Final Renderings

Now that the Planing Department has granted us approval of our overall design, we can move forward with finalizing the details relating to cost and construction planning.

Below are the final renderings of the house.  The first image is a view of the house from Buena Vista Park on Park Hill Ave. towards Corona Heights.  The second image is a view of the house looking up from Roosevelt Way.  The third image is a view of the house from the intersection of Roosevelt Way and 15th Street at dusk.

Thanks to Mark Dessert of Powder Haus Studios for the fantastic renderings that bring the design from gb architecture + design to life.

Approved!

We have now received notice from the San Francisco Planning Department that the overall site plan and our variance have been approved!  The variance has been now recoded with our deed and we are moving forward with finalizing the building permits.

This is a substantial milestone in the process and now that it is complete the next steps in the process will move swiftly along.

A Street Runs Through It

While preparing our submission for Planning Department review, we had to have a historical evaluation of the property prepared by a third party.  While most of the history of the property was rather boring and non-eventful, a small bit of history that discussed the development of the neighborhood over the past century caught our eye.  This history also shed some light on how such an odd shaped lot came into existence.

As noted in a previous blog post, prior to 1900, the neighborhood was dominated by the Gray Brothers Quarry, which produced most of the bricks that lined the San Francisco cable car lines throughout the city.  During the time of the quarry, streets had been cut out of the rock for transport vehicle access and from the general quarrying done to the area. This made the location prime real estate for people who began to build their homes on the streets cut into the hill. 

The first Sanborn map illustrating the immediate area surrounding the property was published in 1899. At this time the block did not include the current section of Roosevelt Way, which was not a thoroughfare until after 1920.  The reproduced Sanborn map below shows the current boundaries of property (identified with the arrow) as it fit in the existing block in 1899. The area was sparsely developed with single-family homes and hospital facing Buena Vista Park.  

1899 Sanborn Map showing approximate location of the property

The 1913 Sanborn map shows the gradual development of the surrounding blocks with several more single family and multiple family residences. Prior to construction of the current house that sits on the property, the approximate location of the parcel contained two modest one-story single-family homes (see the arrow pointing to the triangle outline of our property). In addition, several streets in the neighborhood had been renamed; South Broderick was changed to Buena Vista Terrace and Tilden was changed to 15th Street.

1913 Sanborn Map

In 1926, the present St. Joseph’s Hospital building, replacing the 1889 hospital building, was constructed to a Bakewell and Brown design. Around the same time, Roosevelt Way was cut through joining 14th through 17th streets. This and other street reconfigurations made Buena Vista Park, which was designated in 1867, more accessible from Eureka Valley and the south. The southern end of the block was cut through in order for Roosevelt Way to continue east where it terminated at Alpine Terrace. 

The reproduced 1950 Sanborn map shows the transformation of the neighborhood after Roosevelt Way cut through the southern end of the block containing our property. At this point, the block was completely developed with single and multiple-family residences. The map also shows the property with a one-story-over-basement single-family home as it was originally constructed.

1950 Sanborn Map

Siding With History

With the design of the house well underway, the next step was to pick the siding for the house.  We were fortunate enough to work with a wood broker and secure 100+ year old-growth reclaimed redwood that was used under the galvanized steel sheathing on Hanger One at Moffett Field that will be used for siding for the house.  Hanger One is currently undergoing renovation and will be reclad.

Just a bit of history, Hanger One at Moffett Field was completed in 1931 and is built on a network of steel girders sheathed in galvanized steel. The building’s footprint covers 8 acres without any internal columns, making it one of the world's largest freestanding structures. The structure was designed by Prague-born airship and structural engineer Dr. Karl Arnstein, who was also the chief designer of the U.S. Navy airships the USS Akron and the USS Macon.  Hanger One was originally built to house the USS Macon, shown in the picture below.

The USS Macon was built by the U.S. Navy for air reconnaissance. It also served as a “flying aircraft carrier” with the capacity to carry five F9C Sparrowhawk biplanes. The planes were stored in bays inside the hull.  The zeppelin was kept aloft by 12 helium-filled gas “balloons” or cells within the main hull. The airship was powered by eight German-made Maybach 12-cylninder 560 hp gasoline powered engines with propellers that could be rotated downwards or backwards to provide thrust vectoring.

The pictures below show the old-growth redwood that was reclaimed form Hanger One that we will be using as siding for the house.

Our wood as it is being loaded on the trucks for delivery to our storage facility.

Rendering Get Refined

We have now begun to incorporate the landscaping into the design of the house, and have revised the renderings to include more of the site.  As you can see from the below images, the triangular lot of land at the intersection of Park Hill and Roosevelt will be terraced using a series of retaining walls, likely concrete, and the leveled land will be planted with a series of native trees and plants with decomposed granite covering the soil.  The entrance to the studio will also be accessed through this area.

PD-Day

Well, we are not invading Normandy, but today is our first visit to the SF Planning Department. Let's hope we are as equally successful.

Empire Star Destroyer?

No, in fact that is NOT an Empire Star Destroyer from Star Wars - it is our first physical model of the house!  The triangular shape of the lot and the sloping terrain results in the dramatic base of the model.