SAM LEON BUILDING.

(AKA: Barber Shop.)

1856

© Floyd D. P. Øydegaard.
The Sam Leon Building - 2007.

First the history of the building used today as the "Barber Shop".

1851 Fernando Yrizar has a store and restaurant on this lot. There are wood buildings on 4 lots in a row.

1852 Yrizar sells the lot to Juan Dupont.

1854 Ignatio Christian owns the lot, Carpenter and O'Hara (Uncle Billy) are operating the Jenny Lind restaurant. Christen sells the lot to Sam Leon who has a clothing store and adds a frame building in the rear.

1856 spring - Leon builds a 1 story brick structure with the "back building" where his family lived. By the end of the year, the business sells to Morris Lewisson. Later, Jacobi and Morris, auctioneers occupy the store.

1860 Leon returns from San Francisco and opens a grocery store with his partner, G. J. Ward. Ward leaves in September.

1863 Leon sells to Jack Douglass.

1865 Jack Douglass sells to Wm. Black.

1867 Wm. Black sells to Charles Koch.

1868 After renovating and adding bath tubs, Koch opens his barber shop. One window is rented to Martin's jeweler's shop.

1875 R.H. Towle replaces Martin as the jeweler.

1880 Gardiner Evans replaces Towle. Eventually Koch has canaries in the window.

1898 Frank Dondero takes over the shop while Koch lives in the back rooms.

1900 Koch gives half interest in his property to his nephews, Charles Mayer and Richard Luckow.

1902 Koch dies, Dondero continues the barbershop, he also is elected county supervisor.

1929 Luckow gives his interest to his children: Richard and Charles Luckow and Laverne Luckow Nicolas.

© Columbia State Historic Park.
Period barber pole visible in 1934.
1947 State purchases from Richard Luckow, et al.

1964 Dondero retires.

1965 Bill Davis becomes the barber.

"The barber who was there, when I visited with my class, used to get people out in front of the store and show the crowd the finger he found down on the waterfront of San Francisco after the earthquake of 1906 and the finger belonged to Three Finger Jack, the famous bandit.
"He had the finger in a little white box and, of course, it was his own finger, which the crowd would plainly see. When they got closer, he moved the finger and shouted, 'It's alive!' Everyone jumped 10 ft straight up."

1982 Bill Davis retires.

1984 Bill Sey barber, for a very short time.

2002 September 1st - Janet Newby is the barber. Opened Thursday through Monday.

2006 December 31st - Newby's Barber Shop closes.

© Floyd D. P. Øydegaard.
Barber shop - 2007.

BARBER SHOPS IN COLUMBIA

Barber poles and shop signage - 1850s.

Now the known history of the Barber Shops around Columbia.

1851 Where the J. M. Beam Building is (Towle and Leavitt) originally were 5 lots owned by Bernardo Cassaretto. Stephen Stewart who owned the west part has a barber shop.

1853 One of the first French barbers was Joseph Aime Bonnefoi.

© oac
Note the four period pole displays - c1853.

1854 Wm. Odenheimer and Thaddeus W. Northey buy the property. Odenheimer moves his Eagle Cottage boarding house to the property and into a larger building. It takes care of 100 boarders and has a barber shop in the northeast corner. After burning, it is rebuilt by July 23.

1856? François Garrissere, was a laundryman and had a barber shop on the west side of Main Street. He was thought to have been a black.

NOTE: The association of the black men and the razor goes back to 1820 when they controlled the profession of shaving and hair cutting. As late as 1884, Chamber's Encyclopedia of New York stated, "In the United States the business of barbering is most exclusively in the hands of the colored population." San Francisco was home to sixteen black-owned barber shops as early as 1854, and during the 1860s, a former slave named Peter Briggs enjoyed a monopoly as the sole barber in Los Angeles. The owners of the following buildings with barber shops are not conclusively the barber. They rarely state that the owner is the barber. We can safely assume that many of Columbia's early barbers were black.

1859 Black Barbers, James Barker from Tennessee (his wife Sophia, was a dress maker) and J. A. Cousins from Virginia (his wife Justine, from New York)open a Shaving Emporium in the third building above Fulton Street on the west side of Main (the Temple Building).

1859 July - J. A. Cousins advertised as a barber.

1859 J. A. Cousins leaves the shop with James Barker and locates in the frame building south of the Wells Fargo building.

1859 Richard Henderson from Virginia (not married), a black barber, was in a shop on Fulton Street where Barker joined him. He received some notoriety when his brother William rescued a Columbia woman from a shipwreck they both happened to be aboard. She wrote a very grateful and sentimental letter to the paper.

1861 March - the Ferguson hotel owned by Westley, Wilder and Wheeler who remodel the building and change the name to "The Post Office Building" and open a bookstore and stationery in addition to the post office. The small store is rented to DuBois and Tally, barbers.

© Columbia State Historic Park.
Soderer Building used as a barber shop from 1850s through the 1890s.
1865 Joseph Armand Lamartine, closes his barber shop after many years. His shop adjoined Magendie's grocery store. He was one of two gunsmiths in town as well; Monsieur Jaquet was the other. (from the Tuolumne Independent - Jan. 6-13, 1877)
1865 Charles Snyder has a barber shop in one part of the Meyers building, White has a tailor's shop in the other part.

1867 Snyder takes Kordmeyer as a partner, they add a shoe shop at the back of the barber shop (the Meyers building).

1880 Antonio Frates has a barber shop in the building.

1867 The structure (Juan Questai Building) is joined to the Leavitt-Walker building, it is a saloon and barber shop at various times.

1867 James Wilson moves his shoemaking business into his brick building, his family lives behind the store. He shares the space with a barber and a daguerrotypist.

1868 After renovating the Leon Building and adding bath tubs, Charles Koch opens his barber shop.

1887 February - Tonsorial artist Green moves his Elite Tonsorial Shaving Parlor into the Soderer building.

1902 Koch dies, Dondero continues the barbershop, he also is elected county supervisor.

© Columbia State Historic Park.
Period correct Barber Pole visible in 1940.
c1955 Wood buildings at the south end of the structure (Fallon House), called the kitchen and barber shop, removed.

c1955 A barber shop display is in the Columbia museum.

From the Thames Salon read the
Barber Pole History

This page is created for the benefit of the public by

Columbia Booksellers & Stationers
22725 Main Street
Columbia California 95310-9401

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A WORK IN PROGRESS,
created for the visitors to the Columbia State Historic park.
© Columbia State Historic Park & Floyd D. P. Øydegaard.