Last week, Greg at N Judah Chronicles told me about a bookstore in the Sunset that had some old Richmond Banner newspapers for sale. I picked up a few of them and look forward to sharing some of the stories with you in future posts.
I confess I don’t know much about the Richmond Banner other than what I glean from its inside page. The paper was started in 1893; I have issues dating up to 1931. It was published every Friday out of its offices at 320 6th Avenue, and the subscription price was $1 per year.
Here’s what the Richmond Banner “editorially stood for” in its January 2, 1931 issue:
– Removal of cemeteries that separate the district from the rest of San Francisco
– Completion of the automatic traffic control system on Geary onhealthy cheap prevacid online street
– A street car line on Balboa street
– A senior high in the district
– Better street lighting for Fulton and other district streets
– Better transportation to the Sunset district
– Placing of wires underground on Geary street
– Consruction of a fireproof grammar school south of Geary street between Seventeenth and Thirty-seventh avenues
– Construction of a branch library in the western part of the Park Presidio district
– Preservation of China Cove for the public and the renaming of it to either “Phelan Beach” or “James D. Phelan Park”
– Erection of the proposed Golden Gate Bridge
– Cutting of Clement street through to the beach
Many of the items on the list did come to fruition. George Washington High School, still the only high school in the district, opened in 1936. And all of the cemeteries were eventually relocated outside of San Francisco.
Though I learned recently from the book San Francisco’s Richmond District that while the markers and headstones were removed from City Cemetery, many bodies were left where they lay. So the next time you’re out golfing at Lincoln along Land’s End, be sure to pay your respects. 😉
If you know more history about the Richmond Banner newspaper, please leave it in a comment. Thanks!
Sarah B.
You are right on, according to a archeologist there are around 9,000 bodies still under the golf course! I just wonder if they found anything recently as they are redoing the part of Lincoln Park adjacent to Clement (near the playground)…
There are also quite a few bodies still buried behind the public service hospital off 15th avenue in the presidio. It was the pauper’s cemetary for the building which used to be the Merchant Marine Hospital. The army paved over the cemetary and put a tennis court over it!
Laurel Village was also a cemetary. They dug up those bodies and moved them to a group grave in Colma and used the headstones to make the wave organ at Chrissy Field.
Sarah, the Richmond Banner newspaper was published by Walter T. Lyon up until the 1930s when my grandfather, Sinclair G. Trimble took it over. He published it until his death in 1964. My grandmother Frances Trimble (née Castelhun) continued it until the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Sinclair Trimble had a regular column entitled “Looking at it From Here” and Frances had a column called “The Northwest Corner”, compilations of which I still hope to republish someday.
Sinclair’s oldest son Paul Trimble (my uncle) is retired from the San Francisco Chronicle. Sinclair’s father Robert Sinclair Trimble (1854-1938) worked for the San Francisco Examiner. Sinclair’s grandfather and my great-great-grandfather, William Trimble (1802-1888), started The Impartial Reporter newspaper in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, which still exists today and is managed by my distant third cousins.
I inherited hundreds of old issues of the Richmond Banner that I sorted and donated to Sutro Library back in the 1990s. They microfilmed them all and should still have that collection at their Winston Drive location. I kept a few duplicate issues.
Also, you’re right about that address of 320 6th Avenue, but that was early on. For the majority of its time, the paper was printed at 275 6th Avenue. That building later became a post office and then bought again by someone else and turned into a small office building. I work in the film industry and, when we filmed “Sweet November” on Clement Street in Summer 2000, we rented the building for the day to hold and feed the background extras and crew.