News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
ICONS | LESLIE M. FREUDENHEIM From 1876 to 1910, a group of creative and pioneering men and women in Northern California sought an architectural expression appropriate to the region. They rejected Victorian excess, preferring simple homes of natural materials. Their aspirations went beyond architecture to advocate a sensibility and a way of life. The cradle…
LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER Ruth Bernhard, who lived up a narrow stair in a Victorian flat on Clay Street from 1953 until she died in December 2006 at age 101, was released to “fly with the angels” — her term for death — at a memorial service March 31, 2007, at Calvary Presbyterian Church. Bernhard was remembered…
LANDMARKS | ANNE BLOOMFIELD Hiding behind the trees at Pacific and Baker is a beautiful Georgian Revival house, all brick walls, white trim and fascinating roofline, the work of architects Bliss and Faville, who almost cornered the luxury market in Pacific Heights. The mansion’s trim peaks in a broad entrance with an interrupted pediment over…
By BISCUIT THE CHICK Hello. You may have noticed me flapping around in the window of your local Marc by Marc Jacobs boutique on Fillmore Street recently. And you might well be wondering how a fuzzy yellow fella like me snagged a spot in the retail industry.
The cheeky monkeys over at SFist.com held the “Official Worst MUNI Line” contest recently and were surprised when the 22-Fillmore line won. “We have to consider that a bit of an upset, as most of the comments we got bemoaned the hells of the 38-Geary more than the 22,” said a posting on the site.…
ART | JEROME TARSHIS From the 1890s to the early 1920s, the artists Arthur and Lucia Mathews were at the center of an artistic movement that sought to combine European tradition in art and design with the ideals of a new way of life that celebrated the natural splendors of Northern California. After the earthquake and…
It’s a secret workshop tucked behind a disappearing door at the back of the store. Inside are rows and rows of jars, metal caps and electrical sockets. But this is no mad scientist’s laboratory. From this hidden room come tasteful lamps that illuminate some of the finest homes in Pacific Heights — at prices far…
FIRST PERSON | PASCAL RIGO One morning not very long ago, I was eating breakfast with my family. We were sitting around the kitchen table in our apartment, which is above our bakery on Pine Street.
When Volume 1, Number 1, of the New Fillmore appeared in May 1986, one of its features was ambitiously labeled Great Old Houses #1. It was just a picture and a paragraph about the Victorian at 2447 Washington Street written by Anne Bloomfield. “Untouched it is not,” she noted archly. For the next 14 years,…
The unsightly scaffolding that surrounds Temple Sherith Israel at the corner of Webster and California streets is as repugnant to the synagogue’s leadership as it is to neighbors and passersby, they say, but it is not going away anytime soon. The scaffolding was erected to protect pedestrians from shards of sandstone falling from the facade.…