For Immediate Release: July 31, 2007
Contact: Sherri Eng (415) 557-4282
seng@sfpl.org
An Extraordinary Mayor for an Extraordinary City
Culminating the city’s year-long “San Francisco Rising” commemoration of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire Centennial, the San Francisco Main Library presents The City Redeemed: the Life and Mayoralty of Edward Robeson Taylor,
an exhibition exploring the life and times of the man who became a symbol of recovery for the city.
A poet, doctor and lawyer until he was appointed to office at age 67 in July 1907, Taylor served as San Francisco’s mayor for 30 months, until January 1910. He was respected as much for restoring honesty and good government to the City as he was for rebuilding its crumbled infrastructure.
Among his other achievements, Taylor was dean of Hastings Law School for 20 years, a physician and president of the Cooper Medical School which later became Stanford Medical School, a San Francisco Public Library trustee
for close to 40 years, a bibliophile, and a founder and first president of the Book Club of California.
“In this the centennial of Taylor becoming San Francisco’s mayor, we should remember him as a good citizen who gave up his private life on a few hours notice to take over and mend his beloved City. He should also be hailed
and serve as a role model as a professional whose first duty was to integrity and service to his community. Lastly, we should admire him for his love of learning and ideas and his willingness to invest of himself to foster them,”
wrote the exhibition’s curator James W. Haas in his new biography on Taylor. The biography will appear in installments in the April and September issues of the Argonaut, the semi-annual journal of the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society.
The exhibition, which features photos, correspondences and drawings, is on view through Oct. 12 outside the San Francisco History Center at the Main Library (Sixth Floor). The exhibition is presented by the
San Francisco History Center of the San Francisco Public Library and funded by the Book Club of California, and is free and open to the public.
For more information, please call (415) 557-4277.
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