May 8, 2008

  • Thursday, May 8

    It was very foggy this morning but not too cold and not too windy.  I'll take it.  I headed off Corbett to Portola to Fowler to Teresita to Isola to Rockdale to Omar to Sequoia to Bella Vista to Burlwood to Los Palmos to Hazelwood to Yerba Buena to Brentwood to Maywood to El Verano to Darien to san Fernando to Ocean to Clearfield into 34th to Yorba to 35th to Vicente and down to the coast.  I came up the Great Highway and went into Golden Gate Park at MLK.  I followed it to Stow Lake to JFK into the Panhandle to Baker to Fulton.  This is the Westerfeld House at Fulton and Scott.  It was built in 1889 for William Westerfeld in the "Stick Italian Villa" style with impressive verticality.  I love it.  In the 60's it was the home of the Calliope commune which included among its members Bobby Beausoleil who later joined the Manson family.  Mr. Poe reports that it's been a fabulous mansion as long he can remember so it must have been renovated in the seventies or early eighties:

      

    Here's me across the street from it:

    I continued on Fulton to Steiner to Golden Gate.  This block of Golden Gate is known as the "Seattle Block".  I haven't found out why it was called that but I'm still looking.  The house on the corner is known as the "Chateau Tivoli" and was built in 1892 by William H. Armitage for Oregon shipping magnate Daniel B. Jackson.  It gets it's name from Ernestine Kreling who owned the first opera house on the west coast, the Tivoli Opera House, and who lived here from 1898 to 1917.  Armitage designed the three adjacent apartment buildings and they were all built at the same time.  The Chateau Tivoli went on to be the home for a variety of Jewish organizations after 1917 as the neighborhood became largely Jewish following an influx of Russian Jews following the Russian Revolution.  It's now a bed and breakfast.  The buildings are all incredible, finely detailed, and well maintained.  I love them:

      

    I continued on Golden Gate to Market to Sansome and into work.