Book Club of California

The White House was the first department store in San Francisco; it opened in 1854 and closed in 1965. It was originally named Davidson & Lane, then J.W. Davidson & Company, and finally, in 1870, when it moved to a large new building, took the name "The White House".The White House's long-time owner, Raphael Weill, was a prominent "philanthropist, epicure, and patron of the arts". Weill was a French Jew born in Phalsbourg, Lorraine, France. He arrived in San Francisco in 1853, joined the firm in 1855 at age 18, became a partner in 1858, and in 1885, became senior partner. He was a prominent member of the Bohemian Club, a founder of the French Library, and a patron of the French Hospital. He was an uncle of the founding brothers of Lazard Frères. Weill was appointed as a chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur in 1908. He died in 1920.In the 19th century, the company was known for its progressive treatment of its employees, closing at 6pm and on holidays, offering annual paid vacations, paid sick time, and commissions on sales.The Davidson & Lane Dry Goods Company originally opened in 1854 at the corner of Post and Grant. It moved to Kearny and Post on December 7, 1870, with the new name The White House. After that store burned down in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the third location, designed by Albert Pissis and clad in white terra cotta, was at Sutter and Grant, with street address 256 Grant Avenue. It closed on January 1, 1965, at which time it was housed in four buildings. After remaining vacant for several years, the main building reopened as a parking garage on the upper floors, with restaurants and retail stores including Tiffany & Co. and Peck and Peck at street level. As of 2021, the primary ground floor tenant is Banana Republic.

The Forbidden City was a Chinese nightclub and cabaret in San Francisco, which was in business from 1938 to 1970, and operated on the second floor of 363 Sutter Street, between Chinatown and Union Square.The Forbidden City was one of the first nightlife venues to feature Asian American singers, dancers, chorus lines, magicians, strippers, and musicians, and was entirely managed and staffed by Asian Americans. It was popular with military personnel who were transiting through San Francisco during World War II, as well as Hollywood celebrities, and became the most well-known venue in a golden age of Chinatown nightlife. Some of the featured entertainers would go on to greater fame after launching their careers at the Forbidden City.The club inspired the novel The Flower Drum Song (1957), which became a musical (1958) and film (1961) of the same title. In 1989, the club was profiled in the documentary, Forbidden City U.S.A., by Arthur Dong.

The Sutter Cinema was located on Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco, just off of fashionable Union Square and a few blocks from Chinatown. It was a walk-up, on the second floor 363 Sutter, occupying the space that had previously been one of America's premiere Chinese-owned night clubs, Charlie Low's Forbidden City, which featured dancer Coby Yee. The Sutter Cinema opened in 1970; the owner/manager, also cashier, was Sexual Freedom League member, and one of Janis Joplin's closest friends in high school, Arlene Elster. She was the first, if not the only, woman to operate an adult theater. The clientele was middle-class. Asian-Americans from nearby Chinatown also frequented the cinema because Elster was one of the few customers of the legendary Sam Wo restaurant to be on friendly terms with its notoriously abusive head waiter Edsel Ford Fong, who she provided with an ample supply of free passes. The Sutter Cinema was unique, because in pointed contrast to the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, Elster was not primarily motivated by money. She was a member of the Sexual Freedom League, held a benefit for it at the cinema, and felt that her participation in the pornographic film industry was an opportunity to spread sexual freedom as well as earn a living. She was showing sex films out of a feeling that sex films should be shown: "the times now not only allow but require films like ours." She would only show in the theater films that pleased her, some made with her partner Lowell Pickett. "Sutter Cinema played films that Elster wanted to see, films in which woman possessed sexual desires and 'made it' just like men." Elster intended to show erotic films that showed more than a penis going into a vagina. She felt that "erotic film needed to be made of, by, and for men and women. Female orgasms need to be portrayed on the screen at an equal rate to male orgasms." "In December 1970, the cinema with Leo Productions sponsored a five-day erotic film festival toward this end" ("to elevate pornographic film to a higher level of respectability." (To accommodate the crowd, the festival was held at the 800-seat Presidio Theater, but a poster for it says "Sponsored by the Sutter Cinema.") Mary Rexroth's film Intersection (1971) had its premiere at the Sutter, where she also showed the Mary Rexroth film Cozy Cool (1971) and gay porn films. Mary Rexroth is the daughter of the late poet Kenneth Rexroth. The First International Erotic Film Festival gained a modicum of literary cache thanks to the presence of festival judges, critic Arthur Knight and erotic book publisher Maurice Girodias. As a result, the festival drew the attention of the producers and talent spotters of the Johnny Carson Show, who invited Elster to do a segment on the program, which aired in January, 1971. By 1975 Elster was disenchanted, because of police harassment (she was arrested 14 times, and paid a fine of $1000) and the lack of quality movies to show. From 1975 to 1976 she sublet the cinema, moved with her lesbian partner to Sonoma County, and, like Fred Halsted, operated a wholesale plant nursery. The cinema closed shortly after.

The Dragon Gate ("Chinatown Gate" on some maps) is a south-facing gate at the intersection of Bush Street and Grant Avenue, marking a southern entrance to San Francisco's Chinatown, in the U.S. state of California. Built in 1969 as a gift from the Republic of China (Taiwan) in the style of a traditional Chinese pailou, it became one of the most photographed locations in Chinatown, along with the older Sing Fat and Sing Chong buildings (at Grant and California).

Bay Area Medical Academy (BAMA) is an accredited school of higher education offering programs for students wanting to train to become a phlebotomist, medical assistant, or pharmacy technician. The school's campuses are located in downtown San Francisco near Union Square and in downtown San Jose.

Église Notre Dame Des Victoires is a Catholic church in San Francisco, California. The church was founded in 1856 to serve the French Catholic immigrants during the Gold Rush. The architectural model for the church is the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière in Lyon, France. In 1887, Pope Leo XIII signed the decree placing Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires under the charge of the Marists and giving it the designation of being a French National Church. The church building was rededicated in 1915 after rising from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and great fire. In 1984, the church was designated as a historical landmark. The church remains an important center of San Francisco's French community: it is located adjacent to the city's "French Quarter" centered on Belden Place and regularly conducts a Sunday mass in French.

Hotel des Arts is a boutique hotel in San Francisco, California. When it opened in 2005, 16 of its 51 rooms were painted by local artists–today 38 rooms are. Materials used include wall-mounted vinyl records, plastic bags, graffiti, fabrics, three-dimensional art work, and even installations.

San Francisco Fire Department Engine Co. Number 2, at 460 Bush St. in San Francisco, California, was built in 1908. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.It was designed by city architect Newton J. Tharp in Beaux Arts style. It is a two-story three-bay building with a projecting entablature and a raised parapet, clad with warm gray stone.

San Francisco Fountain, is a 1970 bronze sculpture and fountain by Ruth Asawa, located outside the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in downtown San Francisco, California, in the United States.

The California Theatre was located at 414 (now 440) Bush Street, San Francisco. It was built in 1869 by William Ralston, at that time the treasurer of the Bank of California. S. C. Bugbee & Son were the architects and the theatre cost $250, 000 to build. The original theatre was demolished and rebuilt in 1889. It was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The former site (north side of Bush Street, between Kearny and Grant) is now a California Historical Landmark, with a historical marker commemorating the theatre and its artists. The original theater encompassed 165 feet of frontage, 117 feet in depth, resting on 4 1/2 foot foundation walls; a handsome building with a dress circle, gallery and 51 foot ceiling space in the interior auditorium.

The Grand Hyatt San Francisco is a skyscraper hotel located half a block north of Union Square in San Francisco, California. The 36-storey, 660 room 108 m (354 ft) tower was completed in 1972, as the Hyatt on Union Square and renamed the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in 1990.The hotel had 402 employees before the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to 28 as of April 2021, mainly due to cancelled conventions in the city. It was closed for around half of 2020, losing about $1 million per day during that time.

Antioch College/West (later part of Antioch University West - San Francisco) (AUW) was located in San Francisco, California. Meetings among staff and students at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH began in about 1971 discussing the idea of a University Without Walls program in SF to be known as Antioch College/West. Antioch College/West was the precursor to programs that later included many campuses formed by Antioch University in San Francisco, California. It was one of many campuses formed by Antioch University, a national university, which had its genesis with Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1852. The San Francisco campus closed in July, 1989. The current campuses include Antioch University New England (Keene NH), Antioch University Midwest, (Yellow Springs, OH), Antioch University Los Angeles, Antioch University Santa Barbara and Antioch University Seattle. Antioch College was closed financial reasons effective June 30, 2008. On September 4, 2009, the college's assets were transferred to an independent corporation known as Antioch College Continuation Corporation (ACCC). ACCC reopened the College as an independent institution in the fall of 2011. It operates under the name "Antioch College" by virtue of a license from Antioch University.