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I think about those basement homes in relation to the way my neighborhood here in San Francisco began. Back in the 1880s this part of the city was a distant suburb far from downtown. Speculators sold off individual parcels to cash buyers with no paved roads or public infrastructure. The electric streetcar line was introduced in 1894 to add value to the territory by enabling fast commutes to civilization.
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These are photos of the alley behind my building. The common practice when this neighborhood was first forming was for small cottages to be built at the back of the lot on a cash basis or very short term all-interest loans with a balloon payment after four or five years. When more funds could be pulled together and the value of the land increased the owners would then construct a more substantial building in the front of the lot. My apartment, for example, is in a four unit building facing the street while a two story detached cottage faces the alley. In some cases there was a third or fourth round of intensification where the first and second buildings were removed to make way for a much larger structure. This process continued right up until World War II.
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I’m fond of “reading” the landscape to see how different parts of the city emerged over the decades. Here are a couple of old homes each with a two story cottage in the back. In some cases the cottages came first. In others they were added later. This was completely normal and expected. Each new iteration was seen as progress and part of the natural improvement of the neighborhood. Notice the late 1800s clapboard cottage with the 1920s faux Spanish casita in the back. Remember, thirty year government backed mortgages didn’t exist back then. These were the products of an entirely different development pattern and a fundamentally different economy and culture.
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This is the Whiz Burger. When I was a lot younger and a whole lot poorer I used to live a few doors down from this place. (The food is actually terrible. This is not a hidden local gem to be discovered. Never eat there unless you’re fully insured.) As the sign attests the Whiz Burger was established in 1955. This was right around the time my mother-in-law’s family had settled into a new life in the suburbs of Seattle where her father owned and operated a gas station instead of farming corn in Nebraska. By then absolutely everything about how we built, financed, and occupied the landscape had changed completely.