In San Francisco, historic preservation isn’t just the realm of ornate sconces and delicate spindlework. It’s also part of the politics that current city attorney David Chiu once described as a knife fight in a phone booth.
Sup. Rafael Mandelman was the latest politico to dive in when, last year, he demanded protection of more sites in exchange for his vote for the sweeping Family Zoning Plan.
The landmarking blitz began months ago. Earlier this year Mayor Daniel Lurie expanded the effort to potentially thousands of sites.
Mandelman tells The Frisc he doesn’t dwell on specific sites, but he wants experts to have room to weigh in. “I am not an expert in preservation, I am not an expert in architecture, so I don’t have strong opinions about what should be preserved,” Mandelman says.
But more than 100 years ago, some influential city leaders, including SF’s official architect — yes, that was a thing — did have strong opinions. In fact, much of what the city now holds precious was, in that architect’s eyes, an abomination.
The improbably named Newton J. Tharp’s ideas show that today’s arguments driving preservation politics are themselves fairly modern, and hardly universal. Even better, you can spend an hour strolling around a single San Francisco neighborhood to get face-to-face with the competing styles that once had some city tastemakers’ teeth on edge.
This Cow Hollow-Pacific Heights walk involves a number of hills, but you can do it in reverse if you prefer to let gravity be your friend. It starts on the corner of Union and Divisadero, and at the intersection of some very telling historical opinions.
Axe to grind (or swing)
Tharp got the city architect job after the 1906 earthquake and fire, but he didn’t last long. In 1909, he died “in the full vigor of manhood,” as his Chronicle obituary put it.
While his death at the age of 41 was tragic, lovers of classic San Francisco homes might be glad he wasn’t on the case for much longer. Tharp had an axe to grind, or perhaps to swing.
“That guy hated Victorians,” says San Francisco realtor Max Armour.
There’s no greater legacy of Tharp’s war against what’s now regarded as the most consequential SF style than the sharply-peaked home at 2590 Union Street, which Tharp designed. With five bedrooms, three and a half baths, and built circa 1899, it’s not just another trophy property.
Armour handled the listing when it sold in 2023 for more than $7 million. He leaned into its history and marketed the home as an “Anti-Victorian.” Thanks to its expanse of dark brown shingles and relatively simple style, it’s more Golden Gate Park bison than gaudy butterfly.
How could San Francisco’s official architect hate Victorian architecture? It’s like finding out Philadelphia’s official chef hated cheesesteaks. Other than the Golden Gate Bridge, the most quintessentially San Franciscan image is the row of Painted Ladies on Alamo Square.
Tharp was part of an anti-Victorian vanguard at the turn of the last century. “He was doing things his own way. Times were changing,” says Armour.
For a prominent example of what contributed to Tharp’s grudge, keep walking.
Cow town
Head east and downhill on Union, toward the corner of Buchanan. Stop in front of 2040 Union, now home to a few businesses in the heart of the street’s commercial bustle. This is the Cudworth House, one of Cow Hollow’s most celebrated Victorian homes.
It was built by James Cudworth, both a 19th century dairy farmer and supervisor. You could be both in those days, which is why the Cudworth House (which the city is in the process of landmarking) is called both a “farmhouse” and a “mansion,” depending on who’s asking.
On the next block at 1980 Union, you’ll find Cudworth’s other two homes, also Victorians and dubbed the Twin Wedding Houses. (They’re now also commercial spaces.)
According to local lore, Cudworth built the joined homes for his daughters as respective wedding gifts.
These are all classics in the eyes of modern SF historians and preservationists, which would have made Tharp’s blood boil.
This is a good time to stop and notice how sensibilities began to change. The blocks around you also have many Edwardian apartment buildings, up to four stories tall. The Edwardian is kind of the kid brother of the Victorian. Or maybe more appropriately its heir, named as it is for Queen Victoria’s primary offspring, King Edward VII.
Unlike the fanciful, baroque sensibilities of Vics, Edwardian architecture was meant to be relatively straightforward, emphasizing clean lines and planes. By modern standards “Eds” can still look elaborate, but the contest between the ornate and the straightforward drove the architectural culture war of Tharp’s day.
The world according to Tharp
You now have a steep climb up two blocks, south on Buchanan toward Vallejo Street. Take your time while we unpack exactly what Tharp’s problem was.
In his 1900 article “What Bad There Is and What Good There Might Be in Inexpensive Architecture,” Tharp explained that fancy Victorian styles weren’t suitable for everyday Americans. He found these homes both “swaggering” and “drearily characterless.”
Those are interesting but contradictory descriptions. Swaggering, sure, but “characterless”? It’s possible Tharp was reacting to the effect of the industrial revolution, which made wood frame Victorian homes cheap and easy to build. What we now see as delicate craftsmanship — spindlework, lattice, and such — could be produced by factories and shipped en masse on rails.
“A lot of what people see on these homes was made by machines that turned wood and carved it and pressed designs into it,” the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco president Adam Klafter tells The Frisc. Ornamentation became much more accessible and therefore cheap in the eyes of critics.
At the same time, Victorians were associated with decadence, and Tharp’s “characterless” description invoked a lack of integrity and honesty. “I remember seeing sentiment that Colonial houses were real architecture and these Victorians are too ostentatious,” says Klafter, adding that such sentiment in some circles has never gone away.
Tharp wanted unornamented homes in the then-emerging Craftsman style, which he called “simple and good” in his article. “In England and Holland, the walls are made from common brick made from the nearest bank of clay and roofed with simple thatch,” he wrote.
Weird side note: A local lawyer and self-proclaimed historian believed Tharp, because of his nose, was the second coming of Julius Caesar, according to a clipping from an unknown newspaper of the day.
Ostrich leather
On Vallejo near Buchanan you’ll find two more homes that must have made Tharp black out. The 1890 Albert Wilford Houses sport fantastical ornamentation, including signature domed roofs and knobby surfaces known as “ostrich leather” that resemble the remnants of climbing walls.
To give Tharp his due, it’s fair to say this kind of style is best administered in small doses, not something to proliferate all over town.
Of course, had builders heeded Tharp’s call and opted for thatched roofs and clay bricks, their work probably wouldn’t be on the National Register of Historic Places.
They also might not be here at all, brick being a notoriously bad element in a seismic zone.
Continue west and you’ll pass a noted Beaux-Arts house at 2250 Vallejo. To the modern eye, its wedding cake ornamentation looks pretty fancy, but at the time Beaux-Arts was another move toward simplicity and away from Victoriana.
Dip down to 2400 Vallejo, and there’s finally something to warm Tharp’s heart. On the corner of Steiner Street sits a notable example of a Craftsman, perhaps Tharp’s Platonic vision of a perfect home for a simple, earnest laborer — if that laborer needed six bedrooms, nine baths, 6,300 square feet for a family the size of a SWAT team, and who — these days — could pony up something north of $10 million.
Bringing to bay
Our last stop is just a few blocks away. Head south on Steiner Street and then west on Green Street until you get to 2421 Green, a towering example of the First Bay Tradition, which like Craftsman and Beaux-Arts is noted for “eschewing the highly ornamented Victorian style,” according to an SF Planning preservation guide.
First Bay homes like 2421 Green favored locally sourced materials like “natural wood, shingle, and clinker brick” to emphasize natural Bay Area environments, and often go unpainted to appear more humble and resolute. It’s about as far from Victoriana as you can get.
The owner of 2421 Green, a famous Hollywood director, also spent years fighting the long-running renovation of the property next door, citing the work’s threat to his historic property and more.
You might say that the Tharps of the world won this culture war, as modern architecture rarely favors the overwrought decoration of Victorians.
But the style has clearly ensconced itself in the hearts and minds of San Franciscans. Klafter lays some responsibility for this on 20th century urban renewal schemes, which bulldozed hundreds of Victorians (some he acknowledges had become quite run-down) and removed their mostly Black, mostly low-income tenants.
Backlash against this demolition created a new appreciation for historic SF housing. In the 1970s, Victorians in neighborhoods like the Castro and the Haight made ideal fixer-uppers, which didn’t necessarily end displacement of the people who lived in them.
Now we can’t imagine those neighborhoods without them.
SF’s land use politics remain complicated to this day, as the city continues to balance the need to build with the mandate to preserve. SF’s density skeptics became notorious for wielding vagaries like “neighborhood character” to oppose new housing across the city.
Tharp’s disdain for certain homes didn’t drive us to this point, but he did hand us the directions and wave us cheerfully in that direction. And the city is still trying to plot a route back to less complicated times.
