View more class photos here. Read more about Sunnyside School here.
Some early class photos that have been generously shared with me by Gayle Junkin Hermann and Mary Lucid.
The photo was mounted on a board with the studio name (Frances Thompson Studio, San Francisco) and the year. Ms Thompson appears to have encouraged the girls to bring their dolls for the photo shoot.
Continue reading “In the Picture VII: More Sunnyside Elementary School Class Photos”
View more class photos here. Read more about Sunnyside School here.
My sincere thanks to Steve Bengle for sending these excellent images of his class photos from 1954, 1959, and 1960.
Continue reading “In the Picture VI: More Sunnyside Elementary School Class Photos”
By Amy O’Hair
This photograph from about 1935 captures a moment in a transitional time for Sunnyside—after the building boom of the 1920s, but before the Ingleside Jail was torn down and City College built.
It was taken from what is now the 500 block of Los Palmos Drive on Mount Davidson—then just a steep grassy hillside where four children are enjoying the view. Looking southwest, the landscape shown is now in part lost. The three-winged Ingleside Jail, which occupied part of the current City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus from the 1870s until it was closed in 1934, is still visible just off Judson Avenue—an ordinary part of neighborhood life for residents then.
Sunnyside School is prominent, built only a few years before the photo. In just a couple of years, the first buildings at City College will be constructed, but at this time we see just the naked 354-foot hill. The I-280 freeway is many decades away from being built—the skinny railroad tracks where it will run through this landscape are not visible.
A marked version of the photo follows, to help identify sights. Click on each for a larger version.
Explore some of the sights in this image:
My thanks to Jacqueline Proctor of MtDavidson.org for this image.
View more class photos here. Read more about Sunnyside School here.
My thanks to Richard Tucker for generously sharing his class photos from Sunnyside Elementary School. Richard now lives in Idaho, but he grew up on Joost Avenue, and learned how to scoop up first issues of new comic books from beloved local figure Bruno Cappa, setting off a life-long passion.
Here are his class photos from 1966 to 1970, including the first color photo for the site.
Of note is the apparent diversity of students attending Sunnyside School—before court-ordered desegregation busing began in San Francisco in 1971.
Continue reading “In the picture V: More Sunnyside Elementary School class photos”
A collection of photographs of places and things in Sunnyside’s history.
Photos of people in Sunnyside here. Main photo page here. Do you have a photo to add? Write me.
View more class photos here. Read more about Sunnyside School here.
During the 1960s, before court-mandated busing was instituted, Sunnyside was one of two schools where students from the Bayview were bused to, in order to relieve congestion at the overcrowded Bret Harte Elementary School. That meant a greater diversity of kids at Sunnyside, even before the official busing program began in 1973. And it shows in these two sets of photos, from the late-1940s and the mid-1960s.*
I am grateful for the spontaneous contributions of one-time Sunnyside students Doug da Silva, Anthony Eckstein, and Alan Hansen.
Continue reading “In the picture III: more Sunnyside Elementary School class photos”
View more class photos here. Read more about Sunnyside School here.
My thanks to Sunnyside resident and one-time Sunnyside ES student Greg Adams.
Continue reading “In the picture again: more Sunnyside Elementary School class photos”
Part of a series of articles about Sunnyside School.
The first dedicated schoolhouse to be built for the neighborhood was neither big enough nor safe enough to serve the needs of families in Sunnyside in the long term, but for 18 years it was a busy and productive place. During this time, Sunnyside emerged as a vital neighborhood, no longer ignored by City government and able to garner its share of public monies. Community and parental involvement was effective and intense, centered on a newly founded PTA. Then a group of mothers helped bring to the City’s attention the schoolhouse’s dangers and inadequacies. When it came time to build a replacement, rather than drag the process out for a decade, as the City had with the first provisional school in a cottage, that new building went up in just a few years.
Continue reading “Sunnyside School: the first real schoolhouse, 1909 to 1927”
