Lotta folks stand by fountain namesake
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown admitted to a “big mistake” Monday, after historians and city residents balked at his idea to rename Lotta’s Fountain on Market Street after Ed Lee.
“I never should have said, ‘rename,’ ” Brown said, sheepishly retracting the announcement he made in his Sunday Chronicle column, which caused an uproar on social media.
In his piece, Brown had said he would rededicate the 143-year-old cast iron fountain this Wednesday during the annual ceremony to commemorate the 1906 earthquake. That was news to the event’s main organ “I “No, no, no” said Lee Houskeeper, a veteran publicist and pro bono producer of the earthquake anniversary event, indicating that Brown did not consult him about the name change.
After the column appeared, Houskeeper fielded more than 100 furious Facebook comments and messages from people who hated the idea of stripping the 19th-century entertainer Charlotte Mignon (Lotta) Crabtree’s name from the large monument at Market and Kearny streets.
Brown had to confront angry critics as well, some of whom accosted him on the street. He insisted the column was a misunderstanding and said he’d only meant to honor Ed Lee with a wreath on Wednesday. clearly misstated,” Brown said, adding that he’d never meant to undermine Crabtree, a famed Gold Rush-era entertainer known for smoking cigars and dancing atop barrels. Snubbed by San Francisco’s high society, she is a beloved character for San Francisco history buffs and an antecedent for another cigarsmoking woman — Brown’s friend, the late Rose Pak.
Crabtree “was obviously someone I would have great admiration for,” Brown said on Monday after he enlisted Houskeeper to write a Facebook post that tried to explain the gaffe.
“Hiz Honor told me this morning that he loves that cigar-smoking Lotizer.
ta Crabtree and was just trying to bring attention to our 112th Quake Commemoration with his Sunday Chronicle item,” Houskeeper wrote, inviting more vitriolic comments from people warning Brown to back off.
“Willie should have stayed in Mineola, Texas,” wrote a Facebook commenter named Joe Reney.
“So we’re just gonna wipe away our history like this? NO,” wrote another commenter, David Boyll.
Brown also ran afoul of the #MeToo movement, Houskeeper said, since Lotta’s Fountain is one of the few monuments in the city that’s named for a woman.
San Francisco has 87 statues, but only two of them represent real women: the Florence Nightingale sculpture outside Laguna Honda Hospital, and Dianne Feinstein’s bust in City Hall. Add to that the Lillie Coit Memorial Tower on Telegraph Hill, and females still account for a small portion of the city’s public art.
“Lotta — she was a talented, wild, liberated woman,” said Donna Ewald Huggins, a history buff who attends the earthquake ceremony every year dressed as Lillie Coit.
Crabtree started out performing for miners in her hometown of Grass Valley before gracing stages throughout San Francisco. She made a fortune investing in real estate, and commissioned the fountain in 1875 as a gift to the city. It was a meeting place after the 1906 earthquake and became the site for the earthquake memorial in 1919.
The fountain sat rusting for decades until a group of historians began pestering Brown during his 1995 campaign for mayor. He promised to get the water running, and did so in 1998, with $160,000 and a crack team of engineers.
Brown credited Lee, who was named S.F. Public Works director in 2000, for leading the fountain restoration effort.
Huggins dismissed the idea of renaming the fountain but defended Brown, saying the former mayor had good intentions in honoring Lee, who died of a heart attack on Dec. 12.
“I think Willie’s statement was more admiration for Ed Lee” than denigration of Lotta Crabtree, Huggins said.
Brown isn’t the only one rushing to stamp Lee’s name on a piece of the city. In January, mayoral candidate London Breed proposed renaming Portsmouth Square after Lee, a gesture that some interpreted as a brazen political ploy.
Another candidate in the mayor’s race, Angela Alioto, tried to one-up Breed by promoting a November ballot measure to rechristen Kearny Street in Lee’s honor.
Alioto said the idea of renaming a major downtown artery is mild compared to Brown’s pitch for the Ed Lee fountain.
“That was so out of left field, it literally gave me goose bumps,” she said.
Huggins said it’s appropriate to put some type of Ed Lee memorial on or near Lotta’s Fountain, given that he attended the earthquake ceremony every year.
On Sunday she made a few phone calls and raised about $8,000, which she hopes to spend on an Ed Lee sidewalk plaque.