was born in 1911, followed by another daughter, Dorothy Constance, in 1913. Initially, they lived in Adolph's house in Sausalito, where their first daughter, Alma Emma, was born in 1909, but he soon purchased a property in Pacific Heights where, after the existing homes on it were relocated, Adolph built a new mansion, the Spreckels Mansion in the Beaux-Arts style, completed in c.1912 (it is most recently the home of author Danielle Steel). Because he was head of the Spreckels Sugar Company, she often referred to her husband as her " sugar daddy". Although he was 24 years older than she was, he was smitten by Alma, and after a five-year courtship, they married on May 11, 1908. Regardless, this statue was selected from a number of entries and only barely made the cut, thanks to the crucial vote of the chair of the Citizens' Committee, Adolph Spreckels. Legend holds that Aitken hired Alma de Bretteville Spreckels to model for the statue, but a 1902 article detailing the monument's construction stated that Aitken's model was Clara Petzold, who later became a noted photographer. Īlma de Bretteville met her future husband thanks to the rumor she modeled for the Dewey Monument by Robert Aitken, which can be found in Union Square. After their relationship deteriorated, she gained a bit of notoriety for having successfully sued him for "personal defloweration". Now flush with cash, she became popular around town, and found herself intimately involved with a miner named Charlie Anderson. While there, she earned money by being a nude model. Meanwhile, she had developed a love of art and enrolled in the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art to study painting. At age 14, Alma quit school to work full-time for the family business. In contrast, Mathilde had enough ingenuity and business sense to open a combination Danish bakery–laundry service–massage parlor which became the family's source of income. Viggo descended from Franco-Danish nobility through his grandfather who emigrated during the French Revolution (one of Napoleon III's generals was his uncle) and used that as an excuse to avoid working while simultaneously deriding the " nouveau riche" of California. The family was very poor during her early childhood. She was born Alma Charlotte Corday le Normand de Bretteville in the Sunset District of San Francisco, the fifth of six children of Viggo and Mathilde de Bretteville, two Danish immigrants. Spreckels, to donate the California Palace of the Legion of Honor to the city of San Francisco. Among her many accomplishments, she persuaded her first husband, sugar magnate Adolph B. ![]() ![]() She was known both as "Big Alma" (she was 6 feet (1.8 m) tall) and "The Great Grandmother of San Francisco". Alma de Bretteville Spreckels (Ma– August 7, 1968) was a wealthy socialite and philanthropist in San Francisco, California.
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