Lewin stepping down at Mechanics’ Institute

Ralph Lewin, who in four years helped solidify the Mechanics’ Institute’s reputation as a literary oasis in downtown San Francisco, has announced his departure from the venerable cultural center.

Lewin will step down as the nonprofit institute’s executive director on Jan. 14. He will become the executive director of the Peter E. Haas Jr. Family Fund, a nonprofit grant-making foundation based at the Marin Community Foundation.

Under Lewin’s leadership, the Mechanics’ Institute, founded in 1854 by artisans and craftsmen, helped bring in tenants to the 108-year-old, nine-story tower that made the place a hub of literary life amid the moneymaking of the Financial District.

“When I started at Mechanics’ four years ago,” Lewin said, “I had hopes that we might capture the spirit of the Monkey Block,” the lively 1853 Montgomery Block building where Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Mark Twain and many other artists and writers lived. “We may have taken a step in that direction with Litquake, Zyzzyva, the Writers Studio, the San Francisco Historical Society, Tiffany Shlain and others now counting Mechanics’ as home.”

The centerpiece of the institute’s slender Beaux-Arts building has long been its two-story library, which houses 150,000 volumes. True to its egalitarian mission, the institute charges a reasonable annual membership fee of $120, or $65 for students. Among its past members are such notables as writers Gertrude Atherton and Frank Norris, photographer Eadweard Muybridge and naturalist John Muir. Today’s growing membership includes Pulitzer Prizewinning authors Adam Johnson and T.J. Stiles.

“The Mechanics’ Institute is the first chamber in the beating heart of San Francisco’s literary scene,” Johnson said, adding that the library is “filled with books, history, rich programming, and writers and readers of all walks.”

Johnson said the library allows patrons to be “bathed in inspiration, as I was on the many days I spent composing chapters of ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ in the institute’s comfy leather chairs.”

In his tenure, Lewin also brought in the street-level DaDa Art Gallery and Bar, calling it “the anchor gathering place for Mechanics’. The fight for the right to open that bar was a fight for a piece of the soul of San Francisco.”

In August, the institute also secured a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities — the largest grant Mechanics’ has ever received.

Lindsey Crittenden, president of the Board of Trustees of the Mechanics’ Institute, said the board will conduct a search for a new director over the next few months.

“It’s been a great run,” Lewin said. “I’ll miss the mixture of people and this historic place. I feel that the Mechanics’ Institute is one of those places that makes San Francisco, well, San Francisco.”

“The Mechanics’ Institute is the first chamber in the beating heart of San Francisco’s literary scene ... filled with books, history, rich programming, and writers and readers of all walks.” Adam Johnson, author