Artisan's legacy of Christian beauty
Parts of some of the most beautiful Catholic and Anglican church interiors in the Archdiocese of San Francisco were carved by a Romanian Jew who immigrated shortly before the 1906 earthquake, escaping the pogroms and economic strictures imposed on Jews in Eastern Europe.
Arriving at 18 in 1904, Samuel Berger spent decades employed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco as the city rebuilt after the earthquake, his family says. He met his wife in the earthquake camps of Golden Gate Park, eventually raising a son and three daughters first in the Excelsior, then in a home in the Sunset District of the city.
Berger’s story is coming to light today because his great-granddaughter Lynn Goldfinger is on a quest to find more of her grandfather’s work. She has created a blog, samuelberger.blogspot.com, to serve as a diary of her search.
Berger’s children grew up surrounded by crucifixes and statues of Mary and Joseph in their orthodox Jewish home, said granddaughter Diane Marcus. “He would say I am going to work on Mary, or whomever,” she said. Berger learned his craft at the Bucharest royal court where he worked alongside his father, Marcus said. During the San Francisco church construction heyday, his studio was downtown, between Fourth and Sixth Streets, but later was in the basement of his home. “I remember as a child visiting him and he would have whole tree trunks delivered,” Marcus said.
Berger also worked with Julia Morgan, the architect hired by William Randolph Hearst to design the castle at San Simeon, Marcus said. “Hearst would buy rooms from castles around the world, have them shipped to his place and they did not fit the measurements of the rooms in his castle. My grandfather did all the moldings and doors in the rooms to integrate them into the castle,” said Marcus.
Berger regularly took the family on tours of his work, Marcus said. He took her to a reception at the Carmelites’ Cristo Rey Monastery before the cloistered nuns entered the enclosure, and they visited the Stations of the Cross at the Xavier Hall chapel at the University of San Francisco, St. Catherine of Siena Church, St. Cecilia Church, and the old St. Mary’s Cathedral before it burned down in 1962.
Documentary support for family memories is spotty, but includes a signed photo to Berger from an auxiliary bishop, Bishop Merlin Guilfoyle, a photo in the archdiocesan newspaper The Monitor of a Berger-carved statue of Our Lady of Fatima at St. Brigid Church and photos of Berger with other craftsmen and priests at Mission Dolores Basilica.
Berger ran ads in the Catholic directories in the 1950s and 1960s, listing his work on the Basilica of Mission Dolores, St. Mary’s Cathedral, and Star of the Sea, St. Monica and St. Cecilia churches in San Francisco; St. Catherine of Siena and Our Lady of Angels churches in Burlingame; St. Ambrose Church in Berkeley and St. Leander’s in San Leandro.
An article in the Marin Independent Journal mentions Berger work on St. John Episcopal Church in Ross. The booklet for the grand opening of Mission Dolores Basilica in 1953 includes a Berger ad that reads: “It was an honor and a pleasure to have carved the Seven Dolors, The Stations of the Cross, The Sorrowful Mother, The Episcopal Escutcheons and the Papal Shield for your beautiful Basilica of Mission Dolores.”
Marcus said she is looking for a historian to take on the project of finding contracts and other proofs. The one daughter still alive at 99 has a failing memory, Marcus said. His son, Sanford Berger, was a well known collector and architect, and mentioned his father’s work in passing in “A Gentle Madness,” a book about book collecting authored by Nicholas A. Basbanes. However when Marcus broached the idea to family members of a book shortly after Berger died in 1970, when all four children were still alive, Sanford Berger became irate.
After Sanford Berger’s death, his children gave her the go-ahead, Marcus said, but there are now fewer people alive to consult. In “A Gentle Madness,” Sanford Berger is quoted saying his father “just loved” doing relief work with “detailed borders and flowing decorations,” and Berger is described as “the most successful wood carver in San Francisco, producing decorative works that still adorn some of the better known landmarks in the city, such as Mission Dolores, Grace Cathedral and the Bohemian Club.”
At St. Cecilia Church, dedicated in 1917, there are no records of who did work on the construction, said Msgr. Michael Harriman. St. Catherine of Siena pastor Father John Ryan had not heard of Berger. Neither the archivist for the Archdiocese nor the California Historical Society could find mention of Berger.
The lack of documentation is not unusual, because contemporaries likely viewed Berger as a craftsman not an artist, said Michael Lampen, archivist at Grace Cathedral where the Anglican cathedral kept records of Berger’s work on the massive organ covers, a cabinet for the hosts and a few other minor pieces. At Grace Cathedral, Berger executed architect Lewis Horbart’s designs, Lampen said.
“He was this humble, quiet, sweet man. He didn’t sign his work. He worked to put food on the table,” said Goldfinger, who was 10 when he died. “I drive by certain churches, and I think, I bet he did that – but I don’t know.”
By Valerie Schmalz
From October 29, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
