West Portal
Entry Author: Richard
Brandi
The West Portal shopping and residential district takes its
name from the Twin Peaks Tunnel, which ushered in streetcar
service to the southeast corner of San Francisco in 1918.
MUNI streetcar service opened San Francisco's last great wilderness
to residential development. Formerly sand dunes and vegetable
farms, today West Portal is the area bounded by Portola, Kensington,
Taraval, and 15th Avenue. High quality homes on detached lots
lead to rapid growth in the 1920s and set the stage for West
Portal to become the commercial and transportation hub for
the West of Twin Peaks area.
In Spanish times, West Portal was part of the land holdings
of Mission de Dolores. After the break up of the Missions,
Jose de Jesus Noe was granted a 4,443 acre ranch in 1846,
called Rancho San Miguel. The ranch ran from present day UCSF
in Parnassus Heights to San Jose Avenue, south to Daly City
and north to Juniper Serra Boulevard and Forest Hill, including
the area of present day West Portal. Parts of the ranch east
of Twin Peals were subdivided in the late 1800s and became
Noe Valley, Eureka Valley, Fairmont Heights, Glen Park and
Sunnyside.
But West Portal remained a ranch until well after the 20th
Century. Adolph Sutro bought the remnant of the original rancho
in 1880 -- a 1,200-acre parcel that ran from present day UCSF,
south along Stanyan Street, up over Twin Peaks due south roughly
along present-day Ridgewood Avenue, continuing south to the
Ocean View district, then north along Junipero Serra Boulevard
to the Laguna Honda reservoir.
While most of the ranch was hilly, the area that later became
West Portal was relatively flat, and Sutro rented it to Italian
vegetable farmers. For the next 35 years, the rest of Rancho
San Miguel remained a nature preserve. Sutro's passion for
tree planting eventually covered the slopes of Mt. Sutro and
Mt. Davidson as far south as Ocean Avenue with eucalyptus.
When the rancho was put up for sale in 1909 after a contentious
battle over Sutro's will, the City was desperate to recover
from the 1906 earthquake and fire. City boosters badly wanted
to compete with new subdivisions being built on the Peninsula
and in the East Bay. The Burnham plan of 1905 and the City
Beautiful Movement called for respecting the contours of the
land and incorporating landscaping into residential developments.
It was no longer acceptable to pack houses tightly together
on rectangular street grids that ignored the terrain.
The first neighborhoods to be developed,
St Francis Wood and Forest Hill in 1912, were faithful to
these new ideas and were carefully designed and built as "residential
parks." Both developments prohibited commercial activities
and were made up exclusively of large homes from the Craftsman
movement, the Chicago school, the prairie style of Frank Lloyd
right, the Beaux-Arts, and other styles. In contrast, West
Portal became a commercial and transportation hub with homes
in a wide variety of architectural styles.
West side of Castro St. at Market showing
the entrance to Twin Peaks Tunnel. Dec. 1922
The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley
The area was originally called "West Portal Park"
in a vain attempt to capitalize on the "residential park"
mystique. The name didn't stick partly because of its proximity
to the tunnel entrance. Three streetcars lines (Parkside "L"
line, Ingleside "K" Line, and Oceanview "M"
Line) ran through the area along a new street, West Portal
Avenue, which paralleled Portola Way. Stores and other commercial
activities were attracted to this new transit thoroughfare.
Additionally, Fernando Nelson, who bought the land and developed
much of West Portal, was not an architect but a self-made
developer. A builder in San Francisco since 1876, he and his
sons built homes adjacent to newly constructed streetcar lines
in the Richmond and Sunset districts.
West Portal reflects Fernando Nelson and Sons interpretations
of contemporary designs. Their first homes, along Portola
Drive, mimic the large Arts and Crafts or Spanish style homes
across the street in St. Francis Wood. For example, 1590 Portola
Drive was completed in 1917 at a cost of $14,000, comparable
in cost and size to those selling in St Francis. (It recently
listed for $1.3 million). But his later houses follow no pattern.
The 1920s was a period of tremendous variety in architectural
styles, with revivals of Colonial, Tudor, Spanish, and Italianate
styles. Nelson followed the trends including some "Marina"
style homes as well.
 The
notable architectural exception in West Portal is the Empire
Theatre designed by Garren and Morrow in 1925. This was an
imposing Mediterranean style movie house until much of the
original detailing was stripped in later years. (Irving Morrow
was the consulting architect for the Golden Gate Bridge and
he and his wife are credited for the bridge's Moderne detailing).
Another exception is designed the apartment house at 330 West
Portal Avenue designed by Hermann Baumann in 1931. Baumannn
was a prolific architect who built more than 400 apartment
buildings in the 1920s and 1930s throughout the Bay Area.
He is especially known for the fine detailing in the building's
lobbies.
The photo courtesy of Richard Brandi
Although no architecturally significant structures have been
designated on West Portal Avenue, the movie theater has been
a fixture since it opened as the "Portal Theatre"
on December 26, 1925. Renamed and re-opened on October 1,
1936 as the "Empire", it had its single screen split
into three in 1974.
By the 1930s West Portal looked largely as it does today,
a line of shops and a few apartment buildings along West Portal
Avenue surrounded by single family homes on the side streets.
The Great Depression and World War II did little to change
the character of the neighborhood. But the post-war population
boom lead traffic engineers to plan a series of freeways that
would criss-cross San Francisco, including West Portal.
The "Western Freeway" was run north from present
day I-280 along Junipero Serra Boulevard north of Sloat where
it would turn northeast and tunnel under Forest Hill and join
the Crosstown Freeway running from Glen Park Canyon. Many
homes stood in the way. Neighborhood clubs, including the
West Portal Home Owners Association, challenged the Division
of Highways at a meeting on December 2, 1955 in Lincoln High
School. This intensified public concern and, along with opposition
to other freeways, lead to the famous freeway revolt by the
Board of Supervisors in 1959. Although studies continued for
a more few years, the freeway was dead.
But the need for better transportation led to the creation
of BART in 1962, which posed a new challenge to West Portal.
BART planners wanted to dig up West Portal Avenue so that
MUNI streetcars could go underground all the way to Sloat
Boulevard. West Portal merchants and neighbors, mindful of
the chaos on Market Street during BART construction, defeated
that idea.
But they were not successful in keeping the original West
Portal tunnel entrance, an imposing Beaux Art landmark that
was demolished in 1976 to build the current West Portal MUNI
Metro station. The Ford administration found the facade eligible
as a National Historic Place but local West Portal merchants
thought it was an eyesore. The new station wound up costing
$8.5 million, more than twice the entire amount of the 2 1/4
mile tunnel in 1918.
Until recently, most residents were the adult offspring of
the people who first settled West Portal, giving the area
one of the highest percentage of people over age 60 in the
City. The author remembers West Portal in the late 1980s with
only a few restaurants and no coffee houses, perhaps the last
"authentic" neighborhood in San Francisco. Today,
while West Portal remains a land of single-family homes, the
first generation has given way to an influx of new families
with above average incomes and higher education.
They come seeking the same amenities: good shopping, low
density, convenient MUNI service to downtown and the new housing
stock (that is, relatively "new" for San Francisco).
More than two dozen eating places offer a variety of cuisines
and there are even a few national chains, including the ubiquitous
Starbucks. While Fernando Nelson didn't quite succeed in building
a residential park, he did create a charming village that
endures.
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Richard Brandi wrote about the history of the West Portal
area in the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society's
Argonaut, Summer 2003.
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The Twin Peaks tunnel opened on February 3, 1918