January 2011

“Agriculture is all at an end—and will remain so God knows how long. Provisions are all brought from other countries and yet, though there is an immense quantity on hand the prices are beyond anything ever before heard of. I will just give you a summary: Salt Pork here [San Francisco] 75 cents per Ib., at the mines $200 per Barrel. Flour $2.00 per Ib. Bread at the mines one to one half dollars per Ib. Sugar at the mines $2.00 per Ib, tea $4.00. Revolving pistols worth in N. York $11.00 are here worth $55-75 dol. each. Onions 25-50 cents each. Potatoes about $30 a bushel. A ship load of the latter would bring two hundred thousand dollars .”

— From a miner’s letter, San Francisco, August, 1849 .

George Bancroft was the most successful of all American historians. Three generations ago, at a time when history was still considered literature, the volumes of his History of the United States stood on the shelves of thousands of American homes. During most of the nineteenth century it was a solid best seller. Now his once-so-popular volumes are left untouched not only in the proverbial dusty attic but in teeming university libraries, too. His life, full of success, lasted long; his reputation did not.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon had nothing on our balcony …” This flourish from the opening fanfare of a Midwest movie palace sometime around 1928 posed interesting questions. Was it Twenty Degrees Cooler inside the Hanging Gardens? Were they tended by platoons of dragoons armed with flashlights and smelling salts? Was there a Mighty Wurlitzer to soothe the savage breast? Did stars twinkle reassuringly, and clouds drift lazily overhead no matter what the weather did outside?

The Hanging Gardens hang no more … and, alas, the movie palaces are just hanging on. Parking lots, supermarkets, garages, and bowling alleys now mark the sites of the once-proud Grands, Strands, Rivolis, Tivolis, and Rialtos. The dwindling number that still open their doors are finding the going tough, and only in the largest cities do they operate on anything like a palatial scale.