Colorful San Francisco Outer Mission Houses

My wife recently took some photos of Sunset style homes in the Outer Mission that are particularly colorful. The buildings look like they date from the 1930's to 1950's. Not all the houses are to my taste but the colors are awesome!



Here's a link to her Instagram, enjoy! http://instagram.com/thesecitystreets/#

Knowing Your House - Historical Features

If you like history or historical architecture, you probably want to know and understand the historical features of your home. I read a very cool (if academic) "Sunset District Historic Builders, 1925-1950, Historic Context Statement" document yesterday, see

http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=3192

which includes a lot of details about the exterior of your historic San Francisco home. What most of these survey types of documents do not include is details on the interior (though there are many other sources which include detail about historic house interiors), for the obvious reason that the architectural preservation professionals who write these reports are frequently not allowed to go inside these homes. Which leaves real estate listings as one of the main sources where you can figure out this information. But these listings can be misleading if the listing realtor has no idea about the historic interior features of your home. If you want to preserve these types of features in your home, it can be very confusing trying to figure out what are original features of it on the inside.

For example, I saw a 1931 listing yesterday where the description listed a "bonus room" downstairs. As you may recall, I have written previously that bonus rooms are usually illegal rooms added after the home was built. Yet, when I looked at the photos of the listing, the faux fireplace, shaped arch, and wet bar with what looked like bright original wall tiling seemed to indicate that the bonus room was actually a legally built, original social room.

Here's a photo I took of the Rousseau home I went to awhile back with the wet bar in the downstairs social room:



Social rooms were rare special features for Sunset style homes built in the 1930's, so this makes this home a special treat, but you wouldn't know it from the listing!

When I emailed the uninformed listing realtor in question, he wrote back, "I really don't know. All the information is in the disclosure package. I'm sorry I can't be more specific but I have very limited knowledge and I have a legal responsibility to be almost 100%." Honest enough answer I suppose... I'm pretty sure the realtor we used for our home purchase would have known the moment he set eyes on it what that room was.

Not Your Typical San Francisco 1950s House

Saw another interesting home show up on Redfin today, a home in Merced Manor from the 1950's:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/150-Gellert-Dr-94132/home/1822602?utm_source=myredfin

There's actually a pretty large cluster of San Francisco homes built in the 1950's, especially in the southern and southwestern part of the city (coinciding with when much of Daly City was developed); it's just there aren't as many large developments of such houses in most parts of the city since most of the city had already been developed by then.

This is kind of an interesting house. First of all, the exterior is built in the English Tudor style, which is a bit unusual as most of the 1950s houses built in San Francisco were built in a more mid-century modern esque style, similar to the Westlake district in Daly City. It's free-standing, unlike a lot of houses in San Francisco that are more row houses. It's got a relatively modern two car side-by-side garage, which is very unusual in San Francisco where most houses have tandem garages. Finally, it's a split level home, which is also a bit unusual for San Francisco (though not for the United States; split level homes started appearing in common usage in the 1930s and became truly prevalent from the 1950s to 1970s). This house was built in 1953, so pretty much at around the same time as the Stonestown Galleria (the developer of the Galleria was the Stoneson Brothers, who therefore possibly built this house as well).


Inside, it's got a beautiful lava rock fireplace and wood beam ceiling:


The next photo shows clearly how the split level works - the level in the "middle" contains the front entrance and the living and dining rooms. You go up the stairs halfway to get to the main bedrooms and bathrooms. You probably go down a few steps to get to the basement room(s) and garage.


Pretty hot looking green bathroom:


Another bathroom, typical 50's tiled bathroom:


Very cool and comfortable looking family room in the basement with built in benches:


Finally, here's looking at the two car garage:

Spanish Influence in Sunset Style Homes

Saw a good example of a Spanish influenced Sunset style home show up on Redfin today:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/710-43rd-Ave-94121/home/1563063?utm_source=myredfin

Within San Francisco, since roughly the 1910's, there had been homes built in a neo-Spanish style that harkens back to the days of Spanish missions in California. But most of those homes tended to be for the rich. Within San Francisco in the 1920's, for normal mass produced homes, the more typical style was Marina style with barrel front. Around 1929 to 1930, it finally became stylish for even these mass produced homes to show neo-Spanish or vaguely Mediterranean characteristics.

So this home is a good example of the first batch of mass-produced homes in San Francisco to show with this style, built in 1930 in the Outer Richmond:


Notice the overall exterior appearance is still a barrel front Marina style, harkening back to the 1920s, but there's some extra red tiling at the top along with the two little decorative triangular parapets on both sides.

The living room is very nice, with a barrel ceiling. The built-in cabinets next to the fireplace look very nice but not sure if they are really original.


My favorite part is the fireplace, which comes with a decorative tile showing what could be a California Spanish mission:


The dining room has a nice rounded ceiling:


Finally, looks like they've remodeled the downstairs with a bonus room. The steps look a bit narrow, and you can tell on the walls they've painted/plastered over the foundation) it bulges out from the walls, up to the small windows. And you can clearly see the pillars that support the original home in the middle. But still very nicely done for a bonus room.