Santa Rosa High School - Echo Yearbook (Santa Rosa, CA)

Page 5 text:

VoL, III. SANTA ROSA, CAL., JANUARY, 1912 No. V Apartment Number ‘Ghree ERY few apartments, however modern, claim the simple luxury of a fire-place, and few indeed -have newly married couples as tenants, but Number Three, of the New San Carlos, had both. When Mrs. Harlin opened the massive oaken doors of the New San Carlos to the public, nearly four years ago, Number Three had been taken possession the younger set, and held by it ever since, all because of this little = o Me brown stone fire-place, and many a little domestic quarrel and make-up had centered around its hearth. Tom Kinley had “spotted” it nearly three months before his wedding day and had it held for him, that he might lead, Sophia home to where a blazing wood fire, casting its cheerful glow upon the dainty furnishings of the little sitting room, would remind her more of her own home, where she had lived with her mother and brothers, and where she would be less lone- some in the long wintry days approaching, when his business would keep him from her. Thus Number Three was once more taken by newly-weds, though the old neighborhood gossip said it was likely to be the last time, since those rich people from the north were rushing the St. Marks to completion. The St: Marks, towering with its massive steel frame work, fifteen stories above the street, was to be the finest, most modern and complete hotel in the city, so its promoters said. So anxious were they for its completion that the builder had finally consented to put forth greater efforts, and resulting therefrom, electric lights were strung through the great steel skeleton, while a force of workers, with their riveting machines, kept up an incessant din through the long hours of the night, much to the discomfiture of the neighbors, especially the inmates of the New San Carlos; for so close were the two that one might reach across from the window of Sophia’s little pink and white dining room and touch one of the huge steel beams of the St. Marks. Many times, in the course of the day, Sophia herself would stand at this window and watch the men at their work, as they clung to the beams like ants, or climbed steep, clinging ladders to the street below, or into the dizzy heights above,