Category: Edna Street

New Map: The Creek that Ran Through Sunnyside

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By Amy O’Hair
[Revised with additional information December 2023.]

Here is a new map for understanding the historical path that Sunnyside’s tributary of Islais Creek once took through the neighborhood, a composite using color Sanborn maps and historical survey information from the Library of Congress, SF Dept of Public Works, and DavidRumsey.org. 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. Composite of historical data over OpenStreetMap.org base. Sources: Library of Congress, SF Dept of Public Works, and DavidRumsey.org. Help from SeepCity.org. Created in 2023 by Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org. Click on image for the larger version.
The Creek that Ran Through Sunnyside. Composite of historical data over OpenStreetMap.org base. Sources: Library of Congress, SF Dept of Public Works, 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 under Monterey Boulevard 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 around then, until the City diverted the water that would have fed it into an improved sewer system, during the 1920s.

But water will out (when in sufficient quantities). Various heavy El Nino years have overwhelmed the sewers, leading to street-level flows of water and flooding in garages and basements along the historical route. One tragic disaster can be traced directly to its path in 1942. In the 2010s,  SFDPW made improvements to the Foerster/Edna section, which appeared to prevent some of the worst of the impacts.

Read more about Sunnyside’s creek here.

My thanks to Kathleen Laderman for finding the rich vein of early detailed survey information in the historical Dept of Public Works Field Notes section of the SFDPW website, giving a priceless glimpse into the lay of the land when Islais still ran through our district.

Sunnyside’s Missing Mini-Park

Sunnyside History3 Comments

By Amy O’Hair

If not for the hapless mistakes made by the Sunnyside Land Company in 1891, our district would have no parks at all. An ill-advised street layout meant that some lots were too steep and rocky to build on, leaving them vacant for decades. This resulted in enough conjoined lots that the City, two generations later, could buy up and create the Sunnyside Playground and Dorothy Erskine Park.

Planned streets that were in fact too steep to be built have also been transformed into open space, as in the Detroit Steps Project, the Melrose Detroit Botanical Garden. Portions of unbuilt Edna Street and Melrose Avenue were incorporated into the Playground as well.

Additionally, by laying out streets without regard to slopes, the City had to later buy up several residential lots in Sunnyside, in order to lay the sewer pipes—which must of course go where gravity dictates. This happenstance has given Sunnyside several small open spaces for public enjoyment, such as the Joost-Baden Mini-Park and the steps behind Sunnyside Conservatory.

Yet still today there remains a City-owned piece of land—5000 square feet in size—that is undeveloped as a public open space. It is fenced off and inaccessible. One half is used as a private side yard by an adjacent homeowner. The other half is currently leased to Friends of the Urban Forest, but that organization has never used it. These non-public uses of public land represent a loss to the community, and it is time the situation was rectified.

First, a short history of Sunnyside’s land and its parks. Continue reading “Sunnyside’s Missing Mini-Park” →

Built on Beer: The Streets of Sunnyside and San Francisco Brewery Profits

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By Amy O’Hair

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.
Portion of the original Sunnyside Land Company homestead map, submitted to the city in 1891.

In addition, Edna Street is likely to have been named for the beloved daughter of one of these brewery men. Continue reading “Built on Beer: The Streets of Sunnyside and San Francisco Brewery Profits” →

Marston and Edna: 1923 and Today

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Note the Ingleside Police Station visible across the vegetable fields in 1923, a view now obscured by the I-280 freeway. Move slider to compare photographs. View larger here. Look at other comparisons photographs here. 

The opening of new Edna Street

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1919c Monterey & Edna. Photo: Western Neighborhoods Project

In 1916, one block of Edna Street north of Monterey was closed, and relocated 200 feet to the west–the dogleg portion.

1916-realignment-Edna-Street_H_053
1916. New location of Edna Street. County Recorder’s Alpha Maps. View larger. 

The reason? Sewer pipes. This was the low spot in the block, and you can’t argue with gravity. (This is on the route of Sunnyside’s old creek.)  Continue reading “The opening of new Edna Street” →

Sunnyside/Jailside: the tale of the big house down the street

Sunnyside History5 Comments
OpenSFHistory.org

By Amy O’Hair

Who would site the city’s “Largest and Most Important City Subdivision” next to an extensive and notorious jail compound? That’s exactly what Behrend Joost did in 1890 when he created the Sunnyside district from a portion of the Rancho San Miguel land. Joost in any case had his eye on becoming a pioneer of the electric streetcar in San Francisco; the deleterious effect the adjacent jail might have on the neighborhood was not on his mind.

To one of the splash advertisements for Sunnyside from the day of the real estate rollout, I’ve added a little cartoon of the jail (lower left):

1891Apr26-Chron-ad-ALTEREDds
Half-page debut ad for Sunnyside, altered! SF Chronicle, 26 Apr 1891.

Located on a large 100-acre lot in the south-central area of San Francisco, the “House of Refuge” property had had a jail in some form or another since the 1850s. The city originally bought the land in 1854, when it was far, far from the little northeastern corner that was considered to constitute the city proper then.

1869 Coast Survey map, altered: House of Refuge lot marked in green. From DavidRumsey.com.
1869 Coast Survey map, altered: House of Refuge lot marked in green. From DavidRumsey.com.

The 1905 view shown below is now unimaginable: the Jail complex has been replaced by City College of San Francisco, and the narrow railroad tracks of the San Francisco-San Jose train line that passed directly adjacent have been replaced by the Interstate 280 Freeway.

1905. View of Ingleside Jail from Ocean Avenue, looking northwest. Southern Pacific tracks run just below jail's white fence. Courtesy SFMTA. Cropped from U00341. sfmta.photoshelter.com
1905. View of Ingleside Jail complex (women’s on left, men’s on right with cupola sticking up). Looking northwest from Ocean Ave near San Jose Ave. Southern Pacific tracks run just below jail’s white fence. Courtesy SFMTA. Cropped from U00341. sfmta.photoshelter.com

Continue reading “Sunnyside/Jailside: the tale of the big house down the street” →

Disappeared Streets of Sunnyside

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From Sunnyside Homestead map, 1891.

We have lost a few bits of the original streets. The blocks laid out by the surveyor in 1891 were perfectly rectangular and the streets die-straight. All the better to milk maximum profits from the sale of lots–no extra wedge-shaped bits, or wasteful little parks to clutter up the profit landscape. But reality meant changes had to be made in that rigid map in the course of building out the neighborhood in the twentieth century.

Half-page ad for new Sunnyside real estate speculation project. 26 April 1892, SF Chronicle. From newspapers.com.
1891 half-page newspaper ad for the new Sunnyside real estate speculation project. Drawing is closely based on original homestead map submitted to the City. 26 April 1891, SF Chronicle. From newspapers.com.

Continue reading “Disappeared Streets of Sunnyside” →