 Thank you. What an honor it is to be introduced by the archivist of the city and county of San Francisco And now that I'm old enough to be an archivist artifact is even more appropriate It's it's a pleasure to be here with because I first of all Jim Hawes and I are longtime friends and In terms of being a tutor to So many of us in terms of civic value generally there should be an office created called civic tutors James should be the first incumbent and he's been wrestling with this Jim is a of course belongs to that genre of scholarly attorney who has accounted for so many so much good writing about the history of California in the West and He's a graduate of Stanford University and a graduate of Columbia Law School and Jim and I have had a number of discussions over time as to a a Challenge posed by Harold Kerker in his history Very pioneering history of California Architecture that is the question. What should California look like? American California and the case of Hispanic, California. It looked like the American Southwest the architecture and It was modified dramatically in the late 1820s when Thomas Oliver Larkin fused the New England frame style New England frame with the Spanish adobe you can see this today at the Larkin house and in Monterey which allowed the Spanish adobe to go up to the second floor create a veranda and Overlying roof on the model of Charleston, South Carolina and low and behold what we think today was the is the iconic architecture of Southern California in general is actually only the last 15 or so years of California history that it has but that look has maintained itself now. I think there's a wonderful phrase by by Wallace Stegner that California is like the rest of America, but only more so And I think I think that only more so is part of what we're going to be seeing tonight because we look at the opening Shot from Chicago is that basically when the when the infant the infant are newly found that American Republic Asked itself. What shall we look like? Of course? It's settled on the class and the classic set on classicism We see this today in buildings like Benjamin Latrobe's great capital But we also saw it very early in San Francisco in South Park The development of classicism there Domestic classicism on the on the at the same time that the same style was were developing in London Which suggests a very interesting ability of the artistic architectural world the world of taste to communicate itself across a continent and the sea and Proceed simultaneously on this idea of the classical ideal now this question of the classics was rooted in Obviously the classical civilization of the Mediterranean and in the 1870s and 80s as California architects searched around for metaphors with which to enliven their architecture Increasingly they turn to the south of France the Romanesque revival for instance, which is so gloriously represented in and Jim's Alma Mater Stanford University quadrangle one of the last great Designs of H.H. Richardson reflected this sense of southern of France for the Mediterranean of course it was a Roman architecture that was recycled with a carol engines and then brought into Normandy and emerging in the 10th and 11th century and Suggested the lands of the south there's a new study of this Tendency that's just come out from a wonderful book from Oxford University Press which I had the privilege of putting a blurb on the on the back call classical, California and When we San Franciscans then determined that we would have this classical look In South Park, which we didn't determine it automatically. We anticipated it because there is no Enforced architecture that there's no director directorate of architecture says you must build this way on the other hand in the case of say the Second Empire France with Baron Hausmann's re creation of Paris reworking of Paris you could say you will build in this style this basically bows our Classicism now the path the paradox that I think Jim is going to suggest to us is how this Fuse with the city beautiful movement that came out of Chicago to Daniel Hudson Hudson Burnham Of course, we did the Burnham plan or laid out the fair did the Burnham plan for Chicago this city beautiful movement, which was organized around the European city as developed by Rome and under Pope six is the fifth as developed by Vienna and as bar and by in Paris by by Hausmann and that movement then became To this country with a major online fonts first designs for Washington DC came into Chicago later to st. Louis to Seattle and even of course those who know Manila the Philippines, which we had briefly an association with the I mean an imperialistic Paralistic association with to Manila itself The very interesting thing about this classicism that it was not Ray Tardare was not Escapist it was not let's go back to the past. It was linked with Progressivism, I know that's a magic word in San Francisco But I'm using it with the capital P not the current Progressivism although it certainly has a lot in common But that great sweep of wanting to upgrade and clarify and reform America that swept through this country in the 80s 80s and 90s that also expressed itself in this bozar Paris-based classical revival and No, I think there is no single legacy no single ensemble of public spaces and No more glorious evocation of those values than we have here in the Civic Center of San Francisco and that's what James Haas has devoted so much time and its Marvelous scholarship drawing upon many cases our magnificent collection here of San Francisco history and which he will Illuminate us regarding this evening So looking forward to a marvelous interplay of interpretation and imagery from a remarkably erudite and dedicated man Who has privileged given me great privilege and allowed me to write the introduction on his forthcoming book on this topic? I'd like to have a warm hand and welcome James Haas. Thank you