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.
Sunnyside History in Photos: Places
Category: Sunnyside Land Company
Foerster: Work Hard, Die Young, and Leave a Good Name
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.
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.
Continue reading “Foerster: Work Hard, Die Young, and Leave a Good Name”
7 Ladies and The Great Horned Spoon: More Sunnyside advertising
More example of advertising for the Sunnyside district in San Francisco newspapers in the first years, 1891-1892. (More wacky Sunnyside ads in the first post in this series.)
Note the frequent use of white space, clean-looking typefaces, and asymmetrically positioned text blocks, a bit ahead of their time–favorite features of midcentury advertisers decades later.
Continue reading “7 Ladies and The Great Horned Spoon: More Sunnyside advertising”
87 Men and Golden Chances: The Sunnyside advertising campaign
After Sunnyside was laid out and lots went on sale in San Francisco in 1891, there were a lot of unusual newspaper advertisements pushing property sales in the new district during that first year. (More wacky Sunnyside ads in the second post in this series here.)
The initial splash took place on Sunday 26 April 1891, with half-page ads in at least three San Francisco newspapers: the Chronicle, the Call, and the Examiner. Continue reading “87 Men and Golden Chances: The Sunnyside advertising campaign”