Partner Mary Godde

Queer Places:
920 O'Farrell St, San Francisco, CA 94109, USA
University of California, Berkeley, CA, United States
La Playa Hotel, Camino Real & 8th Ave, Carmel-By-The-Sea, CA 93921, United States

Harriet Lane Levy (March 29, 1866 – September 15, 1950) was a pioneering San Francisco-born author, drama critic, and art collector whose life intersected with the modern art explosion of early twentieth-century Paris and the landmark literary circle of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

Born into an upper-middle-class Polish-Jewish immigrant family, Levy was raised at 920 O'Farrell Street in San Francisco alongside her sisters Addie and Polly by her parents, Benjamin "Benish" Levy and Henrietta "Yetta" Michelson Levy. Resisting the prevailing 19th-century social expectations that urged young women to marry wealthy suitors, Levy proved intellectually independent and focused on her education. She passed her entrance exam for the University of California, Berkeley, at sixteen by translating Heinrich Heine's poem "Die Lorelei" for philosopher Josiah Royce, eventually graduating in 1886. In her youth, she also formally converted from Judaism to Christian Science alongside her friend Sarah Stein.

Following her university studies, Levy launched a prominent career as a writer and drama critic in San Francisco. She contributed to The Wave alongside literary figures such as Jack London and Frank Norris, and served as a drama critic for the San Francisco Call. After the catastrophic 1906 San Francisco earthquake completely destroyed her childhood home, Levy set sail for Europe in 1907 with her childhood friend and companion, Alice B. Toklas. Arriving in Paris, the pair integrated into the vibrant bohemian and artistic avant-garde, connecting closely with Sarah and Michael Stein, as well as Gertrude Stein. Levy quickly became embedded in the Parisian art scene, attending the famous 1908 Rousseau Banquet hosted by Pablo Picasso in Montmartre, where she famously sang the Berkeley fight song. During these Parisian years, Levy sat for several prominent artists, becoming the subject of an early word portrait by Gertrude Stein, a 1913 ink portrait by Henri Matisse, and a 1908 terracotta sculpture by Peter David Edstrom.

Levy's central role as Toklas's traveling partner shifts when Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas fell in love and became life partners. Recognizing that Toklas was moving in with Stein, Stein and Toklas orchestrated Levy's solo departure, and Levy returned to California in 1910. Throughout her travels and subsequent life back in the United States, Levy amassed a significant collection of modern art, accumulating works by Picasso, Matisse, André Derain, and Henri Manguin, which she later bequeathed to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

In 1943, during World War II, Levy moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where she lived at the La Playa Hotel with her companion, Mary Godde. Late in life, at age eighty, Levy achieved literary recognition with the publication of her celebrated memoir, 920 O’Farrell Street (1946), which chronicled her Victorian upbringing in San Francisco, alongside a volume of light verse titled I Love to Talk About Myself. Harriet Lane Levy died at age 84 on September 15, 1950, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and her ashes were scattered in Monterey County. Her extensive archival materials and unpublished manuscripts were left to the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Posthumously, her recollections of European artistic circles were gathered, edited, and published as Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Their Circle in 2011, serving as a vital literary record of the early modern art era and lesbian cultural history.

University of California, Berkeley, CA

References:

• 920 O’Farrell Street (Doubleday, 1947; republished 1994) – Levy's autobiography chronicling her childhood in late 19th-century San Francisco.
• I Love to Talk About Myself (Grabhorn Press, 1947) – A collection of light verse published the same year as her memoir.
• A Supper in Montmartre (UC Berkeley Seminar Limited Edition, 1985) – A published account of the 1908 Rousseau Banquet hosted by Pablo Picasso.
• Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Their Circle (Heyday Books, 2011) – Posthumously published recollections edited from her archived manuscripts.
• Harriet Lane Levy Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley – Houses unpublished manuscripts, personal papers, and travel recollections regarding her years in Paris.
• An Index to 920 O'Farrell Street By Harriet Lane Levy, edited by Glory Anne Laffey (Sourisseau Academy for State and Local History, San Jose State University, 1990).
• Jewish Women Pioneering the Frontier Trail: A History in the American West, by Jeanne E. Abrams (New York University Press, 2006).
• "The Jews of Portland, Oregon: A Statistical Dimension, 1860-1880", by Scott Cline (Oregon Historical Quarterly, 1987).
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) – Bequest of modern art collected by Levy, including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Henri Manguin, and Peter David Edstrom.
• San Francisco Call – Drama criticism and articles authored by Levy starting in 1898.
• The Wave – Literary entries and articles written by Levy alongside Jack London and Frank Norris.

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