BARLEY ON THE BARGES
WHISKEY IN THE WAREHOUSE

Rengstorff's Landing, near the Rengstorff House, was a major shipping point for the enormous stores of grain grown in the western Santa Clara Valley. Mr. Rengstorff's shipping ledger covering the early 1880s, discovered during the 1990 restoration of the house, has recently been digitized, facilitating more convenient research. Some of the shippers who brought their products to the landing, mostly with a San Francisco destination, make interesting reading:

An entry for September 1881: "Shipped per schooner Mtn View ... 354 sacks of Hotaling barley per order of J.A. Hornberger." The destination of the shipment presumably was A.P. Hotaling & Co. a whiskey distiller. The elegantly restored Italianate three-story Hotaling building, built in 1866 by Anson Parson Hotaling at 429 Jackson Street, was once the largest liquor warehouse on the West Coast. (When Hoaling, a New York native, died in 1900, he left an estate in excess of $7 million.)

In 1906, earthquake, fire —and dynamite— took down a total of 28,000 San Francisco buildings. A few pockets inside the burned city were saved due to the whimsy of wind and flame, or local heroism. Hotaling's was the savior of this particular pocket, that is now called Jackson Square.

Here's the story: the Army wanted to dynamite the Jackson Street buildings, including Hotaling’s, to create a firebreak to save the nearby U.S. Appraiser’s Building. However, as the Hotaling manager pointed out, a few sticks of dynamite, the woodframe building and the 5,000 barrels of Old Kirk whiskey stored inside would have created rather more firestorm than firebreak. (Some say an exchange of gifts of cash or alcohol may have facilitated the decision.) It escaped destruction through the heroic efforts of a Navy lieutenant and his men. They ran a hose all the way from Pier 43, over Telegraph Hill, and down to Jackson Square. Salt water from their ship's pumps enabled them to stop the fire's spread into this area. Also, military officials permitted the company's employees to remove over a thousand barrels of whiskey, which were placed under guard near the Appraiser's Building.

After the City's destruction, several clergymen asserted that the catastrophe had been divine retribution, visited upon the City for its wicked ways. But a local humorist, a Stanford graduate of 1895, asked the poetic question, which has been immortalized on a plaque on the facade of the Hotaling Building:

If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling's whiskey?

And a latter day muse may wonder if the Mountain View grain wound up in those Jackson Street stills:

Aye, the barley was sent
By Rengstorff crews,
But was it all meant
For Hotaling's booze?