3em">Clubs

Club life in San Francisco has won the admiration of many men of letters and other visitors. Kipling says appreciative things about the Bohemian Club in his American Notes that exceed anything written by its own historians. Julian Street, in his Abroad at Home, says that with her hills San Francisco is Rome; with her harbor she is Naples; with her hotels she is New York.

"But with her clubs and her people she is San Francisco, which to my mind comes near being the apotheosis of praise," he adds.

The Bohemian Club's devotion to music and drama finds expression beyond the plays and concerts at its town clubhouse. In addition it owns a grove of redwoods in Sonoma county, where "highjinks" are staged every midsummer. A grove play, the book and music of which are written by members, is the feature of the annual gathering which has spread the name of the Bohemian Club to many distant places. This distinctive type of country annex is likewise enjoyed by The Family, a club which has in addition to its city quarters a redwood grove in San Mateo county known as "the Farm," where original drama and music are produced.

A bronze tablet in memory of Bret Harte is on the Post street facade of the Bohemian Club, near Taylor. Characters from the prose and verse of the author are shown in bas-relief, including Salomy Jane, Yuba Bill, Tennessee's Partner, John Oakhurst and the Heathen Chinee. The Olympic Club, the Pacific Union Club on Nob Hill, the University Club, the Commonwealth, the Union League Club, the Commercial, the Transportation, the Concordia, the Argonaut, the Engineers, the Army and Navy, the Old Colony and the Press Clubs are among the other organizations with well appointed quarters. The Knights of Columbus, Masons, Elks and other fraternal orders have their own clubs. The Olympic Club also maintains the Lakeside Country Club with a golf course and trapshooting facilities. The Olympic is one of the oldest and largest athletic clubs in the country, having over 5000 members.

Women's organizations owning or now building their own club houses
include the Francisca, Woman's Athletic, the California, Sequoia,
Century, Sorosis, Town and Country, National League for Woman's Service,
City and County Federation of Women's Clubs and the Y. W. C. A.

San Francisco is a paradise for golfers, and the courses of the various clubs have settings of exceptional natural beauty. Among them are those of the Presidio Golf Club, the California Golf Club, the San Francisco Golf and the Lake Merced Golf and Country Club on the Rancho Laguna de la Merced. The municipality maintains two golf courses, one at—Lincoln Park and one at Lake Merced.

Across the Bay, in Alameda and Marin counties, and down the peninsula are any number of country clubs. The San Francisco Yacht Club and the Corinthian Yacht Club have club houses on the Marin shore.

Homes and Gardens

Surface impressions of San Francisco assail the visitor like colors in a gypsy's scarf lustrous and salient. There is so much vivacity in the streets downtown, so much to see in the haunts talked about, that one is apt to overlook in a brief sojourn an outstanding characteristic of the city—its many distinctive homes.

Hardly a month passes that is not marked by pages of appreciation in national architectural journals about the creative originality shown in the landscape gardening and in the structural conceptions achieved in the residence parks of San Francisco. In versatility of treatment the architects who have specialized in home building in the San Francisco Bay region have had their designs of contoured streets, parterres, terraces and plantings published more widely than those of their professional brethren in any other section of the country.

Tour leisurely by motor car or afoot through the city if you would convince yourself how lovely the homes of San Francisco are. Leave the traveled boulevards and journey out into the districts that lie along the hills north of Washington street and west of Van Ness avenue as far as the Presidio wall. Skirting that dividing line, wander through the area between Geary street and the military reservation.

Pacific avenue, Broadway, Vallejo and the cross streets leading into them are built up with splendid homes, outlined against inviting lawns and gardens. There are noteworthy residence tracts in this section— Presidio Terrace, West Clay Park and Sea Cliff, where homes that look like villas and chateaux perch on heights that afford a sweeping range of ocean, hills and harbor entrance.

The district west of Twin Peaks, which may be reached either by the Municipal street cars that go out Market street or by automobile, has restricted residential areas that are reminiscent of the illustrations on the satiny pages of de luxe architectural folios.

Rapid transit has brought country life to city dwellers in San Francisco, Third and Market streets being only twenty minutes away from St. Francis Wood and its fountains and trees; Ingleside Terraces; Westwood Park, lying along the lower slopes of Mt. Davidson; Forest Hill and other verdant home areas, the tunnel through Twin Peaks making all this possible.

Coming back downtown over the shoulder of Twin Peaks your eyes are bewildered in trying to chart the sea of roofs and gables that stretch over the Mission district. Where once a few tiled adobes clustered around Mission Dolores, founded by Padre Junipero Serra, now spread homes flooding the level places and gradually climbing up toward the tops of the hills that are like watchtowers over the Golden Gate.

San Francisco Outlines and Insights

Area: 42 square miles.

Climate: Cool summers and mild winters. Average summer temperature, 59 degrees. Average winter temperature, 51 degrees.

Population: 687,000 in city; 1,200,000 in metropolitan area.

Tax Rate: $3.47 per $100 assessed value, rate of assessment to market value of property being 50 per cent.

Per Capita Wealth: Based on actual value of property, the per capita wealth of San Francisco, $3,115, is the highest of any large city in the country.

Foreign Trade: Trade with foreign countries passing through the Golden Gate during the fiscal year 1922-1923 totaled $343,307,567, of which exports amounted to $157,242,290 and imports $186,065,277.

Industrial Activity: San Francisco leads the cities of the Pacific Coast in the value of manufactured products, the total annual volume of which is $500,000,000.

Labor Efficiency: Owing to equable climate, labor efficiency is higher than in any other large center in the country, the per capita output for San Francisco being $6,804.75.

Money Market of Pacific: San Francisco ranks fifth in bank clearings in the United States. Total bank clearings for the year amount to $7,274,000,000. Deposits total $935,119,374. Total resources of the five national and thirty-one state banks were $1,311,368,502 in 1923.

Real Estate and Construction: Realty sales for the past year totaled $132,227,478. Building totaled $34,079,996. Since 1906 new construction totals $500,000,000.

Sightseeing Tours: Descriptive folders and other literature may be obtained at the Chamber of Commerce and at the hotels and information bureaus in San Francisco about trips supervised by licensed sightseeing companies. Some of the outstanding attractions of the city are detailed briefly here.

Civic Center: One of the most impressive groups of public buildings to be seen in this country or abroad. Lands and buildings for this undertaking cost the people $20,000,000. The group