Sutro Library

The foundation of the library's collection was assembled by former San Francisco mayor, engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Adolph Sutro.

He made his money as a mining engineer in Virginia City, Nevada - where the Comstock Lode was discovered and where he built an eponymous tunnel.

When Sutro realized the magnitude of the task of building a research collection, he hired German and British experts to go to auctions and other book sales to make acquisitions.

When Sutro passed away in 1898, the collection remained in limbo, housed in two warehouses in downtown San Francisco – one in the Montgomery Block and the other at Pine and Battery Street.

[11][12] It took a little over a decade for Sutro's family to settle the estate, and it was during this period when the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake destroyed approximately two thirds of the original collection.

Since its donation in 1913, and because Sutro Library is required to remain within the city limits of San Francisco, it has been housed in several locations.

Gillis leased the third floor of Stanford's Lane Medical Department, located in San Francisco at the time, to house the Sutro Library.

[16] Gillis had initially hoped the legislature would agree to fund a building for Sutro Library in San Francisco's Civic Center.

Among other cuts proposed by the State Legislature was to “eliminate Sutro library, San Francisco, transfer books to Sacramento or return to donor.

[21] Sutro's granddaughters, Alberta Morbio Pruett and Marguerite Morbio de Mailly felt that “the original donors expected the Sutro Library to be housed in a nonsectarian environment.” And as USF is a private institution, the San Francisco Public Library Commission opposed the move.

There are approximately 30,000 pamphlets in the collection, primarily on the political history of Mexico during the outbreak of the revolution against Spain (1810, 1811), the promulgation of the Constitution of Cadiz (1812), its reaffirmation (1820), and the establishment of the Mexican Republic (1821-1823).

Adolph Sutro acquired this part of his collection in 1884 from the estate of Moses W. Shapira, a Jerusalem bookseller and antiquities dealer.

[31] The collection of English pamphlets at the Sutro Library consists of over 12,000 tracts relating to British politics, religion, and culture from the 1500s through the 1800s.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded library projects throughout the United States and employed around 14,000 people during the Great Depression.