goes upstairs in order to gain entrance. So far as good air and decency are concerned nothing is gained by the ascent. The upstairs places are just as vile as those in the cellars. Often they are worse.

"But they are all dives, whether above or below ground. The 'Century Dictionary' gives the definition if a dive as that of 'a disreputable place of resort, where drinking and other forms of vice are indulged in, and commonly vulgar entertainments are given.' So it may be in a cellar or in an attic. If it conforms to the foregoing definition putting it upstairs does not let it escape from the appellation of 'dive.' But there is a bitter name for them — crime hatcheries. That is what they are. The police records will prove it. Now, there are a great many dives in San Francisco. If there were only one, that would be one too many. Some of them are hidden away out of sight. Others flaunt themselves brazenly on our leading streets, their blatant bands of harsh music sending forth their discordant notes nightly.

"These places which greet the youth of the city with attractive signs, inviting them to come in and begin a course of vice, are maintained on such streets as Market and Kearny, staring the public in the face, saying, 'We are here to stay; what are you going to do about it?..' The dive-keepers have political pulls. They know how to get off easily when it comes to threatened punishment. They are experts at evasion of the law. They have plenty of money, and use it more unscrupulously than does any other class of corruptionists. They are moral lepers. And yet these same dive-keepers have the support of the law, after a fashion. To uproot them one most strike deep. It should be done. They should be uprooted, and with no tender hand; but mercilessly, just as they slay and corrupt...

 

"TOBIN'S APPROVAL... R. J. Tobin, president of the Board of Police Commissioners, was told that The Call was collecting data for a crusade against the dens of depravity in this city. 'Good... We have had a great deal of trouble with the dens— a great deal. We know that in those places much of the crime that is committed in this city originates. We know that they are a stench in the nostrils of the community. We have done everything in our power to close the most disreputable of them, but we cannot go further than the law allows to go...' 

 

"WHAT THE CHIEF SAYS... 'These dives and dance-halls are like so many festering sores on the body politic, and were the power mine not one of the disreputable places would be open to-day.' It was P. Crowley who spoke, Chief of the Police Department of San Francisco. 'Some of them are vile and filthy places; none of them fit to live in a respectable community... Yes; some of them are worse than others. Some have bad criminal records. In some crime has been committed, even to murder... I can tell you which causes us the most trouble. That is the Cremorne, but the Bella Union, the Eureka music-hall and half a dozen others are just about as bad... Dives cost the city more in a year than any other nuisance it has to contend against. Taxpayers ought to put their feet down on the dives and stamp them out of existence."

"THERE ARE MANY SUCH. Dives That are Moral Stenches to the Community... There are many dives in San Francisco— many more than in any other city of its size. We may be lacking in many things, but not in dives. Our gilded youth are well provided for in this respect, and the pitfalls for our own sons and daughters are numerous and varied. No; we are not backward in iniquity. There's the Bella Union, for instance, Ned Foster's notorious place. It is a foul resort, much frequented by boys of respectable and respected parents, by crooks and harpies and by the very dregs of a metropolitan society. 

"The Bella Union's stage performances, while most disappointing to the sensualists and those who look for indecent exhibitions, is yet so disgustingly vile and filthy in language and action as to turn the stomach of any one but a Barbary Coast rounder. But while the stage performance is disappointing the performances in the dirty lobby and foul little private boxes are calculated to please the most degraded... The main feature of all the dives are the female waiters. They are mostly aged, all are brazen and but few even passingly good looking. Yet they serve their purpose. They make the dive-keeper rich."

In a comment to an early Bella Union photo posted by Mark Schwery on the San Francisco History Facebook he noted:  

"Big Bertha was one of the last owners of the Bella but the 1895 law made it illegal to sell liquor there so she quit and left the city."

 

For more on Bertha (and her pal Oofty Goofty) check out the 2017 SF Examiner article "'Big' Bertha Heyman, the Confidence Queen" by Paul Drexler. In "Romeo and Juliet," one of Berth's famous performances, she finished a love scene by sitting on her Romeo. 

 

Evidently the house closed as part of the general campaign against The Dives. Art Siegel located an announcement in the September 30, 1896 San Francisco Call about a reopening:

"TO AMUSE CHINESE - Scheme to Convert the Bella Union Theater Into a Chinese Playhouse. The old Bella Union Theater on Kearny street, near Washington, has been leased for five years to a Chinese syndicate, which will convert the old building into a Chinese theater.

"The work of conversion will at once be proceeded with. It is the intention of the managers to cater to American patronage as well as to Chinese. The place will be remodeled in accordance with the requirements of the modern Chinese drama. It is intended to give Americans the best plays procurable in China, and an augmented orchestra will furnish the latest and best compositions of the Chinese composers."

The Chinese venture didn't happen and the reasons for that were mentioned in an article Art located about the next proposal for the theatre that appeared in the April 15, 1898 San Francisco Call:

"OLD BELLA UNION TO BE REOPENED - The Historic Vaudeville Theater to Take a Fresh Start. Carpenters and Refitters Will Have It Ready in About a Month. After a long siege of idleness, during which rust and general decay have reigned, the notorious old Bella Union is about to be reopened. The contractors decline to say who the new proprietors are. A score of carpenters and refitters were busy on the old place yesterday, and it is announced that the resort will be opened about the middle of next month as a first-class song and dance house, with refreshments to suit the most fastidious tastes. Many fortunes have been made and lost in the place.

"A bit of history not generally known has just come to light concerning the old house. It is the fact that there was for a long time a strong effort to turn the theater into a Chinese resort. Little Pete negotiated with Ned Foster for its purchase shortly before Foster sold to the brewery syndicate. The sale would have been consummated but for the fact that the theater and all the property in the block are owned by the Alfred Borel banking house. 

 

"Other tenants refused to pay their rent if the house was transformed into a Chinese theater, so all efforts to that end were suspended. For some weeks the boycott raged quite fiercely, and the bank gave up all idea of allowing a deal to be made. Ed Harrigan, the well known Veda sisters, Lotta, Sam Rickey and many other well known actors got their start at this famous old vaudeville theater."

Well, that story about opposition to the Chinese theatre was wrong according to a later article Art found in the Chronicle. The real fear was that the new Chinese owners would also own the other storefronts and would evict the present tenants in favor of Chinese merchants."

The Bella Union is noted as "Variety Theatre - closed" in this detail from image 32 of the 1899 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map located by Art Siegel in the Library of Congress collection. Art notes that there was also a "closed" notation for the theatre on the 1905 Sanborn map.

By the time of this map the hotel had become the Osborn House. Note the indication that there was a saloon and dance hall in the basement space below 813-819. 

At some point Peter Bacigalupi took over the premises and used the south storefront of the building for a penny arcade. He was initially in the phonograph business, and acquired the Edison franchise for California. Later he added Edison Kinetoscope peepshow machines to his locations both in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The assumption is that the used the Bella Union's auditorium to show movies on a screen after Edison's Projecting Kinetoscope and other equipment became available in 1895. 

 

A view north on Kearny from Washington St. in August 1905. Thanks to Art Siegel for locating the image from the Marilyn Blaisdell collection that appears on the Open SF History Project website. Their caption:  

 

"... A Penny Arcade is in what was formerly the entry to the Bella Union Theater at left. At this time, Peter Bacigalupi, a pioneer in bringing moving pictures to San Francisco in 1894, ran this and another Penny Arcade. Also, Pioneer Tom & Jerry Saloon, Saloon with Wunder Beer sign, rooming houses, laundry wagon, restaurants, streetcars and bars. California Hotel in distance at Columbus (then Montgomery Ave.) corner. Telegraph Hill in the distance."

 

 

A detail of the Bella Union's facade extracted by Art Siegel from the 1905 photo. 

 

 

A closer look at Bacigalupi's storefront. Thanks, Art!

 

Bacigalupi was running films at the "historic old Bella Union theater on Kearny street" until the 1906 earthquake. It gets a mention in an article about early San Francisco film exhibition in the July 15, 1916 Moving Picture World. It's on Google Books.

 

The demise: The theatre was destroyed in the April 1906 earthquake and fire.  

"There Will Be Nothing To It - And Frisco Will Rise, Phoenix Like, from Its Ashes." This was Peter Bacigalupi's ad in the May 13, 1906 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle: 

 

Thanks to Art Siegel for locating the ad. 

More information: The c.1911 Shanghai / Kearny Theatre at 825 Kearny was renamed the Bella Union in 1948. Also see the page for a 1907 vintage theatre on the block, the Lyceum. Both theatres were located on lots that had earlier been occupied by versions of the Bella Union.

 
The Bella Union is discussed in Chapter 6 of Herbert Asbury's "The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld." It's available on Amazon.

 

A dance hall downstairs from the Hippodrome, 555 Pacific, used the Bella Union name in the 1910s and 20s. 

Jack Tillmany's Arcadia Publishing book "Theatres of San Francisco" can be previewed on Google Books. It's available from Amazon or your local bookseller.

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