by Michael Helquist
Copyright 2007 All rights reserved, Michael Helquist
All streets have their stories, of course, but the 700 block of Broderick Street, between Fulton and McAllister, offers an insightful view of the major changes San Francisco and our neighborhood experienced since the 1890s. Most of the houses in the North Panhandle area were built in the early 1900s, but the stately rows of Victorians on both sides of this block of Broderick were erected in the early 1890s by one of the city’s first home building companies, Cranston and Keenan.
These dozen Queen Anne-style residences represented the last phase of Victorian styles in house building. Most feature the flourishes of Queen Annes: the round corner towers with semi-circular bay windows complemented by turrets, tall chimneys, and spacious porches. Various exterior surfaces using many different materials help highlight the ornate cornices, brackets, and columns. This block has been called the most colorful concentration of Victorians in the city (1).
The heavy migration to the city in the 1890s led to a housing boom marked by cheap lumber and factory-produced appliances and parts. The huge numbers of laborers made it possible for building in the “outer lands” to get seriously underway. The new Broderick Street houses lured homeowners with amenities previously available only to the wealthy: central heating, stained glass windows, decorative carvings gracing eaves, porches, and ceilings. Many of the nearby blocks remained pastures for several more years.
Calvin W. Knowles, a dentist, was the first owner of 718 Broderick, purchased in 1891 for about $4000. The four-story house was the last of the Queen Annes on the eastern side of Broderick, and it soared majestically along with the seven other houses on the same side of the street. Knowles, as a homeowner, was among the minority in a city of renters. He paid about $48 a year in property taxes for his new home. He and his neighbors could travel to the financial district for a nickel, using the Omnibus Railroad and Cable Car Company line that served Broderick Street.
In time, however, the automobile allowed the prosperous merchants and professionals of Broderick Street to leave the block to its increasingly middle-class residents. One study (2) of the relocation patterns in early San Francisco found that the city was growing so fast that a ten-year-old house was considered out-of-date. Notions of fashionable neighborhoods came and went quickly. In the 1920s another housing boom took place, and this time the prosperous moved to the new suburbs further west and down the peninsula. Soon the grand Victorians on Broderick Street were partitioned to allow for small apartments and boarding rooms for white, blue-collar workers. Mr. Knowles’ $4000 house had risen in value to $10,000 to $14,000 twenty years after his purchase. Then the Depression, perhaps having an effect on real estate like our modern day earthquakes, brought his and other houses closer to $5000 to $7000.
Prior to World War II, San Francisco’s African American population clustered near the cemetary lands (Laurel Hill), the very western edge of the Western Addition. But with the onset of war and plentiful jobs in the shipyards, the city’s Blacks joined thousands of new arrivals from the South and established residences and vibrant communities along Fillmore Street and throughout the Western Addition.
In just a few years following the end of the war, “the whites took to the hills,” according to Joe Williams, a retired merchant seaman, who had bought 763 Broderick in 1955 for $24,000 (3). In the mid-1960s when the Reverend William R. London moved into 714 Broderick, the entire block was inhabited by Blacks. A close-knit, if not so prosperous, community flourished on the facing blocks.
However, the 700 block of Broderick suffered the most during the social turbulence of the late 60s and early 70s. Many of the homes were abandoned and a few served as a refuge for alcoholics and heroin users. Life became more difficult for many of the residents on Broderick Street, and house maintenance suffered.
A booming regional economy ushered in the 1970s and sent home prices on a decade-long surge. Soon investors and speculators took notice of the stately, if worn, houses on Broderick; they saw an opportunity -- and took the risk -- in turning these bargain-priced Victorians into showplace apartments for the city’s new professional, sometimes “yuppie”, workers.
In 1986 Barbara Russell, a retired nurse, made a down-payment of $120,000 to buy 718 Broderick. Her investment became a labor of love as well. She and her husband renovated the interior themselves, stripping 50-year-old wallpaper and sanding away the black paint that hid the lovely oak paneling in the lobby. The Russells and their neighbors helped return the Queen Annes of Broderick Street into one of our neighborhood’s most notable architectural treasures.
The large oak-panelled lobby with its own fireplace leads visitors to the ground level apartment home of Sam Silverstein and Lisa Tabb, whose residence was selected in NOPNA’s Historic House Profile drawing. Their apartment has beautiful inlaid wood floors, a built-in cabinet surrounding the original fireplace which is faced with olive and yellow-toned tiles, coved ceilings, and, facing the street, the lower curved windows of the building’s soaring tower.
Sam and Lisa are both involved with writing, editing, and publishing. Lisa is the editor and founder of Adventure , a journal that targets those interested in eco-travel, combining “a sense of adventure and a level of luxury.” Sam is a contributing editor to the journal and is a prolific freelance writer, primarily for sports publications. The North Panhandle News also benefits from Sam’s skills: he currently researches and writes about what’s new with our neighborhood businesses. The most notable event for Sam and Lisa has been the recent arrival of their new son, Aaron. Congratulations to all three of them. And take the opportunity for a leisurely stroll on Broderick past these Queen Annes for a closer look at our North of Panhandle treasures.
(1) “Painted Ladies Revisited: San Francisco’s Resplendent Victorians Inside and Out”, E. Pomada and M. Larsen, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1989. (2), (3) “Street of Dreams”, W. Cellis III, The Wall Street Journal, 1989.
“In the Victorian Style” by Randolph Delehanty and Richard Sexton, Chronicle Books, San Francisco,1991. “Painted Ladies Revisted: San Francisco’s Resplendent Victorians Inside and Out” , E. Pomada and M. Larsen, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1989. “Street of Dreams” , W. Celis III, The Wall Street Journal, 1989. City directories, Municipal Reports, SF Water Department, Sanborn maps.
Special thanks to Jack Walsh for his illustration of 718 Broderick.
(c) 1999 Michael Helquist
Drawing (c) 1999 Jack Walsh, used by permission.