Thursday's Mission Dolores: Part II

Mission Dolores

By the time the United States defeated Mexico in the Mexican-American War (1848 to 1848), the sleepy port village of Yerba Buena connected to the Mission via a two-plank road. After the Gold Rush of 1849, Yerba Buena and its port eclipsed the village around the mission as the cultural and economic center of the region. With the American victory came land disputes among the Mexican-owned rancheros, including those around the mission.

The American government promised the prominent Mexican landowners they would maintain the same boundaries as they had under the Mexican government. The land around Mission Dolores became part of Rancho San Miguel, owned by the Noe family. However, several factors precluded the ranchero families from keeping their land. The United States defeated Mexico in 1848 and gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill the same year. The Gold Rush began in earnest in 1849. Yerba Buena became San Francisco and its population swelled from 800 people in 1849 to 34,000 just three short years later.

Seemingly overnight squatters began pitching tents and started claiming the lands owned by the great ranchero families, without knowledge of whose land it was. Some of those rancheros cover hundreds of square miles, and difficult to control the boundaries on the periphery of these large swaths of land. Soon the land around the Mission Dolores started to see squatters, as tens of thousands of people descended upon San Francisco to seek their fortune in gold.

This begat conditions which lead to the mission's demise. Once the center of the community, Mission Dolores kind of ended up in what became a backwater part of the city. St. Mary's Church was built in 1854 just a few blocks from the port, became the main Catholic church for the city, and the first brick building in San Francisco. By 1857, the Franciscans had turned control of the Mission San Francisco to the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

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Racism also had a part to play in the demise of the mission's influence. The Catholic parishioners around the old mission were predominantly descendants of Mexican and Spanish settlers. The new Catholic immigrants who arrived to find their fortune in gold were mostly northern European: French, German, and Italian. The burial registers show a change from mostly Spanish names to Italian and Irish. They found a home, closer to the port, at St. Mary's church.

Soon thereafter, a schism arose between the different adherents of the faith. As the city grew by leaps and bounds in the decades after the Gold Rush, the influence of the church shifted from Mission Dolores to the wealthier northern parts of the city.

By the turn of the 20th century, the city grew around the mission into a diverse neighborhood. It was no longer predominantly Latino. Within a mile of the mission sprang German, Irish and Greek enclaves within the Mission District. Although the post-war Mission District reverted to a mostly Latino population again, due to white-flight and cheaper housing for the suburbs, there are still remnants of a previously ethnically diverse neighborhood.

In 1918 a basilica was constructed next to the original mission in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, which was a popular style for churches at that time. It was also the first church designated a basilica west of the Mississippi River

In the post-war era, Mission Dolores achieved a kind of notoriety. The Archbishop of San Francisco, John J. Mitty announced in 1952 that Pope Pius XII had proclaimed Mission Dolores had achieved the status of a minor basilica. Thus, making it the first minor basilica west of Chicago and only the fifth one in the United States.

Having the pope's endorsement brought some attention to the mission in the 1950s, but what brought more notoriety was the recognition from Alfred Hitchcock. In his 1958 classic Vertigo, the Master of Suspense filmed a short but pivotal scene where Jimmy Stuart follows a possessed (or so we thought) Kim Novak through Mission Dolores and into their small graveyard. There he finds her transfixed by one of the headstones.

Fun Fact: Ironically the Mission's small graveyard is the only one left in San Francisco. All the others were shut down, dug up, and relocated in the 1950s and 1960s.

Over the last 50 years the neighborhoods around Mission Dolores have evolved from a case study of White-Flight to the suburbs, to a gentrified reverse migration of young high-paid tech executives a generation later. They wanted a gritty urban experience rather than the banal suburbs they grew up in. Ironically, the intersection of Dolores and 16th Streets, where the mission is located, became a home for other denominations and faith-based organizations. There is a synagogue, a Mennonite, and Lutheran Church on each corner - making it an unofficial Ecumenical zone.

As a former chief concierge of a fancy hotel, I judge Mission Dolores' popularity based not on how many parishioners they have, but by how many tourists visit. Given that it is one of the primary stops for the all of the Hop-On/Hop-Off sightseeing tour buses (or Ho Hos, in a hotel parlance), makes Mission Dolores more than just San Francisco's first building, it has been a cultural and integral touchpoint in the city's history.

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