UPDATED May 11, 2022
Alma Charlotte Corday le Normand de Bretteville was born on March 24, 1881 on a farm in San Francisco’s Sunset District[1]. The fifth of six children, the family struggled to make ends meet. Alma quit school at the age of 14 to work full time at her mother’s bakery/laundry service/massage parlor. She enrolled in the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art[2] to study painting, and earned money by posing as a nude model. At six feet tall and with striking features and a knack for engaging conversation, she was highly sought after. Alma became involved with a gold miner named Charlie Anderson who ultimately left her, and she successfully sued him for “personal defloweration” for which she was awarded $1,250.
Alma’s life changed forever when she posed for artist Robert Aitkens’ design submitted for the Dewey Monument in Union Square[3], a statue commissioned by San Francisco’s Citizen’s Committee to celebrate the 1903 US victory in the Spanish-American War. Aitkens envisioned the Greek Goddess Nike perched atop an 85 foot column with a trident in one hand and a wreath in the other. Business mogul Adolph Spreckels, owner of the Spreckels Sugar Company, was the deciding vote in choosing Aitkens’ design, namely because of his desire to meet the model. Spreckels was a wealthy man but shrouded in scandal when eight years earlier he shot San Francisco Chronicle[3A] journalist Michael de Young – twice – for accusing his family of monopolizing the sugar trade. Spreckels would have kept shooting had another Chronicle employee not shot him in the arm. He plead temporary insanity and was acquitted of attempted murder.
Spreckels was 24 years Alma’s senior, and he courted her for five years before she finally agreed to marry him in 1908. They had three children: one son and two daughters. Spreckels bought Alma property at the corner of Washington and Octavia in Pacific Heights as a Christmas present. After moving the eight Victorian houses that existed on the lot to other locations, Alma commissioned the building of a three story Beaux Arts mansion in 1912. There is a five-car garage that she repurposed into an air raid shelter during World War II[4]. The estate is one block long and half a block wide, its rooftop observatory offers a 360 degree view. Today, the romance author Danielle Steele owns the property. Steele raised the ire of the neighborhood when she planted an enormous hedge-wall around the perimeter of her estate for privacy.
To furnish their new home, Alma traveled to Paris, where she was introduced to the sculptor August Rodin. She became one of his most important patrons, returning home from that trip with 13 of his sculptures which she displayed at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition[5]. It was here that she fell in love with a replica of Paris’s Palais D’Honneur. Wanting a public space to house her extensive art collection, but unable to approach the de Young Museum[6] because of the running feud between her husband and the de Young family, she and Adolph commissioned the building of California’s Palace of the Legion of Honor[7] in Lincoln Park, copying the Paris design. It is both a museum and a memorial to the 3,600 California casualties during World War I[8]. While the de Young Museum houses American art, the Legion of Honor houses European art.
Six months before the Legion of Honor opened, Adolph Spreckels died. Following his death Alma threw herself into philanthropy. While she had not been accepted into San Francisco’s upper eschelon of society when she and Adolph married, she was considered the most influencial member of that society at the time of Adoph’s death. She raised thousands of dollars during the Depression[9] and World War II by hosting fundraisers at her home and setting up high end thrift shops throughout the City. In 1939 she married Elmer Awl, a Santa Barbara businessman who had helped her purchase a hotel. Awl, a member of the Coast Guard Reserve, was called up at the beginning World War II, and while he was overseas Alma learned that he had been having an affair with her niece. She divorced him while he was still on tour.
In 1951 Alma donated money for the establishment of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, located at the foot of Polk Street in Aquatic Park in a former bathhouse built to look like a ship. While she and the museum organizers would have a falling out, Alma donated an extensive model ship collection. The museum became part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park[10], which includes a fleet of historic vessels, a visitor center, the museum and a library.
When her son died in 1961, Alma retreated from society. She died seven years later at the age of 87. One will always be reminded of Alma when visiting Union Square, but her most famous legacy is the fact that she referred to her husband Adolph as her “sugar daddy”, a term that gained traction and is still used in our cultural lexicon today.[11]
[1] Sunset District: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4584
[2] Mark Hopkins Institute of Art/The San Francisco Art Institute: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4627 [3] Union Square: story coming July 25th [3A] San Francisco Chronicle: story coming January 16th [4] World War II: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4222 [5] 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition: story coming February 20th [6] De Young Museum: story coming March 23rd [7] Legion of Honor: story coming September 10th [8] World War I: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4079 [9] The Great Depression: story coming October 11th [10] Visit them at www.nps.gov[11] For a more in-depth look at Alma’s life, I recommend Big Alma by Martin Chapman, Ann Heath Karlstrom, and Bernice Scharlach
