by George Schumm
If one had to preserve a single structure in North Beach, what would it be? My vote is for the Artigues Building at 261-71 Columbus Avenue housing the City Lights Bookstore and Publishing Company. It shouts “North Beach!” like no other building I know. The structure’s history is tied intimately, in ways well-known and largely forgotten, to the neighborhood’s most salient features, its architecture, literary fame, and Italian heritage.
The building was designed in 1907 by Oliver Everett in Classical Revival style or what John King, former urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, dubbed “barebone classic.” A residential architect, Everett executed the commission for the French brothers Emile and Jean Artigues. He was responsible for only three commercial buildings, this being the sole one to have survived.
Apart from the triangular “flatiron” footprint, the building had the stock features of small commercial structures of the period found throughout North Beach and dotting The City. There were storefronts on the ground floor surmounted by a row of small clerestory windows, a mezzanine inside, and apartments on the second floor. Conventional, yes, but arguably the finest example extant. The clerestory windows are exceptional, and many original elements are either mercifully intact or were restored in 2000 after Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy Peters purchased the building for City Lights.
Like some other structures in the area, this one was erected on the brick foundations of the building previously on the site and victim of the 1906 earthquake and fires. Those walls are (partially) exposed in the basement for anyone interested in pre-quake constructional techniques.
Ferlinghetti’s promotion and defense of the Beats, printing, and insistence on selling “quality” books only in paperback is the stuff of legend. The outsize impact this had on the publishing world belies City Light’s early presence in the Artigues Building. Opened in 1953, the business occupied only the pointy end, down by Kerouac Alley, where the checkout counter is located. Access to the basement and other rooms ensued as opportunity arose, though it took nearly a half century for the operation to become the celebrated book emporium it is today.
There were many additional tenants over the years, including a photography studio, flower shop, Cheap Thrills (an ice cream parlor), a blade sharpening operation, and Ray the Barber, local drug pusher and later longtime guest of Soledad Prison. Before City Lights, the basement served as home to the dragon used in the Chinese New Year’s parade and to a Christian sect, which held weekly revival meetings there.
There were two, however, of special note. Among the four initial commercial tenants were A. Cavalli & Co. and a travel agency. The first occupied the same space as City Lights originally and sold only Italian-language literature, while the second was in the center room next door. (The bookstore would relocate and morph eventually into the Cavalli Cafe now over on Stockton Street. Travel operations in the structure ceased only in 1978, when City Lights took over the space.)
It’s easy to overlook the importance of Cavalli’s. Essential to a stable immigrant community is the ability to sustain cultural identity and contact with one’s homeland. And this is precisely what this early bookstore helped provide since its founding back in 1880, explicitly for that purpose. For new arrivals, unable to speak English and having left family or friends behind, Italian newspapers and magazines must have been especially welcome. One can easily imagine Cavalli’s as a center of civic engagement, a meeting place to hash out news and issues of the moment.
But this was later. In the early days of San Francisco, following the Gold Rush, the North Beach area was a polyglot community. Represented were nationalities from all over Europe and the Far East. By one account, up to 17 different languages could be found spoken on a single block.
That would change with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. The same year, Giovanni (“John”) Fugazi established a travel agency, Agenzia Fugazi, a business to facilitate money transfers back to the old country and funnel Italian immigrants from New York to northern California. The climate and terrain, proximity to water, and agriculture were a natural fit. The North Beach area was likewise well-suited. Rents were low, and the nearby bay—which, in those days, ran all the way up to the base of Telegraph Hill—provided ample opportunity for dock work and fishing. By the latter 19th century, other immigrant groups—notably, the Irish, Germans, Russians, and French—had drifted away to other parts of The City, with North Beach now recognized as a “Little Italy.”
The quake of 1906 destroyed nearly the entire neighborhood. Fugazi, recently retired, reemerged, determined to reclaim his Italian enclave. He opened a new bank, Banco Popolare Operaia Italiano, for the express purpose of financing reconstruction and tapped his travel connections to recruit and transport the needed workforce, largely from northern Italy. North Beach was rebuilt in less than a year, accounting for the neighborhood’s architectural coherence. More importantly, this rapid response facilitated the relatively quick return of residents and business owners, many of whom had been left destitute, camped out in Washington Square Park.
So, what of the travel business in the Artigues Building? Little is known apart from clues found on the signage present when City Lights opened.
The agency there then wasn’t Fratelli Forte, as is sometimes claimed. The sign says merely that the fratelli Forte (“Forte brothers”) were the “mgrs.” The name on the business is ‘Agenzia James Fugazi.’ I’m not entirely sure who that was, but permit me a guess.
Agenzia Fugazi’s headquarters down on Montgomery Street were badly damaged in the conflagration and would take a while to reestablish in the area. Giovanni’s sons, James and Samuel, were running the business. The obvious move under the circumstances would be to open an office post haste, retaining a presence for the family’s travel enterprise. And that’s my suspicion. The office in the Artigues Building was founded by this James Fugazi and later passed on to the Forte brothers.
It was certainly in the mold of Giovanni’s, a mission-based instrument for growing and sustaining a specific immigrant community. (Our modern focus on recreational travel, at this time, would have made no sense.) The Forte brothers continued this tradition, specializing in travel to and from Italy, with the signage advertising spedizoni di denaro (money transfer) and assicurazioni (notary services) as well.
The initial influx of workers post-quake, many of whom would have gone on to help rebuild other parts of San Francisco, dates to before the venture’s tenure in our structure. But Italian craftsmen must still have been arriving due to rumors of employment opportunities. And, of course, some of that first wave will have decided to settle and were now looking to bring families over. This travel outlet surely handled some of this subsequent business, perhaps most or all of it. Fugazi-style immigration promotion and building were thus linked at a defining moment in The City’s history and remain so for decades.
Absent these agenzie, with support of enterprises like Cavalli’s, North Beach might never have become an Italian community in the first place or survived as one after the quake.
