City Of San Rafael Historic Sites
1009 B Street - Aileen Apartments
Bellevue House, San Rafael Illustrated and Described, published by W.W. Elliott & Co., in 1884
In 1884, Michael J. O’Connor (1818-1891) opened a restaurant in the Bellevue Building at the corner of 4th and B Streets. According to the Marin Journal of April 10, 1884, “In all its appointments it is as neat and trim as O’Connor himself … everything served in it is homelike and good.” O’Connor had opened the Tamalpais Hotel in 1870, which was purchased by local businessman Arthur Foster and donated to the Mount Tamalpais Military Academy in 1891. It was named Foster Hall in his honor and is still on the Marin Academy campus.
In 1888, Louis Dujardin (1861-1904), a bartender on the ferry “San Rafael,” rented the Bellevue House with George Hewett of Olema to open “the finest bar in San Rafael.” They advertised “the finest wines, liquors and cigars, billiard and card rooms.” They also offered furnished rooms upstairs for rent.
The place was headquarters for the sons of the early pioneers of Marin County. This was a place where they spent a great deal of the money they inherited over the bar and gambling tables. They had well-known names: David Nye, the Pacheco Boys, Charles Byrne, Pedro Sais, Frank Valencia, Frank Delong, James Taylor and others. These young men had plenty of money and spent it lavishly. Thousands of dollars changed hands with one member barely escaping going to the penitentiary.
David Nye, who squandered his fortune in the café, was killed working as a brakeman on the old narrow-gauge railroad in 1896.
When Frank DeLong’s father died in 1885, he inherited the 12,000-acre DeLong estate in Novato, $190K in cash and an income of $50,000/year. In 1894, he declared bankruptcy and died a poor man.
In 1915, the building was purchased by Sigfried Kramer Herzog, Sr. (1873-1953) and Elwood S. Rake (1865-1928). In 1916-17, they invested almost $100,000 to build a large department store at the site for Albert Jacob (1871-1946). Jacob had started a "department store in a suitcase" in 1892, selling his wares from door to door. He eventually had three storefronts in Marin, including across the street at 4th and B.
Herzog and Rake rebuilt the hotel to accommodate 2nd story apartments with Albert’s Store taking up the entire floor at street level. When the store opened on the evening of February 16, 1917, more than 2500 people flocked to the store from all over the Bay Area, to the music of an orchestra and dancing in the aisles. By that time, nearly all of the upper level apartments were rented.
The design of the upper story was for more than fifty rooms, with apartments consisting of one to four rooms each. The apartments were named for the contractor Joseph A. Kappenmann’s daughter, Aileen.
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