Victorian House Tour Around Alta Plaza Park, San Francisco

It's fun to learn about the five main styles of Victorians and the gingerbread patterns used by the builders as artful decorations.

Note along our route, near the end, we'll take a look at Julia Morgan's home, after she moved from the family home in Oakland in 1920, to near Washington & Divisadero,
Also provided are sketches of the five common Victorian styles in SF. Lastly we can go over a color rendition of the interior of a representative SF Victorian to get a feel for what the interiors were like originally.

Here's a simple link that will allow you to support the Meetup and add a thank you.) Instead of this link, during the tour, I'll just pass the hat.
The information below is provided if you are interested in more details about SF Victorian architecture.

Looking at a San Francisco Victorian, what to look for:(There are five Styles)

1. Flat front Italianate- (earliest Victorians). (French 2nd Empire appear)
2. Italianate with slanted bay windows.
3. San Francisco Stick Style (also called East Lake). Simpler square bay windows now used. Overall much more elaborate decoration, ornament and gingerbread used.
4. Queen Anne Tower House&Witches Cap, with angled or rounded bay windows & front gable
5. Queen Anne Row House, 1, 1-1/2 or two stories. Large front gable. Possible moongate entry. Most common in SF.

Features & "Gingerbread"
Type of Entry & Doorway(maybe a rounded or partial Moongate entry)-Decorative Ironwork-
Floral Decor-
Garlands
Fish scale&Diamond shingles-
Towers & Witch's Cap-
Stained Glass or Beveled Glass-
Carvings of grotesque faces-
Sunbursts- often painted gold color, half or full.
Gables (Queen Anne's) in a variety of material- (mainly redwood)
Newel Posts and Finials on Tower tops and roof peaks-

Fernando Nelson built thousands of homes in SF, from 1876 to 1953. We'll see clusters (2 to 17) of Victorian homes systematically built for the average working person by a development company, "The Real Estate Assoc." THEA, from 1870 to 1880. Not quite magnificent but many still standing.

Development of woodworking mills South of Market provided the ornaments with which to add the "gingerbread" to the Victorian houses There was an Old English custom using fancy cutouts of gingerbread to decorate wedding cakes. The term gingerbread was subsequently used for the decorating of Victorian houses. The secret ingredient was redwood. It could be carved, sawn, or turned, or soaked and press molded into almost any design

• Periods 1860 - 1870s Italianate: Buildings were vertical in emphasis with rounded classical detail. Earliest had flat windows & flat roofs with false roof fronts.
• 1880s Stick Style (also called East Lake): The early buildings in this genre relied heavily on plane vertical board decorations. Squared off bay windows appear.
• Late 1880s and 1890s Queen Anne : Gingerbread would be applied to both the Stick and Queen Ann styles in San Francisco. Sloping roofs appear. Gables and towers.In Queen Ann surfaces are covered in a variety of patterns with fish scale and diamond shingles, lap siding and masonry, sometimes all in the same building.Rooflines in the Queen Anne were irregular, combining the witches hat roof on a rounded or octagonal tower. Frieze bands of foliated patterns wrapped around towers and tall chimneys.

If you would like a scholarly and detailed explanation with photos, click. (https://sfplanning.org/sites/default/files/documents/preserv/bulletins/HistPres_Bulletin_18.PDF)

For the detailed history of nine houses nearby houses:(https://archive.org/details/pacificheightsso00unse/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater) (These are nearby not on our route today.)