Hilltop Russians in San Francisco
A Record of the Potrero Hill Colony

Thirty Illustrations in Color by Pauline Vinson  [born 1915]
Text by William Saroyan
Printed at the Grabhorn Press (1941)

THERE are Russian people living on the crest of Potrero Hill who can remember when the hill was all yellow flowers. Now the hilltop is a peasant village with the city eddying around it.
     Here is a new light on San Francisco's infinite variety recorded in a unique bit of San Franciscana.
     Nowhere else is there such a record of a community which observes traditions brought over from Russia by its first settlers in the beginning of this century.
     Potrero Hilltop is more than a vantage point for sweeping vistas. It is the home of a Russian group whose independent ways of life in the midst of San Francisco have survived intact. The wonder of discovering such survival is affectionately expressed in this book which will keep alive a community that in itself may not survive.

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Copyright 1941 by James Ladd Delkin, Stanford University, California The water-color reproductions of the work of Pauline Vinson of the Art Project in San Francisco are used by permission of Work Projects Administration.

INTRODUCTION
by Willian Saroyan (with historical notes)

PREFACE TO THE PICTURES
The pictures which make up this book were selected from a portfolio of impressions made from life during a period of residence in the heart of the colony. They tell no story but merely attempt to record that quality of the Hilltop's life which will inevitably diminish as death claims increasing numbers of the steadfast original settlers.

     Though the new generation is unquestionably American, and speak of their parents as being "old fashioned," the discipline and authority of the patriarchal tradition is yet alive. The Hilltop still retains both the aspect and the atmosphere of a peasant village. Only with the morning and evening rush of the younger workers is the slow temp broken--and then only briefly.

     At first sight the architecture may seem drab and commonplace because in building, these people followed the haphazard local forms of the day. Nevertheless, they added something of their own in the quality of a foreign accent--difficult to point to specifically, but clearly perceptible. With the life which quietly animates these streets and buildings, they do become quite as foreign as the people themselves.

See pictures in groups of 6:   1-67-12,   13-1819-24,   25-30

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