While browsing the stacks at UCLA's Young Research Library, looking for materials for a personal research project, I discovered an interesting title from 1862: Gillespie, W. M. A manual of the principles and practice of road-making; comprising the location, construction, and improvement of roads (common, macadam, paved, plank, etc.) and rail-roads. New York: A.S. Barnes & Burr, 1862. Okay, it’s not the most dynamic title, but I couldn’t help but notice the obviously older title sitting among its newer neighbors. And as a librarian, I have a natural bibliographic curiosity about older materials like this one. But when I opened to the title page, the inscription caught my attention immediately: "A. S. Hallidie."

Title page with Hallidie signature

 

The name Hallidie normally wouldn’t have meant much, but as it happens I’ve come across that name numerous times while researching the history of San Francisco’s public parks and squares. In downtown San Francisco there’s a small public space called Hallidie Plaza where the Powell Street cable car line ends on the north side of Market Street. Sightseers line up in the plaza to watch the cable cars turn around on a turntable and to ride the iconic cars from Market Street to either North Beach or Fisherman’s Wharf. Appropriately, this plaza is named after Andrew Smith Hallidie, the mechanical engineer who built the city’s first cable car system in the late 19^th century. I realized I was having one of those exciting moments of research synergy. Or perhaps it was simply serendipity! I brought the book to the attention of one of our rare books catalogers, who not only recognized its potential historical value but quickly figured out that the second inscription on the title page says "San Francisco." Hallidie. San Francisco. Okay, this was getting interesting and clearly required more bibliographic investigation! ANDREW SMITH HALLIDIE

Andrew S. Hallidie

 

Hallidie, who was a trained mechanical engineer, emigrated from Britain to California in 1852 to work in the state’s gold country. He worked variously as a blacksmith, surveyor, bridge builder and inventor (Kahn, 2). While working at a mine along the American River in 1856, he produced the state’s first wire rope pulley system, replacing the traditional fabric rope system, which wore out quickly. Seeing a commercial opportunity, Hallide began manufacturing wire rope from a workshop in San Francisco, and during the 1850s and 1860s became well known for building wire suspension bridges over many of the rivers throughout gold country (Kahn, 3). In the late 1860s, Hallidie began experimenting with a new “elevated traveling wire rope” capable of bending around a turn and straightening out without fracturing (Kahn, 6). He soon considered the possible commercial applications of this so-called “Hallidie Ropeway (Hallidie, 1),” particularly in the field of transportation. By the early 1870s, Hallide, along with several business associates, formed the Clay Street Railway Company and constructed the first underground cable railway along Clay Street. The cable ran from Portsmouth Square in today’s Chinatown up to the top of Nob Hill. In the early morning of August 1, 1873, Hallidie and his associates boarded a test car at the top of Nob Hill and slowly went down Clay Street to the end of the line at Kearny Street. At the bottom of the hill, they turned the car around and went back up marking the first successful test of cable traction technology in California (Kahn, 8).

Clay Street Hill Railroad, 1873
(Cable Car Museum)

There was an immediate rush on cable car franchises in the city. New lines soon opened on Sutter, California, Geary, and Union streets. The cable car succeeded in opening up San Francisco’s inaccessible hilltops, once considered “waste areas,” to urban development and real estate opportunities. The city’s wealthy population migrated away from neighborhoods in the South of Market area to the newly accessible hilltops in the Western Addition, Russian Hill, and Nob Hill where they built mansions, luxury apartments, and hotels (Kahn, Cable Car Days, 42). In addition to his technological and commercial achievements, Hallidie was involved in the city’s civic life as a supporter of public libraries and public education. He served as President and Secretary of the Mechanics' Institute, a private library to support the mechanical arts, as one of the original regents of the University of California, serving from 1868-1900, and as a member of the board of the San Francisco Public Library system when it opened in the late 1870s. THE HISTORY OF A BOOK Using the Online Archive of California, I eventually tracked down a collection containing a document signed by Hallidie. The James L. Warren Papers, 1846-1889, held at UC Berkeley, contains documents related to Warren’s activities as editor of the California Farmer, including an 1864 correspondence from the Mechanics’ Institute, penned and signed by “A. S. Hallidie, Secy, Lecture Committee.” I was able to obtain a copy of the original letter from our wonderful colleagues at the Bancroft and you can see that the signature from the letter appears to match the signature in our book.

Hallidie signature located in the James L. Warren Papers

The book’s backstory is I think one of the most fascinating things about this bibliographic investigation. It’s not a stretch to say the book was very likely part of Hallidie’s personal library. He was no doubt a book lover and the subject matter is certainly within his area of expertise. We can see from the preface page that the book was originally acquired by Berkeley in about 1935 and was probably transferred to UCLA as a duplicate copy. But where the book was between Hallidie’s death in 1900 and its acquisition in 1935 is unknown. The book contains no significant marginalia, only some circled page numbers and pencil markings highlighting certain paragraphs. It’s also fascinating to think about when he owned the book. Was Hallidie using it before he developed the cable car as a sort of professional reference material? Perhaps we can imagine the “mechanical genius” consulting it in the early 1870s, struggling to figure out how to modify a road surface so he could install and operate a continuously running cable underground. I guess we’ll never know. The book, which has been in UCLA’s collection since 1936, was removed from the circulating stacks and transferred to Library Special Collections where it was fully cataloged including more information on its provenance. The book now includes the copy of the signature which validates the Hallidie signature. By Chris Salvano, Research Support Librarian, CRIS, Charles E. Young Research Library Works cited: “About the Mechanics’ Institute.” Mechanics’ Institute Library & Chess Room. Accessed June 26, 2012. http://www.milibrary.org/about. Hallidie, Andrew S. The invention of the cable railway system. [San Francisco, 1885]. Hilton, George W. The cable car in America: a new treatise upon cable or rope traction as applied to the working of street and other railways. San Diego, Calif. : Howell-North Books, 1982. Kahn, Edgar Myron. Andrew Smith Hallidie: originator of cable railway transportation. San Francisco: [s.n.], 1940. Kahn, Edgar Myron. Cable car days in San Francisco. Stanford University, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [c1940]. “The Regents of the University of California.” University of California Regents.  Last modified June 21, 2012. Accessed June 26, 2012. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regentslistb.pdf. San Francisco Board of Supervisors. San Francisco Municipal Reports. San Francisco: Board of Supervisors, 1878/1879.