In little teaser ads that spoke cryptically of "transmogrification," the news was broken gently to San Franciscans. After 40 years of looking more like the inside of an old Moulmein pagoda than a retail store, S. & G. Gump Co., the pride of Post Street, was Westernizing itself. On its temple-quiet second floor, the famed Treasure, Ivory, Porcelain and Lotus rooms, which had ranked with the Cliff House and Chinatown as S&iA Francisco tourist attractions, were ruthlessly torn out. Gump's was spending $150,000 to streamline one of the Occident's richest treasure houses of the Orient's art.
Last week, inspecting the...
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