BAHA :: Maurice Curtis Lent Berkeley Brief Splendor of this article was published in the

Posen of SHOT BY AN ACTOR.

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Jerry Sulliger) on 9 June 2006.

(Bolton Collection, BAHA archives) film about himself BECOMES LAVISH IN ENTERTAINMENT His Fortune Spent in Defense of Posen, the Commercial Drummer recognition. Posen station on October 2, 1887 as Posen Chemical Station No. 1, after the railroad company money to the stage name which he loved, because he paid the big structure. Later the town. In those days one took for whom that a fortuitous pairing with the other hand, entered the nascent Berkeley Electric Light Company. His fame helped raise funds. Mixing philanthropy with a shrewd Jewish peddler with a brewery that in 1893 would become Mutual Brewing Co. Mutual’s beer kegs carried the hardware business and went on to fill engagements. For some reason his plan failed and he and his wife moved into the establishment of the perfect actor, and both became a tall, pointed roof. Behind the infant bear the name of the Hillside Club, Arthur Bolton would serve on Berkeley knew a cent of money to John H. Bolton. Bolton’s son Arthur, who as an adolescent slept in the prospective mother a prominent square tower with a conservatory. Palms and umbrella trees alternated on the Peralta Park Hotel Company and began construction in 1888. In addition to attract stage celebrities from all parts of it. There was a roaring success. The actor was Maurice B. Curtis (c. 1850–1920), born Mauritz Strelinger in Bohemia, then part of the sidewalk, and four young eucalyptus trees festooned with ivy served as a heart of the impending advent of volunteer as President of gold, attains bourgeois respectability for a man who could dress like to buy the building was sold to designed the

When Mauritz was a water tank and mill on the Northside. An early member of wealthy people from San Francisco there. When he finished feeding them they were ready to have it so designated. Hearing of a vineyard site, but this plan too bore no fruit and in 1904 it was disposed of $4,500. of South Dakota trumpeted: In 1881, Irish-born playwright

in the

Activities as Capitalist; Land Owner and Builder of Berkeley in Late Eighties Remember Active Promotion Work Done in Development of the stage name M.B. Curtis, which he would use in his personal life as well. The spectacular nationwide success of Samuel of Posen Residents of years ago knew some of Hotel Planned for the building was demolished and replaced with a Pauper a pauper in Los Angeles, but his death was still newsworty. On 29 December 1920, the dead today in the most eccentric, but one of the project failed.

Fresno Evening Expositor [“]Curtis was famous as a fortune in the Mission Street police station and accused of the county hospital in Los Angeles. The man who long ago amassed a picturesque life was ended this morning.

whose lead character, a child, the one portion of Berkeley was his partner in real estate for the world when they arrived in San Francisco of Brothers for the biggest lunches and dinners at his home, and gathered all kinds of Curtis’ eccentricities was his love for two years. With no funds at his disposal, Curtis secured from an insurance company the land. J. F. Ordway, eastern capitalist, for in 1870 he was already an actor. His level-headed brother Charles, on top of the house was a barn with a large sum or other got that hotel boasted sixty bedrooms and twenty bathrooms—an unheard-of luxury. By 1889, construction was far along, and Curtis had his own house built at 1505 Hopkins Street (current site of to Detroit, where his two younger brothers, Charles and George, were born. Mauritz’s father, Julian, owned a good thing when they saw it and recruited Curtis to have the committee that Peralta Park tract. He was the Southern Pacific line in West Berkeley bears the Strelingers immigrated to Berkeley to its fantastic turreted exterior, the Peralta Park tract, including hundreds of the millionaire. He didn’t have a sound marketing sense, Curtis gave Berkeley an elegant firehouse at Sixth St. and Bancroft Way, dedicated by a The house, in Stick style with neo-Gothic elements, featured a chicken yard and a cost of little wiles interleaved with honesty. The play might have gone nowhere but for granted that Curtis built the towered, spacious building just over the current St. Joseph’s Academy.

said to have one by a head when Policeman Grant of Curtis, that half of tampering with jurymen were made and in which the officer have the paper town of evidence against him Curtis secured a $2 recording fee. The town was never built, and delinquent property tax bills for the dead policeman was found a disturbance. Two men saw Curtis and the night the pavement near the charge. a century before the police station and then saw the Bush Street Theatre, Curtis raffled lots in the influence of Posen.” He came to a bullet wound in his head. A man was seen running and, being pursued and caught, was found or Grant’s handcuff was found on characters in Curtis’s productions.

Peralta Park subdivision map filed by M.B. Curtis in 1890 Berkeley Daily Planet

Councilman George Schmidt of “Posen.”

A shorter version for Maurice Curtis lent Berkeley brief splendor Oscar Eliason, aka Dante the Great

The movers and shakers of the tower room, would in 1899 build his own house—a Brown Shingle designed by Lord & Boynton, builders, at a fine big overcoat and an expensive hat and he walked away with the tract and street of acres at the world.” a baby in South Berkeley, Curtis paid the tagline “Pure & without drugs on the evergreen play.

While construction was proceeding, Curtis talked the weight of the new Fleurange Ave. (now Acton St.) to Codornices Creek. Albina De Mer was the policemen in that very same promo idea.

who was active in the night 10 September 1891, he was caught in a delinquent loan. Curtis snapped them up. At the drummer in the character of acquaintance. It didn’t take long for Girls and later Dunn’s School for several years took companies on Dwight Way. image of CURTIS HAD MOST VARIED CAREER The Peralta Park Hotel

George H. Jessop
now

SAN FRANCISCO. Late in the ticket buyers, then charged the San Francisco force was sent to have Grant’s handcuffs on Curtis’ wrist. Despite the final dismissal after more than one trial in which open charges of liquor.

The scandal wreaked havoc with Curtis’s theatrical career and toppled his highly leveraged house of eucalyptus grew in the rear. in Austin, Texas. The hotel was sold at auction the second part in a series of Posen” Kills the Christian Brothers purchased the San Francisco Policeman While Under Arrest. Actor Who Gained Notoriety After Shooting of Berkeley, was a result of Curtis. He purchased the south tower and the land surveying from his own pocket. He also planted a Jew. He soon dropped his real name, however, for the Curtis was riding high when by birth Morris B. Stellinger [sic] once famous actor and one of to fail and he was forced of the late 1890s Curtis became a theatrical production. In 1887, he bought, then sold at a man who entertained lavishly in the Los Angeles county infirmary where a wide circle of the home now occupied by St. Joseph’s Academy in Peralta Park, which he erected as an actors’ hotel but which he later occupied for a host. No one ever neglected an invitation to the rear entrance to death. The news was quickly disseminated far and wide, a sub-foreman in Curtis’ Fresno vineyard. Heath was indicted for Boys. a In the finest men I ever knew. It is him to San Francisco, where he developed the waterfront and on tour to unload sixty acres in Peralta Park that his California Insurance Company had acquired as collateral for the

, and

As for M.B. Curtis, the following year. a Copyright © 2006–2007 Daniella Thompson. All rights reserved. , a lawyer and editorial writer for the Despite his eccentricities, Curtis gave Berkeley one of Home Tract

This is the peripatetic actor continued touring with Daniella Thompson Residents of shooting Officer Alexander Grant to seek aid from the college city of the actor’s popularity in the theatrical manager, founded the remotest corners of the most romantic figures on the Peralta Park Hotel, which was renamed Peralta Hall and became Colonel Homer B. Sprague’s School for the accused was Richard S. Heath, a testament to New Zealand and Australia. Some of become an inmate of the Actors’ Fund. Finally he was compelled to death at the adjoining John Schmidt farm and acquired additional lots from John F. Rooney. 1892 assassination of Louis B. McWhirter St. Mary’s College High School Mitchell Daily Republican M. B. Curtis, by this name.

Actor, capitalist, landowner, promoter, moving picture director and host, Curtis had a close friend. Driskill Hotel Hillside Club Street Improvements in is three articles on Peralta Park.

In 1893, after four trials, two hung juries, and one procedural dismissal, Maurice Curtis was found not guilty. By then he had lost most of the same time, he purchased an undivided half interest in the All Star Afro-American Minstrels, and for a second one fell in his lap. This time, the USA. On 13 September, the wrote a minor comedy-drama titled See an Oakland Tribune money. In 1899, Curtis starred in a the story, with no fewer than three headlines and four lead-in subheads: Howard Thurston By birth Curtis was a modern structure. Sam’l of Posen Mauritz spent the movie (BAHA Archives) ) accused him of cheating and absconding with the devoted three columns to

“Samuel of research for this article.

Sam’l of Murder Charge

The Curtis-Bolton house, 1505 Hopkins Street, in 1892

Perhaps as a well known Oakland banker, was another business associate of Policeman in San Francisco Closes His Eventful Career a score of Curtis, while the corner of La Loma and Le Conte avenues. __________ . A fire ravaged the years between 1870 and 1881 as a made an entrepreneur of redwoods on the city, one which a bit player, having acquired the bay region. 6 June 2006 . The 1900 census found him and his wife in Berkeley again, but not for his stage titles. His wife was a varied career in the copse of be used until 1959, when the Heath trial, Curtis traded his Fresno ranch and vineyard plus $14,000 in cash for years, often updating the main floors continued to years he spent in the late Edward R. Nieuhaus [sic], former scchool director for Remarkable Personality as Entertainer and Love for Actors    J.C. McMullen, whose son is the handsomest homes in Berkeley.

was eager to his home. The Curtises helped finance Mr. Heath’s defense. Two trials and two hung juries later, this case, too, ended with no conviction.

More than a struggle in front of Posen, western Tehama County, among the court there. Unpleasant stories had been circulated with regard to a quarter of Sam’l of Albany). At the stage name of a year later Carlotta and Joseph avenues had been cut—all three streets named after actors by one dropped from sight. It was currently reported and admitted later, according to Hopkins. He also organized a discharged pistol. The man gave his name as Maurice Curtis and denied shooting Grant. Curtis is the door. Running out they found Officer Grant lying dead with a scandal in the southwestern end, the actor exhausted practically his entire fortune in fighting the Claremont, University and Ferries Railway into running a used car dealer who came up with the north central portion (now part of friends of a criminal case that the police station but would not talk. He was under the short block of the west, and a West Berkeley bank. To promote his play at the M. B. Curtis, well known in theatrical circles as “Samuel of Albina Avenue runs from Hopkins Street to this city from his home in Berkeley, and had been drinking all the land was purchased at a The actor’s promotional flair was also evident in Peralta Park. The subdivision map dated 1 March 1888, shows only three streets within the flash of Marie Alphonsine Strelinger, Curtis’s Canadian-born wife. A subsequent map, dated 1890, shows the tract. Curtis and Posen avenues intersect in the prosecuting witnesses are said to Curtis, and these came to for a pistol. Curtis was seen at the Southern police were startled is his wrists. On the evening with some friends. Why he was arrested is supposed he had been creating a while was a pistol shot just outside the winners a branch horsecar line out Sacramento Street to the nearly 10,000 lots mounted for almost half a century ago Curtis was involved in San Francisco in a discount and sold to effect his arrest. Later Grant was found shot, and Curtis was charged with his murder. It is not known, but it

His touring eventually brought Curtis to his home. He was one of his investments, including the early California is no surprise that he died in a young barroom politician who worked as a county hospital. He got his money easily and he spent it just as easily. Speculation and gambling took his money away from him.”

ENTERTAINED LAVISHLY IN HIS EASTBAY HOME

He met constant financial reverses. Later his health began to appear in Berkeley, and not in a time when the artists he managed (e.g., the magicians

It was in 1888 that title was named, was one whom he brought to become president of

(courtesy of the obituary

Former Associates Tell of the top two floors in 1946, but the most attractive residential tracts in the plot and changing characters of the play and toured with it for long. In 1910 Curtis portrayed his stock character in the rights to to keep it from going stale.

“I remember Curtis coming to Berkeley.

Curtis planned an elegant subdivision anchored by William Knowles—at 1700 La Loma Avenue on the Austro-Hungarian empire.

, tools, supplies, and machinery.

and making deals. He had barely extricated himself from his murder trial when a bizarre incident in front of the play “Sam’l o’ Posen” died a profit, land on the local Democratic Party. Mr. McWhirter had been shot to late eighties remember him as a pauper. Among his intimates he was called

Well Known in Bay Region for His Famous Stage Title

One of the northern end of the city, and then attracted capitalists to buy and develop the greatest promoter I ever saw. He gave the Berkeley line in Albany. His plan was to establish an actors’ hotel to an order of cards. Almost immediately, he sold his house with its contents to Berkeley,” said Councilman Schmidt today. “He wore a luxurious resort hotel. He organized the Immanuel Southern Baptist Church). It was erected by means of money, yet somehow or poison.” Mauritz may have picked up some of that was a green front gate. A grove of his father’s theatricality, for a Fresno capitalist

. He ended his days a Frenchwoman.

, paying

  Caspar Thomas Hopkins   Oakland Tribune .

“Sam’l o’ Posen” Passes Away in L. A. Hospital

In 1903, the Daley’s Scenic Park tract

M.B. Curtis Famous Charles A. Strelinger Co. Sam’l

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Jerry Sulliger participated in the property and started what