From left to right, Margaret Mayer, Mary Loise Stong, and Marjorie Stern, photographed in 1995. Historical data cited from and photo credited to A Free Library in the City, by Peter Booth Wiley.

The Making of the San Francisco Library Movement: Chapter 1 

San Francisco is not just lucky to have a world-class Library. We created the conditions to make it exceptional. 

To celebrate our 60th year, we present a special series in the newsletter recalling our history, honoring our legacy of advocacy, and inspiring us to pursue our next chapter. The San Francisco Public Library was not always a great Library. It was rather bad. Friends story is about community members, famous and not so famous, who decided to make our Library exceptional and worked hard over decades to do just that. For 60 years, people like you and me fought for, funded, and valued our most democratic and equitable public institution, creating the miracle we now enjoy. It is a history we continue to write. - Marie Ciepiela, Executive Director, Friends of the SFPL 

​Let's go back to 1957 when Hale Champion, San Francisco Chronicle reporter, wrote a scathing editorial claiming that so many things went wrong for so many years that the SFPL was "nationally ill-famed". The first branch was built in the Mission District during an expansionist era under Mayor James Rolph, reached an unprecedented level of use during the Great Depression, and expanded by eight branches care of a small number of wealthy patrons by 1963. But by the late 1960s, the Library system was stressed beyond its capacity and lagged far behind the literary world flowering around it. Mayor Joseph Alioto (1967-1971) vowed to make the Library a budget priority but struggled to make that happen. The public took notice, and a few brave women decided to take action.   

The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library was founded in 1961 by determined, civic-minded young people who refused to accept San Francisco's mediocre library. Three young women emerged as leaders, laboring for decades without assistance from the elected political establishment to build a constituency that would become Friends' membership. Known as the "three Ms", they were Margaret Mayer, Mary Loise Stong, and Marjorie Stern. Against growing income polarization and a decline of civic investment in public resources, they captured a growing national library activism movement. They set the course for San Francisco's historic public investment decades later. 

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The Making of the San Francisco Library Movement: Chapter 2​

Tall, lanky, and with a drawl from out of town (Galveston, Texas), William Holman assumed the City Librarian's position in 1960. Impressed by the plethora of bookstores, Holman told a reporter, "San Francisco is a bookish, unique city… and it certainly doesn't deserve a third-rate library." He found the Main Library at civic center gloomy, dirty, smelly, technologically out of date. At its lowest point in 1959, only 1,500 books had been checked out, down from 12,000.   

In his first appearance before the Library Commission, Holman requested an emergency appropriation to fix an enormous backlog in cataloging and was told to wait for the city budget cycle a year later. His first encounter with the Board of Supervisor was not encouraging. His request for funds to hire nine additional Librarians was met by a scoffing Supervisor who yelled out, "that's welfare!" Holman ultimately won a small increase, insufficient to prevent the closure of all libraries on Sundays.    
Holman walked out of City Hall to find two citizen groups rumored to be organizing for library improvements: San Francisco for a Better Library and Friends of the Library that were in the process of merging. A meeting hosted at the home of Mortimer and Janet Fleishhacker brought the groups together, along with the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee, a business coalition shaping San Francisco's redevelopment efforts, to finalize the creation of a single organization with a list of founding sponsors, including Walter Haas, Nion Tucker, Ms. Dean Whitter, and the Zellerbach, Bransten, Follis, Schwabacher, and Gerbode families.  

In 1966, Margaret Mayer, who had joined the public library cause through volunteering at Friends' book sales, was hired as the first paid Executive Director. Friends first fundraising efforts furnished a new Rare Book Room, provided uniforms for security guards, and established a scholarship fund for librarians. Margaret Mayer and Board members Mary Louise Stong and Marjorie Stern were unified in the belief that the grassroots citizenry, not just the elite, must join the library movement. They committed themselves to publicize the library's dire budgetary situation and to build a grassroots membership organization for advocacy support. Ms. Stern later reflected, "What is really needed to make our library system an excellent one is solid citizen support. We tried hard to get out in the community for support for every section of the population. We believe that every citizen has a responsibility to the library."   

The desire to fight for a reformed public library went well beyond its new leader and his alliance with the newly formed Friends. The Librarians started a revolution from within, with Librarians making smart and significant changes with flat budgets. Among the leaders was Effie Lee Morris (more info), a nationally recognized children's librarian from the New York Public Library who served as the SFPL's first-ever Children's Services Coordinator. With predominantly female leadership, the adult services department was created under Harriet Collopy, technical services and cataloging under Vivian Goodwin, branches under Mary Moses, and the Main under Avis Stopple. Collections were reorganized more strategically by interest, 100,000s of books previously held behind reference desks were shelved for accessible public browsing, and the Business and Science Department opened. 

Inadequate budgets still limited progress, but the coalition of Friends and the SFPL began to make headway with a steady and coordinated strategy. Librarian Holman figured out that he was more likely to obtain budget allocations from city hall when he sent a series of small requests instead of large annual requests. When he made a budget request, he alerted Friends, who mobilized its members to visit city hall to publicly and loudly back the requests. By 1965, this strategy paid off when the book-buying budget was raised from $381,000 to $500,000. By 1967, the overall Library budget was double was it had been in 1961. 

Historical data cited from A Free Library in the City, by Peter Booth Wiley. Photos credited to the SFPL History Center.

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The Making of the San Francisco Library Movement
Chapter 3: Civil Rights, a Literary Renaissance - and still no new Main Library

Defeated in his attempt to build a new Main Library, Librarian Holman drew on the civil rights activism pulsating on the streets in the late 1960s and took the library directly to the people. Librarians went door-to-door, familiarizing residents with library services in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog, visited community centers and housing projects, and even distributed free books on the street. Effie Lee Morris sent the first bookmobile to the Bayview. Simultaneously, community rooms were added to the Chinatown Branch, and Friends raised money for collections and a bibliographic study of African-Americans in the West. The SFPL also received federal funding from the Economic Opportunity Act for its fledging Jobs and Careers program for the unemployed. 
​

In 1975 city librarian Kevin Starr marched the library budget across Civic Center plaza to City Hall, accompanied by a band from San Francisco Conservatory of music dressed as ragged and bloodied Minutemen.

San Francisco was an epicenter of a literary and artistic renaissance with prominent fiction writers calling San Francisco home - John Steinbeck, Dashiell Hammett, William Saroyan, and historians and essayists Wallace Stegner, Oscar Lewis, and Irving Stone. Poetry thrived throughout North Beach coffeehouses, making household names of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti, and bringing to prominence racially diverse, queer, and women writers, such as Kay Boyle, Tillie Olsen, Diane DiPrima, Jade Snow Wong, and subsequently, Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Isabel Allende, and Alice Walker.   

San Francisco needed a Library as big and vibrant as the city around it. But that did not happen. A new Librarian, John Anderson, arrived from Tuscon in 1968, where he had successfully doubled the library budget and expanded its staff seven-fold. He described the SFPL as the "worst metropolitan library in the country," judging that the Main library should get a new building. He set the tone for his tenure by declaring that the library should accept its "special relationship to the people in this changing city who do not have educational and cultural advantages." 

When Joseph Alioto began his mayoral term in 1970, things looked hopeful. Known for his obsession for redevelopment, he was politically adept and well-connected in Washington DC. He secured a $115 million HUD grant for preliminary planning of a new building in Marshal Square, which produced a report condemning the Main Library as grossly inadequate. It also advised against floating a bond measure to build a new library that might not pass with the voters. Despite the warning, Friends pursued placing a bond measure on the ballot with the blessing of Alito and the City Administrator. When the citizens' bond review committee rejected the measure, the Friends' board, with great debate, voted to postpone its efforts until 1974. ​

The window then closed quickly as the US and California turned to austerity in the face of economic hard times. Alioto declared a hiring freeze in 1971, and the Library Commission recommended the closure of five branches in 1972. Richard Nixon cut national library funding in 1973. Librarian Anderson resigned and was replaced by Kevin Starr, the only City Librarian (of no minor controversy) to not have a professional library degree. The final blow came in 1978 when Californians passed Proposition 13, again derailing Friends' plans for a bond measure and sending public institutions into a long era of perpetual budget cuts.  

Throughout this period, Friends continued to stage protests, lobby city hall, and support the efforts of various City Librarians to fund the construction of a new Main. Increasingly sidelined by other interests in the city power structure, Friends got creative.

Historical data cited from A Free Library in the City, by Peter Booth Wiley. Photos credited to the SFPL History Center.

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The Making of the San Francisco Library Movement: Chapters 4 and 5 

By 1973, City Librarian Anderson resigned his efforts to increase outreach to underserved neighborhoods and a new Main Library to seemingly endless budget-cutting, more studies about the state of the old building, and frustrated patrons on all sides. A new Main Library seemed a longshot, with even City Librarians, Commissioners, and Mayors skeptical of the project. But Friends never gave up hope and pushed ahead with three strategies:

• ​defending the location at Civic Center
• passing a public bond measure
• raising private money to outfit the new building. 

Chapter 4: Defending the location: The fight for Marshall Square 
With a controversial appointment by Mayor Joseph L. Alioto, Kevin Starr began his tenure as City Librarian in 1973. The selection was controversial because Starr did not hold a Library Science degree at the time of his appointment, but he did consistently advocate for increased funding for a new Main Library. Starr's first request for an increased budget was immediately rejected at City Hall and then in April 1974, in a blindside, Starr and Library Commission President, Edward Callanan, were called to the Mayor's office. Mayor Alioto revealed that he was in private discussions with the city's most significant philanthropists who would help fund a performing arts center for a symphony at Civic Center instead of a library, introducing them on the spot to Samuel Stewart, Gwinn Follis, and Harold Zellerbach. (Marshall Square denotes the plaza that connects Market Street to the current City Hall.) 

It was a classic confrontation between downtown interests and wealthy supporters versus a motley crew of artists and neighborhood groups galvanized by the Friends and its advocacy arm, Keep Libraries Alive! Friends lost badly at the first Planning Commission hearing where the performing arts center plan was endorsed 7-0. As the battleground shifted to the Board of Supervisors, Starr hired attorney William Coblentz to help with a behind-the-scenes compromise. With help from Supervisor Ronald Pelosi, they crafted a deal that included the Board of Education, which at the time was engaged in their own dilemma about what to do with their property on Van Ness Avenue. In the end, the Board of Education turned their Commerce High School athletic fields over to the symphony and the Library retained Marshall Square.  

Chapter 5: Finding the public investment: Passing the bond measures 
As George Moscone entered his mayoral term in 1976, the fallout from Proposition 13 continued to choke local governments in maintaining the public infrastructure. The newly appointed City Librarian in 1997, John Frantz, encountered the same rejections in successive budget seasons. After the tragic assassination of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, Frantz served his tenure for the duration of the Diane Feinstein’s administration, where he found an engaged and pragmatic advocate for libraries. 

Grappling with a branch-heavy system, particularly in the city's northeastern quadrant, Frantz attempted to close 14 branches in 1978. When greeted by groups of yelling library lovers in front of all of them, he closed none. He still went on in 1981 to commission Lowell Martin of Columbia University to study the economics of a branch system. The report again recommended closing branches and converting others into "supermarket libraries" with a comprehensive range of services and special-purpose branches. When Frantz took the draft report to Mayor Feinstein, he recalls: 

She was lecturing us on the importance of libraries and on the importance of having all of the branches open all of the time with real librarians. She got herself into such a froth that she increased our budget for 1982-1983 by about 30% in order to leave things alone.  

This was short-lived.  

Feinstein focused on the masterplan for the Civic Center, insistent that a Main Library serve as an anchor there. Even as the public and private sectors spared no cost to build the new Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Building, that same spirit and wealthy power structure did not yet support the public Library. Ambition was high at Friends however, where the Board had already hired Marilyn Smulyan to coordinate a Campaign for the Main and dared to offer an alternate masterplan for Civic Center. 

In April 1985, James Haas, a member of the Board of Directors, wrote to Mayor Feinstein recommending that a new library be built on the other side of Fulton Street and that the Asian Arts Museum is moved into the existing Main building. While initially unreceptive in a first meeting with Commission President Edward Callanan, John Frantz, Marjorie Stern, and Mary Louise Stong, Mayor Feinstein soon dispatched her Deputy Mayor Peter Henschel to form a task force around the idea, obtaining the willing agreement of the Asian Art Museum Board and the eventual approval of the Board of Supervisors. But which side of Marshall Square, and how would the community get around the central problem of paying for a library in either location? Several fortuitous developments started to fall into place: 

1. In November 1986, California voters revised Proposition 13 to allow local governments to issue general obligation bonds if supported by a two-thirds vote. 
2. In late 1987, Friends spawned a second entity, the San Francisco Library Foundation. Sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation, it would prove its fundraising chops alongside the major arts organizations.
3. Librarian Frantz, no longer convinced that building a new main library was a good idea, resigned, and Kenneth Dowlin replaced him. During his twelve-year tenure, Dowlin oversaw the building of the new Main and a doubling of branches. 
4. In April 1988, the California Senate placed a small bond on the ballot motivating Friends to ask the Board of Supervisors to approve a $120 million local bond for the voters. Under Mayor Art Agnos, Chief of Staff Rudy Nothenberg and Supervisor John Molinari, chair of the Finance Committee, negotiated the amount down to $109.5 million approved it for the June ballot.

Election victory! While almost no one believed the voters would approve such a whopping sum, Friends' polling showed that slightly more than two-thirds of voters favored the bond. Friends hired consultant Dick Pabich, who led the Proposition A – Yes for Libraries campaign. Pabich focused on securing the natural base of support in the liberal activist community and targeted conservative home-owning voters. Using precinct records from a recent school board election, volunteers knocked on doors engaging in one-on-one conversations and made 40,000 phone calls. On election night, the bond passed with 78% of the vote.
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Coming next, Chapter 6: The Library Foundation and the inclusive and unifying philanthropic campaign for the Main.

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