July 16, 2009
by Kaleene Kenning
The small and dense Haight Ashbury neighborhood is located two miles
west of downtown San Francisco, at the eastern entrance to Golden
Gate Park. "The Haight" spans no more than eight blocks bordered by
Divisadero Street, Buena Vista Avenue, Stanyan Street, and Fulton Street.
The Haight was primarily sand dunes claimed by squatters until 1865,
when Frank McCoppin spearheaded the development of what is now Golden
Gate Park. The development of the park, the creation of a cable-car
line along Haight Street, and the opening of an amusement park along
the oceanfront, all drew people out to what was then the western edge
of town. By the 1890s the Haight was a thriving middle-class
neighborhood with the Panhandle section of the park forming a
tree-lined promenade through the center of it.
Of the more than 1,500 individuals and companies building, moving and
remodeling houses in San Francisco in the 1880's and '90's, only
about a quarter of them were high art architectural practitioners
(and even they were primarily self-trained architects) who designed
unique homes for specific clients. Low art architectural
practitioners (including builders, contractors and developers) who
purchased multiple lots and constructed clusters of two or many
homes, identical in plan, to take advantage of mass-production and
offer low prices were actually the most important force in shaping
San Francisco's built environment during the 1880's and '90's, the
decades of intense building. Initially all houses in a cluster were
built to look alike, but soon this became undesirable and builders
began to offer minor choices in exterior detail and paint color to
the prospective buyer. Eventually all houses varied at least
slightly. Owners-builders as several hundred people described
themselves were another important influence on Victorian era
construction; the majority built only the houses in which they lived,
but a few became real estate developers.
The contracting firm of Cranston and Keenan built several clusters of
houses in the neighborhood, including a rare grouping of tower houses
at 1214-56 Masonic Street. In an extant house on Buena Vista East, an
owner recently found a business card when the interior stairway newel
post taken apart to be stripped of paint. "Built and finished by R.
D. Cranston for L. G. Lander, July 21, 1899" was written on the card.
Since most records were lost when city hall burned in the 1906
earthquake and fire, we do not know who designed and built many of
the city's Victorian era structures, or if indeed anybody did design
them as we define that term today. The fact that some of the
buildings did, indeed, have architects is today almost incidental; it
is not in their origins that value exists but in the fact that they
survived the 1906 earthquake and fire and, in many cases, misguided
improvements, years of neglect, and looming demolition for newer construction.
The Haight survived the 1906 earthquake and fire relatively
unscathed. During the Depression of the 1930s, many of the
respectable Victorian era homes were turned into low-rent rooming
houses. During the 1950s, students from San Francisco State College
(which, at the time, was nearby) began to move into the neighborhood,
creating a local youth culture. The Haight emerged in the 1960s as
the focus of the countercultural scene, free love and anti-war
movements, making it perhaps the world's most known neighborhood.
The first hippies were an offshoot of the Beats, many of whom had
moved out of their increasingly expensive North Beach dwellings to
the affordable, large, rundown Victorian era houses of the Haight.
Where Beat philosophy had emphasized self-indulgence, the hippies
embraced such concepts as "universal truth" and "cosmic awareness."
The post-Beat bohemian culture that developed was more along the
lines of Eastern religion and philosophy. The hip became "heads," the
others "straights." The heads challenged authority and dropped out of
the social and political establishment. Pop Art found mass appeal,
light shows became legion, dress became flamboyant, and money became
a dirty word.
Experimentation with drugs, especially psychedelics, was seen as an
integral, and positive, part of the movement. LSD, which was legal,
was pumped out in private laboratories. It was touted as an
avant-garde art form, consciousness-raising in its effects. But its
effects were just being discovered, despite an esoteric following in
psychoanalytical circles for decades before.
In January 1966, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters hosted a "Trips
Festival" in the Longshoremen's Hall at Fisherman's Wharf, attended
by thousands. Timothy Leary prescribed "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead (who lived in 710 Ashbury St site
of a famous drugs bust in 1967), Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother
and the Holding Company became popular entertainers. Bill Graham took
the psychedelic music scene nationwide.
The corner of Haight and Ashbury was perhaps the most famous
intersection in the world, a place where young people came from all
over the world in search of free food, free drugs...and free love and
peace. By the time of the massive "Be-In" in Golden Gate Park in 1966
and the "Summer of Love" the following year, the intersection had
attracted more than 75,000 transitory people.
But along with all the middle-class kids who simply wanted to get
stoned came the unsavory characters and organized crime. Charles
Manson recruited much of his "family" in the Haight. Hunter S.
Thompson researched and wrote his book Hell's Angels from his
apartment at 318 Parnassus Street. He was notorious for inviting
Angels to parties that were noisy, long and sometimes even dangerous
due to his penchant for firearms.
While real Summer-of-Love generation hippies and their psychedelic
vans may be hard to find today, the district still has one of the
highest concentrations of eccentrics of any neighborhood in the
country. Young people, often dreadlocked, skin-headed, pierced and
tattooed, and sometimes skateboard-crazy continue to come to the
Haight to break boundaries.
The neighborhood is a great place to shop for "alternative" clothing,
books and music if you are willing to contend with persistent
panhandlers and plenty of tourists purchasing their flower-power,
peace-and-love souvenirs, tie dye t-shirts or a bong. There are
dozens of laid-back cafes, restaurants, nightclubs and pubs along
main commercial artery, Haight Street, from Masonic to Stanyan
streets. The Lower Haight has experienced a renaissance and is a
haven for young artsy types with its chic bars, restaurants, and boutiques.
Nighttime can be a bit edgy, especially near the entrance to Golden
Gate Park, where the street's long association with drugs has kept
the number of people seeking, selling, and using them here
disturbingly high. An abundance of homeless campers line the edge of the park.
Since most of the neighborhood was built up during the late Victorian
era, gables, plasterworks and towers with finials dominate the
architectural landscape. In 1976 about 1,160 Victorian era structures
remained in the Haight-Ashbury, roughly three-quarters of them in the
Queen Anne style. Today many of these homes are being restored from
the neglect and misguided alterations of the "flower children." And,
with the eccentric neighborhood now supplemented by a blend of
culturally diverse singles and families, many of the homes have gone up market.
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