UPDATED June 29, 2022
St. Dominic Church (St. Dominic’s)[1] is a Roman Catholic parish at the corner of Bush and Steiner in the Western Addition of San Francisco.
The Dominican Order first came to San Francisco from Spain in 1850 led by Reverend Joseph Alemany who would later be appointed as the first ArchBishop of the San Francisco ArchDiocese. The first Dominican Priory was established in 1863 at Broadway and Van Ness. That same year the Order bought the Steiner/Bush/Pierce/Pine block. The first St. Dominic Church opened at the site on June 29, 1873. The church was soon too small for its burgeoning congregation and a second church was built. This structure was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fires[2]. Parishioners gathered outside for mass each week as a temporary structure was quickly erected. Construction of the current St. Dominic’s was completed in 1928. This fourth church is a magnificent gothic structure with stone, stained glass and high ceilings. After the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake[3] the octagonal lantern atop the tower was destroyed and not replaced. Nine flying buttresses were added to the sides of the church for fortification.
Opened in 1862, St. Rose Academy for Girls was on St. Dominic grounds and part of a convent for semi-cloistered nuns. It was a stately white stone structure on the corner of Pierce and Pine that looked more like a mansion found on a Southern plantation than a school. There was a chapel on the first floor where daily services were performed by St. Dominic priests. A small grotto sat just outside the school. The nuns could not leave the grounds alone and were not allowed to share meals with others. Because they practiced periods of silence, there was no talking in the hallways or during lunch in the communal cafeteria. Once lunch was finished, students were encouraged to grab a veil and go to the Chapel to pray. St. Rose remained the oldest private girls high school in San Francisco until the Loma Prieta Earthquake caused significant structural damage. The building was torn down and the student body was absorbed by St. Ignatius College Preparatory School. The story goes that, as the bulldozers were about to demolish the building, Father Martin Walsh threw himself between the machinery and the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto. This grotto remains today and is the only thing left of St. Rose Academy. The space where the building once stood is now a parking lot for the church.
Both my mother Anne and my great-aunt Barbara Jane Filmer attended St. Rose. Barbara Jane, born in 1911, was considered a cripple because she had one leg that was significantly longer than the other. “Cripples” were not treated well during her lifetime because of San Francisco’s Ugly Laws[4], designed to keep “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed” people off the streets. Barbara Jane’s parents sent her St. Rose Academy in the hopes that the nuns would treat her kindly, which they did. After graduation Barbara Jane lived at home with her parents, her brother and her brother’s bride. She spent her days painting and embroidering intricate bookmarks that she donated to St. Dominic’s.
In 1935, at the age of 24, Barbara Jane went in for a simple surgical procedure at Stanford Hospital on Sacramento. The surgeon did not take the time to consult with her beforehand and was therefore unaware that Barbara Jane suffered from a bleeding disorder. Barbara Jane died on the operating table.
Before she died, Barbara Jane would tell her sister-in-law Florence (my grandmother) about her “visions”. One was that she was at a funeral where there were bouquets of Calla lilies on the coffin. Another was of a little brown haired girl sleeping in her bed (the entire family was blond). When Florence arrived at Barbara Jane’s funeral, her casket was covered in Calla lilies. When my mother was born a year later, she was given Barbara Jane’s room. One night, as Florence went to tuck her into bed, she realized that a brown-haired girl was now sleeping in Barbara Jane’s bed. Florence, already susceptible to superstition, became a staunch believer in the gifts of sight.
Anne attended St. Rose in the mid-1950s. Like her aunt, she thrived there. The uniforms, according to Anne, looked like they were made out of horse blankets: heavy tan tweed styled in 1940’s fashion and worn with a brown beret, brown gloves, and brown shoes. Anne would later marry at St. Dominic’s.
[1] Visit them at https://stdominics.org
[2] 1906 Earthquake and Fires: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2849 [3] 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake: story coming October 17th [4] The Ugly Laws: story coming October 31st
