Herbert Fleishhacker


Herbert Fleishhacker, son of Aaron Fleishhacker and Delia Fleishhacker, was an American businessman, civic leader and philanthropist. He lived in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco and at an estate in Atherton until it had to be sold to pay debts.

Biography

Born to a Jewish family, the son of Deliah and Aaron Fleishhacker. He created and helped fund the Fleishhacker Pool, the world's largest outdoor saltwater swimming pool, in 1924. The pool continued to operate until 1971.
While serving as president of the San Francisco Parks Commission, he founded the Fleishhacker Zoo, later renamed the San Francisco Zoological Gardens. He was also instrumental in the building of Coit Tower. Fleishhacker was president of the London and Paris National Bank and later the Anglo California National Bank. In November 1955, the Anglo California National Bank merged with the Crocker First National Bank.

Personal life

He was married August 9, 1905 to May Belle Greenebaum and had one daughter, Marjorie, and two sons: Herbert Fleishhacker Jr. and Alan Fleishhacker.
Herbert Jr. was a renowned football player at Stanford who married a San Franciscan woman whose previous marriage to an Austrian Count ended in divorce. His daughter from that marriage was Leonora von Wertheimer.
It is possible that in the mid-1920s Fleishhacker had his portrait painted by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury who had established a new studio home in San Marino, California in 1925.