Eureka Valley Historic Context Statement
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Eureka Valley Historic Context Statement Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association By Elaine B. Stiles Adopted by the Historic Preservation Commission on December 20, 2017 CONTENTS I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Project Description ............................................................................................................................. 1 Methods ............................................................................................................................................. 3 Previous Surveys, Evaluations, and Designated Resources ................................................................ 4 II. Historical Development and Themes ..................................................................................... 6 Native Californian Settlement and Presence ..................................................................................... 6 Spanish and Mexican Settlement and Land Development (1776‐1848) ............................................ 7 Early American Period Land Division and Settlement (1848‐1864) ................................................. 10 Homestead Era Land Division and Settlement (1864‐1886) ............................................................ 16 Streetcar Suburb (1886‐1906) .......................................................................................................... 38 Becoming a District of the City (1906‐1941) .................................................................................... 80 Neighborhood in Transition (1941‐1974) ....................................................................................... 111 III. Property Types and Architectural Styles ............................................................................ 135 Residential Property Types ............................................................................................................. 135 Commercial Property Types ........................................................................................................... 158 Architectural Styles ......................................................................................................................... 166 IV. Evaluation Frameworks ..................................................................................................... 202 Criteria for Evaluating Historic Properties ...................................................................................... 202 Themes, Property Types, and Eligibility Requirements .................................................................. 204 V. Recommendations ............................................................................................................ 241 Potential San Francisco Landmarks ................................................................................................ 241 Potential Historic Districts .............................................................................................................. 241 Survey and Planning ....................................................................................................................... 242 VI. Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 244 i DRAFT ‐ Eureka Valley Historic Context Statement May 2017 I. INTRODUCTION The place San Franciscans know as Eureka Valley has had many names since its first settlement by Europeans in the mid nineteenth century: Rancho San Miguel, Horner’s Addition, Most Holy Redeemer Parish, “the Sunny Heart of San Francisco,” and most recently, The Castro.1 Two hundred and forty years ago, the valley was a hinterland to the Mission Dolores settlement and then part of a large Mexican rancho. Over the course of less than fifty years in the late nineteenth century, Eureka Valley went from a rural fringe area of agricultural and industrial production to one of the city’s burgeoning streetcar suburbs. After surviving the 1906 earthquake and fire largely intact, the valley became a full‐fledged urban district, complete with its own local commercial district, civic and religious institutions, and city services. Widespread demographic shifts in the city and greater urban decentralization after World War II affected long‐standing change in Eureka Valley, underwriting its transition in the 1960s and 1970s into one of the country’s most well‐known predominantly gay neighborhoods. As a neighborhood, Eureka Valley boasts historic properties ranging from some of San Francisco’s earliest surviving dwellings to sites significant for their association with LGBTQ history of the last twenty‐ five years. Eureka Valley is also a neighborhood that continues to change, as evidenced by schemes of new infill residential development, new commercial development, and changing institutions and demographics. PROJECT DESCRIPTION In recognition of the wealth of historic resources in Eureka Valley, the Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association (EVNA), in partnership with San Francisco Historic Preservation Fund Committee and the San Francisco Planning Department, developed the Eureka Valley Historic Context Statement (HCS) to provide a framework for consistent, informed evaluations of historic resources in the Eureka Valley/Castro neighborhood. The context statement documents the development history of the neighborhood and calls out influential themes, geographic patterns, and time periods in the district’s history. The context statement also identifies key associated historic property types, forms, and architectural styles and their character‐defining features, and a detailed discussion of potential areas of significance, criteria considerations, and integrity thresholds. The Eureka Valley HCS study area encompasses all or a portion of twenty‐nine city blocks roughly bounded by 16th, Market, and 17th streets on the north, Sanchez and Church streets on the east, 20th and 21st streets on the south, and Douglass Street on the west. (Figure 1) The irregular bounds of the study area are based on several factors: local understanding of neighborhood boundaries, the bounds of the 1864 Eureka Homestead Association tract that was the namesake of the neighborhood, the boundaries of previously completed historic context statements in adjacent neighborhoods, and visual and topographical considerations. On the east, the study area boundaries extend to the edges of study areas for the Mission Dolores Neighborhood Survey and Market & Octavia Area Plan Historic Resource Survey (HRS). On the south, the boundaries align with the top of the ridge that separates Eureka and Noe Valleys. On the west, the study area extends to the 1 Simons, Bill, “Districts: Eureka Valley Section Is Pleasant and Friendly,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 21, 1940. 1 DRAFT ‐ Eureka Valley Historic Context Statement May 2017 Figure 1. Study Area 2 DRAFT ‐ Eureka Valley Historic Context Statement May 2017 edges of the Corbett Heights Historic Context Statement coverage area. And on the north, the study area extends to the bounds of the Market & Octavia Area Plan HRS study area and the irregular property line behind lots on the north side of 17th Street. The study period for the Eureka Valley HCS dates from just before permanent European settlement in the region to 1976. The end date of 1976 extends the study period ten years beyond the typical fifty‐year cut‐off date for historic designation consideration, currently 1966. The extension of the study period gives the context statement a ten‐year future window of potential use. METHODS The Eureka Valley HCS is the product of reconnaissance‐level field observation and documentation, archival research, previous historic preservation planning efforts, and public input. Reconnaissance‐level fieldwork and research for the HCS began in July 2015, with the fieldwork completed the same month.2 Research repositories consulted for the project include the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library; the libraries at the University of California, Berkeley; the Online Archive of California; the San Francisco Planning Department; the David Rumsey Map Collection; and Internet Archive. Key primary research materials included Sanborn Company fire insurance maps, historical atlas and survey maps, US Census records,3 city directories, historic photographs, and the online archives of the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Call. The HCS is organized into a set of themes, arranged chronologically based on periods of development in the study area. Each theme ends with a discussion of historic property types associated with that theme. Themes that continue through multiple development periods, such as agriculture and industrial production, are treated in whole under the development period when the theme began. The study area contains a wealth of developer‐driven housing from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as a variety of commercial buildings from the same periods. Because certain versatile residential and commercial forms repeat in a variety of styles, form is given equal consideration to style in developing historic property types. To address the interaction of form and style, the HCS has separate, dedicated sections detailing residential property types, commercial property types, and architectural styles following the historical development and themes section. Historic themes related to the presence and influence