Harriet Lane Levy


Harriet Lane Levy is a California writer best known for her memoir, 920 O’Farrell Street. Levy was also an avid art collector, a girlhood friend of Alice B. Toklas, and an acquaintance of Gertrude Stein.
She was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family and raised in San Francisco. From 1865-1869, her cousin, Albert A. Michelson, lived with her. The first part of her autobiography, 920 O’Farrell Street, chronicles her childhood in an upper-middle-class San Francisco neighborhood. Additionally, young women such as Levy were expected to marry well-off men, which generated additional societal expectations. However, the intellectually inclined Levy was hesitant to marry early. Instead, she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1886 and became a prominent writer for popular San Francisco publications, such as the San Francisco Call. She also wrote for The Wave with notable writers such as Jack London and Frank Norris. Another one of Levy’s passions was traveling. She visited Paris many times, the first being with her friends Michael and Sarah Stein. She later returned to Paris with Toklas, in 1907, living with her until she moved in with Gertrude Stein in 1910. In 1910, she resettled in San Francisco, at the age of 47, continuing to live independently by pursuing her intellectual interests until her death in 1950.

Connections to Gertrude Stein

Levy was the subject of one of Gertrude Stein's early word portraits. Levy was the subject of much effort on the part of Toklas and Stein to return Levy to San Francisco sans Alice B. Toklas, her original traveling companion.
Levy wrote a description of the famed Rousseau Banquet which was published in a limited edition of 30 copies, in 1985 as part of a UC Berkeley seminar:
.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Benefactor

Harriet Lane Levy bequeathed to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: