Read Part 1 here: The China Cafe
How is it that such a well-traveled corner in an old part of town came to be available for the new China Cafe in 1963? It turns out that the same floods that pushed China Cafe off Pacific avenue also wiped out an established commercial corner at the east end of the Bridge. Also in this story, a description of a delightful grocery, an amazing bookstore, yet another story proving you can’t find City Hall (even if you cheat), and the surprising origins of the present Quaker Meeting house way over on Rooney street.
Where the old China Cafe still stands, once there was a typical commercial building with shops downstairs and apartments upstairs. It known as the Riverside Cash Store through most of its lifetime, and appears to have been built around 1909.
This photo of the corner was probably taken by Preston Sawyer just before the bridge was removed in 1921. (From UCSC's Historic Photo Collection)
Sanborn map of 1917, showing Soquel and Riverside. The Cash Store is at 109 Soquel, and two stores are at 107 and 105. The Bernheim mansion is across the street where Riverside Lighting is now. (UCSC McHenry Library Digital Map Collection, accessed April 13, 2016.
The Cash Store was probably one of those places that always seemed to be there until the floods of the 1950s changed everything. It first appears in Sentinel advertising in 1910.
Santa Cruz Evening News, Fri, Apr 1, 1910, Page 6
One long-time tenant at 109 Soquel was Frank Sawyer, who kept a shoe repair shop for many years. Sawyer started out as a harness maker, but converted to shoes in around 1913.
New Repairing Shop
An up-to-date fully equipped Shoe Repairing establishment has been opened in this city. All latest machinery. Call and see our shop. Sawyer and Antelman, Props, 105 Soquel avenue.
The Sawyer family lived a few blocks away on Garfield street, and later at 120 Campbell street in a house that was long a neighborhood landmark because of the little adobe shop in the front yard. Frank Sawyer kept a shoe repair shop on one side of the bridge or the other until the twenties, and “returned to business” in 1936, working from his home on Campbell. As much as his customers must have loved to have him fix their shoes for them, it could not have been for the fun of it. (The vile protests of an eviction and the tenant destruction of the old Sawyer home in August of 1996 was front page news.)
Frank’s son Preston grew up in the neighborhood, and the boy photographed his neighborhood as well as more historically significant events such as the Pan-Pacific Exhibition of 1915. In many cases, photos of the ordinary homes and streets of his neighborhood are the only record we have. Later, Preston was a proofreader at the News and later published hundreds of photos in his “Santa Cruz Yesterdays” column in the Sentinel.
1913 Cash store advertisement.
October 18, 1913 high tech audio equipment advertisement.
In 1911 members of the Socialist Party met in “The People’s Hall,” the upper storey of a blacksmith and carriage repair shop built on pilings over Branciforte Creek on Soquel at Riverside. That year, about ten percent of Californians belonged to the Socialist Party and the local party was very active in the elections. Besides running a full slate for the City Commission, five women ran for the school board, and women were not even allowed to vote in 1911. Mrs. Minnie Ashcroft, one of the candidates, gave her home address as 109 Soquel so perhaps she lived in one of the apartments above the shops across the street from her Party’s headquarters. The election that year was hotly contested, and the entire story deserves to be told elsewhere.
A few years after Frank Sawyer moved in, the J. A. (“Jake”) Youngs, who owned the Cash Store, announced they would operate it as of February of 1917. This article gives a laudatory description of a well-run grocery store.
The Youngs Take Over Riverside Store.
The Riverside Cash Store at the corner of Soquel and Riverside avenues, is now being conducted by the owners of the property, Mr. And Mrs. J. A. Young.
It is doubtful if there exists anywhere a neater furnished or better appointed family grocery. Mr. Young, who is a craftsman of ability, has introduced some novel ideas in the fixtures and added an up-to-date lighting scheme. The floor covering is linoleum and the paint is pure white. The stock is new and well chosen, covering all the wanted lines, both in staple and fancy groceries. Mrs. Young has immediate charge of the store and her experience in mercantile pursuits has been extensive. The store is a delight to enter.
Just a few months later, in October the Youngs had turned over the store to Kurt Rosenthal. It was subsequently operated by many people, and later advertisements indicated that several grocery store owners got their start at the Riverside Cash Store.
The Cash Store was known as Hadley’s Grocery in the 1940s. By the 1950s, general stores of this type were replaced by drive-in markets such as Shoppers Corner up the street at Branciforte, and Mission Grocery on Soquel and Front. “Drive-in market” means that the store had a parking lot, and the little neighborhood store like this one did not. At the cash store, which you probably walked to, you placed your order and it was delivered to your house that afternoon. A relic of this practice lives on at modern groceries where the clerk asks “would you like help out to your car?” Home delivery is a far more civilized method for obtaining groceries than driving around town and then hauling them up the stairs yourself.
In 1951, the old Cash Store was known as The Bargain Center, advertising itself with a tiny classified ad, offering “clothing, furniture, hardware.” One shop in the building also sold cash registers and then it declined into being the site of an army surplus store.
By 1955 the old Cash Store was the home of Pacific Bookstore. Wally Trabing wrote a very long article about it which is reproduced below. Although this may just be his style of writing, it seems as if Trabing had never seen a used bookstore before.
Old Book Store is Place for Interesting Search, Research
By Wally Trabing
No famous person said it but: "A city without a secondhand book store is like a home without a library."
Such a store is a place of search and research. It's a place where books of value, now out of print, can become your own for a small sum. It ties together the values of the past and makes a city seem more connected with the world.
Santa Cruz, although an amazing number of people are unaware of it, can claim a used book shop said to have the most complete library range between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
It is called the Pacific Book Shop and is located at 270 Soquel avenue, near the end of the Soquel avenue bridge.
Master of the bookish labyrinth which he claims contains some 100,000 books, is Eric Ericson, a 66-year-old jack-of-all-trades who quit school after the eighth grade.
Ericson has been collecting the works of thousands of authors for 25 years and turned this hobby into a business two years ago.
Since he opened his shop near the bridge, his appetite for buying more books has focused him to expand into another building next door.
"Sometimes I make a dollar a day, and some days I take a hundred," he said. "The money is not the thing that makes me happy. It's being able to find a book that someone is looking for. I get a lot out of pleasing people with books."
Two large rooms and three smaller ones are filled with tiers of books. They are amassed along the four walls of each room and spill over in all rooms and at his reception desk.
His rarest volumes are kept in another library in back of his home at 144 Seaside avenue. Here he has some 700 volumes ranging from his favorites, early Californian history to a 1749 copy of Milton's "Paradise Lost."
Unlike many used book dealers, Ericson has his books classified and he can spot a book in seconds if he has it in stock.
Religion, psychology, philosophy, engineering, arts, music, geology. The list goes on and on.
"Many times the Santa Cruz library sends people over here when they do not have a certain book."
Most of his customers, he said, come looking for research material. "Of course I specialize in books out of print." That should be the function of a second-hand bookstore," said Ericson.
He claims to have 50,000 National Geographics dating back to 1912. For school children he has a special service. A student, bent on research material can use his Geographics index system and in a matter of minutes can usually be the owner of the magazine he needs for a few cents.
Ericson works alone. He has set up a bookbinding room and receives orders from many parts of the US. He is also a professional appraiser.
And if you should visit the store and find it locked during business hours—well he is either showing a customer around his home library or maybe has just gone fishing.
"I don't want to set the world on fire," drawls Ericson. "I could probably setup a store on Pacific avenue and stock it with 5000 new books and make a go if it.
"But a man needs to go fishing now and then and I'd be awful tied down," he said.
Ericson was the son of a gold prospector.
"We were always on the move. The first and the either were the only grades in which I spent a full year. In the others we'd move two or three times during the school season.
"I married young and have been about everything—cook, contractor, hardware salesman, and so on.
"I wanted so badly to learn, but there was always work to be done and little time for reading. When I did get an extra few dollars I would buy books until my money ran out."
Ancient history and religion fascinate Ericson as does early California history.
Some of his collectors items include a Bible in French dating back to 1632; the "Worlds of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher," some 10 volumes printed in 1750; an 1855 copy of "Tour of Dr Syntax," by William Combe. Ericson treasures this copy because of the color lithographs which have retained their brilliancy for 100 years.
He has a first edition f H. B. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." There is another first edition of John Brown’s autobiography, printed in 1860.
At his store, Ericson has built up another interesting department which he calls his foreign section.
"I have books in many languages that i know would be interesting to many Santa Cruz residents.
"People are always coming in here and tell me with surprised faces: "Why I didn't know there was just a place in town."
"I put a lot of work in arranging here," he said, sweeping his hand over the broad alleys of cases, "but it is a part of my life."
Ericson is young looking for all his years. His eyes are sharp and his conversation is not bookish, but obviously school far beyond the formal ninth grade education he had.
A book seems to be a personal thing with him. The fact that they have been read and discarded does not in the least lessen their value in his eyes.
Rather Ericson takes great delight in watching them leave his store paid for or as a gift which is often the case. For him the books have come alive again.
"I like especially to see children searching for books and I often give them books if I see they can not really afford them.
In the collection are a great many novels as well as research material. There he has classified by authors if he feels the author has produced worthwhile works.
he buys them sometimes by the truck load, but he doesn't save them all.
"The junk, I throw out," he says, "and I throw out a lot."
But he better material, you will find on the shelf—probably the book you've always wanted to read.
Pacific Books moved to 717 Pacific avenue (at Laurel), in 1959, after Ericson died in 1958. An ad in May of 1960 announced New Management, and the last advertisement for the Pacific Bookshop appeared in October of 1964.
In spring of 1956, the year after the flood, the entire Cash Store was for sale, fully rented.
Five stores and three apartments. All rented. Location is good and will increase in value. $17,500.
The value probably did not improve because soon the entire neighborhood was under the plans of the Redevelopment District, building the apartment buildings and strip malls that line both sides of the river today. By the next flood of 1958, levee work had commenced, and the buildings were removed. And that is why Deck Soo Hoo was able to build his new China Cafe there on the corner.
Fighting City Hall
It is inconvenient to walk from the river levee near Riverside avenue and cross the Soquel bridge. Because of the bridge rail, you need to walk all the way out to the street, and go around the corner before you can gain the sidewalk and cross the bridge.
It can now be reported that this is an ancient situation and a terrible feud.
In 1921, after the covered bridge was removed and the new bridge constructed, a cement railing was installed, just like there is now. Except that back then, the 20 year-old commercial buildings faced Soquel, and the rail made it very difficult to walk into the store. Sawyer, the shoemaker, probably had to listen to complaints every single day. By 1922, his landlord had asked the city more than once to be allowed to cut a passage in the railing so that the shops could conveniently serve customers.
Bridge Defacement Placed Under Ban
L. W. Bee, owner of a store building occupied by Frank Sawyer’s shoe repair shop and "the Beanery" a restaurant, appeared before the city council this morning and made a request that he be given a permit to cut a passageway in the cement railing of Soquel avenue bridge leading to his building.
The council having previously gone upon record as being opposed to any such permits being granted, informed him through Mayor C. C. Kratzenstein that under no circumstances would the city tolerate such a request being granted.
No further reports of Sawyer’s request to open the rail appear. A few years later, the Missionary and Christian Alliance Church built a hall and school next door to the Cash Store. They too asked for permission to cut an opening in the bridge rail.
Church Again Asks Bridge Rail Removal
The Missionary and Christian Alliance church, fortified by a petition containing the names of "242 members and sympathizers," made another city council attempt today to secure the razing of eight feet of cement railing on the east end of the Soquel avenue bridge opposite the church entrance.
It was the third attempt, but from council remarks today the church's objective is still far, far off. Commissioner Uriah Thompson threw the most cold water.
"In the first place you took out a permit to build on Riverside avenue and turned around and built facing the Soquel avenue bridge," he told J. M. Stone, Alliance church spokesman. "In the second place a church entranceway where you want it on the bridge will constitute a safety menace," Mr. Thompson's stand was backed by Acting Mayor C. W Balzari.
"Well, it’s only just that our request be granted, replied Mr. Stone. "If you don't grant it, we will have to go to law and have that part of the railing condemned."
"You could hardly do that," opined Leslie Johnson, city attorney.
"We certainly can," retorted the church delegate. "Ernie Kramer told us we could."
Mr. Stone promised to submit Attorney Kramer's legal authorities before next Thursday.
The story continued the next week.
Alliance Fails Again in Try for Opening in Bridge Rails
Representatives of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church did not appear at the city council meeting today with Attorney Ernest Kramer's promised legal citations showing their right to remove Soquel avenue bridge railing facing their church, but they did appear with augmented members to lengthily and vainly argue their case.
Mr. Kramer is not ready to come before you today, but he has told us that the city building inspector was on the job during the erection of our church and allowed its present situation fronting on the bridge," said J. M. Stone, appearing today for the second time as one of the congregation's spokemen.
Warning Given
As on last week, the delegation was told by council members today that the permit for building the church was granted on the condition that it face on Riverside avenue, and that placing it on Soquel avenue was illegal and unfair to city officials. Acting Mayor C. W. Balzari stated that had he known the building was to face on the bridge and that a portion of the railing would be removed for entrance purposes he would not have voted in favor of the permit.
It was then that R. C. Bowes took the floor.
"It is a serious matter to close the doors of a church, even though it be Catholic," he warned, "I ask you in God's name to think this over in all seriousness."
He declared that opening the railing in front of the Alliance church would entail no more traffic menace than the opening through the rail opposite the shoe repairing shop next door, through which the church members now pass.
Opposition Wins
"Well, I didn't vote that either," responded the acting mayor. "I don't know how that opening was made."
"Neither do I," said Commissioner Uriah Thompson.
Then rose N. Burwell, a council spectator present primarily on other mission.
"You are being asked to sacrifice human lives to satisfy people who haven't done the square thing," he told the council.
That apparently settled things. Commissioner Thompson moved that the church's request be denied and forthwith it was.
He then suggested that the rail opening in front of the shoe repair shop be closed and was assured by his fellow board members that his suggestion would receive immediate attention.
No further articles appear following up on Frank Sawyer’s response when he learned the church next door ratted him out to the city council, or if the rail opening was attended to.
By the early 1960s, the Alliance church was known as the “Church on the Bridge.” They sold their lot to the City when the levee was built, and built a new church across town at 225 Rooney street. That building is now the Quaker Meeting House.
The Garden Spot of the Earth
Before the Cash Store, what was here where the creek joins the river?
In 1866, it was a hayfield of A. C. Meserve.
Heavy Crop of Hay
We have seldom seen the grass growing so luxuriantly as this season. Mr Meserve has a two-acre lot on the east bank of the San Lorenzo, sown in wheat, from which he expects to cut over five tons of hay per acre. The same field, last year, yielded nine tones [sic] of hay—best quality. It is estimated that five tones of hay per acre will be the average yield of the bottom lands this year—about one-third larger than previous years. We are informed that a good oat hay can be purchased in the field, in Santa Clara valley at $5 per tun—such prices are enough to make a horse laugh and farmers look sour.
Like most successful men of the post-gold rush years, Meserve was in the grocery and real estate business. He served as County Treasurer, was a witness at the trial of the previous Treasurer, in the matter of half the county’s gold coin disappearing in a robbery that may or may not have been an inside job. But that’s another story.
Here’s an advertisement from a 1870 sale of some of Mr. Meserve’s land.
A. R. Meserve offers a very desirable lot and residence for sale, cheap for cash. The property is located near the eastern end of the foot-bridge, and but a short distance beyond Mr. Meserve's property; is on the upper side of a public highway, and on the crest of a gently-sloping hill, giving a commanding view of the ocean and town. The house was built by one of the best mechanics, by the day, and on honor. Circumstances make the sale imperative, and anyone wishing a pleasant home in the garden spot of the earth, should embrace this opportunity.
Before he left in 1876, Meserve subdivided his homestead, prompting real estate advertisements that show that the methods used to promote real estate sales never change.
--Advertise, and sell your property at reasonable prices. A. R. Meserve has, in one week, sold the Cathcart house and lot; also seven lots of his homestead, all because he notified the people through the Sentinel that his property was for sale, cheap, and made his words good.
Great Bargains in Real Estate
Within one week from the survey and offer fro sale of the homestead property of A. R. Meserve, one-half of the lots were sold. The inducements are proximity to the business center, beautiful location, commanding and magnificent views of bay, river, valley, and mountain plain and wood-covered hills. Good drainage, splendid well water, title perfect, and one-half the price of similar lots in point of location.
From the description, lots were probably on the street that is now the 800 block of Riverside, and perhaps the block of Soquel between Riverside and Ocean.
Since Mr Meserve’s land was a “homestead,” it means he made had made a claim to “public land” that was later confirmed by the U. S. government. It is unlikely that this gorgeous pasture on east side of the river so close to Branciforte had never been claimed by anyone before. I do not know who the land on the south side of the creek had been granted to, but perhaps it was the same family who lived on the north side. According to Phil Reader, the prominent Perez and Buelna families received Alcade grants of ranches at the confluence of the San Lorenzo River and Branciforte Creek. Various Ernest Otto columns locate their adobe at the end of Garfield street, which was about where San Lorenzo park and the Dakota apartments are now.
In the footnote by Phil Reader to an unpublished manuscript by Henry Cerruti published in the SC History Journal No. 4 (Branciforte edition), we find this brief description of life at this corner.
3. “An aged soldier named Perez,” refers to Pedro Juan Perez 1814-1884, the son of Branciforte Spanish pioneer Jose Maria Perez and his wife Maria Margarita Rodriguez. Juan was a wild young man when he entered the ranks of the Mexican army where he served in the garrison at San Francisco and later Sonoma. He later settled at Branciforte and married Maria Antionia Armas. Together they raised a large family at their adobe at the confluence of Branciforte Creek and the San Lorenzo river. It was the site of a fandango hall and bull fight ring which served as a social center for the young people of the Pueblo.
Before the arrival of Mr. Meserve and his hay, the confluence of creek and river was wooded, and the hills beyond them open oak pastures. Ernest Otto said when he was a boy the banks of the Branciforte Creek here had the best strawberries.
The view from this hill hasn’t changed since the beginning of time: a wooded valley to the north, the little hill to the south, and the broad river that floods from one to the other.
