Abe Warner didn’t mind the spiders.
When he opened his North Beach saloon in 1856, he welcomed his eight-legged friends to festoon the bar with intricate webs at the San Francisco watering hole known as Cobweb Palace.
Warner had an eccentric penchant for animals and insects. He once described arachnids as “industrious” critters and admired them for their ability to “mind their own business,” a historic San Francisco Chronicle story said.
Cobweb Palace was unlike any other saloon in that it had dense spider webs fixed on the bar’s ceiling. More threads draped over the shelves that stored the liquor bottles. The spiders cast a veil over nude portraits on the walls, and some of the webs reportedly grew 6 feet wide at times. But Warner refused to destroy them.
“The spiders just took advantage of me and my good nature,” Warner told the San Francisco Chronicle. “When I first opened up here, I didn’t have time to bother with ‘em and they grew on me. It’s a great neighborhood for spiders, anyway, and the news got around among ‘em that I was easy and they founded an orphan asylum and put all the orphans to work spinning webs.”
At left, Abe Warner is pictured inside his bar, Cobweb Palace, and on the right he is seen reading the paper as monkeys play by his feet inside. Both photos were taken around 1880.
OpenSFHistory /wnp37.03684 (l) and wnp71.0541 (r)The webs were part of the mystique, but there were other creatures lurking about. The saloon had the advantage of being positioned at the tip of Meiggs' Wharf, which stretched 2,000 feet outward from the end of Powell Street and is now part of Piers 39 and 45 at Fisherman's Wharf. Mariners who docked at Meiggs' Wharf sometimes brought along creatures from their distant travels to strike a deal with Warner.
It wasn’t rare to find long-tailed monkeys, parrots or canaries from Japan inside Cobweb Palace. And once purchased, Warner would let the monkeys roam free inside the bar. Other times when he’d catch wind of animals trapped by the state, Warner rescued large predators, like cougars and bears, and set them up in a cage by the main entrance.
The oddities of Cobweb Palace drew folks in who traveled by the Sausalito ferry to San Francisco. Because there weren’t many establishments where booze wasn’t the main draw, Cobweb Palace became somewhat of a local attraction that piqued the interest from people of all ages.
The allure of Cobweb Palace made Warner a wealthy man. And for nearly 40 years, the spiders kept spinning their webs, until Cobweb Palace was left in the dust.
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Six years before Warner opened the quirky North Beach bar, he was an ordinary butcher in New York City. It’s not clear what provoked Warner to uproot his life on the East Coast and move westward, but when he bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco in 1850, his wife and children didn’t follow.
He picked up a gig as a butcher once he arrived in San Francisco, but by 1856, he traded his soiled apron and cleaver for a shiny top hat and keys to a saloon.
Meiggs' Wharf was constructed between 1852 and 1853, and thanks to Cobweb Palace plus a ferry port, it became a standard terminus for visitors. Guests who stopped by watched the bears snarl in their cages while they enjoyed complimentary chowder that was, undoubtedly, prepared under questionable hygienic conditions.
North Beach and Meiggs' Wharf, from Russian Hill in 1867. Pier extended from present Bay Street near Powell. Cobweb Palace was located at the far end of the pier.
OpenSFHistory / wnp37.00681-LIf Cobweb Palace existed today, it wouldn’t last as long as it did in the 1800s. The San Francisco Department of Public Health told SFGATE that the bar would certainly be issued a written report with “directives to relocate the monkeys and parrots out of the facility, remove the cobwebs, and clean and sanitize all affected areas, including animal feces.” But the customers at the time certainly didn’t seem to mind the zoo-like atmosphere.
Warner, always on the lookout for a good deal, procured a vast collection of walrus tusks and sperm whale teeth that he bartered for with Arctic whalers. Each piece was carved with artistic designs, but Warner especially fancied the ones with patriotic scenes of U.S. history.
“This collection probably was the largest and best of its kind in the world,” The San Francisco Examiner wrote in 1896.
A view inside Cobweb Palace during the 1880s. Abe Warner's bar showcased his collection of walrus tusks along with other curios.
From L to R: OpenSFHistory / wnp71.2193:: OpenSFHistory / wnp71.2194Cobweb Palace would continue showcasing its curios, wild animals, and web-covered ceiling for nearly four decades, until the crowd outgrew their taste for the peculiar fortress Warner created. The saloon began to lose its luster in the 1870s, when the area became mostly industrial. Years later, the Sausalito ferries moved away from Meiggs' Wharf, causing a bigger blow to Warner’s business.
Customers stopped coming to Cobweb Palace and Warner couldn’t make enough cash to pay the rent. The property owner had no choice but to evict Warner by 1893 to tear down the saloon and make way for new housing.
“It nearly broke the old man’s heart to leave the spot where he had played the gamut from poverty to affluence and back again, but there was no help for it. Tears gathered in his eyes as he saw the grimy treasures torn from the walls and dumped into express wagons,” the San Francisco Chronicle wrote.
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Warner’s prized possessions were auctioned in 1893 upon the bar's closing, though there weren’t many interested buyers. A small crowd of antique collectors made their way to the former Cobweb Palace, but the auction only raised about $100 (with today’s inflation, that’s about $3,039).
Cobweb Palace was build in 1856 and closed by the late 1800s. Owner Abe Warner poses by the front entrance (farthest right) in this photo captured around 1890.
OpenSFHistory / wnp37.02071The auctioneers sorted through Warner’s livelihood and ultimately deemed most of it as rubbish. Warner’s life was in shambles, but he wouldn’t let go of his beloved walrus tusk and whale teeth collection.
He became the punch line in historic articles upon the closure of Cobweb Palace. One headline read, “Old Abe is out. His cobweb palace is no more. Curios and relics go dirt cheap.” What once was a popular and booming business became unsustainable and an eyesore of San Francisco.
“The march of improvement, though slow, has at last driven old Abe Warner from the home that has known neither soap, water nor broom in thirty-seven long and weary years,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 1893. “An auctioneer did the cleaning out with his little hammer, knocking down the dusty, cobwebs and dead flies to the highest bidder.”
When it was through, Warner, who had also made Cobweb Palace his place of residence, gathered a few of his pet birds and other small creatures and moved into a shack at 308 1/2 Francisco St., just blocks away from the former Cobweb Palace.
A group of women and men posing in front of Cobweb Palace around 1880.
OpenSFHistory / wnp26.2055Warner is remembered in historic articles as a man whose only friends were the spiders, and in a way, they were. Warner’s best days were among the spiders that coexisted inside his bar as they kept him company long after the crowd abandoned him. Some webs had been undisturbed since the saloon’s inception until the auctioneers finally cleared them out.
Warner refused his daughter’s call to return to New York after the failure of Cobweb Palace. It would be too painful of a move after the decades spent in San Francisco. Even when local relatives wanted to take him in, Warner declined their offer, preferring his own solitude. Then, three years after the saloon’s permanent closure, Warner passed away in 1896 without a dime to his name. He was 82 years old and died alone, save for the spiders that watched over him until the very end.
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