The first flower stall to appear in San Francisco was in front of the Chronicle Building[1] on Market Street[2] sometime in the 1890s. As the City grew, flowers were predominantly grown and sold by Italian, Japanese and Chinese immigrants. By the early 1900s there were 160 flower stands in the City, with Grant and Kearney Streets having a flower stand at every corner. FLower stands have remained popular in San Francisco: the temperate weather allows them to remain open all year round.
Paul Nalbandian arrived in San Francisco in 1915 after fleeing the Armenian Genocide. He opened a flower stand at the cable car turnaround at Market and Powell, calling it “Paul’s Flowers”. When he was killed in World War II[3], his son Harvey (1924 – 2014) took over management of the stand for the next 88 years.
Harvey’s brother Al ran a separate flower stand in front of I Magnin[4] at the corner of Geary and Stockton. Al was not only a florist, but he appeared in 20 movies and TV series. He was also an avid Armenian art collector and died in 2017 at age 95.
In 2012 a City ordinance was passed that set up a lottery system for city permits to operate flower stands and prohibited flower stand ownership to pass down to family members. The Nalbandian family was not the only family affected by this ordinance: the Hoogasian Flower Stand at 250 Post closed after operating for four generations and the Camozzi Family Flower Stand on Grant near Post closed after operating for three generations.
[1] San Francisco Chronicle: see story coming January 16th
[2] Market Street: story coming July 26th [3] World War II: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4222[4] I Magnin: see story coming December 15th
