San Francisco

My initial work for Shell in the Bay Area was at the Shell Building in San Francisco — my recollection is that it was on the fourth, or perhaps the fifth floor. The building was really a distinctive piece of architecture and right after WWII its 25-odd stories made it a tall building and it really stood out prominently in the San Francisco skyline. Now it is dwared and hidden by the newer and taller buildings around it.

I suppose that the first six months or so was a training period, first in the preparation of basic data and then in the fractionation design group. In both of these the training involved doing various projects and calculations of interest and value to Shell. After the training period was over the young engineers went in different directions — for example into process engineering groups for Shell Development (either oil or chemical) or perchance to a transfer to an operating company. In my case the direction was toward chemical engineering research and this was conducted either at a small laboratory in south Berkeley or at a test unit at Emeryville.

The latter was for the study of the hydrodynamics of distillation type contact trays and was part of a larger program the included an actual distillation column at the Houston refinery. The work in my case include conducting or supervising experiments and the analysis of the data. So I spent an increasing amount of time either at the large Emeryville site of Shell Development or at the smaller laboratory at Berkeley. Eventually sometime in the late 1940s the entire engineering group at San Francisco was moved from there into a new office building at Emeryville. Actually it was an extension of an existing building.

But back to San Francisco days at Shell. In retrospect it was a period for me marked by a condition of few or no personal responsibilities outside of work and a congenial and not very demanding atmosphere at work. Unlike at Wilmington where the work being done was often repetitious or mundane, at San Francisco the work really related to chemical engineering as I had envisioned in college courses and atmosphere.

I was exposed to individuals of unusual character, education and capability. It was a stimulating environment. Indirectly the atmosphere was also infected by the tenor of the industry at the time — the war was over, a bright vision of the future or the oil and chemical business was in the air, new plants and processes were being developed and implemented. Further, working in a metropolitan situation like San Francisco was a new experience — certainly it wasn’t like New York but it was a far cry from anything I had experienced up until then.

There was always the commute, getting a seat, reading the Chronicle on the morning trip across the bay, crossing the bay on the Bay Bridge, smelling the delicious coffee-roasting smell from the plant near the western terminus of the bridge, the short walk from the Key Terminal to the Shell Building. Noontimes were a time for having lunch at one of the many places near the Shell Building but within walking distance.

Perhaps the most picturesque to me at least was Adolf Wilke’s Business Men’s Lunch — it was just across the street from the Shell Building. The line of potential eaters (for the cafeteria-style lunch) might be extending out of the entrance for some distance, but rest assured, you would be paying Adolf Wilke himself inside of five minutes. Wilke could make change faster than any other cashier I have ever seen, but it was a messy operation. The floor around the till was always littered with stray coins that he had dropped in his rapid dispersing of change. There was a stack of bills in proper amount to make change for whatever bill was offered for payment and the amount of the tab. He only served lunch (perhaps breakfast, I don’t know) but he closed up by the early afternoon. When the building he was in was taken over for the construction of a new building he went out of business. I never encountered his restaurant again.

Noontimes were also a time for such activities as browsing in Stacey’s bookstore on the other side of Market Street up a block or so from the Shell Building, and exploring other businesses in the area. It was on a noontime walk that I once saw Dean Acheson while he was secretary of state (for Truman?) as big as life on a street corner. He was as elegant in life as in any of the published pictures of him.