The Barbary Coast was a red-light district during the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries in San Francisco that featured dance halls, concert saloons, bars, jazz clubs, variety shows, and brothels.Asbury, Herbert. The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld. New York: Basic Books, 2002, p.104. Its nine block area was centered on a three block stretch of Pacific Street, now Pacific Avenue, between Montgomery and Stockton Streets. Pacific Street was the first street to cut through the hills of San Francisco, starting near Portsmouth Square and continuing east to the first shipping docks at Buena Vista Cove.
The Barbary Coast was born during the California gold rush, when the population of San Francisco was growing at an exponential rate due to the rapid influx of tens of thousands of miners trying to find gold. The early decades of the Barbary Coast were marred by persistent lawlessness, gambling, administrative graft, vigilante justice, and prostitution; however with the passage of time, the city's government gained strength and competence, and the Barbary Coast's maturing entertainment scene of dance halls and jazz clubs influenced American culture. The Barbary Coast's century-long evolution passed through many substantial incarnations due to the city's rapid cultural development during the transition to the 20th century. Its former location now is overlapped by Chinatown, North Beach, and Jackson Square.
Gold Rush and a first decade
San Francisco's Barbary Coast arose from the massive infusion of treasure hunters, called 49-ers, seeking their fortunes by panning for gold as they searched for a potential gold mine.
California gold rush
Before the California gold rush, there were only a few hundred people living in tents and wooden shanties within San Francisco. However, after the gold rush, the population of San Francisco increased fifty-fold in just two years from 492 in 1847 to over 25,000 in 1849. This extreme growth combined with a lack of strong government created many opportunities for criminals, corrupt politicians, and brothel owners.Secrest, William: Dark and Tangled Threads of Crime – San Francisco's Famous Police Detective, Isaiah W. Lees, Quill Driver Books, 2004, p. 153 For many decades murderers and robbers could commit their crimes without punishment, sometimes boldly in public view. As a result, the Barbary Coast became a wild area representative of the Old West, and had many problems with political corruption, gambling, crime, and violence.
Around 1848, a group of volunteers from the Mexican–American War were discharged and settled in San Francisco.Asbury 1933, p. 40 Many of them were from New York City gangs from the Five Points and Bowery districts. About 60 of them organized into a gang named The Hounds, and they paraded around as if they were military, and even created a headquarters named Tammany Hall within a tent on Kearny Street.Lukas 2010, p. 239 In 1849, these thugs began to call themselves the Regulators as they harassed Mexicans and those of Spanish origin as well as extorted money from local businesses for protection services. Anyone who did not pay was likely to lose a nose, ear, or suffer greater bodily injury. However, after a group of 230 men organized into a militia and confronted the Hounds with possible arrest, they quickly fled from San Francisco.Asbury 1933, p. 43
Sydney Town The Hounds was not the only group of criminals to set up business on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. By the end of 1849, several ships from Australia brought former members of Great Britain's penal colony – including ex-convicts, ticket-of-leave men, and criminals – to San Francisco, where they became known as the Sydney Ducks.Montanarelli 2005, p. 92 These Australian immigrants had become so numerous that they dominated the neighborhood.Asbury 1933, p. 111 They opened boarding houses and various types of groggeries that had prostitutes affiliated with their businesses.Pryor 2002, p. 61 People who entered these groggeries and brothels frequently were beaten and robbed.
A newspaper of the day, the San Francisco Herald, states of Sydney Town:
The upper part of Pacific Street, after dark, is crowded by thieves, gamblers, low women, drunken sailors, and similar characters... Unsuspecting sailors and miners are entrapped by the dexterous thieves and swindlers that are always on the lookout, into these dens, where they are filled with liquor – drugged if necessary, until insensibility coming upon them, they fall an easy victim to their tempters...When the habitues of this quarter have a reason to believe a man has money, they will follow him for days, and employ every device to get him into their clutches...These dance-groggeries are outrageous nuisances and nurseries of crime.Asbury 1933, p. 51
When looting San Francisco's neighborhoods, the Sydney Ducks even set fire to San Francisco six times between 1849 and 1851 in order to distract citizens from their pillaging and murdering. Whenever they planned to start a fire, they waited for south westerly winds so that Sydney Town would not also catch fire. The citizens of San Francisco became enraged, and in 1851, they formed a first Vigilance Committee.Asbury 1933, p. 73 Two of the Sydney Ducks, Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie, were then arrested for arson, robbery, and burglary. The vigilantes then held a quick trial, and later hanged them.Pryor 2002, p. 64 Vigilantes, unauthorized individuals who use trials and lynchings to punish criminals, were not uncommon in the Old West, but San Francisco's Vigilance Committees were the largest and most organized of America's history.Benson, Michael: Inside Secret Societies – What They Don't Want You to Know, Citadel Press Books, 2005, p. 223 The hangings scared the remaining Sydney Ducks into fleeing the city. Within two weeks after the hangings, Sydney Town had but only a few dance halls, saloons, and brothels remaining.Asbury 1933, p. 74 That relative peace only lasted for two years; then criminals returned to the Barbary Coast.Lukas 2010, p. 241
More vigilante justice In the latter half of the 19th century, San Francisco saw administrative graft, boss politics, and a persistent lawlessness.Boyd 1997, p. 77 For a while after the hangings of Whittaker and McKenzie, San Francisco functioned as a law-abiding city.Asbury 1933, p. 75 The hangings frightened corrupt judges and government officials, who then began to do their duties with a rare diligence, not seen so far in San Francisco. This new competency in government did not last long, and by 1852, corrupt government officials developed a system of high salaries and expensive projects with political kickbacks that drained the city's treasury to near bankruptcy.Asbury 1933, p. 76 This financial crisis at city hall created a great strain on commerce and affected individual businesses.
The looting of the city's treasury could not have happened without the help of David Broderick, the most powerful man in San Francisco, who was a state senator and held tight control over San Francisco from 1851 until his death in 1859. Broderick's corruption was such that no man could be elected to public office unless he made a deal with Broderick to share half the profits from his office.Asbury 1933, p. 77 As a result of these backroom deals, Broderick accumulated a large amount of wealth that strengthened his position as a powerful city boss. As news of the treasury's financial crisis became known, another even larger uprising of enraged citizenry occurred.
James King, a popular journalist and publisher, vehemently protested the administrative graft of Broderick, which angered one of Broderick's main supporters, a supervisor named James Casey. While King was standing in front of his newspaper's building, Casey shot King in the chest, causing a mortal wound that ultimately launched the formation of a second Vigilance Committee in May 1856. Within two hours after Casey's shooting of King, a mob of 10,000 people surrounded the jail where Casey was being held.Asbury 1933, pp. 86 - 87 The vigilantes then demanded that the jail release James Casey into their custody, and the badly outnumbered jail guards acquiesced to their demands.Asbury 1933, pp. 90-91 King died six days after being shot, and subsequently Casey was put on trial by the Vigilance Committee. King's funeral attracted over 15,000 people, but by the time the funeral had ended, Casey had been convicted and hanged by the vigilantes.Asbury 1933, pp. 92-93 Now energized by wide public support, the Vigilance Committee set up shop in a large building near the wharf that included jail cells, court rooms, a surrounding wall to resist any military intervention; it was nicknamed Fort Gunnybags. During the two months that followed the hanging of Casey, there was not a single murder in San Francisco and less than a half dozen robberies.Asbury 1933, p. 96 In August 1856, the Vigilance Committee decided to disband and give control back to the elected officials.
District defined It was not until the 1860s when sailors gave the district its name, and began to refer to it as the Barbary Coast.Barker, Malcolm: More San Francisco Memoirs,1852–1899 – The Ripening Years, Londonborn Publications, 1996, p. 46 The term Barbary Coast is borrowed from the Barbary Coast of North Africa where local pirates and slave traders launched raids on nearby coastal towns and vessels. That African region was notorious for the same kind of predatory dive bars that targeted sailors, as had been done on San Francisco's Barbary Coast.WPA Guide 2011, p. 214 Miners, sailors, and sojourners hungry for female companionship and bawdy entertainment continued to stream into San Francisco in the 1850s and 1860s, becoming the Barbary Coast's primary clientele. During its early days, San Francisco had become a "wide" open city where police had little to no control in stopping the activities of gambling, drinking, drugs, and prostitution. The fact that San Francisco functioned as a port city meant that it was able to sustain large transient populations that were less likely to conform to social rules and regulations.
Before the 1906 earthquake During this time, San Francisco went through much commercial growth and became an important shipping port, but matured to a level that forbade any more uprisings by vigilantes.Asbury 1933, p. 98 Without the threat of vigilante justice, corruption and crime begin to return along with predatory dives similar to those of Sydney Town. The Barbary Coast continued to build on its notorious reputation as a lawless city.Montanarelli 2005, p. 107 With only 100 policemen as of 1871, San Francisco had a severe shortage of law enforcement at that time. Police Chief Crowley said in his annual report that there was only one officer for every 1,445 inhabitants while New York City had one in 464 and London had one for every 303 residents.