San Francisco's Little Slice of Paris

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

During California's Gold Rush when miners flocked to the Bay Area, so too did people selling goods to those fortune seekers. One of these businesses grew to become a historic Union Square department store that brought a taste of French finery to those San Franciscans who could afford it. Reporter Christopher Beale explores the origins and legacy of the 100+ year run of 'City of Paris.' Additional Reading: How the City of Paris Department Store Once Embodied 'All Things French' for San Franciscans Read a transcript of this episode Sign up for our newsletter Enter our Sierra Nevada Brewing Company monthly trivia contest Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts This story was reported by Christopher Beale. Special thanks this week to Raphaël Timmons. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Amanda Font, and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Cesar Saldana, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Jenny Pritchett and Holly Kernan.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From K-QED.
0:03.0	Hello, hello, I'm Olivia Allen Price and welcome to Bay Curious, the show that answers
0:08.2	listener questions about the San Francisco Bay Area.
0:12.3	Let's get right to it and meet this week's question-asker.
0:15.1	Hi, I'm Jabraia, and I live in Richmond District, San Francisco.
0:19.8	Jabraia was working in a theatrical costume shop at Stanford University where she was going to school.
0:25.6	Building clothes on a daily basis for plays, musicals, things like that.
0:30.6	This was back in 2020. So you probably know how this story goes next. Boom the
0:36.8	pandemic happens and not only is no one on campus anymore but plays are
0:41.8	definitely not happening anymore.
0:44.0	So we have to shift gears.
0:48.7	The people in the costume shop began to look a little more in depth at this hidden away place at Stanford.
0:55.0	Our clothing archive, which holds the really, really old clothes that haven't been digitized.
1:01.0	They're in like a special place within Stanford and that's when I came
1:06.1	across a lot of dresses that were donated to Stanford that had the label City of Paris.
1:14.8	of Paris.
1:16.5	It's a brand she'd never heard of before.
1:18.9	She couldn't find too much online about it.
1:21.3	Maybe a newspaper clipping here and there but nothing really concrete.
1:25.9	And that led her to ask Bay curious this question.
1:28.8	What was City of Paris and how did the brand fall out of fashion?
1:34.0	This week on the show we are venturing back to the heyday of department stores in San Francisco
	...

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