Once the Southern Pacific railroad tracks ran where I-280 freeway is today. Even in 1923, this was at the edges of the city. On the left is the Balboa Mill and Lumber Company, a yard with its own spur of track, replaced by houses in the 1940s. The presence of the freeway makes a precise match of views impossible (therefore no slider). View other comparison photographs here.
1923. View south from near Judson Avenue at the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. Photo: Western Railway Museum 259-V. View larger2019. View south from Judson Ave at Circular. Photo: Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org. View larger
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. View larger 2019. View north from Judson at Circular. Photo: Amy O’Hair SunnysideHistory.org View larger
On 5 January 1911, a photographer named John Henry Mentz came out to Sunnyside to take some shots on a chilly, partly cloudy day. He was the skilled official photographer for United Railroads of San Francisco (URR, which became Muni later). His photos documented the streetcar tracks, but naturally other things were included. Thanks to the availability of high-definition scans of these three images from SFMTA, we can glimpse life on that day in Sunnyside history, complete with a family on the way to the shops and goats grazing on the railroad tracks. The photos were taken on the first block of Monterey Boulevard, near Circular Avenue. First the photos with details, then a comparison to today.
A Thursday Afternoon on Monterey
First Mentz took this image, with a large 8×10 camera and a glass-plate negative positioned squarely in the middle of the unpaved road, facing east (towards what is now Glen Park).
U02892. Monterey Boulevard between Circular Ave and Joost Avenue, 5 January 1911. Photo courtesy SFMTA, sfmta.photoshelter.com.
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.
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”→
Although a sparsely populated neighborhood during the decades around the turn of the last century, Sunnyside had both a streetcar—San Francisco’s first electric car—and the Southern Pacific San Francisco-San Jose steam train running along its eastern border. The two lines crossed at an oblique angle, just south of Monterey Boulevard at Joost Avenue—an area now disappeared by the excavations for I-280. It was referred to as the Sunnyside crossing, and was a notorious site of fatalities and injuries during these years.
The Sunnyside crossing, 1912. Looking southwest, down San Jose Ave. Altered to show route of Southern Pacific steam train and SFSM Electric Railway streetcar. Gatekeeper’s house marked blue. Sunnyside Powerhouse smokestack marked on right hand side. Photo courtesy SFMTA sfmta.photoshelter.com.