THE LANGE LAUNCH COMPANY

by Annie Sutter

The following article appeared in the Spring 1980 issue of the SHS Quarterly publication. It is about the first use of the building on Bridgeway where Scoma’s Restaurant currently resides. It has been lightly edited.

Mathias Lange was born in Norway and appeared in Sausalito in the late 1880s. By 1904 the enterprising young man had several boats at work around the Bay including the paperboat which delivered the San Francisco newspapers to Marin County. In 1907 the building which now houses Scoma's Restaurant became headquarters for his business and his advertisement proclaimed; LANGE'S LAUNCH CO - LAUNCHES FOR HIRE AT ALL HOURS.
And work aplenty there was for the few engine driven boats around Sausalito in the early 1900s; towing, water taxi, deliveries, fishing trips, private party cruises. "If you missed the ferry you called Lange; he brought the morning papers and late Sausalitans home from San Francisco."

He must have meant the "at all hours" on his slogan, for he left Sausalito every night at midnight to pick up the Chronicle and Examiner from San Francisco. He left there at 1:30 a.m. and delivered the papers first to Alcatraz, then to Angel Island,  Tiburon and Belvedere, and on to Sausalito, arriving at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. Three times a week he took papers to Mile Rock lighthouse outside the Gate. The lighthouse keeper would lower a bucket and Lange would deliver the papers to the bucket.  
According to his daughter, he was as faithful to his rounds as the proverbial  postman. "He never  missed  the route, no matter how stormy. He would rope the steering gear, and  sometimes  the  bow would be under water. He would go forward and throw oil to break the waves."

As the years went on his launches, the Marie L and the M. Lange were always hard at work, towing barges and anything that needed hauling, running yachtsmen out to boats moored in Richardson Bay, taking liveaboards home to laid-up sailing ships and freighters, and taking servicemen to their ships (fare 50 cents). These launches were in service for at least 30 years, for we find Lange taking the crew to and from the Zaca before she left Sausalito on a round-the-world cruise in 1930.

In the 1930s the sign changed, the new one featured CRABS AND HOT DOGS, and Captain Lange was known as Pop Lange. He sold bait, soda pop and beer, made sandwiches, took fishing expeditions, and advertised fresh crab. This building survives today, and in 1926 was moved slightly south. It has been a bar and a restaurant, notably the Tin Angel and the Glad Hand, and finally Scoma’s. It has been pushed out, added to, remodeled and redecorated, but underneath, it is still the same building.

The Bars and Saloons of Early Sausalito

This story is taken from the Sausalito Historical Society's Fall 1980 newsletter. It has been edited and shortened.

by Annie Sutter

Do you think poolrooms are places where you play billiards? Not in the Sausalito of the 1890s; they were places where people went to gamble by "pooling" bets on horse races. Do you think you get soda pop at a soda pop parlour? Not in Prohibition era Sausalito where "soda pop and cigar" stores sprang up to cover what everyone knew were speakeasies. Sausalito was a town where San Franciscans went to gamble, where local elections were swung by votes from the barrooms; a town that in its first beginnings sported a hotel and bowling alley before a church, a school or a post office.

The first establishment believed to have been a bar in Sausalito was the Fountain House. Little is known of the Fountain House, and we can only presume that they sold liquor, for we have no ads, menus or firsthand accounts. The Fountain House was built in 1850 by a Mr. McCormack and was sold the next year to Capt. Dickenson and E.T. Whittlesey who operated it in conjunction with a bowling alley. In 1852 a hotel of unknown name was put up by "Bill the Cook" and it is never mentioned again. In 1854 Capt. George Snow built the Saucelito Hotel in Old Town; it burned in 1873.

The Buffalo Hotel was built sometime in the 1880s on the waterfront near what is now Scoma's. Little is known of the Buffalo's early days but we can be sure this one served liquor for it sported a sign saying, "Pabst Beer, 5cents". It was probably built by J. Lowder who sold it in 1893 to build the Walhalla. In the 1890s, political manipulating centered around the Buffalo. In those days poolrooms were centers for gambling and drinking and San Franciscans flocked to Sausalito on the ferries to bet on horse races. The City Councils of 1893 and 1894 prohibited poolrooms, the ordinances of 1896 licensed them, and in 1897 the licenses were revoked. Of course the attitude depended on who had been elected. The Buffalo Hotel played a big part in the elections. Anyone could vote in Sausalito who had been a resident for two weeks. Politicians went to San Francisco and gathered bums and barflies and put them up for two weeks at the Buffalo, all food and drinks, in exchange for votes.

By the time a large fire in 1893 wiped out many of the downtown bars, Sausalito had become a gambling center and a rowdy place where "a decent woman didn't like to pass through Water Street to get to the ferry. The whole town smelled of stale beer"; a town where 25 saloons clustered around the ferry docks and the railroad tracks. We can name some of them from a. newspaper report about a fire which began on the 4th of July 1893. "Guests at the El Monte Hotel were setting off fireworks and fire started on a roof below. The following saloons were destroyed: George Ginn's, M. Beiro's Saloon, the Ferry Cafe, the Lisbon House and the Tamalpais Hotel."

Three downtown establishments that were not destroyed in the fire were across the street. Then the Bay came right up to Bridgeway and the bars stood on stilts. There was the Arbordale, a beer garden, where the owner, Mama Kirstenmacher, sang opera for the patrons, and across the water on stilts was Claudino's Yacht House. It disappears from the records after placing an ad in the year book in 1900. The Walhalla was out toward Ft. Baker, and it was a loud and rowdy place with sawdust on the floor. They served seafood and had clambakes, and during Prohibition it was a bootlegging center. The No Name Bar, which had been called the Lisbon House, was rebuilt after the fire of 1894. It was variously called the Oak Grill, the Pine Lodge, and Herb's Club Cafe.

Today people still flock to Sausalito on the ferries and there are still many watering holes for those so inclined. Perhaps it is not as exciting as when you had to peek through a hole in the door and say, "Joe sent me," but perhaps not. In Sausalito the fun has always been where you make it.

History Beneath Your Feet

By Annie Sutter

When you drive to the Spinnaker Restaurant, or walk along the southern edge of the Sausalito Yacht Harbor, you’re treading atop a treasure trove of nautical history. Enroute to the Spinnaker, you’re walking over an accumulation of Bay mud, shells, rocks and dredging spoils gathered over many years as fill for the street and parking lot. If you park at the yacht brokerage or the store next to the harbor, you’re walking over old ships, some with their engines still there.

Three vessels lie in a roughly east-west line beneath the parking lot at Bay and Humboldt. They were the steam schooners Mazama, Wellesley, and Santa Barbara, brought in by Herb Madden Sr. in the early 1940s to create the south bulkhead of the Sausalito Yacht Harbor. The area, says one resident old-timer, was just mudflats and a muddy basin where the Bay shallowed just east of Bridgeway. “My father bought three ships,” says Herb Madden Jr., “the Mazama, the steam schooners Wellesley, and Santa Barbara, vessels like the Wapama. These ships were all over the place then, and available because the building of the bridges made coastal steam schooners outdated.” The Mazama, a World War I wooden steam vessel, was much older than the others, and had been anchored offshore for years. Its engines and probably most of its gear had been removed, but the Wellesley and Santa Barbara, smaller lumber schooners, still had “engines, furnishings, everything,” said Madden. The three ships were towed in, filled with sand and then burned. Jack Tracy, in his historic book on Sausalito, Moments In Time, tells of an unexpected turn of events: “On the night of November 17, 1944, the old schooners were burned near the Madden and Lewis Yacht Harbor to clear the sand spit of hulks. Hundreds watched as the Mayor ignited an oil soaked rope leading to the ships. To everyone’s surprise, one of the vessels contained thousands of gallons of fuel oil, which burned fiercely throughout the night. Cities around the Bay watched in horror as they assumed Marinship or all of Sausalito was being consumed by flames. The next day as the fire continued, Sausalito was criticized in the San Francisco press for neglecting to inform others of the bonfire.”

Kids Keep Sausalito History Alive

By Larry Clinton, President
The Sausalito Historical Society Schools Program again provided living history lessons to students from Bayside Elementary School and Willow Creek Academy this spring.   Third graders received workbooks with biographical sketches of noteworthy individuals, families and merchants who lived or worked in Sausalito around the turn of the 20th Century.  Then they visited the Historical Society research facility in City Hall to  uncover  photographs and background information on how these people lived and what they did in Sausalito 100 years ago.
The program involved approximately 40 third grade students, third grade teachers Anne Siskin (Willow Creek) and Jim Scullion (Bayside), over a dozen SHS docents, numerous parents, school administrators and local businesses. Participating students received plaques including their photos and their research reports at a joint ceremony on June 4.  
Another Historical Society schools program is being planned for this fall.

 
Willow Creek

SHS volunteers Bob Woodrum, Vicki Nichols, Jeanne Fidler, Margaret Badger, Robin Sweeny, Roland Ojeda, Susan Frank and Larry Clinton (l. to r., top row) are joined by the head of Willow Creek Academy, Carol Cooper (bottom l.), teacher Ann Siskin (bottom, fourth from right) and Willow Creek students.

 
Bayside

Jonette Newton, Principal of Bayside Elementary School (bottom left) and teacher Jim Scullion (top l.) helped SHS volunteers congratulate the Bayside students.

Photos by Ted Sempliner, courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society

 

The Early Boatyards of Sausalito

by Annie Sutter

Boatbuilding in Sausalito has been an ongoing activity from William Richardson's time to the present. The cove in Old Town provided an ideal site for the construction and repair of boats. Photographs of the 1880s show fishing feluccas in the cove and elsewhere along Sausalito's waterfront, when boatbuilding was mainly a family affair. A Sausalito Land and Ferry Co. map of 1873 shows two wharves at the foot of Richardson, probably used by fishermen. But the first mention of a boatbuilding business is found in the Sausalito News of 1890 which reports that "the California Launch Building Company is building a tugboat and a number of fine steam launches."

A boatyard called Brixen and Munfrey was in the cove about 1900, and was destroyed by fire in 1908. In 1920 William Hynes founded The Reliance Boat Company on the little beach, a spot described by his son as "A labyrinth of old docks with crab and salmon boats moored against ancient pilings - there were ways but no pier." This yard would be taken over in 1925 by the Nunes Bros. who would become famous for their tugs, barges, yachts, sailing vessels and Bay class designs.

Not the first, but a very early boatbuilder in Sausalito was Menotti Pasquinucci. He left his home in Viareggio, Italy in the early 1890s and set up shop in Sausalito in 1894 or 1895 at the foot of Turney Street. This business would remain at the same location for some sixty years. Early photos show an extensive family, cousins, brothers, and uncles at work in the yard, and the business would pass on to Menotti's son Frank as the years went on.

Although the yard  remained in the same location at Turney St., the building burned down several times. A photo of the first building in the early 1900s shows a sign "New Sausalito Boat Builder - P. Menotti." Turney St. was then in the area called "New Sausalito," as opposed to "Old Town" which was around the cove at the foot of Valley. And the name is reversed. Menotti Pasquinucci, who was known as "Mr. Menotti," used the old country style of presenting his name, with his initial "P" coming first.

The Pasquinuccis built mostly small fishboats. A news­paper account credits them with building "more than 700 craft of one type of another" and people say "there goes a Pasquinucci" when a little fishboat resembling a Monterey chugs by. But they did build a few yachts, some for members of the San Francisco Yacht Club, and a 1907 photo shows a graceful sailing yacht, the Pagan Lady, alongside the shop. A note on the back of another photo says "a Pasquinucci hull design for a sail powered fishboat similar to a cat boat rig," also circa 1907.

By 1920, after another fire destroyed the building, a photo shows that P. Menotti has changed his name to M. Pasquinucci and the business to "Sausalito Boat Bldg Wks". By 1939 son Frank has taken over, has changed the name to F. Pasquinucci and has added Marine Ways, phone number 40. This building also burned, and, as evidence of the growing population, in 1946 the Sausalito Boat Bldg. Works phone number has become 970.