F. Warren Hellman was born on July 25 1934 in New York City. His great grandfather was Isaac Hellman, founder of both Wells Fargo Bank and the University of Southern California. During World War II, Warren and his family moved to Travis Air Force Base in Vacaville, California where his father served as a Major in the US Army and his mother worked as a pilot flying military planes from aircraft factories to bases. After the war the family moved to San Francisco. Warren attended Lowell High School and earned an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School. After graduation he went to work for Lehman Bothers where he became a partner at age 28. In 1977 he moved to Boston to start Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, but returned to San Francisco in 1984. He married twice and had four children. Hellman died of complications from leukemia in 2011. He was 77. His funeral was held at Congregation Emanu-El.
In 1849 a small group of Jews held San Francisco’s first High Holy Days services on the second floor of a building on Montgomery in San Francisco. A second service was held in a tent on Jackson. The Montgomery group, comprised mostly of Jews from Poland, Northern Germany, England and France eventually established Congregation Emanu-El in 1850. Simultaneously the Jackson group, comprised mostly of Jews from Southern Germany and Bavaria, established Congregation Sherith Israel. There were two separate Jewish cemeteries located next to each other at what is now Dolores Park[1]. By 1893 the cemeteries had been combined and were eventually moved to Colma.
Both congregations built synagogues in 1854: Sherith Israel was located on Stockton off Broadway (it still stands today) and Emanu-El was on Broadway near Powell. Both looked more like churches than synagogues. By 1860 Emanu-El had outgrown its space and hired Arthur Brown, who had designed San Francisco’s City Hall, to build a new synagogue at 450 Sutter Street. Brown designed a gothic structure with buttresses, pointed windows and doorways, stain glass windows and two twin towers. Gold globes were placed at the top of the towers and were the first thing sailors saw when ships rounded Telegraph Hill. It was made entirely out of brick, the belief being that fire was the City’s main threat. But in 1868 an earthquake toppled one of the towers[2]. It was repaired, only to be badly damaged again in the 1906 Earthquake[3]. The main building was repaired, but the towers were not rebuilt.
In 1926 Emanu-El moved to its current location at 2 Lake Street. Its design was heavily influenced by the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. In 1927 it was selected by the American Institute of Architects as the finest piece of architecture in Northern California. Today Emanu-El serves 2,100 households. In 2020 it announced that the synagogue will undergo a two year renovation beginning in 2023[4].
In 2001 Hellman organized and funded the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Music Festival. It is held the first weekend in October at Golden Gate Park’s Polo Fields[5]. This three-day event is free to the public and noncommercial. Various corporations have offered to sponsor the event but Hellman insisted that it be kept free of advertisements. Originally Hellman intended to only invite bluegrass musicians, but by 2004 artists from other genres were invited. The festival draws crowds equal to the entire population of San Francisco. In 2020 and 2021 the festival was held digitally due to COVID-19 restrictions, but it is scheduled to return in 2022[6].
[1] Dolores Park: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3831
[2] 1868 Earthquake: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3995
[3] 1906 Earthquake and Fires: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2849
[4] Visit them at www.emanuelsf.org
[5] Polo Fields: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4346
[6] Visit them at www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com
