The Centennial Series Stay tuned throughout the year for the continuing story of Grace Cathedral

One hundred years ago, in the wake of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, Grace Cathedral was born. It would take twenty-one years before ground was broken for the present cathedral building, and another thirty-seven years before its completion, but the cathedral site, and by 1907 the legal entity, would become a reality. The patient persistence and unwavering vision of one man, Bishop William F. Nichols, and the extraordinary generosity of another, civic leader, banker and philanthropist William H. Crocker, met to create history.

Grace Church ruins from the south

The first hints of a future cathedral began in 1862 when Bishop William Kip, first bishop of the diocese, returned for a second term as rector of the newly-built brick-Gothic Grace Church. The name "Grace Cathedral" was stamped confidently on the parish prayer books. Although the cathedral designation was the second in the Episcopal Church (after the original Chicago Cathedral, St. Peter & St. Paul Cathedral, Chicago) the name was dropped on Bishop Kip's subsequent departure. Yet the cathedral aura lingered. Bishop Kip raised the cathedral idea again in 1878 and 1879, but to no avail. His successor, Bishop Nichols, hearing of the start of construction of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, raised the idea again in 1892, repeating the call on hearing of ideas for Washington Cathedral in 1896, but to little response. The vision dimmed, but did not die.

The William H. Crocker mansion from California and Jones Streets

The William H. Crockers, prominent Grace Church parishioners, owned a city block near the crest of Nob Hill with two large mansions, their own and that of his late father Charles Crocker. In 1901 they served as unofficial hosts of Episcopal Church's General Convention with Episcopal heavyweights J. P. Morgan and Bishop Henry Potter of New York as house guests. A wag approached Bishop Potter one morning, pointed to the vast Deuxieme Empire Charles Crocker mansion and quipped, "This is Crocker's pottery!" to which the bishop replied, "You are mistaken. This is Potter's crockery!" Little did the wag, or the bishop, realize that both the Charles and William H. Crocker mansions would soon be reduced to charred ruins, and would become the future site of a great cathedral.

Bishop William F. Nichols

In 1904 an exploratory cathedral committee pondered buying the Huntington mansion and property, now Huntington Park, as a cathedral site, but no progress was made. The great earthquake and devastating fire of Easter Wednesday, April 18, 1906, changed everything. Fires soon coalesced in the downtown area and began to advance toward Nob Hill. Grace Church, at Stockton and California Streets had sustained minor damage. However, with the fire approaching, the rector Dr. David Evans fled with his wife and infant son, their belongings, and some parish treasures, wrapped in bed sheets and piled in the baby carriage. Parish items saved included early parish registers and some of the parish plate. In the pre-dawn hours of April 19, Grace Church became an imposing blackened shell, and by noon the same day, the Crocker mansions on the nearby hilltop were reduced to chimneys and a maze of stone and brick basements. The Crockers were in New York but their butler managed to save several valuable paintings and the "Risen Christ" tapestry now in Grace Cathedral. The surviving 1876 Crocker property boundary walls still standing today include a blackened and spalled pylon near the present garage entrance, a sobering reminder of the disaster.

"Vision, Disaster, Gift," an exhibit relating to the 1906 disaster and the founding of Grace Cathedral is on display in the cathedral crypt corridor through 2007.

 
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