Miss Jo's San Francisco

AS A KID, MISS JO’S PARENTS WOULD ASK her and older sister Melissa B. to run up to houses for sale and feel the siding to see if it were wood (good) or vinyl (bad), while June and Frank, design enthusiasts, waited in the car.

It was similar real estate rubber necking that nudged Miss Jo yesterday to check out the demolition of a tiny house on Laidley Street near where she lives in San Francisco’s Glen Park.
Unfortunately, she arrived too late, although neighbors were still congregating in front of the blank spot where #533, all 492 square feet of it, had stood.

Before demolition, there had been questions whether the 1906 house started out as a refugee shack for victims of the great San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire storm that year, which devastated most of the City.

However, SF historian Woody LaBounty, at the request of city planners, inspected the building, determining it was just aged and dilapidated.

SF Planning Department preservationist planner Moses Corrette said the cottage was likely always used as a home. “It was added to front, back and side, but it was still just a small house— built when construction materials were in high demand,” Corrette wrote Miss Jo. Additionally, if the home were found to have been a refugee shack, it might have qualified for preservation under state law.

Miss Jo learned from neighbors that the bulldozer arrived at 9:30 a.m. and made quick work of the house, which was sold to a developer for $300,000 to be razed and replaced on the 25 x 100 square-foot lot w/ view.

“It was gone in 10 minutes,” said one neighbor, who seemed somewhere between nostalgia and resignation over the removal of the 103-year-old building without a pedigree to be saved.
A relative bargain, the house sold for 40 percent below the $499,999 asking price. In contrast, the median asking price, as well as sales price, for a single-family home in Glen Park is $899,999.

Citywide, the median asking price for single-family houses is $850,000, about equal to the going median sales price, according to Redfin.com

There were 5,610 quake cottages built in three styles by the City between September 1906 and March 2007. The shacks housed 16,000 people in 11 refugee encampments dotting the City, including in Dolores Park, Washington Square and Park-Presidio Blvd., according to the SF historical group Outside Lands.

Later, some shacks were moved to other parts of the City where they became permanent housing.

There’s no definitive list documenting the whereabouts of surviving quake cottages, although Outside Lands has been compiling one.

And how can you tell a cottage might be a quake shack ? “When I go to confirm a shack, I look at the size, I look for single-wall studless construction, and if possible, I peel away some siding to see if there is the tell-tale green paint,” said Corrette, referring to the cottages’ uniform color.

When asked to eyeball the photos published here of tiny houses in Glen Park that Miss Jo has suspected might be quake shacks, Corrette thought there could be one. “The first few don’t look quite right, but the last one has potential to be a type “B” shack turned to its side,” Corrette said.

When they come on the market, authentic quake shacks or not, the small houses stand out in a City where breathtakingly high real estate prices haven’t changed much in the recession.

Call it San Francisco-induced optimism, but Miss Jo and Jeff still hope to one day have a little place, a bit bigger than an earthquake shack and renovated to be as sustainable as the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, though without the alligator swamp. (POST UPDATED OCT. 2, 2009)

1906 Earthquake house photo from Outside Lands. Other photos by Miss Jo. Top two: After and before demolition of a 1906 small house, proven not to be an earthquake cottage. The other photos are among Glen Park’s one-room early 19th-century cottages, or are they earthquake shacks ?