Alma de Bretteville Spreckels

Alma de Bretteville Spreckels (March 24, 1881 – August 7, 1968) was a wealthy socialite and philanthropist in San Francisco, California. She was known both as "Big Alma" (she was tall) and "The Great Grandmother of San Francisco". Among her many accomplishments, she persuaded her first husband, sugar magnate Adolph B. Spreckels, to donate the California Palace of the Legion of Honor to the city of San Francisco.

Early life Alma Charlotte Corday le Normand de Bretteville was born in 1881 on a farm near Lake Merced, in the then-rural Outside Lands of San Francisco, the fifth of six children of Viggo and Mathilde de Bretteville, two Danish immigrants. Farming was difficult in the sand dunes that formed the outskirts of San Francisco at that time, and the farm was unsuccessful, prompting the family to relocate back to the main part of the city, moving to a small flat on Francisco Street, on Russian Hill. The family was very poor during her early childhood. Viggo descended from Franco-Danish noble family of le Normand de Bretteville through his great-grandfather who emigrated during the French Revolution, and used that as an excuse to avoid working while simultaneously deriding the "nouveau riche" of California. In contrast, Mathilde had enough ingenuity and business sense to open a combination Danish bakery, laundry service, and massage parlor which became the family's source of income. At age 14, Alma's father had Alma quit school to work full-time for the family laundry delivery business, often for wealthy customers whose lifestyle she came to admire.

She had developed a love of art and enrolled in the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art to study painting, eventually specializing in the painting of miniatures. While there, she earned money as an artists' model, and eventually, becoming a nude model for paintings in the city's saloons. or Petzoldt, a popular artists' model in San Francisco at that time. Regardless, this statue was selected from a number of entries and only barely made the cut, thanks to the crucial vote of the chair of the Citizens' Committee, Adolph B. Spreckels. Although he was 24 years older than she was, he was smitten by Alma, and after a five-year courtship, they married on May 11, 1908. In the meantime, son Adolph Bernard Jr. was born in 1911, followed by another daughter, Dorothy Constance, in 1913. It was after Dorothy's birth that Spreckels learned her husband had contracted syphilis before their marriage, as he began showing symptoms of the disease. Alma and her children, however, avoided contracting syphilis. which she dutifully carried out.

In 1921, ground was broken for the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum in Lincoln Park, San Francisco. As Spreckels envisioned it, the building is an almost exact, full-scale replica of the French Pavilion from the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, which in turn was a three-quarter-scale version of the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur in Paris designed by George Applegarth and H. Guillaume. At the close of the exposition, which was located just a few miles away in the current Marina district, the French government granted Adolph permission to construct a permanent replica of the French Pavilion. The museum opened on November 11, 1924, six months after Adolph's death. During the dedication ceremony, the Counsellor of State of France announced that Spreckels had been awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur.

Spreckels met Elmer Awl, a Santa Barbara rancher and businessman, during her inquiries into the Samarkand Hotel, a Persian-themed hotel which had fallen into disrepair. She purchased the property for $55,000 in 1937 and proceeded to renovate it, hoping to provide another home for her now-overflowing art collection. Spreckels and Awl hit it off immediately and were married in 1939. Awl moved to San Francisco, but the hotel was not particularly successful and Spreckels sent him back to Santa Barbara to manage the business, but he was also unable to stem the losses. They decided to rid themselves of the property but could not find a buyer. Eventually, the hotel was swapped for a dairy farm in Marin County worth $80,000.

When the U.S. was drawn into World War II, Awl, as a member of the United States Coast Guard Reserve, was called to active duty. While he was away, Spreckels formed a new charity, the San Francisco League for Servicemen, which gathered supplies for the Army and Navy. She even donated her vast Sonoma County ranch to the Army to use as a recreational facility. Near the end of the war, Spreckels discovered that Awl had been having an affair with her younger cousin Ulla de Bretteville, whom Alma had brought over from Denmark and who had lived with Alma for several years. She quickly divorced Awl in 1943, while he was still stationed in Central America. Elmer Awl and Ulla de Bretteville would later marry in 1945. and as a result, did not receive much recognition for her role in that museum's establishment.

After her son Adolph's death in 1961, she lived mostly in seclusion, visiting only with her daughters and grandchildren. She died in 1968 of pneumonia at age 87, and was interred at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma.