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F I R S TP R E V476NEXTLAST

Rube Goldberg Brothel, Commercial Street
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg was born in San Francisco in 1883. Forced to study engineering by his father, Rube graduated from the University of California in Berkeley and was hired by the city of San Francisco as a sewage engineer. But his love for drawing cartoons drew him to the San Francisco Chronicle and later the San Francisco Bulletin, where he worked as staff cartoonist. He created a number of strips but he's best known for his wacky cartoon inventions which would later bear his name.

In November of 1906 he purchased this property in Chinatown. During the ten years that he owned the building it was used as a brothel which apparently helped finance his later move to New York. There Goldberg worked for the New York Evening Journal, the New York Evening Mail, and New York Journal American, but returned often to his home town of San Francisco.
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