I visited San Francisco for less than three days, a quick stopover on my method house to the Philippines after spending 5 months in New Orleans. I performed vacationer to the max; I biked throughout the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and took the ferry going again, ate at Fisherman’s Wharf, hopped on a cable automotive, tried to go on a day journey to Yosemite Park (the tour I booked by no means picked me up), and met up an outdated buddy.
In fact, I additionally walked round and checked out the town’s Painted Girls. Since I by no means received to write down about my go to, right here’s a visitor publish from fellow blogger Karen Warren.
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One of many pleasures of San Francisco is its historic structure. In fact, the town is filled with the spectacular fashionable buildings that you’d anticipate in any American metropolis.
Nevertheless, there are additionally rows of effectively preserved Victorian homes. They appear to be in every single place, on the lengthy avenues and nestling between the distinctive buildings of Japantown. However among the finest locations to see historic homes is round Alamo Sq., house of the well-known Painted Girls.
Victorian Homes on Alamo Sq.
The gold rush in California led to an enormous increase in home constructing within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Virtually 50,000 properties had been constructed throughout this era. Many of those had been destroyed within the 1906 earthquake, and others had been subsequently pulled down, however a number of nonetheless stay.
Among the finest locations to discover Victorian home structure is Alamo Sq., a historic district filled with largely unspoiled mansions. The homes had been designed by many various architects, giving rise to quite a lot of types. Most of those buildings are multi-storeyed with basements, reflecting the life-style of rich households on the flip of the twentieth century.
The Sq. is on the prime of Alamo Hill, named for the only cottonwood, or alamo, tree that after stood there. This space was as soon as a watering gap for path horses, however in 1856 a public park was created on the summit of the hill. There’s nonetheless a park right here, extremely popular with canine walkers and with vacationers who can benefit from the spectacular views throughout the town (on a transparent day you possibly can even see the highest of the Golden Gate Bridge).
San Francisco’s Painted Girls
A lot of San Francisco’s Victorian and Edwardian homes had been painted in vibrant colours (one critic described them as “loud” and “uncouth”). Nevertheless they steadily wanted repainting and over time most of them had been lined with battleship gray (utilizing Navy-surplus paint left over from the First World Struggle).
It was not till 1963 that the artist Butch Kardum painted his personal home in vibrant shades of blue and inexperienced. Different artists began to repeat him and the “colorist motion” was born.
Probably the most well-known of those coloured homes are the so-called Painted Girls on Steiner Avenue, alongside one aspect of Alamo Sq.. It is a group of homes constructed within the Eighteen Nineties, now every painted in a special colour. Generally often known as “Postcard Row”, the Painted Girls have come to be seen as a logo of San Francisco.
Look intently at these homes and you will note that they don’t seem to be in actual fact an identical. They boast a wealth of unique architectural particulars, subtly totally different in every home. The Painted Girls have typically featured in movies, adverts and TV applications, together with the collection Full Home. Like the entire historic properties of Alamo Sq., these homes recall a long-forgotten age.
Featured picture by Aleah Taboclaon.
