Walking Through Boho Piedmont: Jack London, Marty Martinez, and a Creative Community

Our Piedmont Recreation Department’s Walking on Wednesdays group gathered last Wednesday at our regular time at the Exedra. There was a large turnout of 54 walkers and five K-9 best friends in attendance. Dave D was celebrating his birthday and his wife, Nancy, was having a party for him at their home and they invited us to come after our walk. Since we wanted to be in the neighborhood at the end of the walk, Nancy had also offered to take us on a tour of her neighborhood above Oakland Avenue, which includes the historic Blair and Scenic Avenues.

Nancy told us she became interested in the history of her neighborhood after she learned that noted architect Albert Farr once lived in her Oakland Avenue home for many years. Nancy also said she has drawn on the research that Piedmont Historical Society President Gail L and Piedmont historian Meghan Bennett have done. Meghan has created a website, https://www.paintingpiedmont.com/, dedicated to the Bourgeois Bohemians in “Boho Piedmont.”

Nancy explained that the area above Oakland Avenue was a bit of bohemian neighborhood from about 1890 to 1910. This was a far different place then than today. It was rural and sparsely populated. Writers and painters like Jack London and Xavier “Marty” Martinez lived there in some unique homes. Some of these creative types built their own homes, which seemed to be the thing that people involved in the arts did at the time.

Nancy led us across Highland Avenue and up to Oakland Avenue. We turned up Oakland and stopped at 2010 Oakland, which was once the home of George Sterling, Frank C. Havens’ nephew. Sterling worked for Havens, and married Carrie Rand, Havens’ wife’s sister. He was a frustrated writer and poet and traveled in a circle of writers and artists, including Joaquin Miller, Ambrose Bierce, Herman Whitaker, Marty Martinez and others in San Francisco. Sterling met Jack London and encouraged him to live in Piedmont, so he had an important role in creating this Piedmont artists’ colony.

We backtracked down Oakland a few houses and went up the one-block Hardwick Avenue to the steep Blair Avenue. As we were making our climb of Blair, Nancy pointed out the Sutro Mansion at the top of the street, hidden by other homes. Nancy told us that the mansion is not the first house built on this hilltop site. Initially, a much smaller, craftsman-style home was built there in 1876-77 by architect Joseph Worcester. He was known for introducing craftsman architecture in this region and for mentoring the likes of Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan. Worcester designed and built the renowned Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco. (This Worcester is not the architect for whom the University of California, Berkeley’s architecture department building is named. That’s Wurster Hall.)

This house has another, special claim to fame. It was the house that Jack London rented and lived in when he wrote his classic, The Call of the Wild, in 1902-03. However, in about 1910, after London lived in the house, it was moved two lots up the street so that the Sutro Mansion could be built on the site and have its expansive views of the Bay. We walked up Blair to see the smaller house. It has a lovely, redwood shingle exterior and was enlarged after it was moved by adding a new first floor. Nancy said it was the first redwood shingle exterior home built on the West Coast. It had been on the market recently and just sold. We took the attached group photo in front of this lovely, historical home.

Nancy told us that London was a prominent part of the Piedmont artists’ colony. He was a free-spirited, high-spirited man who sailed to the Orient and to the Klondike, drank freely, and had at least three important women in his life. The success of The Call of the Wild provided him with considerable wealth. He built a separate home for first wife, Bessie, and their two daughters, further up the hill at 206 Scenic Avenue. This was after his move in 1905 to Glen Ellen to start a new life of ranching with his second wife, Charmian. His dream home, Wolf House, built in Glen Ellen, was designed by Piedmont architect Albert Farr. Tragically, it burned down before they could move in. London lived fast and hard and died at the early age of 40 in 1916.

We continued up to Scenic Avenue, enjoyed wonderful views of Oakland, the Bay, and San Francisco, and passed the house that London built for his first wife and children. Further up Scenic, the group looked across Moraga Avenue in the ravine below to homes on Maxwelton Avenue. It is one of the few Piedmont streets we can’t walk to because there isn’t a sidewalk on the busy Moraga Avenue to get to it.

Nancy led us further down the street to a rustic bungalow at 324 Scenic that was once the studio home of painter Marty Martinez. He was another famous member of the Piedmont bohemian community. Martinez had studied and built a reputation in Paris in the late 1890s, where he befriended famous artists of the day and his tonalist style was influenced by the work of James McNeil Whistler. Martinez built this house with wine-drinking friends in 1908. Festive parties with his bohemian friends, who included poet Joaquin Miller, were also held there. Martinez later moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, but his daughter and artist, Kai Martinez, inhabited this home until her death in 1989.

We made our way down this narrow part of Scenic for another adventure on our way back. We descended this hill via Piedmont’s longest pedestrian pathway and set of stairs, the 281 foot Blair and Scenic Path. Its steep stairs go as far as the eye can see, and thankfully there is a handrail the entire way. All of us safely got back to Blair and, after giving Nancy a round of applause for the informative tour of her historic neighborhood, it was time to party. We went a little further down Scenic to the back gate entrance of D & N's’ home. Dave was waiting for us at his barbeque grill cooking sausages. A huge birthday cake, and other food and beverages were also ready, and our appreciative group celebrated Dave and Nancy for over an hour.