Category: Joost

The Sunnyside Powerhouse: New Photographs

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Detail from: Untitled [Sunnyside Powerhouse, San Francisco] 1892c. San Mateo County Historical Association Collection (1990.48). Used with permission and subject to usage restrictions.

Read more about the Sunnyside Powerhouse and the San Francisco and San Mateo Electric Railway.

To add to the recently revealed photo of the Sunnyside Powerhouse, here are five more images from the same album at the San Mateo County Historical Association, including unseen interior shots from the engine room. They were taken by a photographer from the company that supplied the engines, Risdon Iron Works, on the occasion of the opening of the powerhouse and the new electric streetcar line in April 1892.

These new photos are unmatched by any other known ones of Sunnyside’s lost landmark, all of which date to after the powerhouse ceased to operate in 1901. These show a car house and power plant just constructed, ready to revolutionize San Francisco’s urban railways with the introduction of electricity for propulsion. For the first time, the machinery of the powerhouse engine room can be seen.

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Revealed! New photograph of the Sunnyside Powerhouse

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See the rest of these fabulous new photos here.

Thanks to the sharp eye of David Gallagher of Western Neighborhoods Project, this early photo of the Sunnyside Powerhouse has been unearthed from an album at the San Mateo County Historical Association. The association had not identified it, but David recognized Sunnyside’s lost landmark and kindly alerted me.

Untitled [The Sunnyside Powerhouse, San Francisco] 1892c. San Mateo County Historical Association Collection (1990.40.50).
Untitled [Sunnyside Powerhouse, San Francisco] 1892c. San Mateo County Historical Association Collection (1990.40.50). Used with permission and subject to usage restrictions.
The photo was taken, to the best of my estimation, shortly after construction of the powerhouse and car barn was finished in April 1892. That month saw the opening of the pioneering streetcar system, the San Francisco and San Mateo Electric Railway, the first one powered by electricity in the city.

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Foerster: Work Hard, Die Young, and Leave a Good Name

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By Amy O’Hair

The intersection of Foerster and Joost is not just a street corner in Sunnyside, it’s the stormy tale of a family torn apart by the relentless greed of one uncle, Behrend Joost, and the quiet loyalty of his nephew, Constantine Foerster, which finally gave way under the pressure of it. Joost went down in a long spiral of lawsuits, but Foerster survived and prospered, saved by taking the terrible decision to break his bond to his uncle, and stake his future in the company of men of better judgment and ethics.

2020. Street signs at Joost Avenue and Foerster Street. Photo: Amy O'Hair SunnysideHistory.org
2020. Street signs at Joost Avenue and Foerster Street. Photo: Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org

Constantine E.A. Foerster was a successful and industrious corporate attorney in late nineteenth-century San Francisco. At the age of sixteen, he got his start in the city working for his uncle, a scrappy, ill-mannered hardware dealer named Behrend Joost. For many years his fortunes were deeply entwined with this uncouth entrepreneur, including as the attorney for Joost’s project to build San Francisco’s first electric streetcar system. The property speculation project called Sunnyside went along with the streetcar, and Foerster was one of several officers in the company whose names remain on the streets there.

CEA Foerster. 1880s. From Morrison & Foerster: the Evolution of a Law Firm (2006).
CEA Foerster. 1880s. From Morrison & Foerster: the Evolution of a Law Firm (2006).
Behrend Joost. 1890s. SF Call, 23 Apr 1893.
Behrend Joost. 1890s. SF Call, 23 Apr 1893.

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Monterey at Joost: 1920 and Today

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1920/ Monterey at Joost. OpenSFHistory.org

Move slider to compare photographs. Read more about the farm land just beyond the roadway.  View larger here.  Look at other comparison photographs here.

 

The Sunnyside Powerhouse and San Francisco’s First Electric Streetcar

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OpenSFHistory.org

Update Feb 2021: See additional new images of the Sunnyside Powerhouse, including the engine rooms

Sunnyside played an important role in the development of the first electric streetcar in San Francisco. The pioneering enterprise was initiated in 1890 by streetcar-railway engineer John Wesley Hartzell, with financial backing from millionaire real-estate speculator Behrend Joost. Before that, horse-powered and cable-driven streetcars were the norm in the city. Soon the newly introduced technology would power many of San Francisco’s many privately-held transit lines.

1895-Car30-SanJose-Sickles-SFSMRR_wnp32.0239
About 1895. Car 30, San Francisco and San Mateo Railway. At Sickles and San Jose Ave. OpenSFHistory.org

But the San Francisco and San Mateo Railway was the first electric railroad in the city, and central to the project, producing the electric energy to run the line, was the Sunnyside Powerhouse, located on the flatiron-shaped block at the eastern end of Monterey Boulevard, then called Sunnyside Avenue.

Sunnyside Powerhouse
1904. Sunnyside Powerhouse, from Monterey Blvd, looking southeast. Courtesy SFMTA. sfmta.photoshelter.com

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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

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