A Heritage Restored

All along the Comstock, Adolph Sutro is synonymous with mining and engineering, having designed and built the tunnel that bears his name.

In early 2021, Friends of the Sutro Tunnel approached the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP) if they would donate historical interpretive markers and three National Park Service-style inclined laybys.

The JASHP agreed without hesitation.

A Jewish-American immigrant from Germany, he was also an entrepreneur, real estate developer, and art and literary collector. Adolph Sutro was also the mayor of San Francisco from 1894 to 1896. 

Sutro was a self-made millionaire who earned his first fortune in the Comstock silver boom, constructing the famed Sutro Tunnel below Virginia City. In San Francisco, as in Nevada, he lived his life with an overriding public concern for the little guy in society. 

“I don’t believe in aristocracy. The aristocracy of the mind is the only aristocracy I recognize. It makes no difference to me whether a man has not got a cent or whether he is a millionaire. On the contrary, when a man is wealthy, I am more suspicious of him than I am of a poor man. I have found it in my experience that rich men, as a general thing, lose a great deal of the better feeling which they had when they were poor.” 

The 1895 biography by Eugenia Kellog Holmes, “Adolph Sutro: A Brief Story Of A Brilliant Life,” reads:

“His contributions to all public charity, since his arrival to opulence, have been munificent, and confined neither to race, creed nor class. His private alms are said to be limited only to the immediate needs of the individual.”

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Francisco School Board, roiled by woke political activists, demanded that San Francisco schools named for those they deemed racists, sexists, or “linked to an injustice” be renamed. Forty-four schools, including Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Adolph Sutro, came under attack.

Before Sutro became Mayor, San Francisco regarded Sutro very highly. 1891, they renamed a ramshackle school near Geary Boulevard the Sutro Primary School. Rebuilt, Sutro Elementary was formally established in 1894 on 12th Ave., opening in 1895.

The half-educated crusaders cursorily included Sutro for his alleged racism. Sutro had built a “wonder of the world” public bath next to his famous Cliff House for the public of San Francisco to come and enjoy. 

In 1897 a Black man attempted to gain admission to the Baths but was denied entry. A lawsuit was brought against Sutro and the Sutro Baths, the legal action coming a few months before his death in 1898.

In March 1897, California passed the first national public accessibility law prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, recreational facilities, restaurants, and baths. It was called the Dibble Act. 

Four months later, John Harris, an African American accompanied by White friends, went to the Sutro Baths to test the Dibble Act. His White friends gained entry, but Harris was not.

The barring was not done by Adolph Sutro but rather by his son, who managed the baths and who set the policy. Sutro was not aware of the situation.

He had turned over the management of the Baths to his son because he was rapidly declining into dementia. By the time of the suit, he had two strokes, and his daughter was appointed to oversee his affairs because he was incompetent.

Harris sued Adolph Sutro for damages, $10,000 for discrimination, violating the Dibble Act, and causing him great personal distress. The suit went to court. 

The jury was sympathetic to the argument that admitting a Black man to the baths would seriously harm the business. White San Franciscans would not share the same pool with a Black. 

Reluctantly, after the judge directed the jury to follow the law, did they find in favor of Harris, awarding him one hundred dollars.

Nothing changed. San Francisco’s racial intolerance remained, and it would not be until the 1930s that the Sutro Baths became desegregated. 

The San Francisco School Board and the City tabled the school renaming plan for a later date.

San Francisco has numerous recognitions and honors named for him, Mount Sutro, Sutro Railway, Sutro Baths, Sutro Library, Sutro Heights, sculptures, busts, the Cliff House, and even an elementary school. The Golden Gate National Recreation Park and the National Park Service even have numerous interpretive markers about his gifts and public efforts in the Lands End (Point Lobos) area, which they designated the Sutro Historic District.

Because of the push to defame Sutro, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation contacted the Golden Gate National Recreational Park and the National Park Service, enquiring if their markers recognized the first openly Jewish Mayor of San Francisco, Adolph Sutro. None did.

A new marker, recently installed outside the entrance to the Sutro Heights park, reads, “This was the estate of Adolph Sutro — a Jewish-American immigrant, mining engineer, and Mayor of San Francisco.”

After a 127-year neglection, it is the only marker in San Francisco that acknowledges Adolph Sutro’s Jewish heritage, while the Sutro Tunnel and the Comstock boast three.