In 1910, when the Town of Hillsborough was considering articles of incorporation, Templeton Crocker was advanced as a candidate for its first mayor.
Librettist A few years later, the multi-faceted multi-millionaire made history as a librettist. He wrote the lyrics for an opera entitled
The Land of Happiness, a Chinese fantasy-extravaganza set to music by composer (and
Southern Pacific attorney) Joseph Redding which premiered on August 4, 1917, at the
Bohemian Grove. After the success of this opera, Crocker was encouraged to mount an ambitious, professional production. While visiting Bohemian Grove in 1921, the well-known soprano
Mary Garden accepted the opera with the intention to produce it in Chicago, but it would take several more years to make its public debut. After the end of World War I, Crocker and Redding visited Paris in search of talent to design and produce his opera, by then renamed to
Fay-Yen-Fah. They created a partnership with Russian impresario
Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the
Ballets Russes. Diaghilev hired a youthful
George Balanchine as choreographer. It was the first time in the history of music that a full-length opera composed by an American, on a libretto written by an American, was produced in Europe. In mid-January 1926, Gaetano Merola, founding director of the
San Francisco Opera Company, gave
Fay-Yen-Fah its American debut at the Columbia Theater, which also marked the start of the 1926 opera season in San Francisco. San Francisco society appeared in large numbers, making the performance a dazzling success. Redding and Crocker received the Ribbon of the Legion of Honor from France for the opera in 1926. A music critic from the
San Francisco Chronicle praised Crocker and Redding's accomplishment, calling the opera “a refreshing breeze in a hothouse of artificiality.” Crocker brought it back to Monte Carlo in 1932 with Balanchine and Stowitts and danseuse
Tamara Toumanova in the principal role. It was revived in the spring of 2009, again in Monte Carlo, for a special performance using the original costumes. Two hundred members of the
Bohemian Club came to the opening.
California Historical Society Crocker collected rare books and in 1922 refounded the
California Historical Society; at the time there were few collectors of books relating to California history and he amassed what was considered "the best in private hands" by 1923. He convened a luncheon on February 13, 1922, for a small group who agreed to restart the Society, which had, until then, an intermittent history since it was first mentioned in 1852. He served as the Society's first president and provided generous financial support over its first twenty years until its membership had grown sufficiently to cover its costs.
Henry R. Wagner credited Crocker's "social position and wealth" with the Society's success; in addition, he donated his entire book collection to the Society in 1940 after an off-hand suggestion.
Art Deco enthusiast from
Telegraph Hill in 1955; at the time, 945 Green was the tallest and most prominent building pictured. Templeton Crocker owned the
penthouse apartment. Templeton was one of the millions of fair-goers who became enamored with the geometrical motifs of
Art Deco at the
Paris Exposition of 1925. He would return to France a few years later to commission fashionable furnishings and objects for his
penthouse apartment in the
Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The prominent apartment building at 945 Green Street, which was in the
Italianate style, and completed in 1928, was part of a notable
"spite war"; when the 12-storey building at 947 Green had been completed a few years earlier, it spoiled the views from an older property at 973 Green, and the owners of 973 retaliated by constructing the 15-storey 945 to completely obstruct the views east from 947. Templeton hired none other than
Jean-Michel Frank, Pierre Legrain,
Jean Dunand and Madame Lipska to execute the decor for his modernist apartment. French Art Deco at this level was rare in the United States at the time and rarer still in the hills of San Francisco. Crocker ordered wall reliefs, screens, furniture and accessories — some 400 objects in all. Dunand, still widely considered the most important designer of French Art Deco, was charged with finishing Crocker's bedroom, dining room, and breakfast room. It was the French master's most important commission in the United States and one of the earliest luxury apartments in America completed in the modern style. Templeton made a sizeable mark in art history as an early innovator in bringing the French Art Deco movement to the U.S. After Crocker's death in 1948, the apartment was maintained as it had been during his life. Eventually, his heirs dismantled the apartment and sold off the furnishings, and when the apartment itself was sold in 1999, the decorative wall panels were removed. The breakfast room panels (by Dunand) were acquired by the jeweler
Fred Leighton, who used them in his VIP salon and viewing room; they were subsequently exhibited by
Maison Gerard at the
Winter Antiques Show in 2013–14. Most of the bedroom furniture has since been donated to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art; however, the bedroom panels are believed to be lost.
St. Francis Hotel , photographed in 2016 overlooking
Union Square Templeton devoted himself intermittently to the management of the
St. Francis Hotel on Union Square, which the Crocker family financed and built just before the Earthquake. Crocker and his sister Jennie deeded the land for the new north wing in 1912; Templeton himself was credited with redesigning the double-width north wing in 1909 after the original extension was criticized strongly. After Dan London became the manager of the St. Francis in 1937, he, Crocker, and Crocker's nephew decided to hire brilliant San Francisco architect
Timothy Pflueger to turn the existing ground-level restaurant into a sleek and curvaceous Art Deco lounge. The resulting "Patent Leather Room" was unveiled in 1939, with furniture finished in
patent leather; however, the press and public dubbed it "Coffin Corner" or "The Black Hole".
Ansel Adams was hired to take publicity shots. The Crockers sold their interest in the St. Francis in 1944 to a group led by
Benjamin Swig and the Patent Leather Room was replaced by the "Terrace Room" in 1953.
Voyages aboard Zaca Crocker served in the
Naval Reserve, sailing on as an ensign in 1921; at the time he was thought to be the wealthiest man in the Navy. When he died in 1948, he held the rank of Commander in the Reserve. After his childless marriage failed, Crocker lived an increasingly alternative, Bohemian lifestyle and indulged in numerous flights of fancy. In the late 1920s, Crocker commissioned Garland Rotch to design a two-masted, -long, black-hulled schooner, on the lines of the famed
Bluenose. The boat was constructed by the Nunes Brothers Boatyard in
Sausalito. Her galley and interior furnishings were the finest in pleasure craft equipment and she had a considerable spread of canvas. She was christened , a Native American word which means “Peace”, on April 12, 1930 by Academy Award winner
Marie Dressler; Her maiden voyage was to Ensenada, departing on May 8, The yacht provided the ever-restless Crocker a unique, luxurious escape and boasted sleeping accommodations for 18. Staterooms, glamorous hotel-like apartments reflecting favorite Art Deco motifs were done in combinations of imported woods, including beams of Alaskan cedar and panels in teak and primavera. She was equipped with two small diesel engines when off sail and four 5-kW electric generators to power accessories, including a refrigerator and a distiller capable of generating of freshwater per day.
Global circumnavigation, 1930–31 Garland Rotch was Zaca's first captain. With Rotch and a crew of 8, Templeton sailed his yacht around the world covering and calling at 50 ports including Marquesas, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Pago Pago, Trobriands, Bali, Java, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Arabia, Egypt, Malta, Cannes, Teneriffe, Puerto Rico, Panama, Guatemala, Manzanillo, and Ensenada. The voyage departed on June 7, 1930, and returned to San Francisco on May 27, 1931. In 1933, Templeton wrote a narrative of his one-year journey cruising around the world in his grand yacht under the title
The Cruise of the Zaca.
Scientific expeditions, 1931–38 After the globe spanning odyssey, the “Commodore,” as Crocker insisted on being called while at sea, ordered the yacht transformed into a floating laboratory for scientific expeditions. The yacht lost completely the appearance of a pleasure craft. Four temperature controlled tanks with running sea water were installed on her decks to bring back live fish. Six voyages in all between 1932 and 1938 transported ichthyologists, ornithologists, anthropologists, zoologists, botanists, and photographers from the
California Academy of Sciences, the
American Museum of Natural History, the
New York Zoological Society and other academic institutions. During an expedition to the
Galápagos Islands for the California Academy of Sciences in 1932, Crocker and crew explored some of the previously untouched areas in the interior of several islands. Together they compiled collections of 400 stuffed or frozen birds, 3,000 plant specimens and 331 live fish. Artist
Toshio Asaeda painted over 300 water colors of marine and terrestrial life and took over 1,400 photographs. Academy officials declared the expedition of great and permanent value to science. The perpetually tanned Templeton described the journey as “full of adventures,” and promptly offered to host a follow-up expedition that would pass through the Galápagos in 1934 on its way to Polynesia. One species of finch not known since the time of
Charles Darwin and supposed to be extinct was found to have survived on some of the islands. The birds of these islands were of exceptional interest, not only because of their many remarkable peculiarities, but because the study of them was largely responsible for the formulation of Darwin's theory of evolution. The most important single accomplishment of the expeditions according to some was the penetration of
Indefatigable (now Santa Cruz) Island and the first recorded ascent of its main volcano, accomplished on May 9, 1932. Crocker crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean from California to Asia and from the Arctic to Antarctica contributing much to the world of science. A new species of sea snake, found while exploring a brackish lake on
Rennell Island, was named
Laticauda crockeri after Templeton Crocker following his 1933 expedition to Western Polynesian and Melanesian Islands. In 1934–1935, Crocker went on a sea borne investigatory enterprise with
Harry L. Shapiro, anthropologist extraordinaire. Shapiro set out to measure mixed-race islanders, including the descendants of the
mutineers on
Pitcairn Island. The study came to influence U.S. racial thought, adding impetus to the condemnation of racism in science. William Beebe, in spite of some tensions, dedicated one book to Crocker: “Not only must Mr. Crocker be given full credit for the inception and carrying out of the expedition and for the constant care that he took to see that every wish of ours was provided for, but especial thanks are due to him for his active part in capturing, sorting, labeling and preserving specimens, thousands of which passed through his hands.” After the war, the dismasted schooner was sold to Joseph Rosenburg in June 1945 for $13,350, who sold her on to motion picture actor
Errol Flynn in 1946 for .
Zaca became the true love of his life. She is featured prominently in the 1947
Orson Welles film
The Lady from Shanghai. A documentary short film,
Cruise of the Zaca, which features Errol Flynn aboard his vessel, was made in 1952. Press reports referred to the storied vessel as “the sexiest yacht in the world.” she was abandoned in
Mallorca and slowly deteriorated into a rotting hulk, passing between several disinterested owners, including Flynn's widow
Patrice Wymore and Freddie Tinsley, who sailed the decrepit
Zaca to Cannes in 1965. She eventually sank in 1988 while berthed in
Beaulieu-sur-Mer. In 1991, she was acquired by Roberto Memmo and refloated; her structural restoration was completed in 1992 at
Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer and her interior restoration was completed in 1994 at Port Fontvieille in Monaco. Currently, she sails occasionally from her home port in Monaco. == Taxon named in his honor ==