Take Me To The Sanatorium...

One of the more interesting tid bits about or neighborhood is that the building across the street from our house played a role Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.  The movie was filmed in San Francisco and many local sites were used as backdrops to Hitchcock's story.


In the movie, after visiting Madeline's grave, Jimmy Stewart's character, Scottie, suffers a nightmare causing him to have a nervous breakdown requiring treatment at a sanatorium. He is taken to the St. Joseph's Hospital on Buena Vista East facing Buena Vista Park.  The below images show a screen shot from Vertigo (top) and the same view from just a few years ago (bottom).

The hospital is now the Park Hill Condominium and the back end of the building on Park Hill faces our house.

Blue Balls with History

While we are working diligently on the house and planing - we could not possibly overlook the landscaping and art - could we?

We found these really neat blue steel buoys at 14 Feet in Healdsburg and thought they would make a great addition to the front yard, which will be terraced with a series of concrete retaining walls.  

As it turns out these buoys have some really interesting history - they were used during World War II to net the San Francisco Bay against Japanese Submarines.  

San Francisco was a major port and naval base that was vital to the war in the Pacific.  It was well protected by mines, guns, and numerous coastal batteries mounting 40mm anti-aircraft guns all the way up to 16 inch naval guns at Fort Cronkite and Fort Funston. In addition to these defenses, on September 15, 1941, the War Department authorized a submarine net to be positioned across the Golden Gate to prevent access to the bay by Japanese submarines.  These buoys, along with about another 100 buoys, held the net in place during the War.  The net was made and serviced at the Tiburon Naval Net Depot and at Alcatraz prison.  Navy ships would open and close the net for friendly vessels.  The below picture shows the buoys with the net just before the net was installed in the bay.

After the war the nets were recovered and returned to Tiburon for storage in case of future need. Eventually, they were salvaged, the nets went to scrap dealers, the massive concrete anchors became bulkheads for shoreline protection at the depot and what is now Paradise Park, and many of the huge buoys became beehives around California. The gantries were removed, leaving only the tracks on which they ran and a concrete trestle down the center of the base.

As can be seen by the below map, the submarine net spanned from Fort Mason on the San Francisco side to Sausalito on the Marin side.

For additional information on the harbor defenses during World War II see http://www.nps.gov/goga/historyculture/world-war-ii-harbor-defenses.htm 

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.