‘Big Alma’: The Philanthropist Firecracker Who Gave Us the Legion of Honor

She was a Danish immigrant who grew up on the rough side of town. She was a scandalous nude model with a reputation. She enjoyed skinny dipping well into old age. And if it wasn’t for this controversial livewire, San Francisco would have neither the Legion of Honor nor the Maritime Museum.

Her name was Alma de Bretteville Spreckels but her more fitting nickname was “Big Alma” — a moniker that captured not only her 6-foot-tall stature, but her outgoing, devil-may-care personality too.

Alma’s greatest gifts to the city all happened after her 1908 marriage to Adolph Bernard Spreckels, wealthy and successful son of sugar refinery entrepreneur, Claus Spreckels. But Alma was already a local celebrity in her own right by the time she met him in 1902. In no small part because of a gossip-fueled court case earlier that year in which Alma sued a love interest for “breach of promise” — or, as she later put it herself, “personal defloweration” — and won $1,250 in the process.

Shortly after the court case, Alma was hired by sculptor Robert Ingersoll Aitken to pose as the Goddess of Victory. Robert’s resulting bronze in Alma’s likeness was chosen to sit atop the Dewey Monument in San Francisco’s Union Square. It just so happened that the chairman of the citizens’ committee responsible for picking the winning piece of art for the new landmark was smitten with Alma the moment he laid eyes on her. This fortuitous course of events is how Alma and Adolph first fell in love.

Despite his being 24 years her senior, Adolph and Alma were a good match. Adolph was in possession of the same anarchic impulses that also drove Alma. He famously shot San Francisco Chronicle editor Michael de Young in 1884, after the paper printed a series of unflattering articles about his father. (Adolph was acquitted after he pleaded insanity and self-defense.) Even more significantly, Adolph shared Alma’s generous spirit. He was a man who had persuaded his father to contribute to the construction of Golden Gate Park’s band shell, as well the building of the Dewey Monument. She was a woman who responded to the 1906 earthquake by organizing community kitchens and directing aid trucks to them.

After they finally tied the knot, Alma and Adolph’s honeymoon involved a trip around the world. Still, Alma took nothing for granted. Legend has it, she coined the term “sugar daddy” to affectionately describe her husband’s generosity, completely unaware that the phrase would live on forever. The phrase’s longevity is fitting. There was nothing temporary about Adolph’s desire to give Alma whatever she wanted. Because of him, Alma finally had access to the wealth, comfort and ability to affect change that she had been striving for her whole life.

Born in 1881, Alma was raised with four brothers and one sister in San Francisco’s Sunset District, back when it was still known as the “Outside Lands” — a name born from its rugged, sand dune-dominated landscape and sparse population. To make ends meet, Alma’s mom Mathilde transformed the front room of their home into a Danish bakery. Alma’s brothers’ bedroom was sometimes used as a massage studio. Mathilde even laundered other people’s clothes in a Cow Hollow lagoon to make extra money on the side.

Alma was forced out of school and into work in her early teens, but naturally followed her mother’s industrious example. Alma delivered laundry to the mansions in town. She worked as a stenographer. Her nude modeling later came about because it was the quickest way for her to make good money.

After marriage to Adolph, Alma had three children in four years — though she made for a reluctant mother. To accommodate their growing family, in 1913 Adolph finished building Alma her dream mansion at 2080 Washington Street, opposite Lafayette Park. Lavish parties became regular occurrences, though San Francisco’s social elites shunned Alma relentlessly. Instead, she happily hosted fascinating guests including author Jack London, Folies Bergère dancer Loie Fuller, and even the Prince and Princess of Siam.

Some guests enjoyed Alma more than others. Actress Ina Claire once said: “I liked [Alma]. She was a great old sport. But she was a character. She talked dirty. I’ve seen people get up and walk away from her at dinner tables because she was talking dirty.”

Alma was much more than a mere party girl though. She was consistently focused on using her home for more selfless purposes too. During both world wars, when Alma wasn’t holding high profile charity auctions, fairs and raffles at venues like San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, she did so out of her own home. Alma tirelessly raised money for causes close to her heart — aid for Romania, post-war house-building in France, a milk fund for Belgian orphans. She sent medical supplies and musical instruments to troops overseas.

During the Second World War, she sent a washing machine to a Navy station when she found out cooks were having to handwash their clothes. Her wartime charitable organization, the League for Servicemen, opened a recreation center for troops. Alma also saw to it that thousands of radios, toiletries, typewriters and athletic supplies were sent to those serving overseas. One Navy commander credited Alma with saving the lives of at least 250 men via her generosity with — and swift delivery of — much-needed medical equipment.

Alma’s greatest legacy lies at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, however. Inspired by the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Alma’s beloved Paris, the museum was designed by architect George Applegarth and cost Adolph over a million dollars to build. After much campaigning and socializing, Alma managed to acquire donations of art from Belgium, Romania, Serbia, Poland and France.

Those weren’t the only ways the museum had ties to France though. Alma conceptualized and designed The Book of Gold: a record on parchment, written by a calligrapher, of the roughly 3,600 Californian men who died in France during World War I. The book was dedicated to the soldiers’ mothers and put on display at the Legion until 1941, alongside 700 other pieces of art — including Alma’s own precious collection of 31 Auguste Rodin works.

Sadly, by the time the museum opened, Alma was mourning just like the mothers she honored. Adolph had died mere months before the Legion’s doors opened.

The loss of Adolph hit Alma hard, but it never stopped her from forging ahead with big ideas. In the late-1930s, Alma became obsessed with the idea of creating a maritime museum for San Francisco. It was a thought that had been brewing in her mind for some time. Speaking to the San Francisco Beautiful Committee in 1937, Alma expressed her desire to see more “centers to house not only maritime collections, but mining, industrial exhibits and other typically California displays in which visitors to the city would be interested.” Alma became a trustee for the new maritime museum, was instrumental in raising money for its founding, and donated important collections to fill its walls.

The end of Alma’s life was significantly quieter than the beginning. After her son died during a bar altercation in 1961, she stopped socializing and retreated to the comforts of her mansion. Not even receiving a Phoebe Hearst Medal from the San Francisco Examiner in 1963 brought the former attention-seeker back out of her shell. Alma died in 1968 at the age of 87, of the very same thing that had prompted Adolph’s death 44 years earlier: pneumonia. Her funeral, described by the Examiner as “perhaps the most opulent in the city’s history,” was held at her beloved Legion of Honor.

After her death, paying tribute to Big Alma, one Honolulu newspaper called her, “The grandest of grande dames — a lady who not only gave generously, but lived in high old style, paddling around in her Roman pool daily, nipping appreciatively at her pitcher of martinis, and always talking straight and dry.”

She was, the obituary noted, “A San Franciscan, true and through.”

For stories on other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, click here.