Golden Gate
Spiritualist Church

     The Golden Gate Spiritualist Church was granted its chargter from the National Spiritualist Association (currently called the National Spiritualist Association of Churches) on April 5, 1924. The church was founded by Rev. Florence Harwood Becker with the support of a small group of devoted Spiritualists. Florence Harwood Becker, born February 16, 1892, was the church's founding pastor, principal medium and beloved teacher. She continued in those roles until she passed to Spirit on July 12, 1970.

​

     Rev. Florence was probably the most outstanding, highly developed medium in Spiritualistm's history. She was a dead trance medium. For a few decades, one of her guides in Spirit, Dr. E. J. Briggs, gave trance addresses through her. Another of her guides, a Native American woman in Spirit, Squaw Sally, was the message bearer through her at church services. 

​

     In Rev. Becker's seances, trumpets (megaphone-like cones) would float around the circle and the room as Spirit voices spoke through them. She had the gift of direct Spirit voice, where Spirit voices could manifest anywhere in the seance room. As Rev. Becker was in trance during these seances, people from Spirit would also talk though her. Music boxes would float around the seance room playing. 

​

     A building fund was begun early on. Money for a church property and building was raised through holding socials at each other's homes on a regular weekly basis. This began early in the church's history and continued through the 1940s. 

​

     The church first held services in the Redman's Building at 240 Golden Gate Avenue and continued there until the building was sold in April, 1947. The congregation moved to the Native Sons building at 414 Mason Street.

​

     Having accumulated sufficient funds in the Church Building Fund, an offer was made in 1951 for the property at 1901 Franklin Street, known as the Crocker Mansion. The congregation purchased the building. The members then set about remodeling the inerior to make it suitable to be a church.

​

     The building was built in the Italian Renaissance style for Margaret E. Crocker, widow of Judge Edwin B. Crocker of the California Supreme Court. A photograph of the house in the collection of the California Historical Society notes that it was built in 1895. However, San Francisco Water Department records show that water service to the house was not turned on until January 31, 1900.

​

     The building is surrounded by a granite retaining wall. The upper steps and front porch are white marble. "A mosaic covers the floor of the pink marble entry hall, the ceiling of which is carved in a motif similar to the used in the stained glass window which is placed in the second story ceiling, but which can be seen from the main floor through an interior balcony." 

​

     The house originally had fourteen rooms, six fireplaces and five baths. The dining room, now the church Healing Chapel, is the "Jewel of the house, being richly carved and almost unchanged from it's original state." 

​

     Two of the original fireplaces remain. The bricks from the other fireplaces were used to convert the service entrance on the Clay Street side of the building into the church's Clay Street entrance. Much of the interior wall paneling was retained and used in the remodeling of the building to serve as a church.

​

​​