Michael de Young Had Fun Stocking Museum

By Judith Kahn

To San Franciscans, Michael de Young's name denotes a powerful journalist, promoter and avid collector. His private collection, together with items that he purchased from the 1894 exposition in Golden Gate Park, became the foundation for the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.

De young arrived in San Francisco during the Civil War with his brother Charles and widowed mother. They borrowed a $20 gold piece to establish the Daily Chronicle, a theatrical tabloid that carried scraps of gossip and satire. Later, it would change its name to the Daily Morning Chronicle, which appeared in the marketplace as a bold and independent publication. The paper sponsored contests and excursions to increase its circulation and featured the salacious revelations of well-known citizens.

De young was California's representative to Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893. At the fair, he solicited architectural designs and raised funds for a fair in Golden Gate Park that shared some of the exhibits from Chicago. De Young saw this as a opportunity to lift San Francisco out of an economic slump it was in at the time.

John McLaren, the superintendent of Golden Gate Park, was outraged that 180 acres of his park was being stripped of trees and flowers to accommodate the fair and architect Willis Polk declared the plan an "architectural nightmare."

Despite opposition, the fair opened in January, 1894. The five-month-long affair was a tremendous success and de Young gained a lot of the publicity he desired.

"Since I was a young man, I had a great desire to acquire curious things, especially antiquities, and always felt that I would like to make a collection. I commenced by making a collection of stuffed birds," de Young remarked. 

De Young's daughter, Helen, said her father "adored his family but outside of that he didn't give a rap about people. The California Street mansion was filled with everything ' rocks, butterflies, statues and paintings ' until mother called a halt to his accessions." As a young man, he built his collection and secured a number of specimens that were extinct.

When the fair closed in Golden Gate Park, de Young offered the Fine Arts building to park commissioners, together with surplus funds, to create a museum. De Young convinced the commissioners that Golden Gate Park was the ideal location for the institution. Here, families could enjoy the park and visit the building for amusement and educational purposes. On March 23, 1895, the museum opened its doors to the public. Admission was initially free every day of the week.

As a result of the deal with the City, de Young now had a place to exhibit his private collection and he had the space needed to expand it.

Yearly, he would travel to some part of the world and spend his own money to purchase objects for the museum. While on his acquisition junkets, de Young discovered a reality of doing business in the collectibles business.

"I discovered that the cost of making a collection could easily be something fabulous," he said.

De Young was surprised when he saw a collection of knives and forks, priced at $80,000, at Tiffany's in New York. Realizing that a ready-made collection would cost millions, he was determined to put together his own individual collections. On each trip, he would gather a collection of particular items and worked at it until the collection was completed. One day in Paris, he heard art collectors were putting together a collection of clocks from the Napoleonic period. He bought 17 clocks at the time.

"They were old clocks, not what you would call antiques, but they were good examples of those used 100 years ago," he said. He bought jades, Chinese snuff bottles, old furniture, jewelry and precious stones. Over a 20-year period, de Young collected more than 300,000 articles, including items made of jade, Chinese snuff bottles, furniture, jewelry and precious stones. His collection was eclectic, intricate and ornamental. Often, he would carry items with him until he got to a place where he could ship them.

He said his time collecting for the museum and the people of San Francisco "was most interesting work.

"I never see the magnificent collection without recalling the heart-burn and the worries that I had trying to get many of these things," he said.

De Young wanted to win an election to become a senator in 1891 when he was broadsided by a skeleton in his closet.

A published report called upon "all good Republicans to repudiate the candidacy of the man charged with being an extortionist, jury briber and blackmailer. He is a social outlaw."

The scandal erupted when it was discovered that de Young, despite his wealth, had a brother named Gustavus, who was dressed in rags and living in a pauper's ward at the Stockton State Insane Asylum. The asylum's warden told a journalist, Arthur McEwen, that de Young refused to pay the $15 per month it would have cost to keep his living brother in a greater degree of comfort and dignity.

Unsuccessful in his efforts to win a Senate seat, de Young went back to collecting and added numerous items to the museum's collection.