Robison of San Francisco
Robison of San Francisco was a family-owned bird and animal importer, pet-supply producer, and retail pet shop that began operating during the California Gold Rush and endured until at least 1989.
)[1] This "animals in the family" mode was typical for the early 20th century, when zookeepers' wives were frequently drafted to act as unpaid caregivers and surrogate mothers to juvenile great apes.
[21] He had been an importer of exotic fruits in Buffalo[5] and the story goes that he bought a bunch of green bananas in Panama and by the time he arrived in San Francisco they were ready to eat and/or sell.
[22] When panning for gold failed to yield a fortune, he returned to the produce business,[5] buying and selling bananas and coconuts[23] "where Commercial Street…pushed out in the San Francisco Bay."
In 1906, the year of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, an A.C. Robison newspaper advertisement listed "Hartz Mountain canaries & African gray parrot just received" for sale.
On April 18, 1906, as the fire spread toward the pet shop, store employees gave away cats, dogs, birds and fish to strangers, asking them to carry the animals away from the danger.
[24] After the San Francisco earthquake and fire, the firm became Robison and Sons for good, with Merritt running the shop on Market Street, and the two Ansels working together at the Kearny location.
[34] In 1915, Ansel W. Robison asked Frank Buck, then a publicity man working for the year at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, to keep an eye out for rhesus monkeys in Asia as he began his new job (apparently as an advertising salesman for Japanese-owned steamship company Osaka Shosen Kaisha).
The exact nature of the financial arrangement and the division of labor is unclear, but from 1930 to 1950, Buck parlayed this experience in his multiplatform "Bring 'Em Back Alive" brand.
In Barnes' memoir, dictated as he was dying in 1931, he told a story of initial challenges training six leopards shipped from Singapore and purchased from Robison—"We had had so many previous dealings that I never questioned the word of my old friend and I wired immediate acceptance."
[37] In 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported that a hoof-and-mouth quarantine had been lifted and a giraffe from Africa by way of India that had been held by Ansel Robison was finally headed south to Barnes' winter quarters in Culver City.
[1] Times, customs and laws changed—between 1925 and 1950, Robison largely ceased importing animals from overseas but continued to be involved in the American pet and zoo-animal trade.
[39] Urbanist Jane Jacobs, who was a distant cousin of the Robisons, wrote admiringly of Maiden Lane in her essay "Downtown Is for People" (1958) and in her 2002 book The Nature of Economies.
[40] Robison provided Mary, a chimpanzee, to the Honolulu Zoo[1] and colorful songbirds to serve as future invasive species for the rest the Hawaiian Islands.
