Sisters of the Holy Family Convent, In the aftermath of the tremendous earthquake and fire of 1906, 890 Hayes Street.

The Sisters of the Holy Family had moved continually into larger quarters as their numbers and works increased after its initiation in 1872.

In 1893 a grand convent was prepared at the corner of Hayes and Fillmore Streets.  It was built very spaciously and had been paid for initially by the Archdiocese, but repaid by the Sisters.  If all the dormitories and rooms were occupied it was possible to house abut 120 persons there, with ample dining room, assembly rooms, kitchen, storage, laundry, parlors, sewing rooms, chapel and spacious attics. 

In the aftermath of the tremendous earthquake and fire of 1906, 890 Hayes Street was one of the largest buildings left in the City.  It soon became a focal point of great activity.

Dr. Charles McGettigan, M.D. was sent by Judge Murasky to make a difficult request.  After the terrifying events of the catastrophe, many people had lost their minds through terror and there were other mentally ill persons whose hospitals were gone.  The doctor requested a place where the insane could be housed and cared for.Sister Teresa O’Connor, the Superior since Sister Dolores’ death eight months before, immediately turned much of the lower floor over to the purpose.  The windows of that ground floor were barred, and it seemed the ideal place for custodial care.  The hospital filled rapidly and the sisters turned over to the needy patients the beds and cots that were left to them (they had sent half already to the emergency hospital at the Mechanics’ Pavilion) and blankets as well.  The sisters assisted in nursing the patients and the convent provided all the food required.  Father McQuaide from Sacred Heart Parish constantly sent supplies.  As many as 500 patients were cared for during the weeks that spanned the interval between the earthquake and the establishment of a temporary hospital built at Golden Gate and Gough Streets.

Upstairs on the second floor of the five-story convent, the Jesuits, their own properties burned out, occupied the front parlors and the sewing room as a temporary St. Ignatius Church, while the fathers slept in the small dormitory on that floor.  People streamed in constantly for confessions, Mass, counseling, requests for funerals or sick calls, from one place or another around the devastated City.

Judge Murasky transferred his Department of Justice from the ruins of the City Hall to the community rooms on that same second floor.  He could shout out the window, one supposes, to the City officials who were installed in the same wing of the house, but in the laundry area below the Community room and across the yard from the mental wards.  The sheriff and his deputy also opened offices in some of the smaller rooms.  The matron from the Emergency Hospital took up her quarters on the third and fourth floors with her complement of nurses who went out daily to the camps and makeshift clinics set up all around the City.  The sisters were sleeping on the floors of the house’s two attics, to make room for all the other temporary inhabitants of their home.

The only large safe left in San Francisco was located at 890 Hayes Street.  Soldiers were posted by the military at the side gate to the house because people from all over the area came with their valuables.  The Sisters became, throughout that time, the custodians of jewelry, important papers, money and other precious items saved by dozens of earthquake and fire victims.  The hallways of the house were lined with trunks, bird- cages, and goods saved from the rubble by families who brought them to the sisters for safekeeping.

A day home was opened, in the house the sisters purchased next door on Hayes street, caring for children who had no other place to go as their parents struggled with salvaging what they could from the ruins of the City.

Golden Gate Park Sewing Class 1906

Sister Raymond, the sister cook, prepared meals for all of these people, with the aid of one helper, on stoves rigged up for her in the courtyard because no cooking fires were allowed indoors.  The house was also a relief station, one of many set up around what was left of the City, to which people came daily for clothing, supplies, food and counseling.

The Sisters went out daily to the tent cities established around the city.  There they taught catechism, held sewing classes, cared for children and assisted refugees.

The efforts of the sewing classes were distributed – dresses, aprons, all sorts of wearing apparel – to the needy each month.The sisters prepared altars in various places on Sundays so that Mass could be offered without benefit of church buildings and they taught the hymns to be sung.  The camps at Golden Gate Park, Jefferson Square, Washington Square, the Potrero, Lobos Park, Harbor View and a large one at Bay and Polk Streets were the places where the Sisters of the Holy Family were to be found. 

The Sisters, their charism of “seeking out” not to be neglected, hunted up isolated tents that might have been overlooked, and took particular care to appear often at Ingleside where the elderly and many helpless invalids had been gathered.  Winds and rain often pulled tents down in many places and the sisters also worked at finding new shelter for those bereft even of the tents. 

Notwithstanding the conditions, children were prepared regularly and carefully for the sacraments, the Archbishop confirming classes of children in the few churches left standing.  First Communion was received in the tent churches and afterwards the young people were brought together for a communion breakfast in canvas coverings decorated for the occasion.  At Thanksgiving, droves of children were feasted at the convent, relay upon relay of hungry children following each other at the tables at Hayes and Fillmore, set up throughout the first two floors of the house.

At Christmas the sisters made certain that every camp had a Christmas tree.  Gifts were found for every child.  The Sunday School children of St. Mary’s Cathedral provided a program of entertainment for the elderly at Ingleside, and every resident received a small gift.  The sisters were dependent on a wide variety of transportation – express wagons, sheriffs’ vans, garbage trucks and, when there was no conveyance, they walked.

Tent City: Washington Square Children's Day Home

“Some months afterwards, when all the institutions of San Francisco were being reimbursed by the Red Cross funds, Judge Murasky asked me to go to the Sister Superior and get a statement of their losses and expenses during our regime. 

The Sister received me graciously, but refused to hear of reimbursement when I mentioned my errand -$14,000 was their allotment by the committee, which was refused in toto by these women – all for the love of their San Francisco.”

• Originals on file in the Sisters of the Holy Family Archives: Click here to view addition archival photos of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.