It seems incredible, but over 6 million people ride the cable car every year[1]. Another 6 million visit the San Francisco Public Library[2] and over 175,000 registered guests and prospective students visit the University of California at Berkeley[3]. How many of these visitors recognize the name of Andrew Smith Hallidie? Despite being directly involved in these quintessential experiences few people recognize his name, nor realize the impact he had on “life” as we enjoy it in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Born in 1834, the son of a Scottish inventor and engineer, the teenaged Andrew Smith Hallidie arrived in California with his father during the height of the Gold Rush to take advantage of mining and engineering prospects. Left penniless and on his own a few years later, Hallidie rose to meet the challenges of the frontier by using determination and his family’s patented wire rope to build bridges, mining transit systems, and an industry disrupting transportation system in 1873 - one of San Francisco’s most cherished tourist attractions - the cable car. By the end of his life in 1900, Hallidie had established himself as the west’s premier wire rope manufacturer, a leader of the state’s industrial endeavors, and a champion of the region’s libraries and educational institutions.

Hallidie had a remarkable life and I can't wait to tell you about him!

A full-length biography on Andrew Smith Hallidie is long overdue. Hallidie was a prolific lecturer, writer of stories, and autobiographical essayist for business handbooks and biographical encyclopedias such as the National Cyclopedia of American Biography (1891-1984). There has never been a comprehensive biography about him nor any attempt to interpret his life outside of the hyperbole and myths of the period in which he lived.

Nearly everything written about Hallidie cites three essays composed in the late 1940s by the banker and cable car lover Edgar Myron Kahn and published by the California Historical Society. His works on Hallidie are the seeds from which everything available about Hallidie springs including museum copy at the Cable Car Museum and commemorative plaques. Unfortunately, Kahn’s essays rely so heavily on Hallidie’s autobiographical works that they border on plagiarism, add little to the understanding of Hallidie’s life, and embarrassingly in many cases have the facts wrong.

There is also a need to examine the major organizations, which Hallidie stewarded: Mechanics’ Institute, the James Lick Trust, California School of Mechanical Arts (now Lick-Wilmerding High School), San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Art Association, and the University of California. While there is a “history” of the Mechanics’ Institute recently published (Four Books, Three Hundred Dollars and a Dream by Richard Reinhardt, 2005), it is a “coffee table” style book heavy on illustrations and regrettably lacking in notes or citations. The Mechanics’ Institute through its stunning library, pioneering teaching efforts, and thirty-one industrial expositions was instrumental to the development of California’s industry, economy, and attitude towards libraries and public education. The Institute was the closest thing to a public library in San Francisco for nearly twenty-five years (as the city’s Public Library wouldn’t open its doors until 1879) and was tapped by the Governor of California to help oversee the fledgling University of California in 1868. The Mechanics’ Institute owes a heavy debt to Hallidie who devoted forty years of his life to helping it prosper and its story has never been told from Hallidie’s vantage point.

The California School of Mechanical Arts and the James Lick Trust have remarkably been ignored by local historians, save a few books about the Lick Observatory (James Lick’s Monument: The Saga of Captain Richard Floyd and the Building of the Lick Observatory by Helen Wright, 1987 and Eye on the Sky: Lick Observatory's First Century by Osterbrock, Gustafson, and Unruh, 2010). When James Lick died in 1876, he was one of the richest men in California. His Trust, hotly contested by its beneficiaries - many of whom are still active today, has a story worth telling within the context of Hallidie’s involvement.

In 1875, after touring the Eastern states, Hallidie came home with a grand idea – to form a free public library. What is now known as the San Francisco Public Library, the first in the State, and the legislation that made it possible, the Rogers Act (named after Hallidie’s partner in the endeavor, Senator George H. Rogers) could be considered the most important, and civilizing events in California’s history. The Rogers Act authorizes cities to establish a free public library, and levy a property tax to support it. While Hallidie’s involvement is covered briefly in Peter Wiley’s A Free Library in This City: The Illustrated History of the San Francisco Public Library (1996), more should be said about this monumental event.

Finally, a book about Hallidie should be written because he was a person of honor who keenly felt his role as citizen. Hallidie was concerned about the quality of life in San Francisco working closely with local charities and improvement societies. He crusaded tirelessly to better the plight of working class boys and girls, acting as a founding director of the Boys and Girls Aid Society and serving as a trustee of the Hospital for Women and Children. He also possessed surprisingly advanced notions about girls’ educational possibilities, postulating to the Mechanics’ Institute in 1872 that he saw “no good reason why equal facilities and opportunities in which relates to technical and industrial education should [not] be given to women as to men.”[4] Hallidie ought to be at the top of any list of California’s founding fathers and more people should know about his myriad contributions to the “life” we so value in California.

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[1] San Francisco Travel Association, San Francisco Fact Sheet, Accessed September 1, 2019

[2] San Francisco Public Library Annual Report 2017-2018

[3] Baer, Joel, Campus Welcomes New Visitor Center, Berkeley Visitor Services

[4] Andrew S. Hallidie, 16th Annual Address of the Mechanics’ Institute, delivered at their rooms in San Francisco on June 1, 1872.