A snapshot history of the 1886 McNear Building at 23 Petaluma Blvd. North
McNear Building with presumably John McNear standing in front with horse and carriage, 1880s (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
In 1886, John A. McNear erected a two story, Italianate-style building across from what was then known as Lower Main Street Plaza, today’s Center Park.[1] The area was then part of Chinatown, which extended along Lower Main Street from Western Avenue to B Street, where Main Street became Third Street, and continued to D Street.[2]
Of the roughly 1,000 Chinese residing in Sonoma County at the time, more than 100 lived in Chinatown, where they operated five laundries, a tobacco shop, a variety store, a restaurant, and a grocery. There was also a Joss House, or Buddhist-Taoist Temple, Chinese Masonic Hall, and a Chinese Mission School conducted by the Congregational Church, which trained young Chinese men to return to China as Christian evangelists.[3]
John A. McNear (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
In the mid-1880s, Petaluma’s Anti-Chinese League temporarily drove most of the Chinese from Chinatown. McNear, who continued to employ two Chinese as house servants and many more Chinese at his shrimping operations and brickmaking factory in Marin County, came under personal attack by the League.[4]
1885 Sanborn map showing the cleared building site of the new McNear Building extending from Main Street to Fourth Street, beside a group of “Chinese Shanties” still standing (Library of Congress)
Immediately after the Chinese expulsion, McNear erected his building on the site of a group of abandoned Chinese dwellings known as “shanties” beside the Cosmopolitan Hotel. His new two-story, 20,000-square-foot brick building extended from Main Street to Fourth Street. He leased out the entire upper story to Petaluma’s militia for an armory. The bottom story was occupied by a rotation of grocery, hardware, and appliance stores, many occupying the entire floor extending to the Fourth Street entrance.[5]
Labor Day automobile race outside the McNear Buildings, 1916 (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
In 1911, McNear constructed a new two-story building adjacent to his 1886 building. It included the Mystic Theater operated by his oldest son John Jr., a retired doctor, and his son’s sister-in-law, Lulu Egan. McNear evicted the Armory from his 1886 building and reconfigured the top floor into individual business and medical offices for lease.[6]
From the 1930 to 1942, the first floor of the 1886 building was occupied by Safeway Grocery. After Safeway consolidated into their other store on Western Avenue near Liberty Street, the space was leased to Tibbett’s Appliance.[7]
Tibbett’s gave way in 1953 to Guy Manwaring’s Furniture Store, after his original store, in the adjacent Gervasoni Building, burned down. That building site was converted into a parking lot, made famous in the movie “American Graffiti.”[8]
In 1976, Guy’s Furniture relocated after the two McNear Buildings were purchased by Jeff Harriman and Wally Lourdeaux. After an extensive restoration of both buildings, they rented out the bottom floor of the 1886 building to a series of restaurants, beginning with the Petaluma Café, Cheers, and finally McNear’s Saloon and Dining House, which has occupied the building since 1987.[9]
A lifelong teetotaler, McNear is likely rolling over in his grave at the thought of his name being affixed to a bar in his landmark building.
1886 McNear Building, 2022 (photo public domain)
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] “The Upper Story,” Petaluma Argus, July 3, 1886.
[2] Petaluma Sanborn Maps, 1883 and 1885, Library of Congress; “Improvements,” Petaluma Argus, November 29, 1884.
[3] 1870 U.S. Census; Thomas W. Chinn, A History of Chinese in California (Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 24; “Gordon C. Phillips, “The Chinese in Sonoma County, California, 1900-1930: The Aftermath of Exclusion,” a master’s thesis, Sonoma State University, 2015; Chinese New Year,” Petaluma Argus, January 20, 1868; “The Chinese Mission School,” Petaluma Courier, May 1, 1899;
[4] “The Boycott,” Petaluma Argus, March 13, 1886; “The Boycott Again,” Petaluma Argus, March 31, 1886;
[5] 1885 Sanborn Map of Petaluma, Library of Congress; Phillips thesis.
[6] “Last Dance in the Armory,” Petaluma Courier, June 14, 1912; “Company K Votes to Vacate Present Armory on First of Next Month,” Petaluma Argus, June 18, 1912.
[7] Ad for Skagg’s Grocery, Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 21, 1928; “Skaggs Now Safeway,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, January 10, 1930; “Earl Tibbetts To Engage in Business Here,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, December 14, 1945.
[8] “Fire Destroys Two Stores in Petaluma,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 19, 1952; Ad for Guy’s Furniture, Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 2, 1952; Ad for Tibbett’s Furniture, Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 20, 1953.
[9] Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 11, 1976; “Another Historic Building Faces Renovation Project,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 30, 1976; “Petaluma Café to Offer Lunch, Late Night Dining,” PAC, January 28, 1978; Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 22, 1984; “McNear’s: Good food, dancing and fun,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, September 30, 1987.
Fashion, Sex, and Suffrage During the 1890s Bicycle Craze
Two young Petaluma women with their safety bicycles, circa 1890s (photo Petaluma Historical Library & Museum)
On July 4, 1896, Petaluma found itself anointed the new “bicycling Mecca” of the West Coast, as a reported 6,000 people turned out at the city’s new Wheelman Park for the annual divisional meet of the League of American Wheelmen.
Among the 18 Northern California teams competing were two comprised entirely of women—San Francisco’s Alpha Cycling Club and Petaluma’s own “women of the wheel,” the Mercury Cyclists.
Their presence embodied perhaps the greatest social disruption of the 1890’s bicycle craze: women were no longer dependent upon men for their transportation.
Women’s cyclist club, 1890s (photo public domain)
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling,” Susan B. Anthony told New York World reporter Nellie Bly in 1896. “I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
Female liberation came thanks to introduction of the “safety bicycle” in the early 1890s. Its predecessor, the high-wheel, had been strictly a masculine pursuit. With its enormous front wheel and small back wheel, both made of rubber-lined wood, the bike was nicknamed the “boneshaker” for its jarring and often dangerous ride.
Men with their highwheelers, 1880s (photo public domain)
The safety, with its two equal-sized wheels and inflated rubber tires, not only provided a smoother ride but was easier to mount, making it accessible to women in dresses, who dubbed it the “freedom machine.”
Petaluma’s first safety bicycles went on sale in 1892 at Joe Steiger’s Gunsmith Shop on Main Street, across from current day Putnam Plaza. The following year, a group of young men led by Frank Lippitt formed a local chapter of the League of American Wheelmen called the Petaluma Wheelmen.
By 1894, the national bicycle craze was in full swing. New dealerships started popping up in hardware stores around town. Lyman Byce, the entrepreneur behind Petaluma’s booming new egg industry, opened one at his Petaluma Incubator Company across from today’s Penry Park. The bikes weren’t cheap. Byce’s popular Erie model sold for $100 ($3,150 in today’s currency).
Lyman Byce’s Petaluma Incubator Company and Eric Bicycle shop, 1896 (photo Sonoma County Library)
A popular novelty among Petaluma’s younger, middle-class set, bicycles also found early adopters among some older residents, including the city’s leading capitalist, 63-year old John A. McNear. After purchasing a bicycle from Byce, McNear was convinced by Petaluma’s “father of chickendome” to build a local velodrome for racing events. With bicycles at Byce’s incubator factory selling as fast as he could stock them, Byce assured McNear he would make his money back within a year.
In 1895, McNear converted an old baseball stadium he owned on the city’s east side (now the site of the Petaluma Public Library) into Wheelman Park. After building a quarter-mile race track with six-foot-high banked curves, he surfaced it with hard-packed decomposed granite, making it conducive to speed. He then doubled the seating capacity of the baseball bleachers to accommodate 2,500, leaving ample room for standing spectators as well as those who wished to watch from their parked carriages.
John McNear on bicycle alongside a Sonoma Express wagon of chickens (photo Petlauma Historical Library & Museum)
Shortly before the track was completed, a group of young women led by Gertrude Hopkins and Florence Mauzy formed the Mercury Cyclists, joining a number of women’s cycling clubs starting up around the country
“The bicycle,” wrote the League of American Wheelmen, “has taken those old-fashioned, slow-going notions of the gentler sex, and replaced them with a new woman, mounted on her steed of steel.”
As the Mercury Cyclists and other wheelwomen took to their steel steeds, they ran into some cultural speed bumps from conservative Victorians, who wanted to know where they were riding to.
When the question was put to women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton by American Wheelman magazine, she succinctly replied: “To suffrage.”
San Francisco’s Liberty Cycling Club, 1895 (photo California Historical Society)
Victorians believed otherwise. For them, women were stationary, and men mobile. Any female intrusion into the outdoor world of travel, athleticism, or free movement threatened their world order. The only place women were riding to, in their opinion, was heavenly disgrace and eternal destruction.
“As a chivalrous gentleman,” a newspaper article asked of Victorian men, “do you tremble at the revolution of bicycling women?”
Actress Mabel Love with bicycle, 1897 (photo public domain)
The answer was complicated, especially for men grappling with conflicted feelings of repulsion and attraction. A man’s poem in the San Francisco Examiner in 1895 conveyed their dilemma.
“The Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl, /with a spinnaker skirt and a sleeve like a furl; / such a freak on the wheel, such a sight on the tire, / I am certain I never will love or admire.”
Within a few lines of this dismissive opening, the poet fell into a head-turning swoon.
“The sound of her bell and the hum of her wheel / Is enough to make any man’s cranium reel . . . And why did she smile as she lightly spun by? . . . The Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl, / she has tangled my heart in her mystical whirl.”
The introduction in 1895 of tandem bicycles for sale at Joe Steiger’s shop created a small sensation in town. As moonlight rides in the countryside began to usurp dates to dances and musical concerts, some men looked to the bicycle as a revealing test of character.
The popular song Daisy Bell, or Bicycle Built for Two, was written by Harry Dacre in 1892 (Illustration in public domain)
“The woman you see is seldom the woman you think you see,” wrote a man in the Petaluma Courier in 1896. “Mounted upon bicycles, most women have to tell the truth about themselves. One can distinguished at a glance the daring, willful beauty from the timid, tender girl. A woman’s health, vigor of mind and body are apparent. I will even go so far as to advise a man not to get married until he has seen the object of his choice disport herself upon a bicycle.”
Victorians disagreed. The only character trait they believed a woman revealed on a bike was a proclivity for sin and fast living. A woman out cycling without male supervision was not only placing herself in danger, she was exposing herself to the temptations of sexual stimulation, caused according to medical professionals by the protruding pommel of bicycle saddles.
The fear of unleashed female sexuality led bicycle manufacturers to introduce special “hygienic” saddles with little or no pommels, along with high seat stems and upright handlebars that supported a more dignified and ladylike riding position than the bent over, “camel back” style, which required women to provocatively lean forward in the saddle.
Ad for bicycle saddle with reduced pommel for women, Ladies Home Journal magazine, April 1896.
The break with tradition most disturbing to Victorians was fashion. At a time when middle-class women rarely challenged fashion’s dictates, the practicality of bicycling offered them an opportunity to rethink their clothing.
Shedding the restrictive Victorian corsets and large, billowy dresses, women wheelers adopted for riding the “divided skirt,” or baggy trouser cinched at the knee. Originally championed in a dress reform movement led by suffragist Amelia Bloomer, the divided skirts were commonly known as “bloomers.” Their appeal rapidly spread beyond the practicalities of bicycling to women who didn’t ride.
Ad for Continental Bicycle Tires (photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
When asked about bloomers in her interview with Nellie Bly, Susan B. Anthony was blunt.
“Dress to suit the occasion. A woman doesn’t want skirts and flimsy lace to catch in the wheel. Safety, as well as modesty, demands bloomers or extremely short skirts. You know women only wear foolish articles of dress to please men’s eyes anyway.”
The male gaze gladly overlooked the bloomers’ practical modesty, as the trousers scandalously exposed a woman’s ankles, raising an outcry form Victorians.
The hotly contested fashion battle that ensued forever altered public perceptions of female athleticism and proper female behavior. Bloomers permitted women cyclists to jettison the heavy, drop-frame bicycles designed for riding in a dress, and jump aboard the much lighter, diamond-framed bicycles ridden by men, making the women viable competitors in races like Petaluma’s meet on Independence Day in 1896.
Women competing in cycling race in Buffalo, NY, 1897 (photo courtesy of BnF–Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Disappointingly, no records were broken that day at the new Wheelman Park by men or women cyclists. Likewise, while the new safety bicycle technology was liberating for women, it failed to place them on the fast track to suffrage. Their right to vote wasn’t secured in California until 1911, and not on a national scale until 1920.
Bicycling mania itself proved to be short-lived, dying off before the turn of the century, as production improvements dramatically lowered bike prices and the novelty wore off among the younger middle class.
In 1903, Joe Steiger’s Gunsmith Shop sold the first automobile in Petaluma, after which the moral panic over women finding liberation on a bicycle shifted locally to women finding liberation behind the wheel of a car.
A joke from the time captured the challenge women faced:
Jack and Jill have just climbed a steep hill on their tandem bicycle, with Jill riding in front. “Phew, that was a tough climb,” Jill said, leaning over, breathing hard. “The climb was so hard, and we were going so slow, I thought we were never going to make it.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, “good thing I kept the brakes on, or we would have slid all the way back down!”
Couple riding a tandem bicycle, 1890s (photo in public domain)
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A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier on March 3, 2022.
SOURCES:
Newspapers
Los Angeles Herald: “Sports of the Day,” February 10, 1895.
Lincoln (Nebraska) Courier: “The Bicycle as a Reformer,” August 17, 1895.
New York World: Nellie Bly, “Champion Of Her Sex: Miss Susan B. Anthony,” February 2, 1896.
Petaluma Argus: “Two New Automobiles for Petaluma People,” October 31, 1903.
Petaluma Courier: “Bicycling,” April 1, 1893; “Here and There,” August 13, 1893; “The New Track,” April 30, 1894; “The Bicycle Trade,” July 18, 1894; “The Riders,” July 25, 1894; “The New Track,” June 22, 1895; “Out of Door Life for Women,” June 22, 1895; “The Wheel: a Test of Character,” September 12, 1895; “Bicycle Chat,” September 13, 1895; “The Mercury Cyclists,” October 16, 1895; “Local Counsel,” November 15, 1895; “For the Fourth of July,” December 19, 1895; “The League Meet,” January 29, 1896; “Bicycle Notes,” February 12, 1896, June 24, 1896; “Bicycle Races,” May 13, 1896; “Getting Ready,” June 24, 1896; “The Day,” “The League Meet,” July 8, 1896; “Osen Does Some Sprinting,” July 22, 1896.
San Francisco Call: “Wheel Races at Petaluma,” July 5, 1896; “Lady Cyclists Indignant,” August 28, 1896.
San Francisco Chronicle: “Petaluma’s Day to Shine,” June 26, 1896; “Wheelmen Race at Petaluma,” July 5, 1896; Gary Kamiya, “Sex and Cycling,” October 18, 2019.
San Francisco Examiner: “Wheelmen Make Merry,” July 4, 1896; “Greeting the Wheelmen,” July 2, 1890.
Magazines & Websites
Adrienne LaFrance, “How the Bicycle Paved the Way for Women’s Rights,” The Atlantic, June 26, 2014.
Ellen Gruber Garvey, “Reframing the Bicycle: Advertising-Supported Magazines and Scorching Women,” American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1 (John Hopkins University Press, March 1995), pp. 66-101.
Matt Reicher, “Photography, the Bicycle, and the Women’s Movement of the 1890s,” Medium, February 12, 2020. medium.com.
Michael Taylor, “Rapid Transit to Salvation: American Protestants and the Bicycle in the Era of the Cycling Craze,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 9, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 337-363.
