Now a cherished local landmark, Sunnyside Conservatory narrowly avoided being completely demolished in the late 1970s. Saved by vigilant neighbors at that crisis point, it languished nonetheless with little support from the City for years before the persistent efforts of local residents brought about two phases of renovation. The last one in 2009 produced the remarkable small public park and truly unique event venue that stands today.
It has been fifty years since Sunnyside Conservatory became San Francisco City Landmark No.78 in 1975. The story of its salvation and renovations is all about the power of local activism, on the part of both individuals and organized groups. Over more than three decades, and in numerous stages, many people saw historic value and community potential in preserving the old structure and the special garden that surrounded it, and in various ways pursued that shared vision until it became a reality. It is a long and at times dramatic story.
Sunnyside Conservatory, 2025. Photo: Amy O’Hair, Sunnyside History Project
By Amy O’Hair With research contributed by Kathleen Laderman
Last October, in a post about a group of teen nature explorers, I thought I had reached the end the story—their plans to build a clubhouse. Never having come across evidence of the building, I wrongly concluded their plans were mere pipe dreams, abandoned and unrealized. But further research, prompted by an inquiry about an architect from a loyal reader, revealed that the clubhouse—a sizable structure at forty by sixty-five feet—was indeed built! More surprisingly, it was designed by the notable architect, Ida F McCain.
During the 1910s and 1920s, McCain was responsible for designing over a hundred houses in Westwood Park (and many more elsewhere)—the most distinctive in the nearby development. She was a standout for the era—giving interviews, talking publicly with knowledge and ease about her field, and promoting her own work. Her bungalows in the Arts and Crafts vernacular are compact and distinctive, with unique details and thoughtful interior fittings.[1]
The clubhouse for the Sunnyside kids was one of her rare design projects that was not domestic architecture,[2] and though there is no way of knowing what the style and features of the building were, perhaps it included some of the clinker brickwork (an example of which can be seen in the header image above) or the charmingly primitive details she used elsewhere. For many decades, Ida F McCain’s full biography was not complete—until I recently unearthed the true story of her later years and death, published in this post and this post.
The clubhouse project was initiated by the group’s leader, Elfreda Svenberg, whose unusual career leading local teens in a robust nature group I detail in the previous post. She lived at 751 Foerster Street (the house is gone, replaced later by another one with the same address).
Svenberg and McCain were of the same generation, coming of age toward the end of the Progressive Era, and benefiting from the increase in public participation afforded to many women then. They were both well educated and enterprising and both led public lives.
Ida F McCain in 1922. Passport photo. Ancestry.com
Somehow, perhaps through one of the many progressive women’s clubs of the time, the two met and found common cause in this seemingly small project with a community focus—although the nature-loving Svenberg leaned toward bird clubs and the more ambitious McCain preferred business women clubs.[3]
By Amy O’Hair With research contributed by Kathleen Laderman
Toward the end of a long and severe El Niño, a disaster of epic proportions came to the north end of Foerster Street in Sunnyside. The Foerster Slide filled the streets with an avalanche of mud—up to twenty feet deep—flowing down from Mount Davidson. It destroyed five houses. Tragically, two people lost their lives.
The Red Cross declared it a major disaster. It was probably the single most well-documented event in Sunnyside history in the twentieth century, with many dozens of photographs taken by both newspapers and the Department of Public Works (DPW)—immediately after the event, and then days, weeks, even months later. I’ve assembled them all in this post, giving a fairly complete picture of the slide and its destruction.
The Foerster Slide. Sea of mud on Foerster. From about 740 Foerster St. View South. 6 Feb 1942. OpenSFHistory.org
The Foerster Slide. House at 779 Foerster slipped into street. View South. 6 Feb 1942. OpenSFHistory.org
The Foerster Slide. Sea of mud on Foerster, at about Melrose. View north. 6 Feb 1942. OpenSFHistory.org
The Foerster Slide. Sea of mud on Foerster. Houses 744 to 724 Foerster St. View South. 6 Feb 1942. OpenSFHistory.org
The onslaught of mud swept away more than lives and houses—it marked the beginning of the end for a unique enclave of early settlers in this remote corner of Sunnyside at the foot of Mount Davidson. The source of the tons of dirt that slid down to fill the streets was due to the negligence of a contractor at work on future development. In few decades, a new residential district would cover the mountain, to be called Miraloma Park. Two of the crushed houses had been standing there since the 1890s, on large rural lots with chicken houses and vegetable gardens (and even cows for some time)—the homes of early residents who preferred to live in the unpaved and unpopulated wilds on the edge of Mount Davidson.
It was a harrowing time in any case, coming just two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into World War II. This local disaster’s impact was perhaps muted and short-lived, as the City prepared civil defense measures against the unknown threats to come. The general sense of alarm was high; the palpable vulnerability to further attacks on the West Coast was acute. The newspapers gave instruction on how to put out incendiary bombs, should one land on your roof (use a fine spray of water) and how to best cover windows to prevent being killed by shattering glass in a bomb blast, and told people to pack what we now call a go-bag. Get to know your Air Raid Warden! (There was one such volunteer on this very block, at 732 Foerster.) [1]
But for the families here, the Foerster Slide was an upheaval as frightening and disruptive as anything that war might bring to their block (but never did).
The Foerster Slide. View north from just below Teresita. Piece of Negrin house on left. 7 Feb 1942. OpenSFHistory.org
The Foerster Slide. View south, with 785 Foerster in foreground, 779 in the street to the left. 7 Feb 1942. OpenSFHistory.org
The Foerster Slide. Side of 775 Foerster, slipped into street. 6 Feb 1942. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
This website, which I began in 2015, has not been the only effort to collect and rediscover the stories of this neighborhood; almost twenty years ago, Sunnyside Neighborhood Association initiated a wide-ranging project to rediscover historical materials and record oral histories of old-time residents. One result of the group’s work was to present a history fair in February 2006, where documents and photos were shared with the community. Another product of their efforts was a little booklet, “A Brief Look at Sunnyside”.
The members of Sunnyside Neighborhood Association (SNA) who worked on the project were led by Jennifer Heggie, and included Daphne Powell, Robert Danielson, David Becker, Karen Greenwood Henke, Bill Wilson, and Rick Lopez. They were aided in their work by Woody LaBounty and Lori Ungaretti at Western Neighborhoods Project (WNP). Other contributors included Julia Bergman, City College of San Francisco’s Chief Librarian and Archivist (now deceased), and local history author Jacqueline Proctor, as well as two workers at St Finn Barr Church, Denise McEvoy and Kathleen Ramsay.
The Oral Histories
The oral history interviews took place in 1995, 2005, and 2006, and were conducted with six people who grew up in Sunnyside, mostly before the Second World War. To preserve the interviews, the transcripts were later archived at the San Francisco History Center.[1] The subjects described what it was like in the neighborhood, where they played and went to school, what transit they took, the landscapes and animals that were a part of their childhoods, and so on. (I’ll quote extensively from the oral histories later in this post.)
Founded in 1974, Sunnyside Neighborhood Association is coming up for its fiftieth anniversary. The slim pile of paper newsletters that were entrusted to me from the pre-internet days of the organization have now been scanned, thanks to the volunteer work of LisaRuth Elliott.
They are now available on the Internet Archive, part of the online collection of San Francisco Neighborhood Newspapers that LisaRuth and the San Francisco Department of Memory spearheaded. I’m immensely pleased that Sunnyside has now joined this collection, and I extend my sincere thanks to her for this work, delayed as it was by covid. Being in the Internet Archive means they will always be available to future historians, and any interested person, indexed for search. My historian’s heart is aflutter.
The issue above, Winter 1979, features a piece by Greg Gaar writing about saving Sunnyside Conservatory. Editor Ken Hoegger rhapsodizes about the eucalyptus trees of Martha Hill, which was soon to be a new public open space–Dorothy Erskine Park as it is now known. Read the issue in full size here. I feel a strong personal gratitude to the people who worked on these projects over forty years ago, saving vital open spaces and the historic Conservatory; it was a critical moment in the development of livability in the city. Continue reading “Now on the Internet Archive: Sunnyside newsletters 1970s-1990s”→
Traffic calming – planting and saving trees – safe places for children to play – newly revealed local history: the issues on the minds of Sunnysiders fifty years ago were not so different from things that interest residents now. The newsletters of Sunnyside’s local organization from those years have recently been archived and made available online at the Internet Archive, and tell some inspiring stories about actions that still impact our lives today.
Although Sunnyside has seen organized advocacy by residents since the 1890s (more here), the current organization, Sunnyside Neighborhood Association (SNA), dates to late 1974.[1] The 1970s saw a surge of local activism in the many neighborhoods in San Francisco. Five decades later, we still enjoy some of the fruits of that upwelling, for instance in open spaces that were established as parks. There was also a downside to the activism then that still affects the city; in some areas, such as the Richmond district, residents fought density with downzoning measures, working to exclude multi-unit buildings and “retain local character,” resulting in a dearth of housing units in subsequent decades, and de facto residential segregation.
But SNA was, according to the record of these early newsletters, more intent on trees, parks, and calming traffic. Monterey Boulevard had already undergone big changes in the 1950s and 1960s, with an extensive apartment-building boom. The 1970s saw even more upzoning on the boulevard. SNA didn’t oppose more housing, but as we’ll see, it did try to rescue trees that were eventually to fall victim to a particularly determined developer of multi-unit buildings, among many other projects, such as tree-planting and boosting local businesses.
At the edge of Sutro’s forest of eucalyptus trees, in the northwest corner of Sunnyside, the 600 block of Mangels Avenue was home to several families who enjoyed a truly rural existence in the early years. Recently some photos were graciously loaned to me to scan, so there is some visual record of life there. The photos are from the personal archive of resident Geoff Follin, sent to him in 1987 by a man who grew up on the block during these years—Lawrence Behler (1908-1999).[1] Behler included a brief letter of explanation.
1917. Bertha, Charles, and Arnold Behler. 663 Mangels Ave. Photo courtesy Geoff Follin.
1917. Lawrence Behler with his mother Bertha. 663 Mangels Ave. Photo courtesy Geoff Follin.
1917. 663 Mangels Ave. Lawrence’s brother Arnold Behler on steps. Photo courtesy Geoff Follin.
12 Jan 1987. Letter from Lawrence Behler to resident of 663 Mangels Ave. Courtesy Geoff Follin.
Meeting places make possible gatherings that can give rise to group action. Without a place big enough to meet and plan, speak and listen, how do members of a group know they have the number and consensus that can become a force for change? These points seem obvious, but for the real estate speculators laying out Sunnyside in 1891, even the provision of a park space where such a meeting place might be located was not a perceived need. Large union halls were numerous elsewhere in the city in areas with industry, but the rise of mainly residential areas in the late 19th century didn’t anticipate the needs of neighborhood activism.
Sunnyside had no park or public common space in the 1890s, but within a few years, common needs drew people together in private spaces. The first order of business at the first large public gathering of residents was the need for a school. There were 80–100 children in the area, even as sparsely populated as it was then. In January 1896, resident Eugene Dasse called the meeting at a hall he had built a couple of years before (where 54-56 Monterey is now) — Dasse’s Hall. There was such energy at that meeting that the first Sunnyside Improvement Club was spontaneously formed.
The first dedicated schoolhouse to be built for the neighborhood was neither big enough nor safe enough to serve the needs of families in Sunnyside in the long term, but for 18 years it was a busy and productive place. During this time, Sunnyside emerged as a vital neighborhood, no longer ignored by City government and able to garner its share of public monies. Community and parental involvement was effective and intense, centered on a newly founded PTA. Then a group of mothers helped bring to the City’s attention the schoolhouse’s dangers and inadequacies. When it came time to build a replacement, rather than drag the process out for a decade, as the City had with the first provisional school in a cottage, that new building went up in just a few years.
The east face of the first Sunnyside School. Taken in the 1910s. From outsidelands.org, courtesy of longtime Sunnyside resident Ron Davis. There is a link to the photograph at this end of this post.
