Our Neighborhood and the Gold Rush: 1840s–1870
Emanuel Blochman and Nanette Blochman, c. 1880. Blochman Family Papers. Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, BANC MSS 2010/800.
Filled with local history, evocative architecture, and symbolism, The CJM’s building represents stories of the history and innovation of the San Francisco community, and is a work of contemporary art in itself. A former Pacific Gas and Electric Power Substation, The CJM’s historic building was a survivor of the 1906 earthquake. Explore San Francisco history through stories mined from The Museum building, the Gold Rush, immigration, change over time, and San Francisco’s cultural communities. This resource is designed to accompany or supplement a Past to Present tour, and integrates primary sources with discussion questions, and aligns with third-and fourth-grade social studies curriculum areas.
Our Museum building has many stories to tell and much to engage students of local, city and state history. The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s building began as a late nineteenth-century power substation, known as the Jessie Street Substation, illuminating and heating the fast-growing city of San Francisco in the decades following the discovery of gold near Coloma, California. As immigrants arrived from around the world to join the Gold Rush, many settled in San Francisco. Located near the port, our neighborhood was home to miners’ encampments and, eventually, to the businesses and houses constructed South of Market. Rapid growth and new technology brought public transportation and electrification to the growing city. Social movements, expressed in part through architecture, changed the face of our building and the 1906 earthquake reshaped our neighborhood.
Following the rebuilding of the Jessie Street Substation after the earthquake, San Francisco continued to grow and emerge as a vibrant and new city and our building powered that growth for decades. The Jessie Street Substation was preserved as an Historic Landmark in 1977.
Some twenty years later, The Contemporary Jewish Museum purchased the then-vacant building and began renovation, opening as today’s museum in 2008. Our renovation preserves, in key elements of our building, the history and spirit of nineteenth-century San Francisco, home to generations of pioneers, immigrants, and innovators.
This Teacher Resource Guide explores the impact of three historic moments on our neighborhood and offers a starting point for teachers and students to examine primary sources as one way of understanding history:
By looking at primary sources—including our historic building—students can learn about the changing face of local, urban, and state communities. Our building’s original purpose and design reconnect the economic needs and social goals of nineteenth-century San Francisco. Daniel Libeskind, the architect for our late 1990s renovation, took the industry and energy of the neighborhood’s early days, as well as Jewish cultural history, as inspiration for his design, linking the past and the present—as we hope you and your students will do through the lessons in this guide.
The lesson plans in this Teacher Resource Guide are designed to engage students in three key periods in the history of our building and neighborhood, from the arrival of migrants and immigrants in the 1840s through the redevelopment of a disused industrial site into the vibrant cultural community surrounding our Museum today. Together, the lesson plans consider the arrival of people and industries to San Francisco and the changing face and history of our building and our neighborhood. We encourage students to imagine themselves living alongside the pioneers, industrialists, and architects introduced in these lessons in order to make connections between past and present, architecture and history, design and community.
The lesson plans in this guide are designed to align with California’s third and fourth grade Social Studies Curriculum, although they can be adapted for other grades and subject areas. They may also be used in conjunction with the Past to Present or Adventures in Architecture tours available at The CJM.
Please call us at 415.655.7857 or email tours@thecjm.org. Learn more at thecjm.org/tours.
The CJM’s architecture captures the spirit and energy of San Francisco’s early pioneering communities. Our site saw the arrival of migrants from around the world and across our young country, including Jews, who contributed to building a business infrastructure to support the Gold Rush and beyond. Our first lesson plan introduces students to a pioneering Jewish family through primary sources and encourages students to respond to what they discover through writing and sketching.
After 1848, individuals and families from across the country and around the world moved to California, in search of gold and, eventually, to build the businesses and neighborhoods of San Francisco and beyond that grew up after the Gold Rush. This lesson examines a photographic primary source from 1867 to consider how the built and social landscape of San Francisco changed in the decades following the Gold Rush.
Our building, once the Jessie Street Substation, was constructed in 1881 by PG&E’s predecessor to provide electricity to the businesses and homes that had grown up South of Market. From the Gold Rush to the 1880s, San Francisco’s population increased tenfold and our neighborhood became an industrial center supporting diverse populations of immigrant workers. Our third lesson plan considers the growing role of electric power in San Francisco’s economy and asks students to imagine the producers and consumers of that time.
As the Jessie Street Substation, our building suffered a fire in February 1906 and then the earthquake of April 1906. Both events disrupted the neighborhood’s industry and livelihood and displaced people throughout the city. Rebuilding across the city heralded a new age in San Francisco’s industrial and community history, an age and an attitude reflected in our building’s post-earthquake architecture. Lesson Plan 4 looks at the symbolism of our historic building and encourages students to make connections between what a building looks like and the roles it plays in its community.
The Jessie Street Substation provided electricity to San Francisco from the 1880s to the 1960s. In 1977, the building was granted Landmark status, protecting it as historic. The original brick facade and elements of the interior have been preserved as part of our 2008 renovation. Lesson 5 considers the conversation between past and present that is reflected in our renovation and helps students look for the ways in which buildings in their own neighborhoods reflect the history, values, and activities of their local communities.
Emanuel Blochman and Nanette Blochman, c. 1880. Blochman Family Papers. Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, BANC MSS 2010/800.
This activity introduces students to a Jewish family who lived near The Museum site in the decades following the Gold Rush. We have learned about the Blochmans from research into Bay Area Jewish families, particularly Ava Kahn’s collection Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush (2002) and Mary Hoexter and David Hoexter’s writings about the Blochmans in the journal Western States Jewish History in the 1980s. With this activity, students practice historical research and writing using multimedia primary source materials. They learn to ask and answer questions as an historian might. They learn to empathize with a family from our neighborhood’s past, to imagine what their lives may have been like and to compare and contrast the lives of children from San Francisco’s Gold Rush history with their lives today.
Research the explorers who visited here, the newcomers who settled here, and the people who continue to come to the region, including their cultural and religious traditions and contributions.
Analyze the effects of the Gold Rush on settlements, daily life, politics, and the physical environment.
Study the lives of women who helped build early California.
Share the photographs of Emanuel and Nanette Blochman and the newspaper advertisements for their businesses with your students and have students work in groups, each with a set of primary sources.
Start by asking students what information they can collect:
Read aloud from the excerpt from Lazar Blochman’s memoir “Hats and Cows.”
We only have the portraits of Emanuel and Nanette Blochman included here to help us imagine what this family’s life was like. How might your students add to the visual record of the Blochman family’s life in San Francisco, based on the excerpts from Lazar Blochman’s memoir included here? As they listen to Lazar’s retellings from his childhood, how do your students visualize his nineteenth century life? Read through the stories that Lazar tells about his childhood in San Francisco and encourage your students to imagine what it might have been like. Invite your students to select several sentences from Lazar’s memoir to illustrate. Together, illustrate the entire excerpt, and assemble as a class book.
Having set the scene for themselves, with Lazar’s words and their own pictures, invite your students to imagine another afternoon in Lazar’s life and write a diary entry for that day. Illustrate your diary extract.
Click on the buttons below to view full-size images of the surviving photographs of the Blochmans and newspaper clippings advertising their businesses.
Written by a member of an Orthodox family and the son of a woman who owned and operated a variety of businesses, this memoir documents both family and business experiences. L. E. Blochman, born in San Francisco to Nanette (Yettel) Conrad Blochman and Emanuel Blochman, was the eldest of five children. His mother was born in Bavaria in 1830 and came with her parents to San Francisco, where she married Emanuel Blochman in the early 1850s. Emanuel Blochman became a businessman who operated a variety of shops and farms. Observing kosher laws and keeping the Sabbath, the Blochmans always closed the millinery store on Saturdays. As an adult, L. E. Blochman moved to Santa Maria, where he worked as a clerk, started a high school, and eventually entered the oil business.
In addition to describing the childhood of a native San Franciscan, the following memoir demonstrates that women owned and operated businesses in early California while adhering to traditional Jewish law.
I was born in San Francisco in 1856. The one-story house I was born in, was located on the west side of Stockton close to Vallejo Street. [...]
My mother opened a Millinery shop near the part of town where I was born and was going quite well as she told me, but father’s restlessness saw big money in the milk business and induced her, after about two years, to give up her shop and move to a leased place in the second Potrero of San Francisco called Hunter’s Point. He remained there only about a year and then moved out probably in 1860 to the hills about a mile west of Mission Dolores. There was excellent grass there but not a house in sight west of the Mission. I remember once as a four year old boy I hiked some distance up to the top of the hill and beheld the San Francisco Bay towards Golden Gate, and was wondrously struck by the marvelous scenery, in contrast, I suppose, with the monotonous grazing lands about us. I was a lonely child then with no companions. Father then had a partner in his milk business and they delivered milk daily over a city route. It did not pay well, so I was told, so they gave up the business and father moved out to San Mateo County to do some farming on land close to where the cemeteries are now [Colma]. There the great flood year of 1861–62 swamped us out of house and home and we had to leave our house until that heavy January rain subsided. Records show that 24 1/2 inches of rain fell that month, the greatest flood in a 100 year record.
Mother, who had come from Germany before she was married, located with her parents in New York, where she had earned a living and better as a Milliner. She now thought that if she had an opportunity she could go into the millinery business again in San Francisco, but my father had no money so my uncle Abe came to the rescue. He helped her out and we moved into the city where we located on fourth Street near Mission for some time. Gradually the business improved and Mother made a fair living for us all with several milliner hands in her shop as I recollect.I was then, when we moved into the city, a little over 6 years old. I was sent to school at once and was interested in my work as I grew older. We must have remained in the 4th Street store with living rooms in back for about 5 years, a respite from the previous 4 or 5 years wanderings. I remember well the great San Francisco earthquake of 1865. We lived in this 3 story brick building and the building was badly cracked in places but did not toppled down. But I can recollect having seen several brick buildings badly wrecked elsewhere. There was, however, no fires as an aftermath because there was no electric wiring in those days, nor even any gas stoves.
Our next move was in about 1867 to a one story store at 3d and Market, exactly where the entrance to the Examiner building is now. Mother evidently wanted to enlarge her business so that she sought this better location, where we remained for several years. I certainly must admire my mother’s incessant work in business, as well as raising a family of 5 children. I was the eldest, next came my sister Hannah, then Herman, Bertha, nine years younger than I and the youngest, Rachel. Mother was a strict adherent to the Jewish faith and so kept her business closed every Saturday as well as on Jewish holidays. Her Jewish customers knew this, but she lost much of the transient trade of that day. [...]
My father, seeing mother’s business progress, decided to go into the wholesale millinery business, with the help of several excellent millinery workers. He did quite well for about 3 years when his restlessness and venturesomeness led him to invest in a flour purchase on account of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and the rising prices. But the war did not last as long as he expected and he held too long and sold at quite a loss which affected the stability of his business, which he was obliged to discontinue. Father stood for the Alsatian French side and Mother for the Germans. I was neutral so we did not agree about the war affair.
We had moved to a house on Everett Street near 3d, as we could not afford to live separately from the store. I went to the Cosmopolitan school on Natoma near 1st, where it had its beginning. I do not remember much about the school at that time, only that it moved the next year to the old South Cosmopolitan school building on Post Street (North side) below Stockton, where they taught either German or French or both, in its intermediate grades. [...]
My Mother’s next move was to Kearney [Kearny] Street, close to Sutter—a good business center. Here she remained for several years, and in spite of Saturday closings, built up a good trade. She, with her well trained milliners established a reputation as a fancy milliner and had a wide scope of customers. I helped a little by delivering hats and also by attending to small purchases—all after school hours.
Now as to my schooling—I was neither a dull pupil nor a bright one—just an average pupil. When I was 13 ½ or 14 I entered the San Francisco Boys High School and seemed to take much more interest in my work. At the age of 13, Jewish lads of orthodox parents became communicants of the faith or ordained as members of the synagogue. They read a portion of the Hebrew scroll and occasionally make a brief speech—which I remember doing at the time. My Jewish and moral training by my father stood me in good stead on the virtuous side of life in the immoral atmosphere at the time.In the fall of 1876 my Mother decided to move from Kearney [Kearny] Street to a new location on Larkin near Sutter where, through a building and loan she was enabled to build a store and two stories above for dwellings. Gradually the business profits paid for it and she owned store and house, free of rent. She kept on in business there for many years.
Reprinted from “Hats and Cows,” from Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush, Ava Kahn, Editor Copyright © 2002 Wayne State University Press, with the permission of Wayne State University Press.
As settlers arrived in San Francisco, with plans to find gold, temporary encampments grew to accommodate new arrivals. Over time, these camps were replaced with permanent neighborhoods. San Francisco’s society and economy developed into a bustling city of over 55,000 by 1860. In this lesson, students examine and analyze a primary source image to learn about the dramatic ways in which San Francisco changed in the decades following the Gold Rush. From the vantage point of this photograph, students look out onto the “new” San Francisco of the 1860s and look ahead to the fast-growing city served by the power substation that, much later, became The Contemporary Jewish Museum.
Students describe the physical and human geography
Students draw from historical and community resources...and describe how each period of settlement left its mark on the land
Students demonstrate an understanding of the physical and human geographic features that define places and regions in California
Students explain how California became an agricultural and industrial power
Look carefully at the picture below, at both the foreground and the background. Encourage students to discuss the following questions, as well as raising their own. Consider making a class chart, such as the worksheet included here, to gather your students’ descriptions of the image.
Temple Emanuel-El, 1867 (looking southeast, Union Square in right center). San Francisco History Center, San Francico Public Library.
How does what you’ve noticed about the image help to inform your class’ understanding of San Francisco’s early history? What more do they want to find out?
Have your students imagine themselves taking the previous photograph of San Francisco in 1867 to send back to their families, either in Europe or elsewhere in the United States.
Encourage students to examine the photograph in pairs and discuss these questions to prepare for the writing activity.
In pairs, or as a class, brainstorm ways to describe the photograph to family members back home. Using the template included here, invite students to draft a postcard to their families, describing the image and the ways in which San Francisco may be different from the communities they left behind. Use elements of the image to describe their new family life, new profession, or new activities in post-Gold Rush San Francisco.
Interior view of Jessie Street Power Substation, Station “C,” after 1907. Courtesy of Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Our building, once the Jessie Street Substation, was constructed in 1881 to provide electricity to the businesses and homes that had grown up South of Market. From the Gold Rush to the 1880s, San Francisco’s population increased tenfold and our neighborhood became an industrial center supporting diverse populations of immigrant workers. Our third lesson plan looks at the growing role of electric power in San Francisco’s economy and asks students to imagine the producers and consumers of the time.
Students demonstrate basic economic reasoning skills and an understanding of the economy of the local region.
Describe the ways in which local producers have used and are using natural resources, human resources, and capital resources to produce goods and services in the past and present.
Analyze the effects of the Gold Rush on settlements, daily life, politics, and the physical environment.
Students explain how California became an agricultural and industrial power, tracing the transformation of the California economy and its political and cultural development since the 1850s.
Describe rapid American immigration, internal migration, settlement, and the growth of towns and cities.
Invite your students to examine the two following photographs carefully, looking all around the frame of each one. Use the following questions as starting points for discussion:
Our building was constructed in 1881 by the California Gas and Electric Company (now Pacific Gas and Electric, or PG&E) to provide gas and electricity to businesses and homes in San Francisco.
Look at the photograph again. Who might have been the electric company’s customers? Look at the photograph again, and then at the photograph of the inside of the building. What kinds of materials were “consumed” to build the building? What businesses might have produced those materials?
Jessie Street Power Substation, Station “A,” c. 1892. Courtesy of Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Interior views of Jessie Street Power Substation, Station “C,” after 1907. Courtesy of Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Ringling Brothers Circus comes to Market Street, 1900. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Originally built in 1881, the Jessie Street Substation distributed electricity needed by San Francisco for industry, transportation, as well as lighting for streets and households. When it was first built, and, again, when it was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake, the outside of the building was designed to be much more decorative than its inside “function” required. This lesson uses our building as a primary source and asks students to look carefully at historical architectural features of today’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. After examining pictures of our building, the lesson sends students out into your school neighborhood to hunt for features that our building and your neighborhood may have in common. What will they find in the buildings and streets that surround their school?
In 1900, the architect Willis Polk (1867–1924) redesigned the Jessie Street Substation (now The Contemporary Jewish Museum) in the classical revival style favored by the City Beautiful Movement. These architects, led by Daniel Burnham, used the inspiration of European cities to imagine a San Francisco that was both beautiful to look at and “good” for people. This lesson explores the architectural elements, shapes, and patterns of European buildings that these architects admired and what messages they felt those elements, shapes, and patterns communicated to people walking by, or into, the buildings they designed. How do those elements inform the architecture in your neighborhood?
Trace why their community was established, how individuals and families contributed to its founding and development, and how the community has changed over time, drawing on maps, photographs, oral histories, letters, newspapers, and other primary sources.
Use maps, charts, and pictures to describe how communities in California vary in land use, vegetation, wildlife, climate, population density, architecture, services and transportation.
We’ve collected examples from our building’s facade of neoclassical architectural features, some included in the original 1881 building and some added in the 1907 rebuilding, for you to explore with your students. Take time to look for each architectural element in the photographs of our building, then go on an architectural walking tour of the neighborhood around your school.
Consider making a map of your school’s neighborhood and arranging your sketches onto the map. How are different buildings, with different functions, arranged in your neighborhood? What is next to what? What do you notice about the architectural features from one building to the next?
The "Blue Cube," or Yud. © Bruce_Damonte.
In Lessons 1 and 2, your students learned about the history of our San Francisco neighborhood through primary sources, including photographs and memoir. In Lessons 3 and 4, students examined, again through a photograph, a street scene from early twentieth century San Francisco, around the time of our building’s construction and post-Earthquake renovation. In buildings and in architectural details, they looked for ways in which architecture reflects changes in history and society. Now, we encourage your students to be researchers and historians, using your school as their primary source.
Trace why their community was established, how individuals and families contributed to its founding and development, and how the community has changed over time, drawing on maps, photographs, oral histories, letters, newspapers, and other primary sources.
Use maps, charts, and pictures to describe how communities in California vary in land use, vegetation, wildlife, climate, population density, architecture, services, and transportation.
Using close observation and first-hand research, students investigate their school building’s architectural and social history, connecting their own days at school with the building’s past. Here are some suggested activities and discussion questions:
Working in groups, students might plan out how to gather, record, and share the information they collect by conducting primary historical research. They might choose to share the questions they want to ask with the class and practice asking interview questions before setting up interviews with school administrators and community members. There are all kinds of ways to share results—by making books or posters, videos or blogposts, or by creating a pop-up “history room” of your own in the classroom or on your school website.
At The Contemporary Jewish Museum, our building’s history has shaped our space, influencing the way we share art and culture with our visitors. Maybe your findings will become part of how new students, families, and visitors experience your school.
The CJM offers two types of interactive history and architecture tours for elementary school students: Past to Present: A San Francisco Neighborhood from the Gold Rush to Today and Adventures in Architecture.
Tours for school groups are offered on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. All school tours are interactive and keep participants’ voices and ideas central to the conversation, while promoting critical thinking, creativity, and observation skills. Tours align with California Common Core State Standards and are customized to meet the needs of groups, including elementary, university or art school students, students with learning disabilities, and other special needs. School tours are one hour long and are led by professional Museum Educators. Advance registration required.
To find out more and to book a tour, please call us at 415.655.7857 or email tours@thecjm.org.
School and Teacher Programs are made possible by major support from The Hearst Foundations and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. Generous support is provided by Alaska Airlines, The Bavar Family Foundation, California Arts Council, Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, Toole Family Charitable Foundation, Ullendorff Memorial Foundation, and Ezra Jack Keats Foundation.
Lesson 1: Emanuel Blochman and Nanette Blochman, c. 1880. Blochman Family Papers, Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. BANC MSS 2010/800. Advertisements: From The Gleaner, 1864. Blochman Family Papers, Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. BANC MSS 2010/800.
