Description
Five volumes of scrapbooks containing newspaper
clippings documenting the reconstruction of San Francisco, California after the 1906
earthquake and fire, and subsequent city and architectural development. Commercial
and public buildings represented include: the Civic Center, the Hobart Building, the
Hallidie Building, and others. Includes two folders of miscellaneous clippings and
photocopies of articles.
Background
Variously labelled brilliant, temperamental, flamboyant and eccentric, Willis
Jefferson Polk was born in 1867 in Jacksonville, Illinois. Receiving no formal
education, Polk grew up learning the building trades from his father Willis Webb
Polk (1833-1906) an itinerant carpenter. In a 1921 interview for The Chronicle, Polk recalled having worked as a hat boy,
a water boy for a St. Louis contractor; a lemonade stand seller; a handy boy,
sticker and bench boy at a planing mill; and as an office boy for St. Louis
architect J.B. Legg by the age of thirteen. Proudly he related the story of how, at
the age of fifteen, he had shocked the town of Hope, Arkansas by having his drawings
for the design of their new schoolhouse accepted as the winning entry out of a field
of practicing professionals.
Extent
5 volumes
(3.5 Linear feet)
Restrictions
Copyright has not been assigned to the California Historical Society. All
requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted
in writing to the Director of Research Collections. Permission for publication
is given on behalf of the California Historical Society as the owner of the
physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the
copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.
Availability
Fragile originals; use microfilm only.