Around 1920, Misak Hoogasian (known in the USA as “Mike”) made his way to San Francisco from Soviet Armenia. His wife (Verkin, known in the USA as “Virginia”) and two sons (Hraud, known in the USA as “Harry”, and Hriere, known in the USA as “Harold”) stayed behind to await “permission” to emigrate to the USA.
In a couple of years, the mother and two sons were instructed to make their way “west” to North America. Due to quota restrictions, they were forced to make a five year stopover in Mexico City. Fortunately, Misak’s brother was resident there and the wayward Hoogasians found a temporary home south of the border. When the official “permission” to emigrate to the USA came, a passport was necessary. As there was no “Armenian” or “Soviet” passport available (it appears the exit from the USSR was not a “sanctioned” departure), a Mexican passport (#984) was issued on October 2, 1928 in Mexico City. Interestingly, the threesome entered the USA on foot in Nogales, Arizona. The date was November 9, 1928.
While members of the Hoogasian family had been jewelers (Cousin Aram Hagosian [and his son John] continued the family tradition at their shop on Powell near Sutter until the 1990’s), Mike took to selling flowers on the street. The San Francisco flower stands near Union Square were the place many immigrant families found their place in San Francisco’s bustling downtown. Many of those immigrants were members of San Francisco’s Armenian American community. Of Mike’s many different flower stands, the most notable was at 15 Stockton Street (now the site of the Apple Store) near Market. Harry took over that stand and Harold moved to a flower stand at Ellis and Powell Streets. The move would turn out to be a fortuitous positioning.
On Powell Street, there was scads of traffic as the cable car lines as well as foot traffic made it the thoroughfare from Market Street to Union Square. One of the San Franciscans that made Powell Street their “commute” was a young woman who worked as a waitress at a coffee shop located in the historic Saint Francis Hotel.
One day, in the spring of 1949, the young woman stopped to buy flowers for her sister who at just given birth to her first child, a daughter named Cynthia. The woman who bought the flowers was named Theresa Abraham. She and her sister were American born natives of northern Ohio who were of Lebanese ancestry. Harold was smitten with Theresa, but the feeling wasn’t quite mutual. Through an apparent display of professional “ineptitude,” Harold had sent Theresa off to Mary’s Help Hospital with a bouquet lacking the then required cellophane.
One day, in the spring of 1949, the young woman stopped to buy flowers for her sister who at just given birth to her first child, a daughter named Cynthia. The woman who bought the flowers was named Theresa Abraham. She and her sister were American born natives of northern Ohio who were of Lebanese ancestry. Harold was smitten with Theresa, but the feeling wasn’t quite mutual. Through an apparent display of professional “ineptitude,” Harold had sent Theresa off to Mary’s Help Hospital with a bouquet lacking the then required cellophane.
The day after the now memorable purchase, Theresa stopped by to tell Harold of her disappointment regarding the lack of cellophane wrapping. As the story was related subsequently, Theresa’s second stop gave Harold the opportunity he was looking for to strike up a conversation. First, he showed Theresa his roll of cellophane and professed knowing the hospital’s requirement for same. When she asked why he would send her off without it, he responded that she walked by every day without so much as a look in his direction. He knew the nuns at the hospital had cellophane to repair the omission and hoped that same omission would cause a repeat visit, if only to chastise him. He was confident he could win her over if he had the chance.
That purchase, on April Fools Day 1949, would be the beginning of a whirlwind courtship. Harold would walk her from his stand to the hotel on her way to work. That would culminate with a proposal on the steps of the Saint Francis Hotel. Theresa was late for work and Harold was insistent on an answer. She said yes and dashed into the hotel to save her job. On July 7, 1949, Harold Barkev Hoogasian and Theresa Elizabeth Abraham were married in Reno, Nevada.
A year and a week later on July 14, 1950, their first son, Harold M. Hoogasian, was born at that same Mary’s Help Hospital on Guerrero Street in San Francisco. Three years later (to the day), July 14, 1953, Lawrence (Larry) Hoogasian was born at Saint Francis Hospital in San Francisco. The timing of two sons born on the same date prompted long time San Francisco philosopher/columnist Herb Caen to write in his column that Harold and Theresa might be sleeping with an alarm clock and a calendar under the pillow.
Through a variety of enterprise decisions, Harold focused his life on the floral business with forays into the fields of real estate, restaurants and bars, import and export of exotic wood and furniture, writing children’s stories and invention of all sorts of items. During their lives, the foundation of the modern day Hoogasian Flowers, Inc. was the flower stand at 250 Post Street.
Opened on Valentine’s Day (February 14th) 1953, the flower stand at “Gump’s” was known through the second half of the 20th century as THE place to go in San Francisco for a corsage or nosegay of violets. Harold was there, often 6 days a week, in a suit, starched white shirt and tie. Distinguished by many firsts: first flower stand to wrap flowers in paper that was not green (the trademark Gump’s red wrapping paper), the first flower stand to have a telephone (courtesy of the Gump’s switchboard, and the first flower stand operation to open a flower shop.
In 1966, Harold and Theresa were prospected by a local real estate agent to consider opening a flower shop in a new shopping center on what was then the fringe of Fisherman’s Wharf. The Cannery was a derelict fruit cannery of Del Monte. The Hoogasians were not interested in opening a flower shop, but the realtor was persistent and invited them to set their own terms. The proposed terms they thought would discourage the agent. Instead, they were told it was a deal.
A ten year initial term for a center that was offering 3 to 5 years only was hard to understand until they heard “the rest of the story.” It seems that the man who developed The Cannery was one Leonard Martin. Harold didn’t know his name, but when they met he recognized the “Tropicana” rose man. Mr. Martin always came to the flower stand at 250 Post for a bunch of an orange rose whose name was “Tropicana” and wouldn’t settle for any other rose. One evening, Mr. Martin came for a bunch of the orange roses and Harold told him that the bunch he had wasn’t “up to snuff” and he gave him the bunch, refusing any compensation. Later, Mr. Martin decided that was the kind of service he wanted in a florist in his new shopping center. He told the realtor that, whatever the terms, he wanted the Hoogasian family to operate a flower shop right in the center of the ground floor of The Cannery… and they did from the day (actually night) that The Cannery opened in the fall of 1966 until the Summer of 1977.
The Hoogasian Flowers operation at The Cannery was, at first, really just a flower stand, cash and carry operation until the family was approached to operate a flower shop at the Naval Exchange at the Treasure Island Navy Base. One of the requirements was the ability to “wire” flowers. To wire flowers meant operating a full service flower shop with local delivery service. With the opening of the operation at the Navy Exchange Treasure Island in 1967, Hoogasian Flowers became a full service, traditional flower shop operation. During the term of the Treasure Island shop, Hoogasian Flowers became one of the top order producing shops in the nation, in part due to the timing of the Vietnam conflict and TI’s position as the last stateside stop for many Navy trainees.
Harold M. Hoogasian was attending UC Berkeley in the early years of the 1970’s and has always commented on the reverse “culture shock” he experienced going from Cal to Treasure Island as he worked “after school” before coming home to San Francisco on his reverse commute. The Treasure Island shop closed just before Harold got his Genetics degree from Cal in the spring of 1973. Taking a year off from school to decide on grad school proved to be more than a temporary diversion in May of 1974. Young Harold was working at the flower stand at Gump’s one day and met a local funeral director named Nick Daphne. Mr. Daphne was in the company of his wife, operations manager and two of his four daughters. What Nick thought was a business introduction turned out to be much more than that.
Harold tells the story that he didn’t recall hearing the names of the daughters (Nick probably didn’t mention them), so he called the mortuary to figure out the name of the one “with the blue eyes.” That turned out to be Nikki Aurora Daphne. Nick didn’t give up her name until he had done a thorough “third degree” of Harold, asking about his family (parents’ marital status, location of home, etc.). Questions about Harold’s academic career led to the endpoint of the line of questioning. When Harold was asked what his “major” had been, apparently Nick didn’t have a follow up question for the young geneticist and paused. Harold repeated his question: “What is the name of your daughter with the blue eyes?” Nick blurted out “Nikki” and that was all it took. Nikki actually had her name listed in the local phone book (as was often the case, in those days)!
Harold’s career choice decision tree was “cut off” as graduate school in another city was not as attractive as staying in the flower business close to Nikki (she worked in the family funeral homes in San Francisco). Nikki and Harold married at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church on Valencia Street (just a block from the site of Mary’s Help Hospital, where Harold was born) on September 21, 1975. That union resulted in the addition of Christine Marie Hoogasian on May 26, 1977 and Michael Peter Hoogasian on October 18, 1978.
Larry Hoogasian graduated from Cal with a degree in Architecture and decided to join Harold in taking the family flower business to the next level.
At that time, many people felt that traditional flower shops had “had their day” and the future was flower sold in supermarkets and a decline in serviced (delivered) orders. Harold felt there would always be a place for delivery and started to build that trade up and more the business towards that model.
While the flower shop grew at The Cannery, the lease shortened and in the summer of 1977, the operations were moved to a rented flower shop on Lombard Street in the Marina District of The City. Over time, that operation grew and ancillary operations included flower shops at Ghirardelli Square (900 Northpoint Street) and the Holiday Inn Union Square (480 Sutter Street). The branch operations were of some value, but the core business grew on Lombard as the base of operations for production and delivery of floral gift orders.
The expression “size matters” is indeed relevant to floral delivery operations. The size of production areas, refrigeration storage and ancillary storage demand increases of all those categories as the business grows. In October 1999, a 10,000 square foot warehouse at 615 Seventh Street (in the South of Market or SoMa District), San Francisco was decided upon for the next step for Hoogasian Flowers, Inc. The state of the art floral facility for San Francisco was christened into operation on February 4, 2000. A 1,000 square foot (14,000 cubic foot) high humidity, low temperature, Chain of Life standard floral cooler (the largest single floral cooler in San Francisco to date) is the centerpiece of the operation. Radiant heat in the floors of the design area and a fully “wired” office and sales area compliment the state of the art floral POS system.
During this South of Market stage in Hoogasian Flowers’ growth, a sales milestone was reached as the firm was recognized as a “Top 100” member of FTD. Top 100 status brings with it the opportunity to network with the other high volume operators from across the US and Canada.
The 21st Century brought challenges to many traditional flower shops as internet “order gatherers” have continued to take market share away. Efforts to keep abreast of the changing marketplace brings us to www.hoogasian.com, www.broadbandflowers.com,www.goldengateflorist.com, www.hoogasianflowers.net, www.konaperfect.com, and www.sanfranciscofloralservice.com as the Hoogasian Flowers internet presence. Those coupled with the 35 year tradition of being Open Every Day of the Year coupled with the 21st Century addition of 24 telephone service (answered by real florists, not commissioned telephone sales operators) represent Hoogasian Flowers’ response to the “order gatherers.”
Larry Hoogasian had a catastrophic fall on Feburary 19, 2023. In the early hours of February 20th, he had brain surgery, spend five months in various states of care and passed away on July 12, 2023 less than two days from his 70th birthday. He was a great artist and a brother beyond measure.
