EARLY YEARS

Willis Jefferson Polk was born in Jacksonville, Illinois in 1867 and although it has been said that he had seven siblings, most died before they reached adolescence. In his lifetime, Willis would know only two sisters, Endemial and Daisy and one brother, Daniel. Architecture and building were early lessons in the Polk household, as Willis Senior, Daniel and Willis’s father, was a master carpenter and house builder. Willis and Daniel had their first job as  “spikers” when they were just 8 years old. A spiker would go onto the rooftop of newly constructed houses and hand nails and tools to the workers. Willis was apprenticed to an architect at age thirteen and two years later the teenager submitted his first professional design in answer to an ad for a six-room schoolhouse in Hope Arkansas. His design was accepted and written about in many of the Missouri and Arkansas papers heralding the “boy genius”. Due to this success, Willis Sr. decided that the three Polks should start their own architecture and building firm in Kansas City Missouri. Thus emerged W.W. Polk & Sons.

Although the Willis Polks were not rich, the Polk name was a badge of honor in the South as Willis was of the same Polk’s as General Leonidas Polk and President James Knox Polk. Raised with this pride and great expectations, Willis Senior decided that if his children were to learn the arts and advance in status, they needed to be in Europe.

WILLIS JEFFERSON POLK
Willis Jefferson Polk  (1867-1924)   

Part of the reason for the move could have been a rift between the two Willis’ over the younger Willis’s decision to venture out on his own to work for Van Brunt & Howe architects in Kansas City shortly after his 20th birthday. Nonetheless the family split and Willis was soon to learn that his drawing and architecture talents were far greater than any architect he was working for (or so he thought). Willis worked for a number of architects across the country until in July of 1889 he permanently moved to San Francisco to Partner with Fritz Maurice Gamble in the firm of Polk & Gamble (Daniel also briefly worked for the firm in 1894).

While Willis was traveling around the American countryside (literally coast-to- coast) learning the craft of architecture, his family was living in Florence Italy. His brother Daniel was studying architecture, his sister Daisy a virtuoso violinist and Endemial a famous opera star. But tragedy struck in 1889 when Endemial was to make her grand debut at the Paris Opera House. The night before her eighteenth birthday, Endemial suddenly died of a strange illness (believed to be appendicitis). Heartbroken, the family returned to America and made their way out west with cousins Charlie, Clement, James and Edward.

 POLK FAMILY

When the Polk Clan arrived in the city Willis was well underway with his own career. Willis was less than energetic about his family’s arrival and engaged in numerous public quarrels over who had the right to be in San Francisco and who didn’t. After the dust had settled, Willis, Daniel and Willis Sr. decided to start their own business again; Polk & Polk Architects. Daniel would be the chief draftsman, Willis the chief designer and salesman and Willis Sr. would be the chief financial officer and General Contractor utilizing cousins Charlie, Clement, James and Edward as skilled carpenters. They built a house to live and work out of at 1013 Vallejo Street, which is still standing today (see below). The business flourished until Daniel left the practice after 3 short years and moved to New York to pursue a career in Vaudeville (he played nine instruments and could even play the banjo behind his head!). Shortly after Daniel’s departure, Willis Senior retired and the company ran out of money and closed in bankruptcy in 1897.

Disappointed but undaunted, Willis would work tirelessly for the next several years re-building his reputation and status as one of San Francisco's most creative architects. In 1904, Willis married Frederico Barreda's daughter, Christina Barreda Moore (Barreda was Minister Plenipotentiary from Spain to the United States). A year after the marriage in 1905 Polk again constructed a duplex similar in size to 1013 Vallejo, this time choosing 2139 Buchanan as the location. Madame Barreda and her daughter used the upper flat, while the Polks lived in the lower.

In 1905 he joined Daniel Burnham’s team as the chief architect in the San Francisco office. Soon after Willis’s arrival, the earthquake of 1906 destroyed the city. Willis was put in charge as the chief architect of the “master plan” for re-building the earthquake-ravaged city. Daniel Burnham died shortly thereafter and in 1910 the office was renamed Willis Polk & Company.

Willis is one of the fathers of the California Arts and Crafts movement and credited with introducing the California Mission  and Brown Shingle styles of architecture to California. His Hallidie Building in Chinatown was the first building in North America to utilize a glass curtain facade and is considered by many the most important commercial building in America. Aside form these distinct honors, Polk's greatest achievement did not come in the form of one of his own buildings, but rather in a human gesture. The event took place when Polk selflessly handed over the choicest project of The Panama Pacific Exposition, The Palace of Fine Arts, which he had reserved for himself, to his lifelong friend Bernard Maybeck. Shortly before the fair opened Maybeck wrote to Polk: “You have put up a monument to your ideals through me and made a sacrifice for them…there is in you a yearning for the highest ideals.”

Willis Jefferson Polk died in 1924 at the age of 57. It’s fitting that William Bowers Bourne, to whom Polk owed his reputation and legacy, gave Willis’ eulogy. The Chairman of the Board used the company paper, San Francisco Water, to eulogize San Francisco’s Master Builder. A quotation from Daniel Burnham, Polk's long time mentor and boss, expressed Bournes' feelings.

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir man’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are all gone will be a living thing asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.”

Polk Family Side Note:  

Willis's Sister Daisy Polk never returned to United States after the family’s journey to Europe in the late 1800’s. She remained in Italy working as a master violin teacher at the Florence Conservatory of Music until war broke out in Europe. She immediately joined the Red Cross as a nurse and was stationed in France with Mrs. William H. Crocker. The two worked tirelessly and were the first American women awarded the Croix de Guerre. Daisy later married Count de Buyer (General de Buyer). Daniel, Willis’s younger brother, worked in Vaudeville for a few years then took up architecture in earnest in New York City after meeting Alice Grimm and marrying. Daniel specialized in classical interiors until he died in 1909 after a long battle with alcohol. Daniel and Alice’s descendants are the only living relatives of Willis Polk. The family patriarch Willis Webb Polk died in 1906 in southern California and is buried with his wife Endemial and son Willis in Oakland California.

 

‘“Who’ll be the Clerk?”

“I!” said the Lark.’

(The Lark 1896)

 

John T. Hunter owns this site and can be contacted via info@willispolk.com

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