The first owner was a small-scale real estate developer. Subsequent owners and occupants held working- and middle-class occupations such as teacher, clerk, serviceman and salesman, and did not make any significant contributions to the history of San Francisco, the state or the nation.
Therefore, 50 Seward Street is not eligible for the California Register under Criterion 2 (Person).
Criterion 3 (Design/Construction): 50 Seward Street was designed in the Mediterranean Revival style, and while it does include the basic characteristics of that style, including stucco cladding red tile roofing material, and an arched opening to the recessed entry, it does not include other architectural features and details which give this style its distinctive character, including complexity of design, expressive massing, articulated façades, arched windows, muscular chimney stacks and/or towers, and ornamentation including molded rope mullions, vigas, cartouches, machicolations, and niches. Further, the house was not designed by an architect, but was constructed by a small-scale developer and builder: and therefore the house can not be said to be the work of a master, nor does it possess high artistic values. For these reasons, 50 Seward Street is not eligible for the California Register under Criterion 3 (Design/Construction).
Criterion 4 (Information Potential): Evaluation of 50 Seward Street under Criterion 4 (Information Potential) is beyond the scope of this report. This criterion is generally applied to sites of potential archeological importance.
Historic Resource Evaluation 50 Seward Street, San Francisco, CA criterion and is therefore not individually eligible for listing in the California Register.
Potential Historic District
Following previously-provided guidance from staff of the San Francisco Planning Department regarding the evaluation of a property for inclusion in a potential district, Seward Street between 19th and Douglass streets is evaluated here as a potential historic district. As previously introduced, Seward Street contains two dominant property types: two-story Mediterranean Revival-style single-family dwellings like the subject property, constructed in 1928 and 1929, and three- to four-story Modern-style multi-unit residential buildings, constructed between 1959 and 1974. Properties on the block constructed outside of these two most common time periods represent mixed dates of construction, ranging from 1906 to 1984, and a range of architectural styles. Based on the broad range of construction dates and architectural styles present on the block, the block as a unit does not appear to constitute a historic district according to guidance in the National Park Service in National Register Bulletin 15: How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation, which defines a district as “a significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of sites, buildings, structures, or objects united historically or aesthetically by plan or physical development,” which is “important for historical, architectural, archeological, engineering, or cultural values.”29
The 16 two-story, Mediterranean Revival-style single family houses on the block constructed in 1928 and 1929 by William S. Barron and builder H. H. Putnam, including the subject property, do exhibit the required concentration of buildings historically and aesthetically united by plan and physical development, but they lack the level of historical, architectural, or cultural importance necessary to be considered a historically significant district. As discussed in the evaluation of the subject property, these 16 houses were constructed during the period of rapid real estate construction in San Francisco between the close of World War I and the start of the Great Depression, but they are one of innumerable extant examples of this pattern of construction that occurred during this period, present in all of the City’s southern and western neighborhoods, and do not represent this pattern to a unique or specific degree that they would be considered historically significant. The 16 houses have no connection as a group to significant persons. And, while the 16 houses are unified by their Mediterranean Revival style, they reflect the most basic elements of the style, including stucco cladding, red tile roof cladding, and arched openings, rather than the full expression of the style which would make them significant for their architecture. Overall the 16 houses on the subject block constructed in 1928 and 1929 do not display important historical, architectural, or cultural value to a degree that they would be considered a historically significant district.
The draft version of the Corbett Heights Historic Context Statement currently in review by the San Francisco Planning Department includes a preliminary finding that the Clover Heights subdivision merits further study as a potential historic district.30 The Clover Heights subdivision appears to have been the first development in San Francisco “whose design was shaped in substantial part by public opinion and city policy, as opposed simply to the goals and ideas of a developer and
29 U. S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register Bulletin 15: How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation (Washington, DC: 1990, revised for the internet 2002) no page. Available at Nps.gov.
30 Corbett, 190.
Historic Resource Evaluation 50 Seward Street, San Francisco, CA
architects.”31 As described in the Context Statement, the neighborhood is readily identifiable as a distinctive area because it includes a cohesive concentration of stucco-clad houses constructed around the same time, with few exterior alterations. While the influence of public opinion and city policy on the plan of Clover Heights may represent a historically significant event in the development of planning policy in San Francisco, it is not accurate to say that all of the houses in the Clover Heights subdivision were constructed around the same time and represent a visually cohesive district. The first homes in the subdivision were constructed in 1913 and were architect-designed, Craftsman- and Mission Revival-style homes, well-appointed with sun-porches, French sliding doors, mirror-paneled closets, and artistic wall finishes.32 The development of Clover Heights was interrupted by World War I, during and after which the undeveloped lots in the subdivision sat dormant for over ten years. In 1928, the developer of Clover Heights, the Anglo American Land Co., sold 16 undeveloped lots to the independent real estate developer William S.
Barron. Barron and his builder H. H. Putnam constructed 16 homes in a minimal interpretation of the Mediterranean Revival style, with few if any of the interior features that characterized the first wave of development in Clover Heights. Although Barron briefly sold at least one of the houses he constructed back to the Anglo American Land Co., the houses within Clover Heights subdivision that were constructed in 1928 and 1929 clearly represent a second and different phase of development within the original boundaries of the subdivision, rather than the “readily identifiable distinctive area” described in the Context Statement. For this reason, while the Clover Heights subdivision may merit further study as a potential historic district in relation to its historic role in the development of planning policy in San Francisco, the houses located within the Clover Heights subdivision were constructed in at least two distinct phases, and they do not constitute an architecturally unified concentration of buildings.
Conclusion
50 Seward Street was constructed in 1928, during a period of residential growth that was taking place throughout the City in the years after World War I but before the great Depression. It was one of 16 nearly identical houses constructed in the vicinity by small-scale real estate developer William S. Barron and builder H. H. Putnam. Ownership of the house was held by bank and title companies before 1940, after which time the property changed hands five times before it was purchased by the current owner in 2015. This evaluation finds that 50 Seward Street is not individually eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources (California Register) under any significance criterion. Additionally, the property is not eligible as part of a district for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources (California Register) under any significance criterion. Additionally, while the Corbett Heights Historic Context Statement includes a preliminary finding that the Clover Heights subdivision merits further study as a potential historic district, the subject property is representative of a second wave of residential development in Clover Heights, completed by a different developer and in a different architectural style, and for this reason does not appear to contribute to a cohesive, architecturally-unified concentration of buildings such that it would be considered part of a historic district.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid, 113.
APPELLANT’S BRIEF FOR APPEAL NO. 20-058
Kenneth John Hillan, 64 Seward Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114 Appeal No.: 20-058