More Demands for Justice. Noe Valley neighbors made a show of support in June by taking to a slowed Sanchez Street and saying that black lives matter. For more protest coverage and essays by two African American Noe Valley residents, see pages 8 and 9 of this edition. Photo by Sally Smith
Vol. XLIV, No. 7
July/August 2020
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THE NOE VALLEY VOICE The Valley Tavern And How It Came To Be
Tracing the Roots Of Abby (and Alexander) Fisher
By Megan Wetherall
By Evelyn Rose
f you’ve lingered over a pint at the Valley Tavern at 4054 24th St., then you have steeped in a fascinating history that spans more than a century, from when the bones of the building were first laid shortly after the 1906 earthquake right up to the precarious present. According to local legend, the original structure was a storage space that became the overflow mortuary for a crematorium located in what is now the Peruvian restaurant Fresca. After a stint as a coffee shop in the 1940s, the place was revamped as the first in a long line of bars, which included the Celtic Tavern, Murphy’s Irish Inn, Finnegan’s Wake, the Rat and Raven, the Coyote Club, and most recently, since 2007, the Valley Tavern. Noe resident Mary McFadden is the oldest of 10 children and grew up next door to this colorful establishment during the 1960s, in the small Victorian where her mother still lives. She describes a working-class immigrant neighborhood of bars, bookshops, and bakeries. Her father, a Scottish immigrant from the slums of Glasgow, had his doctor’s office in their house and frequented all the bars. “Bars were the province of men,” Mc-
Editor's Note: A few years back, in our May 2017 issue, the Noe Valley Voice published a short piece by bookstore owner Celia Sack in which she described one of her most prized possessions, a cookbook by Abby Fisher, an African American woman living in San Francisco in the 1880s. With her recent rediscovery that Fisher had resided in Noe Valley, historian Evelyn Rose approached the Voice in late 2019 to ask if she could share what she had learned about Mrs. Fisher and her road from the deep South to a wood-frame house on 27th Street. We are pleased to print it here.
Vince and Declan Hogan Pour Their Generous Spirits Into Local Venue
Born a Slave in the South, Cookbook Author Called Noe Valley Home
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What We Haven’t Known That Mrs. Fisher Already Knew: Some Insights for a Southern Culinary Mystery By Evelyn Rose, Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project The Garden Is Open: Though the interior of the Valley Tavern is off limits to patrons, service is happening in the spacious outdoor area. Photo by Megan Wetherall
Fadden recalls dryly. “And these were his patients, the people he served. There were radios instead of televisions, and the bar windows were always open with guys
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hanging out, and you could hear the ball game or live music out on the streets.”
hat Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Pickles, Preserves, etc., a small book published by the Women’s Co-operative Printing Office of San Francisco in 1881, was once
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