Category: Circular Avenue

New Map: The Creek that Ran Through Sunnyside

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Here is a new map for understanding the historical path that Sunnyside’s tributary of the Islais Creek once took through the neighborhood, a composite using color Sanborn maps from the Library of Congress and DavidRumsey.org from the early 1900s. Additional information for areas not covered by Sanborn from Joel Pomerantz’s Seep City project for mapping our city’s old waterways.

Read more about Sunnyside’s creek here. Click on map for larger version.

The Creek that Ran Through Sunnyside. OpenStreetMap base. Created in 2023 by Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org

The Creek that Ran Through Sunnyside. Composite of historical data over OpenStreetMap.org base. Sources: Library of Congress and DavidRumsey.org. Help from SeepCity.org. Created in 2023 by Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org. Click on image for the larger version.

A culvert was installed from one side of Monterey to the other at about Edna Street in the 1910s. Part of the creek was contained in a box drain in the 100 block of Flood Ave (north side) about the same time. Other manipulations took place, until the City diverted the water that would have fed it into the sewer system, during the 1920s.

View North at Judson and Circular: 1923 and Today

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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 

 

A Bridge between Neighborhoods: the Santa Rosa Underpass

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OpenSFHistory.org

A now-lost bit of infrastructure connected two neighborhoods for six decades, an underpass below the Southern Pacific railroad tracks that extended Santa Rosa Avenue to meet Circular Avenue and Congo Street.

1927_Congo-SantaRosa-Bridge-1_wnp36.03489
1927, Santa Rosa Bridge. Circular Ave at Congo Street. Southern Pacific railroad tracks running at crest of embankment. Houses on left located on Flood Ave. OpenSFHistory.org wnp36.03489

In the usual way of things then, Sunnysiders asked for this relatively minor, yet vital link for many years before the city built it. From the neighborhood’s beginning in 1891 and for decades to come, Sunnyside was hemmed in.[1]  Sutro Forest blocked the west, Phelan Ave was not yet built through on the south, there was no road over the railroad tracks on the east, and no passage over Mt Davidson on the north. You came in via Chenery or San Jose Road, and left the same way, usually on the electric streetcar.    Continue reading “A Bridge between Neighborhoods: the Santa Rosa Underpass” →