Old 1920s Ingleside House with Shaped Parapet

I saw a nice old house today in the Ingleside with one of my favorite residential architectural features in San Francisco, the shaped parapet. The house is at: http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/423-Faxon-Ave-94112/home/1584473 .

The shaped parapet is the decorative part of the front façade above the roof shingles. I just like it because I think it gives the house a special look of classical dignity, and also because this feature was particularly popular from about 1910 to about the mid 1920's (this house was built in 1926, probably one of the last years houses in San Francisco would be built with this feature). Shaped parapets became less popular after that, and it may possibly be a safety hazard (see http://www.sf-planning.org/modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=1105, search for "parapet").  

The house has what's called an English entrance. This means the front entrance to the house is downstairs (there are indoor stairs that then lead to the main floor upstairs) as opposed to other Sunset style homes where either there are completely outdoor stairs up front, or there is a covered but outdoor tunnel entrance that leads to stairs to the front entrance.

The floor plan is a very common floor plan popular in the 1920's; the flat I lived in for many years in the Inner Sunset had more or less the same plan (and looked similar too). It's got a nice classic 1920's living room with original windows with patterned muntins (decorative wooden strips; I had to ask my wife the proper term for this) in the upper sash, original fireplace, rounded ceiling with moldings, and built-in cabinets (though they have been painted over).

The dining room also has those same rounded ceilings.

There is one bedroom facing the front.

The kitchen is likely not original, but still is very old - judging from the wavy decorations and the wall tiling from the 1930's to the 1950's.

The tiny bathroom also has these wall tiles, but the big tiles are blue instead of white (blue seemed a more popular color in the 1950's, but I still can't date it with any certainty). 

Here's a close-up of the bathroom tiles.

There's a cute old telephone niche in the hallway.

Here's a look at the other bedroom (in the back), which leads to the sun room which is only accessible from this bedroom (which I find kind of weird and a bit of a waste of space since it would then be hard to use it as a third bedroom).

The sunroom does have nice views.

1900's Victorian / Edwardian Outer Mission Home

I saw an interesting Victorian / Edwardian transitional house in the Outer Mission last weekend:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/24-Niagara-Ave-94112/home/823171

It's actually already pending after less than two weeks, yet another example of the hot housing market in San Francisco right now - its official square footage sits at 836 square feet, it's got bars on the windows and it's located about a block from the corner of Geneva and Mission which is somewhat of a crime hotspot (on the plus side, it's literally across the street from El Pollo Supremo, where the grilled chicken seems to have a cult following in the City - I have tried the grilled chicken, pretty good, really). Though, that's not really why I find this house interesting.



This is a good example of a house that was built right after the period when highly ornamented Victorian houses were most popular (this was built in 1907 according to records though according to the agent it could have been built before since a lot of records were destroyed after the earthquake). This house has the shape of a Victorian house but has much plainer ornamentation, more in line with Edwardian houses built in the late 1900 and 1910's. I also think the exterior color is pretty hot. Even though I think of Sunset style homes as being houses built in the 1920's to 1930's primarily, this particular house does more or less has the same form as Sunset style homes - narrow row house on a narrow lot, one story living space over basement style garage.

It has a cute fireplace in the living room:


It's got nice detailing on the hardwood floors:


Nice built-in cabinet and wood paneled walls in the dining room:


Nice boxed beam ceiling in the dining room:


I was joking with the agent that this is a great three-bedroom 800 square foot house. This is because while the official statistics show 836 square feet and 1 bedroom, there are two fully finished un-warranted knotty pine bedrooms in the attic that are very cool and which I'm sure would be well loved by children:


Finally, one small funny thing I saw is the dining room has a nice window facing out, except looks like decades after this house was built, another house was built right next to it, blocking the view of that side window and making it somewhat useless: