“IT’S GETTING IMPOSSIBLE.”
THE TWILIGHT YEARS OF
SAN FRANCISCO’S RELOCATION
Workers are digging up the Odd Fellows Cemetery in preparation for its move on December 26, 1933. The cemetery opened in 1865 and consisted of some 30 acres bounded by Geary, Turk, Parker, and Arguello Streets. The push to remove the cemeteries from San Francisco’s boundaries began in the late 1800s, encouraged by developers who foresaw that San Francisco’s land would become too valuable to serve as burial grounds. (Courtesy of a private collection.)
A 1930s cemetery map displays the locations of “the big four” cemeteries. In 1900, the board of supervisors prohibited further burials within city limits after 1901; thus, the revenue for burial charges and lot sales vanished for those cemeteries already in place. As the existing cemeteries deteriorated, the push for their removal became relentless. By the 1940s, the cemeteries had all moved away from San Francisco. (Courtesy of the Western Neighborhoods Project.)
Lone Mountain Cemetery is shown in 1862; it was moved in 1937. From the 1920s to the 1940s, San Francisco’s cemeteries were moved to Colma, the “cemetery city” south of town. There were two reasons for these moves: cemeteries attracted teenagers and vandals, and more importantly, real estate developers foresaw huge profits in relatively inexpensive land in prime neighborhoods. The health issue cited as a concern was actually a smokescreen. (Courtesy of the Western Neighborhoods Project.)
This image was captured during moving day at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. The cemetery began emptying in 1929. This photograph was taken on December 26, 1933, in the area that would someday become Rossi Park, and shows men working to remove bodies. This image includes the only part of the cemetery still standing today, the Columbarium (center). (Courtesy of a private collection.)
The US Life Saving Station was built in 1879 and appears here at its original Ocean Beach location. When the building was sold at auction, the only bidder for the house, who actually worked for the Coast Guard, paid $75 for it in 1923. The building did not go far; it moved from Golden Gate Park to nearby Cabrillo Street and Forty-Seventh Avenue. (Courtesy of the Dennis O’Rorke collection.)
This is the US Life Saving Station in its present incarnation as a private San Francisco home. The house was moved in 1923, and the buyer’s relative, who was a contractor, raised it over a garage. While its architecture remains distinctive, to the uninformed eye, it looks like just another San Francisco row house, smack up against the next. (Courtesy of a private collection.)
Today’s visitors to Ocean Beach will see a restaurant across the highway from the beach, proudly billed as The Beach Chalet from 1925. Here is the original chalet, which was built on the sandy beach bluffs directly across from today’s modern restaurant. Note the encroaching erosion. In 1891, architect William O. Banks won a park and recreation department bid to construct this building for $8,000, which was erected in 1892. (Courtesy of the Dennis O’Rorke collection.)
The ocean tides proved a severe threat to the original chalet, despite the construction of a 300-foot breakwater in the early 1900s to protect the chalet and the Great Highway. When storms eroded the wall and encroached upon the chalet, some 100,000 to 200,000 people turned out to witness its possible demise during a pounding winter storm. (Courtesy of a private collection.)
The old chalet building was given to the Boy Scouts on the condition that it would be moved. Parks commissioner Herbert Fleishhacker donated the money to have the building moved, and in the spring of 1925, the first floor of the original Beach Chalet was removed and transported along Irving Street to Twenty-Fourth Avenue. (Courtesy of a private collection.)
Five lots on Twenty-Fourth Avenue housed the Beach Chalet. Its upper story was supported on cribbing while a foundation and large assembly room were constructed beneath it. For the next 33 years, it hosted Scouts events and numerous community groups. This photograph shows it being renovated in its new Twenty-Fourth Avenue home in 1925. The Scouts sold it to a contractor in 1958, and later, it burned to the ground. (Courtesy of a private collection.)
This 1906 photograph, taken by Arnold Genthe, shows the original location of the 1861 McElroy Octagon House, one of five octagon houses in the city, and captures the effects of the 1906 earthquake on the building. It stood vacant and neglected until it was acquired, moved, and restored by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America. In 1952, PG&E sought bids to tear down the house so the land could be sold. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
The McElroy Octagon House in 1956 is shown in its new location. Two matron members of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America who lived across the street donated their land for the McElroy Octagon House’s new home. Surprisingly, almost nothing was known of its history when the society purchased it. In 1952, it was sold for $1, plus the cost of moving it. The house was rotated before being placed on its new site. Joseph A. Baird took this photograph. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
This photograph, probably taken around 1915, shows a house that stood approximately on Irving Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Before 1935, the house was moved to Funston Street between Irving and Judah Streets, where it still stands. There is no other information about this house’s moving history. (Courtesy of a private collection.)
A more modern photograph shows the same house today, at its new home on Funston Street between Irving and Judah Streets. The history of how and why it moved, like so many of the ordinary row houses in San Francisco’s neighborhoods, has yet to surface. (Courtesy of the Lorri Ungaretti collection.)
This 1936 photograph sports the title “sliding house on Bernal Heights hill” on the back of the image, but research indicates it may have been located at the top of Folsom Street and was being moved by Hanson Brothers to allow for the completion of the construction of Bernal Heights Boulevard, which was built between 1931 and 1936 to circle Bernal Hill. (Courtesy of the History Center, San Francisco Public Library.)
