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Years of Grace, Part I: Chapel to "Cathedral"
Archival pieces from Michael Lampen, Visitors to the soaring edifice of Grace Cathedral will have difficulty envisioning its humble parish ancestor of a century-and-a-half ago. The setting was rough-and-tumble Gold Rush San Francisco. Little clapboard and shingle Grace Chapel, built on muddy Powell Street near Jackson Street, opened December 30, 1849, just feet away from its predecessor, Holy Trinity Church.
The proximity of the two buildings symbolizes the tangled roots of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Belgian-born Dr. John L. Ver Mehr, first priest appointed to the city by the Board of Missions in New York, was subsequently "given the run around" by the Board, who instead sent Dr. Flavel Mines. Ver Mehr persisted, despite a serious bout of smallpox, and was given free passage to San Francisco by a sympathetic captain. Mines and Ver Mehr became good friends, recognizing the challenges of the West's vast missionary field. Before his chapel's opening service, Ver Mehr wrote that he "peeped through the canvas partition. Sturdy miners came in and took their seats on the rough planks, taking up their prayer-books and evidently in earnest. Others came. A few ladies, very few." At the offertory, "I had nothing but gold to offer at the altar." Grace Church was organized the next year, and in 1851 a larger wooden church was built. Debt lingered over the fledgling parish. Robbery, a cholera epidemic, and a city fire that singed the tower were other problems, but the parish survived. A sacred concert, the city's first, helped raise money for the parish. Bishop William I. Kip, first Missionary Bishop of California, arrived in 1854 and took over as rector. Before his first service he was told, "There are twenty people inside and the sheriff at the door."
The dynamic and eloquent Revered Ferdinand C. Ewer succeeded Bishop Kip in 1857, and the congregation quickly grew. Author Richard Henry Dana commented on the prosperity of the church in 1859. The next year, Bishop Kip laid the cornerstone for a new and more substantial church building at Stockton and California Streets, part way up what would soon be called "Nob Hill". Consecrated in 1862, the stately brick Gothic church was unofficially dubbed Grace "Cathedral", as Bishop Kip had returned as rector. Although this was the second use of the title by an American Episcopal church, and was dropped after 1867, the title proved to be prophetic.
Bishop Kip's departure as rector in 1864 led to a long search for a permanent rector, satirized by local newspaper columnist Mark Twain. Short term rectors included the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin, inventor of photographic film, and the Reverend James S. Bush, great-great-grandfather of President George W. Bush. Grace Church became a fashionable parish as Nob Hill's mansions rose up-slope in the 1870s. The parish vestry boasted some of the leading families of San Francisco; Tevis, Haggin, Bancroft, Stanford, Gibbs, Crocker, Gwin. Society weddings (Alexander/Crocker) and funerals (Sharon, Hearst) drew crowds of spectators up the hill.
The Reverend William Platt and his successor, the Reverend Robert C. Foute, presided over those prosperous years. By 1893 the new diocesan, Bishop William F. Nichols, was a frequent presence, and began to envision a diocesan cathedral. The great pre-dawn earthquake of April 18, 1906, caused only minor damage to the iron-framed church, but a relentless city-wide fire swept across Nob Hill that night, destroying everything. The last rector, Reverend David Evans, managed to save several parish registers and a communion plate, wheeling them, and his child, down California Street in a baby carriage. The noble shell of the "Old Warder of the Hill" became a dramatic subject for photographers, until its demolition months later.
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