The Sunnyside History Project of 2006

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 in the 1970s: Trees, Traffic, Taxes

By Amy O’Hair

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 The newsletters of Sunnyside’s local organization from those years have recently been archived and made available online at the Internet Archive, and tell some inspiring stories about actions that still impact our lives today.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.

The publication of the new archive of the SNA newsletters is due to the work of LisaRuth Elliott and her team for the Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco project on the Internet Archive. Continue reading “Sunnyside in the 1970s: Trees, Traffic, Taxes”

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 

 

A Bridge between Neighborhoods: the Santa Rosa Underpass

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.

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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”

Farmland to Freeway: a history of Rock Ranch

OpenSFHistory.org

Once at the site of a landmark rock so large it merited its own mark on early maps, there was an area of rich farmland used for growing food and raising animals into the 1920s, located just east of Sunnyside and south of the present Glen Park Bart Station. It is now lost under the kilotons of concrete that make up the I-280/San Jose Ave interchange.

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The vegetable gardens near San Jose Avenue, 1917. OpenSFHistory / wnp36.01632.jpg
2017-openstreetmap-RockRanch-overlay
2017 OpenStreetMap altered to show area of ranch/vegetable gardens.

Continue reading “Farmland to Freeway: a history of Rock Ranch”