Category: Edna Street

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 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.

The Sunnyside History Project of 2006

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By Amy O’Hair

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.)

The History Fair 

Continue reading “The Sunnyside History Project of 2006” →

Sunnyside’s Missing Mini-Park

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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. A portion of unbuilt Edna Street was 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 the Sunnyside Conservatory.

Yet still today there remains a City-owned piece of land—500 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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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” →

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

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OpenSFHistory.org

By Amy O’Hair

Who would site “the 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 that Leland Stanford sold off then. The choicer cuts went to other investors; this was no Stanford Heights (later Miraloma Park), perched on Mt Davidson. (Joost’s true aim was to be Baron of the Electric Rails, in any case.)

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

There had been a jail on this property in some form or another since the 1850s; the city originally bought the 100-acre House of Refuge lot in 1854, when it was far, far from the city. The 1905 view show 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 by 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). 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” →