News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
One fateful day in 1947, a scruffy dog wandered into the yard of a Pacific Heights home. Mrs. Carter Downing took the dog to the city pound, where she learned his prospects for survival were slim. Wayward pets were put to sleep unless adopted quickly. Horrified by the thought, she decided to take the dog…
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…
Calvary Presbyterian Church opened on Fillmore Street — its third location — with a community Thanksgiving service in November 1902. The church moved to Fillmore from Union Square to make way for the construction of the St. Francis Hotel. Much of the Powell Street church — including all of the pews and over a million…
Then as now, the intersection of Fillmore and Post was also the intersection of two neighborhoods. Japanese-Americans had returned from the internment camps of World War II to find that, in their absence, African-Americans had arrived in record numbers as part of the war effort. What had been Japantown had been transformed into an all-night…
Fillmore Street quickly became “the new Market Street” after the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906, which devastated most of downtown San Francisco. Businesses had to find temporary locations elsewhere, and Fillmore Street was largely untouched by the catastrophe. Businesses crowded into existing buildings, sharing whatever quarters they could find. This photograph, taken two…
LANDMARKS | ANNE BLOOMFIELD Observe at the corner of Pine and Scott a low brick fence, a hedge and a row of cypresses. Nothing can be seen behind them except more trees and hints of a rather large white house, an excellent Italianate specimen, it develops. No, we are not out in the country, somewhere…
LANDMARKS | ANNE BLOOMFIELD A year after the Queen Anne house at Pierce and Pine was built — we’re talking 1887 — it was photographed for a newspaper series titled “Artistic Homes of California.” Except for minor details, the picture might have been taken today: It shows the same sinuous brackets at the entry and…