Vignettes

In 1946, George Zaro opened a restaurant at the north end of the old redwood Richardson Bay Bridge. In 1949 he turned the restaurant over to Enrico Pastori so that he could devote most of his time to developing a yacht harbor behind the restaurant. Pastori’s restaurant didn’t last long. In 1951, Anthony and John…

In 1979, Dave Smith and Paul Hawken founded Smith & Hawken for catalog sales of sturdy garden tools manufactured in England.  In 1982 they opened a retail store on the corner of Lovell Ave. and Corte Madera Ave.  By 1988 the business had become a great success: Paul Hawken was named Citizen of the Year…

Enrollment in the Golden Gate Baptist Seminary on Strawberry Point had been declining since the 1970’s. In 2014, the trustees decided to relocate to Southern California.  North Coast Lands Holdings paid $84 million for the property. Their plan was to add 93 residential units and lease the campus buildings to Branson School in Ross. Neighbors…

There are now over 500 Banana Republic stores in the US and 100 more in other countries. The first store was in Mill Valley. Mel and Patricia Ziegler worked for the San Francisco Chronicle.  He was a reporter. She was an illustrator. They lived in an apartment on Russian Hill. In 1978, they quit their…

In 1890, “The Nest” at 116 Cascade Dr. was one of the first weekend/summer cottages built in Cascade Canyon.  The owner was Jerome Stanford, nephew of Leland Stanford, a governor of California and founder of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. The cottage originally had seven tiny bedrooms, and a lean-to for a kitchen.  In 1914,…

The first Mill Valley Film Festival, a three-day event, began on Friday August 11, 1978 in Odd Fellows Hall at 142 Throckmorton with champagne at 7 pm followed at 9 pm by a tribute to filmmaker James Broughton, widely known as one of the most influential pioneers in the realm of avant-garde cinema and poetry.…