by Michael Helquist
Copyright 2007 All rights reserved, Michael Helquist
San Francisco is small enough that its neighborhoods, especially those close to its center, can each reflect the major events of the city’s history. Sometimes a focus on a particular block, or even a single building, can unleash a myriad of details that defines the city’s character, development, and continuing attraction far and wide. The North of the Panhandle neighborhood, the 2000 block of Golden Gate Avenue, and the building on that street at 2077-2079-2081 reveal just those dimensions.
When the small outpost at the tip of the peninsula was known as Yerba Buena rather than San Francisco, it would have been inconceivable that the sand dunes stretching all the way to the ocean would ever yield more than a wind-swept reason to not stray far from the few comforts afforded the first settlers. But the familiar story of how the small village would become a city once gold and silver were discovered in the mid-1800s is ample evidence of how quickly expectations can change. No sooner had San Francisco burst at its seams to accomodate the wave of immigrants seeking their fortune than its leaders began looking west and south to expand its borders.
To the west of the port city Mexican landowners had struggled to no avail to keep their unfenced properties free of squatters during the Gold Rush. Their property, known as “pueblo lands,” were eventually placed in litigation before the U.S. government. On March 8, 1866, Congress decided against the property rights of the Mexicans, and the broad stretch of wind-swept sand hills from Divisadero Street to the ocean was granted to the city. This territory, called first the “outer lands” after the change in ownership and then the Western Addition, was surveyed, with maps completed quickly by 1868. Contractors established the lines and grades of streets, and the first land grants were awarded to settlers and developers in March of 1870.
Masonic Avenue became the western edge of the city, and it seemed a reasonable limit for future expansion. To the west of it were several large cemetery tracts named Calvary, Chinese, Greek, Laurel Hill, Odd Fellows, and Masonic.
The land between Divisadero and Masonic Avenue was laid out in rectangular blocks, similar in size, with longer east-west dimensions and shorter north-south blocks, some of which had a slight grade. The streets were named after popular political leaders (Hayes, Broderick, Baker), important individuals (Fulton, McAllister, Lyon, and Turk), or points of interest (Grove). Today’s Golden Gate Avenue was first named Tyler Street, after President John Tyler, and Central Avenue was originally named Lott Street (for reasons now uncertain) until 1894.
The decision in 1870 by California Governor Henry H. Haight to develop Golden Gate Park, under the guidance of the San Francisco Park Commission, spurred investors, builders, and prospective home-owners to develop the blocks between Divisadero and Masonic. The original proposal for the park was to have a broad green swath leading from the Civic Center to the ocean. But land was precious, even in those early years of the city, and a compromise allowed for three, instead of five, miles of parkland with a narrower, one-block wide strip for three quarters of a mile at the eastern end (the Panhandle Park). Both the parks (they were considered separate at first) became wildly popular. By 1886 (three years before the construction of the house at 2077-20791 Golden Gate) 50,000 people visited the parks on any given day. The first families to settle on Golden Gate Avenue just north of the park likely joined the more than two million people who visited the 1894 MidWinter Fair, held in Golden Gate Park in 1894. There they would have strolled along the curving paths, dodged speeding bicyclists, and stopped at the Fine Arts Building, which was the first museum in the park. A year later nearby park neighbors may have taken the cable car to the end of Haight Street for a day at The Chutes where they could board a gondola and descend the sixty foot structure that would hurl them to the water (reportedly at speeds of 60 miles per hour) of the artificial lake at the bottom of the tower.
The Panhandle Park itself was no ordinary grassy, open space. It became an outdoor tree museum with living exhibits from more than a dozen countries on every continent, including bush cherries from Australia, ginkgos from China, olive trees from Greece, cedars from Morrocco, and hawthornes from England. The eucalyptus trees in the Panhandle today are the oldest in both stretches of Golden Gate Park.
With the popularity of the new city park, cable car lines were extended to allow downtown residents easy access to the further reaches of the city. Travellers could choose among several lines in operation every day, including those following Hayes, McAllister, Haight, Oak, Ellis, and Geary streets. And of course the lines made commuting into town, for business and shopping, just as easy -- and inexpensive at just five cents a ride. Since each line had its own distinctive color of cars, one can imagine early travellers telling friends, “I’m taking the yellow line (McAllister Street) out to the Panhandle,” or “Just catch the green car (Hayes Street) after your picnic in the park.”
What is today called the North of the Panhandle neighborhood , along with the Haight-Ashbury and the beginnings of the Inner Sunset, evolved into suburbs. They were located a respectable distance from downtown but still accessible for professionals, tradesmen, and families. Construction followed the transit lines, and those blocks like 2000 Golden Gate with just a handful of houses in the late 1880s were soon filled the with the sounds of construction. A heavy migration to the city in the 1890s also led to a housing boom, one marked by cheap lumber and factory-produced appliances and parts. Building the new suburbs was good business as well: property values tripled whenever cable car lines were laid. With the coming of electricity in the 1890s, cable cars were gradually replaced by electric street cars and trolley buses; in the 20th century gasoline-powered buses were introduced. Even as the vehicles themselves changed, many of the initial routes remained. Today’s buses on Muni’s #5 Fulton and #21 Hayes still carry commuters along the same streets as those taken by the first homeowners and tenants who settled on the 2000 block of Golden Gate.
The first surveys of the outer Western Addition clearly established that these properties would be developed for middle-class homeowners. There were no expansive lots surrounded by large lawns and gardens; most were laid out as 25 feet wide and 100 feet deep.2 Some blocks, like the 2000 block of Golden Gate, were exceptions to this plan and had lots 27.5 feet wide and 137 feet long. (Along 2000 Golden Gate, the sixth through the eleventh lots from Central Avenue are wider and deeper). In addition to dividing lots to be sold to the middle-classes, developers also knew that the more lots planned for each block, the greater would be their profits.
The surveyors followed a standard rectangular pattern, separating each into basically three different types of lots. There were the corner lots, the mid-block lots along the long side of the block (like 2077-2079 Golden Gate), and what were called key lots, which were those in the middle of the shorter sides of the rectangular blocks (in this neighborhood, the north-south streets). Of these three types the corner lots were the most expensive and the key lots the least costly. Properties along the east-west streets were usually more desirable and more expensive than those along the north-south streets.
San Francisco has been called the last Victorian City3 since it was slow to adopt the architectural features that had already flourished in the early 1850s in England and in eastern American cities. Due to Queen Victoria’s long reign, San Francisco emerged from its tents and sand dune encampments, developed beyond its original port city limits, and became a true city, all before the death of Victoria.
In the new cable car suburbs of the Western Addition, beyond Van Ness Avenue, families selected the building features and patterns seen on a grander scale on Nob Hill. Although not so elaborate in scope and execution, many of the homes near Golden Gate Park proudly displayed extensive ornamentation. A few, like the Zellerbach mansion (1550 Fell) and the Clunie mansion (now the Victorian Inn on the Park at Fell and Lyon) were built by the truly wealthy.
When construction began on the surveyed lots, the corner property was often a large apartment building set right out to the property line at the sidewalk. Mid-block row houses4 were recessed, providing a sense of seclusion and giving the full block definition and balance. Most houses had the same number of stories and cost the same as neighboring structures. This uniform pattern was reinforced by builders and developers. Early San Franciscans could often predict the price of any given house once they knew its block location.
All early San Francisco houses were raised up off the damp, sandy ground, but they did not all have full basements. Many of the side-by-side, or row, houses had slots between them; these were recesses that allowed light and air around the front and sides of the house or served as a service alley providing street access to the backyard. It is very possible that the current unit at 2081 Golden Gate, part of the larger 2077-2079 building, was initially just such a service alley, converted later to housing, especially given the city’s chronic housing shortage.
While blocks in this part of the Western Addition were not fully developed all at once, the 2000 block of Golden Gate has several buildings of the same style with similar period architecture. The oldest building appears to be that at 2022 Golden Gate (the fourth building west of Lyon Street on the north side of Golden Gate); it was completed in November, 1886. A few other houses, notably that of 2009-2009a (now unfortunately covered with asbestos shingles, were built the same year, 1889, as 2077-2079 Golden Gate.
The building at 2077-2079 Golden Gate is a handsome Stick-style5 house, popular in San Francisco in the 1880s, with vertical and horizontal planks or “sticks” following the framework. Rectangular bay windows define both levels of the house and lend perspective to the otherwise flat, linear quality of the building. Stylized natural elements, heavily incised, provide ornamentation that might seem overdone if not so well-balanced. A heavy, bracketed cornice assures the visual aspect is contained, appearing solid on the street. Walking down this block of Golden Gate, a visitor will notice similar stick style features in several houses, such as 2076, 2067-2069, 2059, 2022, 2011, and 2009, but none are as pure in form as 2077-2079 with its bay window on the first level complementing the cornice and entry, the second level bay window complemented by the single flat window, and the recessed roof line several feet higher than a few of its neighbors.
One can also see the rich variations that defined San Franciscan buildings with Stick features blending with Italianate and Edwardian styles. For example, directly across the street from 2077-2079, the house at 2082-2084 shares many features except for its slanted bay windows, a feature more popular in the following decade of construction. Several of the buildings have been modified to include a driveway and garage. Most of the early construction also reveals the creativity, sometimes the frivolity, of builders with the amount of ornamentation added to the exteriors. Whether these details seem integral to the style or simply excessive is often determined by the balance of features and by exterior painting schemes.
On a cool March 15th of 1889 Stephen D. Chiucovich must have taken great satisfaction in completing the necessary paperwork at the Spring Valley Water Works offices to apply for water service at his new home. His wasn’t the first house to be built on the second to last block of Golden Gate Avenue as it ended at the broad expanse of cemeteries just the other side of Masonic Avenue. His friends must have marvelled at his decision to live so far from the center of town. Only the year before he was residing at 308 McAllister, a good many blocks closer to town than his new home.
Designed as a one-family home, Chiucovich’s building reflected his solid financial position: the house was large with two stories, thirteen rooms, and a full basement. He owned his business, the S.D. Chiucovich Company, with Maurice N. Perrault, who resided at 211 Mason Street. Their firm operated a liquor saloon at the southeast corner of Larkin and Golden Gate. The two men were probably acquainted with Chiucovich’s neighbor at the opposite end of the block where he had just completed his new home. Charles Leonhardt of 2003 Golden Gate was also a saloon keeper.
Chiucovich and his wife, Mary, resided at their Golden Gate home for another twelve years, when, in 1902, they had relocated to Alamany. They continued to own their Golden Gate property through the years of turmoil following the 1906 earthquake and fire. They certainly returned to their property at some point after the fire to check on the status of their building. While they likely found little structural damage at their house, they could not have helped notice the thousands of people camping out in the park a few blocks away. On Golden Gate itself, as everywhere in the city by order of the mayor, residents were not permitted to use any gas or electricity for fear of igniting additional fires from broken gas lines. For a period of up to six weeks, homeowners and tenants of all walks of life cooked on the sidewalks on make-shift grills or on appliances pulled out from their homes.
The Chiucoviches sold their first home to a relative (Vaso Lazzaro Chiucovich) in December of 1914. The period of their ownership, twenty five years, would become the longest the building at 2077-2079 Golden Gate ever remained with one individual or family.
The residents of the 2000 block of Golden Gate were a mix of working class and middle-class backgrounds. In 1911 city voters were required to list their occupations as they registered. Based on these records, the demographic make-up of this one city block are evident. There were carpenters (at 2004, 2068, 2055, and 2071), plumbers (at 2052, 2059), engineers (at 2009, 2051), salesmen and merchants (at 2005, 2014, 2084, 2055, 2085), a music teacher at 2003, a police officer at 2069, an attorney at 2089, and several men involved in other trades such as bricklaying, general contracting, tilesetting, and ironmoulding. Like much of this part of the Western Addition, party affiliations strongly favored the Republicans with a few members of the Union Labor party.
Eleven years later, in 1922, similar records reveal that some neighbors had progressed in their occupations, such as James Donovan of 2088 who was first a bricklayer before being promoted to a building inspector, others changed jobs such as Joseph Wurdack of 2082, a tilesetter in 1911 but a clerk in 1922. There remained, however, a remarkable similarity to their pursuits of a decade earlier. Women were for the first time listed in the voter registry; most on the 2000 block listed their occupation as housewife although Mrs. Mary Adams of 2059 stated that she was a nurse. As before, many of the block residents were immigrants; some established their own businesses, such as Ettore and Antoinette Massagli of Italian origin, residing at 2009, who founded a family cement contracting firm.
In the early 1920s several spectacular projects were completed at the beach, and San Franciscans residing near the Panhandle likely joined thousands of others to stroll along the three mile esplanade parallel to the Great Highway, stop for a swim at the Sutro Baths (built in 1896 as the world’s largest indoor pool) or, on warm days, at Fleishhacker Pool (the world’s largest outdoors pool, filled with sea water), visit the animals at the Fleishhacker Zoo, or indulge in the varied entertainment at Playland-at-the-Beach, before dining at the Cliff House restaurant with its views of the Pacific.
Periods of ownership of 2077-2079 Golden Gate gradually shortened. In 1916 the house left the Chiucovich family altogether when it was sold to Jacob and Bessie Friedman. The Friedmans, including their son Barney who worked as a tailor, lived in the ornate Victorian until late 1925. From that year to 1929, six transactions occurred, perhaps reflecting the dire economic times faced by the city and nation. When the Depression hit, homes that ten years earlier had sold for as much as $12,000 dropped in price to $5000. During the 1930s and 1940s, ownership of the Golden Gate house changed every four to five years.
San Francisco saw an unprecedented surge in population growth during 1941 to 1945, with an increase of 100,000 residents. Industrial factories and shipbuilding plants expanded rapidly, and the number of workers who streamed into the city for the many jobs often found housing in short supply. Either during the World War II years or directly thereafter, sales records and city directory listings indicate that this single-family house was split into two flats, an upper and lower, either owned jointly by two families or rented by separate tenants. It was not uncommon in many of the city’s older neighborhoods for the grand single-family homes to be bought and sold as boardinghouse investments rather than residences. In later years, the Golden Gate building would provide additional units with the upper flat divided into two separate apartments of three rooms each and with a street level apartment (2081) carved out of the basement.
Prior to World War II the only concentration of African Americans in San Francisco was near the slopes of the cemetery lands at Lone Mountain. With the massive migration to the city for the war-related industrial jobs, many African Americans settled in the Western Addition, including the area left vacant around Fillmore Street by the evacuation of Japanese American residents. The blocks around Golden Gate and Central Avenues became home for a thriving African American community, with historically black churches located within every two to three blocks. Following the war, much of the white population deserted the Western Addition, seeking the newer suburbs in the Richmond, the Sunset, and those down the peninsula.
The social turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s took its toll on the residents north of the Panhandle. Several homes were abandoned and others fell into major disrepair. What had been a proud address fifty years earlier was now dismissed with the pejorative “Western Addition,” meaning an area that many found unsafe and undesirable. The blocks closer to the park seemed to experience more of the social disruption, and neighbors started referring to Golden Gate Avenue as the “Heights.”
Those who remained here, however, formed a tight-knit community, recognizing its problems but appreciating their urban neighborhood, the proximity of the park, the schools, and the churches.
The 1980 Census Data map for the city shows a heavy concentration of African Americans residing along Fell, Hayes, Grove, and Fulton Streets from Divisadero to Masonic. Blacks also resided in the northeast corner of the North of Panhandle area, including the 2000 block of Golden Gate, but not in such high numbers.
The North of the Panhandle neighborhood had been served primarily by corner grocery stores, small storefronts, and a few clubs along Divisadero Street. Anyone wanting more extensive shopping would travel via the cable cars, or later, the buses and private vehicles, into town. Thus it was a major event when the San Francisco Municipal Railway yard, previously an historic cable car barn, that filled most of the block bordered by Fulton, McAllister, Masonic and Central was sold to make way for a supermarket. The Plaza Foods Shopping Center, owned by the Petrini family, was built in 1955. On the opening day a circus filled the parking lot with amusement rides for neighborhood children. Although the Petrinis maintained a grocery store here for a few years, the primary vendor became Falletti’s Finer Foods. The supermarket and the several accompanying stores gave the outer Western Addition its own identity as well as convenient shopping.
Freeway access and proposals for expansion have helped define the character of the North of the Panhandle neighborhood. The nearby playgrounds and winding paths for casual weekend walks in the Panhandle Park were nearly lost, or at least severely compromised, in the mid-1960s when a Park Panhandle Freeway was proposed to close the link between the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, and thus complete the Federal Interstate Highway Defense System in San Francisco. Among the options considered were a surface level freeway and a tunnel under the Panhandle from Baker to Clayton Streets. Public debate raged with the daily newspapers stirring sentiment on both sides (the San Francisco Examiner supported the freeway; the Chronicle opposed it). Although Fell Street houses would not be lost to a freeway expansion (as would houses on the south side of Oak Street), botanists warned that the century-old trees and the overall parkland would be irreparably damaged not only by a surface road but also by the proposed tunnel. When the decision came to the Board of Supervisors, just one swing vote block blocked the freeway plans. Nevertheless, the freeway proposal was resurrected two years later, in 1966, with renewed debate before it was again defeated.
Prior to the Loma Prieta earthquake’s weakening of the Central Freeway, Golden Gate Avenue provided a quick and convenient route to the freeway for motorists from the western reaches of the city. Beginning at Masonic Avenue, Golden Gate offered then, as it does today, two lanes for traffic heading east to the freeway ramps. When the earthquake in 1989 brought an end to the use of these ramps, traffic on Golden Gate lessened although the two lanes on the south side remained. The city currently has plans for installing a bicycle lane on Golden Gate from Masonic to Baker. The more recent three-year battle by voters over the Central Freeway harkened the days of the Park Panhandle Freeway debates. In 1997 residents in the Richmond district, among others, wanted to repair the damage done by the 1989 earthquake and improve the freeway access further. Their success with the electorate that year was countered the following November by proponents of a plan to bring the Central Freeway down at Mar ket Street and re-route traffic using a newly designed Octavia Boulevard. The success of the boulevard plan was challenged unsuccessfully in 1999 with a third ballot measure. With that vote, the matter appeared settled.
In 1986 a small group of neighbors gathered to discuss the ongoing problems of noise, litter, street-fighting, and overall tension linked to the drug-dealing that had claimed the Grove Street and Central Avenue area. Working together and with the police, the neighbors managed to stop the drug-dealing, and relative calm settled at the intersection. Further meetings were discontinued. However, with continuing unemployment, homelessness, and other social problems not so easily deterred, the neighbors found the drug trafficking, street crime, and vandalism had returned four years later. This time neighbors mobilized on a much larger scale, and 100 concerned residents gathered in May 1990 to address the decline in quality of life. Many of the most active participants in the new North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association (NOPNA) were members from the Golden Gate Avenue Community Association, a group founded in 1983. Both organizations continue to exist today. One of the early neighborhood activists was Tom Luby, a tenant residing at 2077 Golden Gate from 1977 to 1985, and the first president of NOPNA lived on the 2000 block.
NOPNA, the larger association, focused on basic neighborhood interests6 and needs. Since 1998 NOPNA has grown considerably; it now has 300 registered members, a healthy budget, a bi-monthly newsletter distributed to each of the 2500 households in the area, and several committees that continue to focus on clean and safe streets, monitoring commercial and residential developments, and the impact of traffic and parking in the neighborhood.
The last few years of the twentieth century witnessed signficant changes both in the North of the Panhandle neighborhood and for the 2000 block of Golden Gate Avenue. The city’s ever-spiraling real estate market continued to bring gasps of disbelief to anyone in the housing market -- investors, homeowners, and tenants. As the prices of properties in the neighborhood zoomed seemingly out of control, the word was definitely out about the desirable features of the 30 square blocks between Divisadero and Masonic, Fell and Turk Streets. Homebuyers unable to afford houses in the Noe Valley and Diamond Heights neighborhoods, for example, found the North of the Panhandle area offered better value for their diminished real estate dollars. What had been a largely unnoticed neighborhood for many city residents suddenly found itself popular and advertised. The current owners of 2077-2079 Golden Gate, William May and Gail Enfiajian, purchased the building in the summer of 1997. In a two year period, 1999 and 2000, more than 60 properties changed ownership in the neighborhood and 48 of those were purchased over the asking price7.
With the charged economy of the late 1990s and first years of the new century, a great number of buildings in the North of Panhandle area have been upgraded, painted, and generally improved. The neighborhood association’s newsletter noted that more than 200 buildings in the area had been re-painted in the last two years. This new color has been especially noticeable on the 2100 and 2000 blocks of Golden Gate: since 1999 ten houses on the 2100 block have been painted, including a few that had been neighborhood eyesores; another nine have received new coats of paint on the 2000 block, including three in a row at 2077-2079, 2085-2087, and 2089-2091-2093.
The neighborhood’s largest commercial development from the mid-1950s, the Plaza Foods complex at Fulton and Masonic, is currently set once again to become the most ambitious new construction in the area. In late 1997 the Petrini family sold the site to a limited partnership composed of a local development firm, the Emerald Fund, and Lucky’s Supermarket (Lucky’s has since been purchased by the Albertson’s food stores). Plans were announced to replace the one-story shopping mall and street-level open parking lot with a mixed-use complex, three stories high, including 135 condo units atop a supermarket and an underground parking lot. The building would rise three floors above street level to the forty foot maximum height limit. The prospect of losing a beloved grocery store, Falletti’s, mobilized hundreds of neighbors to provide input for, or outright opposition to, the project. An ad-hoc group of neighbors extracted extensive changes in design, layout, exterior appearance, and commerical operations of the project, and the city’s severe need for housing ensured official approval of the construction. What was once a sandy and empty expanse not even within the city boundaries, then a cable car and Muni bus yard, followed by a mid-century collection of small retail stores was expected to be completed as the new Fulton Street Market and Condos in late 2001.
Public recognition of the neighborhood’s improved standing in the public eye came in July 2000 when the weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper heralded the North of Panhandle blocks as one of the Bay Area’s “Best of the Bay” neighborhoods.8 The report declared, “You’d be hard-pressed to find an area that could compete with the North of Panhandle district, an area that has come into its own over the last few years ... with a lot to offer.”
Although the blocks surrounding the elegant Stick-style Victorians on Golden Gate near Central Avenue may lose some of their population diversity as the city’s real estate market restricts the ability of many to live here, there is every reason to be optimistic for the years ahead with cleaner, safer str eets, well-maintained housing stock, balanced transportation, varied and convenient shopping, and the ongoing proximity to the broad green stretch of the Panhandle Park.
San Francisco Block Books, San Francisco Main Library.
Sanborn Maps, San Francisco Main Library.
Great Index to Register (voter registration records to 1928), San Francisco Main Library.
City directories, city reverse address directories, San Francisco Main Library.
Real Estate Records, Assessor’s Office, City Hall, San Francisco. San Francisco Water Department, Application for Service Installation records. United States Census Data: maps and statistics. North Panhandle News, San Francisco.
Beebe, Lucius and Clegg, Charles. Cable Car Carnival. Oakland, California: Grahame Hardy, 1951.
Bonnet, Wayne (ed.). Victorian Classics of San Francisco. Sausalito, California: Windgate Press, 1987.
Delehanty, Randolph and Sexton, Richard. In the Victorian Style. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997.
Lewis, Oscar.San Francisco: Mission to Metropolis. Berkeley, California: Howell- North, 1966.
Loewenstein, Louis K. Streets of San Francisco - The Origins of Street and Place Names. Berkeley, California: Wilderness Press, 1996.
Moulin, Tom. San Francisco-Creation of a City. Millbrae, California: Celestial Arts, 1978.
Woodbridge, Sally B, Woodbridge, John M., Byrne, Chuck. San Francisco Architecture. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992.
Yenne, Bill. San Francisco Then and Now. San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 1998.
The following information, obtained during research for this house profilem may be relevant for further study: