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In the picture: Sunnyside Elementary School students through the years

There is nothing quite like kids’ faces! I’ve been fortunate over the years to have been given the chance by several former students to scan class photos from the 1930s to the 1960s. I present them here in reverse chronological order without commentary.* My thanks to Marty Hackett, Mark Sultana, Julie Spalasso Vozza, Bill Wilson, and Greg Gaar for sharing these with me.

The current building of Sunnyside Elementary School (250 Foerster Street, San Francisco) was built in 1927. Here more about its history here.

Sixth grade, Sunnyside Elementary School, 1964. Courtesy Marty Hackett.
Sixth grade, Sunnyside Elementary School, 1964. Courtesy Marty Hackett. View larger. 
Fourth/fifth grade, Sunnyside Elementary School, 1963. Courtesy Marty Hackett.
Fourth/fifth grade, Sunnyside Elementary School, 1963. Courtesy Marty Hackett. View larger. 

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Gilbert Plov, Little-Box Builder

The strange dominance of really small single-family homes in San Francisco, with its roots in pre-Quake planning and post-Quake building, has come at last in this century to bite the city in its housing-supply backside. Density doesn’t match need now and it is difficult to see how it ever can. It is as though San Francisco, to personify for a moment, never expected to become a real city. So it allowed builders to fill the thousands of residential blocks with one-story-over-basement structures that cannot reasonably ever be transformed into multi-unit, multi-story buildings—unlike, say, a Mission-District Victorian or a Brooklyn brownstone. And should you be inclined to try, zoning and/or neighbors will prevent you from rebuilding one as a four-story wart on the smooth skin of row-upon-row of SFHs.

In their vast inertial numbers, the Little Boxes will always win. The march of those attached four- or five-room homes, on their narrow 25×100 foot lots, across hundreds of city blocks can only ever be disrupted here and there—a few corner developments, a few big structures on old gas station lots, a few scattered replacements, or the odd added story or ADU.

The die was cast—getting on for a hundred years ago now—and the pattern will persist.

Portion of the 1948 aerial survey, Garfield Street from Vernon to Head, in Ingleside. Soon all the gaps would be filled. DavidRumsey.com
Portion of the 1948 aerial survey, Garfield Street from Vernon to Head, in Ingleside. Soon all the gaps would be filled. DavidRumsey.com

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Dancer, Director, Dreamer: The Work and Life of Ann Marie Garvin

SF Examiner, 20 Dec 1981. Photo: Chris Hardy for the Examiner.

Sunnyside Resident Ann Marie Garvin passed away recently at the age of 82.

“Dance is all that’s left that’s real. It’s another world, all yours, and no one can take away the thrill of it.”

Ann Marie Garvin spoke those words to a reporter in 1976, shortly after she had founded her studio on Monterey Boulevard, Dancer’s Synectics Group. They were words she lived by over the course of her long working life–performing, teaching, directing, and choreographing, in San Francisco and beyond.

For 45 years, in the pink-striped building, she taught thousands of dancers, from near and far, her particular fast-paced jazz style and much else as well. Many Bay Area dancers studied with her, such as Ed Mock, Snowy Winter, Greg de Silva, and Craig Innes. Jazz dancer and instructor Ann Barrett noted in an artist’s bio how performing in Ann Marie Garvin’s ‘Dance Between the Lines’ had been invaluable to her understanding of choreography and theater, and for that she was “eternally grateful.”[1]

In assembling and choreographing her own companies of dancers, Ann Marie Garvin rode the crests of several trends, including the push for a greater diversity of body shapes and skin colors in dance that happened in the Bay Area the late 1970s.[2]

“The distinctive thing about Ann Marie is her disregard for height, or color of skin. She is unaware of anything except this: Can they dance? So [her] company has tall and short, plumpish, tan, black, white, but all marvelous dancers.”[3]

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View South at Judson and Circular: 1923 and Today

Once the Southern Pacific railroad tracks ran where I-280 freeway is today. Even in 1923, this was at the edges of the city. On the left is the Balboa Mill and Lumber Company, a yard with its own spur of track, replaced by houses in the 1940s. The presence of the freeway makes a precise match of views impossible (therefore no slider). View other comparison photographs here.

1923. View south from near Judson Avenue at the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. Photo:Western Railway Museum 259-V.
1923. View south from near Judson Avenue at the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. Photo: Western Railway Museum 259-V. View larger
2019. View south from Judson Ave at Circular. Photo: Amy O'Hair SunnysideHistory.org.
2019. View south from Judson Ave at Circular. Photo: Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org. View larger 
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View North at Judson and Circular: 1923 and Today

Looking north toward Sunnyside. At center left are the houses at 74 to 30 Staples Avenue, built in the 1910s. The little hut in the center is the Judson Avenue whistle stop for the Southern Pacific train, which was running only once a day or so by this time. On the right out of the frame is land that was cultivated for vegetables until the 1920s. Presence of the I-280 freeway makes a precise match impossible (therefore no slider). View other comparison photographs here.

1923. View north from near Judson, on Southern Pacific railroad tracks. Photo: Western Railway Museum 260-V.
1923. View north from near Judson, on Southern Pacific railroad tracks. Photo: Western Railway Museum 260-V. View larger 
2019. View north from Judson at Circular. Photo: Amy O'Hair SunnysideHistory.org
2019. View north from Judson at Circular. Photo: Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org View larger 

 

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Ocean and Frida Kahlo Way: 1980 and Today

Shot from the pedestrian overpass in 1980, this view of Ocean Avenue and Frida Kahlo Way (then Phelan Ave) shows the same transit-dense area as today, but with a few changes. Grand Auto Supply is gone, replaced with housing and retail at 1100-1250 Ocean (2011-2014). City College Station (aka Phelan Loop) was repositioned in 2013. The Ocean Ave Vet Hospital is still there, on left, 40 years on. The growth of a large tree next to the overpass made a precise match to the original impossible (therefore no slider). View more comparison photos here.

1980. View west from pedestrian overpass, Ocena Ave and Frida Kahlo Way. Photo: William J Madden OpenSFHistory.org
1980. View west from pedestrian overpass, Ocean Ave and Frida Kahlo Way. Photo: William J Madden OpenSFHistory.org View larger 
2019. View west from pedestrian overpass, Ocean Ave and Frida Kahlo Way. Photo: Amy O'Hair SunnysideHistory.org
2019. View west from pedestrian overpass, Ocean Ave and Frida Kahlo Way. Photo: Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org View larger 
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Built on Beer: The Streets of Sunnyside and San Francisco Brewery Profits

Investment money that funded the Sunnyside Land Company in 1890 was largely sourced from the hefty profits of some of San Francisco’s biggest late nineteenth-century breweries: Philadelphia Brewery, Albany Brewery, and United States Brewery—all overseen by the Brewer’s Protective Association. Men who were heirs to these fortunes, or wrapped up in the racket of propping up prices and selling off franchises to foreign capitalists, were among the most prominent initial investors in the Sunnyside project.

Behrend Joost, President of Sunnyside Land Company, was a notorious and irascible teetotaler[1], but he had no problem accepting beer-drenched money from his investors, who altogether put in one million dollars to fund the property speculation project. In return, many got their names or the places in Germany they came from on the newly laid-out streets.

2015-signs-Mangels-Baden

Five of the original Sunnyside streets—Mangels Avenue, Spreckels Avenue, Wieland Avenue, Baden Street, and Hamburg Street—I trace directly to these men.

Portion of the original Sunnyside Land Company homestead map, submitted to the city in 1891. View whole map here. https://sunnysidehistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1891-Sunnyside-homestead-map-sm.jpg
Portion of the original Sunnyside Land Company homestead map, submitted to the city in 1891. View whole map here. 

In addition, Edna Street is likely to have been named for the beloved daughter of one of these brewery men. Read more

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One block in Sunnyside: 50 years ago and today

1969c. 679 Mangels. San Francisco Office of Assessor-Recorder Photographs Collection, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library sfpl.org/sfphotos/asr

Fresh from the new collection of building photographs that were recently transferred from the San Francisco Office of the Assessor-Recorder to the History Center–here is one residential block in Sunnyside. More about the collection here.

On a bright overcast day in 1968 or 1969*, a unnamed photographer from the Assessor’s office appears to have shot every house on the 600 block of Mangels Avenue, leaving an unusually complete record of houses there at that time. Read more

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A glimpse into the past: San Francisco historical house photos now available

Just released for public viewing by the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu: 94,000 photos of houses, shops, and other structures in San Francisco, dating from the 1940s to the 2000s. Visit this webpage for a map showing properties with available photographs, including instructions on requesting an image to view.

Not every house in the city is included, but many are. On the map, once you have located your property lot, mouse over, and a pop-up text block will give the needed information to access the image — the block and lot number, the box number, and the bundle number. Alternately, enter your address on this page.

Once you have those numbers (block/lot, box and bundle), visit this page to fill out a request to have the image pulled.

The new policy from SF History Center: You must visit the SFHC during photo-viewing hours, when they will pull the photo you need at that time. (no order-ahead form anymore [11 May 2019].)

Plan a visit to the SF History Center, on the top floor of the Main Library, Grove and Larkin. Hours for the photo desk at Tuesday and Thursdays 1 to 5pm, and Saturday 10am-12pm and 1-5pm.

You can also order a scan for $20.