News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
REAL ESTATE | John Fitzgerald The volume of sales in the local housing market remains strong, with 38 closings during the past month, exactly the same as the previous month. Most notable among recent sales is 2830 Pacific Avenue, the 2009 decorator showcase home. The 7-bedroom Pacific Heights mansion was originally listed at $12.9 million in…
Renovation of Le Petit Trianon — long delayed — is now scheduled to begin this summer. The grand home at 3800 Washington Street has been empty for years and largely unattended, even since it was bought in 2007 for $22 million by tech mogul Halsey Minor, founder of CNet. “The state of Le Petit Trianon…
Home furnishing stores — which took a big hit during the last decade — are seeing a resurgence on Fillmore, especially in the block between Pine and Bush, home to Zinc Details, Design Within Reach, the Shade Store and newcomer Ruby Living Design. Today the block got something new in modern home design when BoConcept…
The roses in Susan Meyers’ garden will be in peak bloom on Saturday, May 22, for the Garden Conservancy’s garden tour. The tour is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and this year the starting point is Meyers’ “playful Pine Street garden” at 2418 Pine Street.
F loral designer Kaori Imaizumi is preparing for a museum exhibition this month, as she has every spring since she opened her flower shop in the neighborhood in 2006. She’s participating once again in “Bouquets to Art,” the annual extravaganza in which floral arrangements interpret and comment upon works of art in the DeYoung Museum in…
Soon after the February issue of the New Fillmore hit the streets, with its report on the discovery and delivery of a manzanita plant in the Presidio thought to be extinct, the phone rang. “There’s another one,” the caller said. “I’ll show you.”
Friends of the Urban Forest will mark a major milestone in the neighborhood on Saturday, February 20: For the 1000th time, a team of volunteers will plant trees on city streets. Environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill will address the volunteers when they gather at 9 a.m. at Rosa Parks Elementary School at 1501 O’Farrell Street,…
A rare Franciscan manzanita long thought to be extinct was transplanted to a protected location in the Presidio this week after it was discovered along the Doyle Drive rebuilding project by a biologist who happened to be driving by. “It’s an incredible find, like Christmas morning when you’re five,” says Mark Frey, an ecologist with…
LOCALS | THOMAS REYNOLDS In the springtime came the annual invitation to stop by the corner of Alta Plaza Park and tour the elegant home of interior designer John Wheatman. Hundreds of current and former clients walked through on May 3, a cool, grey Sunday afternoon, to admire the treasures Wheatman has acquired and the…
Story and photograph by JEAN COLLIER HURLEY This is a story about kindness, determination, beauty — and an unusual bougainvillea plant. Over the years, the front yard of the little house at 1923 Webster Street had become a junkyard, its wooden fence a dilapidated eyesore. The kindly owner, who had raised her family there, was too…