Terrific Street facts for kids

Looking east down Pacific Street from Kearny Street during 1913.
(San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library)

Terrific Street was a short-lived entertainment district on San Francisco's Barbary Coast during the early 20th century. It consisted of dance halls, jazz clubs, and various kinds of drinking establishments. Terrific Street was centered upon a single block of Pacific Street, which was one of the earliest streets 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 district was located between Kearny and Montgomery streets on Pacific Street (now Avenue).

The term 'Terrific Street' was first used in the mid-1890s by musicians in describing the quality of music at Pacific Street's clubs, and indeed the first jazz clubs of San Francisco occurred there. At the beginning, the prevailing music was ragtime and slow blues, but within the first decade of the 20th century the music clubs began to develop early forms of jazz. The district also attracted many famous entertainers such as actress Sarah Bernhardt, Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova, and musicians Sophie Tucker, Al Jolson, and Jelly Roll Morton. A principal attraction of Terrific Street was dancing, and many nationally known dance steps like the Texas Tommy and the Turkey Trot were invented on Terrific Street. However, the district's existence was short-lived, and Terrific Street's dominance slowly came to an end by 1921 after a newspaper's crusade to shut down the district, and severe restrictions were placed upon its dance halls by the Police Commission.

Demise

Coppa's Neptune Palace was on Jackson square, but also closed in 1914 after the Police Commission crackdown.

Oddly enough, it was a popular dance called the Texas Tommy that was one of the early steps in disabling the district. When it was announced that the infamous dance would be performed at a local theater, many concerned citizens and the police went to see the dance for the first time. But they came away surprised, and declared that there was nothingdistasteful about the strenuous dance.

The dance then became very popular with the youth of middle and upper classes. However, members of older generations who had not even seen the dance began to condemn it, and parents feared that the dance would harm the moral fiber of their children. And at the same time, businesses which surrounded the district further inflamed the controversy, while trying rid themselves of the competing dance halls upon Terrific Street. By 1912, the expanding war in the press against the Texas Tommy caused the public to fear and oppose all other ragtime dances as well.

William Randolf Hearst, owner of the Examiner and whose name frequently is attached to the term 'yellow journalism', was instrumental in causing the demise of Terrific Street. Just before election time in September 1913, Hearst's Examiner launched a major crusade against Terrific Street "with all the fanfare of furious excitement which has always characterized Hearst's journalistic wars", when the Examiner published a full page editorial condemning the district.

In response, just 10 days after the Examiner's full-page editorial, the police commission adopted resolutions that no dancing was allowed in any establishment of the district which served alcohol, that no women – employees or patrons – were permitted in any saloon of the district, and that even electric signs were forbidden. Due to San Francisco's small municipal government, the police department was given an overwhelming amount of responsibility for the Pacific Street scene.

As a result, some drinking establishments fired their female employees and became straight saloons, and others closed their businesses. Some musicians moved to LA, while others performed at Oakland's Seventh Street jazz scene. Some of the larger dance halls moved to other districts and managed to survive for several more years by masquerading as dance academies or closed dance halls, but they never regained their previous popularity. After the 1913 liquor ban, the Thalia stopped serving liquor, declared itself a dance academy, and hired nearly 100 women to dance with customers on a dance-by-dance basis. 'Dance academy' is a code word for a taxi dance hall, and the term was used for another two decades as taxi dancing migrated to Chicago and then other large cities. A report by the Public Dance Hall Committee of San Francisco Center of California Civic League of Women Voters states:

In September, 1913, the Police Commissioner prohibited dancing in any cafe, restaurant, or saloon where liquor was sold. This resolution wiped out dancing on the [Barbary] Coast and resulted in the appearance of the so-called "closed" hall in the districts adjoining. There the girls were paid to dance with the men on a commission basis and salary. Patrons paid ten cent for each dance, lasting less than two minutes. About six hundred girls were employed in these 'closed' dance halls.

The closed dance halls were the first version of latter-day taxi dance halls. They were called closed because most of the time the only women permitted in the club were the taxi dancers. The final blow, which ended the entertainment scene, came in 1921 when taxi dancing and its closed dance halls were forbidden by law. Prohibition also caused a complete absence of alcohol in 1920. By 1917, all the excitement of Terrific Street had vanished.

Pacific Street today

Pacific Street, now Avenue, no longer has bars, dance halls, or entertainment clubs. As of the first decade of the 21st century, its narrow corridor is populated with offices, design firms, and law firms despite the fact that many of the original buildings from the Terrific Street era still remain. The old Hippodrome dance hall, also known as the Moulin Rouge at one time, now houses an art store, Artist & Craftsman Supply. One of the old secret tunnels from the Barbary Coast days can be seen in the basement of that art store. The two photos below show exactly the same three buildings, but at different points in time. From left to right, they are Spider Kelly's dance hall, the Hippodrome, and Purcell's So Different Café. Within the 2014 photograph Spider Kelly's former dance hall has brown brick, the Hippodrome's building has orange brick, and Purcell's So Different Café building has brown brick and is behind a tree.

See also

• Barbary Coast
• 1906 earthquake
• Gold Rush of 1849
• Jackson Square
• North Beach
• Jazz
• Blues
• Ragtime
• Taxi dance hall