I am looking for any historical information on Jack's Restuarant/Bar. I have found conflicting dates as to when it was built, some say 1907, possibly rebuilt after '06 quake? Thank's to anyone who can help.

-- Traci Stetueville (tracileewh@aol.com), July 31, 2001

Answers

Jack's is an official city landmark, #146. You can find the Landmarks Board case report, with history, at the SF History Room, Main Library, 6th floor.

-- Bill Kostura (sfinoakland@aol.com), November 18, 2001.

No. Jack's was rebuilt or refurnished after the 1906 Earthquake so that is why you think it was built in 1907 but actually it was built in 1864. I remember that because that is when Lincoln was assisinated and the San Francisco Stinkable Sleazy Chronicle started publication. I have a lot of date associations in my head. Anyway Jack's was opened by a Frenchman named George Voges. Apparently there was a tremendous demand for French food in San Francisco at that time and someone even went to Franch to grab as many French chef's as they could and bring them over here. The story goes that Mr. Voges was staring at his restaurant from the outside thinking about what he could name his restaurant when out of nowhere jumped a jackrabbit and so that was the first thing that popped into his mind and that is why he named the place Jack's. It was supposed to have been the second oldest restaurant in San Francisco, the first of which is the Taddich Grill and it has always been the place to go for celebrities - Mark Twain used to eat there and actors such as Clark Gable and Cary Grant. As far as the business goes, let's see how this goes -- George Voges, the original owner sold the restaurant to Jacques Monique who then sold it to Edward Blanque who then sold it to Michel Redinger who had become part owner after putting in money to have it rebuilt after the 1906 disaster. Michel's brother Paul then bought out Edward Blanque's share and eventually Paul's son Jack became owner. Apparently, Paul named his son Jack after the restaurant. I guess it was fitting. You might as well be named after your father's business. I think sometime in I think it was in 1997 Jack sold the restaurant to John Konstin. I'm not exactly sure how it was arranged but I believe the whole building was bought as well and that John Konstin payed $460,000 for it. Then what happened was that in the year 2,000 with the dotcom boom and the great jump in the price of real-estate, John got an offer to sell the building for approximately 5 million dollars though I think it was eventually sold for a half-million less than that. -- The other thing I forgot to mention was that in the old days up until the early 1900s, Jack's restaurant was not just a restaurant. It was a whorehouse too. The upstairs floors were used for the dirty work and lots of respectable businessmen used to bring in their secretaries at lunch time, give them a fabulous lunch and then do them upstairs. It made it very convenient. Nowadays there are tons of wifes who believe their husbands are so totally faithful. Well, I got news for them, it ain't so. And the better off, more successful and wealthier the person is the more women he is doing behind his wife's back who ever so faithfully thinks her husband to be such a pefect guy. Women really have the blinders on in this country. Anyway that's another story. -- Well, I probably forgot some things but that is all the time I have for now. -- One other thing, if my style seems kind of weird and I make a lot of typos, it's because everything I write disappears after one line and I can no longer edit anything after that without some awkward backspacing. It's because I use a free nongraphic ISP and have never used a regular ISP except for short periods. I don't believe in paying for internet access and in the past I even used to hack AOL but have no need of doing that anymore. Anyway, that's another story too.

-- Harry Murphy (harrymurphy@my-deja.com), November 25, 2001.