San Francisco’s best-kept secret: The Book Club of California

Don’t judge the Book Club of California by its lobby.

Even knowing the address — 312 Sutter St., just off Union Square — I passed the storefront entrance three times, finally entering through a dull-looking glass door to a duller hallway and up the dullest-ever elevator to the fifth floor, wondering all the way if I’d entered the right office building or if I’d be interrupting someone’s tax audit.

This uninspired facade faded, however, once I’d found the actual club entry. Its large double doors open onto a gracious book-walled room of leather chairs, a fireplace, a bar and a hushed realm of gentility, order and reverence for the written word. Think Diogenes Club, but you can actually speak out loud without a glare from a stuffy old Mycroft.

“There’s no secret handshake required,” jokes Shruti Swamy, the club’s program coordinator, welcoming me in like an old friend and guiding me on a short tour through this haven for bookies. Not the gambling kind, although they are indeed involved in book making — as in the actual publishing of books. But only fine press editions, maybe one or two a year, with titles that might not make it to large publishing houses. Things like “Letters of Ambrose Bierce,” “The Woods Were Never Quiet” and “Palatino: The Natural History of a Typeface.”

And it’s not a book club in the sense of an Oprah-style book club, where you read a novel and then discuss it over chai and cake. Here, members or visitors — it’s open to the public — can research, learn about and honor the history of books and the book arts through the club’s collections of about 12,000 volumes and ephemera, books on the history of printing in California and the West, books on books and other fine press works. The century-old club may be one of S.F.’s best-kept secrets to most of us, but it’s well-known as a hub in the vibrant Bay Area book-arts community, holding literary events and public programs year-round.

Indeed, true bibliophiles love not only the message a publication contains, but the book itself as a material object of their affection, the presentation enhancing the words. It’s about spines and fonts, delicate illustrations, quality paper — sometimes so thick you’d swear there are three pages stuck together when it’s really just one. It’s the smell of the ink, the heft of the volume, the skillful binding that allows it to fall open in your hand like petals of a full-blown rose.

No offense to the digital world, but a book in any other form just doesn’t feel as sweet.

“In some ways, we are happily digital, using social media, cataloging collections online. Those are powerful tools,” says the club’s executive director, Jennifer Sime. “But not everything has to be digital, even in a digital age. Those things don’t replace the artifact, the material culture.”

Books that bind

So, a poet, a businessman and a printer walked into a luncheon back in 1912 — book lovers all — and they came up with an idea for a rare-book exhibit for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The display never materialized, but the casual lunch chat resulted in the club, quickly boasting 58 charter members and even admitting women at a time when that was as rare as a first-edition of, oh, say the Holy Bible. One of the club’s earliest female members was philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst.

Over the decades, the club has been housed in at least 10 different San Francisco spots but is now happily settled in this elegant home, defying its drab entry. The day I visited, library volunteers Norman McKnight and Mark Knudsen were helping assistant librarian Kitty Luce sort a box of ephemera and put shelves in order. “People don’t necessarily come in and read books here,” Luce says. “Some do. But others come in to view a particular volume, or research 19th-century bookbinding techniques, or view work by a certain lithographer.”

Beautiful print

Swamy, a book lover and writer herself, says she took home a copy of “The Woods Were Never Quiet” when she first came to work here, and it changed her entire reading experience. “I’d never read a book so finely printed,” she says. “The stories are one thing, and I would have loved them anyway, even in a paperback form. But there’s something about the paper, the texture, the tactile quality. It really made me understand why we want to preserve this experience.”

Contact Angela Hill at ahill@bayareanewsgroup.com, or follow her on Twitter @GiveEmHi`ll.