Potrero Hill, Volkswagen, and Modernist Housing in San Francisco

[Updated March 16, 2006:  A few bloggers picked up on my earlier posting (Boston, Curbed, PotreroHillSF), so I've expanded it.]

The automaker Volkswagen recently (early 2006) featured a photograph of San Francisco's De Haro Street (in the Potrero Hill neighborhood) on their  website home page  (click the photo to see full size) (by the way, f**k Volkswagen):

I've been in one of those new homes, and yes, it is really nice! Amazing views, an open and airy living room, and a couple of nice outdoor terraces  all make for  a fantastic living environment. The home has three bedrooms total, two of which are average (a little  small and dark), while the master bedroom is a 1/2 story higher than the main living floor and is very comfortably sized.

Recent History of 692 De Haro Street

Before this got built, the site was occupied by an old Victorian farmhouse known as the “Little Red House” that must have dated to the 1880s or 1890s, surrounded by a gigantic yard the likes of which we simply don't normally have around here. Native Potrero Hill bedrock outcroppings poked up through the topsoil in the steeply sloped back yard, where the hill rises to Rhode Island Street.  The home was relatively small and decrepit, one of the old “shacks” of Potrero HIll that have been flattened over the past 10 years to make way for new maximum-density housing.

Below: the Little Red House in early 2001; I photographed those trees on the sidewalk as they were cut down in preparation for the pending demolition.

Below: the Little Red House in early 2001, after clearing away the front trees.

The house was finally demolished in 2001 after a minor neighborhood fight to save it. When the demolition was underway, the neighbors on the left side of the property hung a giant sign on their balcony which read “MURDER!” with an arrow pointing to the demolished home.

Below: demolition of Potrero Hill's Little Red House, April 4, 2001, San Francisco:

The lot during grading, June 2001:

Construction soon commenced, as in this view from March 2002:

And by the fall of 2002, the building was done. The developer got a zoning variance to divide the parcel into 3  lots, onto which they built the condos at 692, 694, 696 De Haro;  the unit on the left end at 698 De Haro Street was part of the same development. Each of the distinct façades is a two-unit building, each a 3-bedroom. Note that the red unit began life as yellow:

...until the ratty looking apartment building at 680 De Haro was painted yellow too, seen here in March 2003:

The developer probably wasn't too happy about that, so he painted his freshly painted building again, this time in red, seen here in April 2005:

And a bonus! A dusk photo of this site, October 2005 »

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