- Mansions/Victorians-SF Arch.Heritage Tour-Pacific Hts./Broadway/Lafayette ParkBlue Bottle Coffee, San Francisco, CA
[If you are a little late or if it is too crowded outside the coffee shop, look for us diagonally across the street which will be our first stop on the tour.]
Meet outside Blue Bottle Coffee at Jackson St & Fillmore if you are early, or across the street at our first stop on the tour. There is available free parking around the neighborhood and no restriction on weekends. There is parking around Alta Plaza Park between Steiner & Pierce, on Jackson St. (Don't park by a meter like those on Fillmore.)
About midway we'll stop for a break at Lafayette Park. Restrooms and view the surrounding houses from the top of the park.
Pacific Heights is best known for being one of the most affluent neighborhoods in San Francisco. This tour highlights not only the architecture, but also the people who built, occupied and maintained these grand properties. About 30 of which will be on our tour with a few sentences of information about each property.
The walking tour is 2.5-3.5 miles.
Here's a simple link that will allow you to support the Meetup and add a thank you.
Looking at a Victorian, what to look for: (Information comes from the San Francisco Heritage organization.)
Flat front Italianate- (earliest Victorians)
Italianate with slanted or square bay windows
Queen Anne Tower House with angled or rounded bay windows (mid 1880s)
Type of Entry & Doorway(maybe a rounded Moongate entry)-
Decorative Ironwork-
*Floral Decor-Garlands (one of many types of decorations known as *"Gingerbread")
Fish scale&Diamond shingles-
Towers & Witch's Cap-
Stained Glass-
*Carvings of grotesque faces-
*Sunbursts- often painted gold color
Gables in a variety of material- (mainly redwood)
*Newel Posts and Finials on Tower tops and roof peaks-
Fernando Nelson built an estimated 15,000 homes in SF & Pelton's Affordable Dwellings from a bygone era-
Development of woodworking mills South of Market provided the ornaments with which to add the "gingerbread" to the Victorian houses There was an Old English custom using fancy cutouts of gingerbread to decorate wedding cakes. The term gingerbread was subsequently used for the decorating of Victorian houses.
1860 - 1870s Italianate: Buildings were vertical in emphasis with rounded classical detail. Earliest had flat windows & flat roofs with false roof fronts.
1880s Stick Style (also called East Lake): The early buildings in this genre relied heavily on plane vertical board decorations. Squared off bay windows appear.
Late 1880s and 1890s Queen Anne : Gingerbread would be applied to both the Stick and Queen Ann styles in San Francisco. Sloping roofs appear.
In Queen Ann surfaces are covered in a variety of patterns with fish scale and diamond shingles, lap siding and masonry, sometimes all in the same building.
Rooflines in the Queen Anne were irregular, combining the witches hat roof on a rounded or octagonal tower with, sometimes decorated with a spool work gable braces. Frieze bands of foliated patterns wrapped around towers and tall chimneys. Horizontal proportions prevailed over the general vertical emphasis of the previous styles.
1895 to 1910 Edwardian and Colonial Revival: The continued elaboration of Victorian ornamentation and facade shapes reached its height in the early 1890s. After that and into the 1900s there was a gradual move towards simplicity and away from excess and toward, order. As these two styles, Edwardian and Colonial Revival, shared characteristics that were distinguished by the restrained use of classical ornament, flat planes and facades which were square or rectangular and were topped by either a hip roof or a flat roof with a heavy cornice.
The brash individuality of the late Victorians subsided into reticence and good manners of the Edwardian style. Eccentricity gave way to strict conventions, quiet lines and understated quality materials. Money now made understatement its chief method of display. Style was no longer measured in pounds of gingerbread ornament per square foot, but in elegant proportions and an air of restfulness.
After the 06' earthquake apartments in substantial buildings became popular with well-to-do San Franciscans.
If you would like a look at a full floor condo/coop apartment, here is a link to an interior tour of 1940 Broadway, 8th floor.T