San Francisco's diamond heights: Urban renewal and the modernist city

Journal of Planning History

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 133-153

  Brandi, Richard ^a  

^a not available   (United States)

Author keywords

City planning; Joseph Eichler; Modern architecture; Urban renewal; Vernon DeMars

Indexed keywords

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN; URBAN AREA; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN PLANNING; URBAN RENEWAL;

CALIFORNIA; SAN FRANCISCO [CALIFORNIA]; UNITED STATES;

EID: 84875931917     PISSN: 15385132     EISSN: 15526585     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1538513212456970     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. This thesis is focused on "urban renewal" as it became known through the 1949 Housing Act and subsequent acts through 1973. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, along with all 400 redevelopment agencies in California, was dissolved on February 1, 2012, as a result of California's chronic budget deficits (California Redevelopment Association et al. v. Ana Matosantos).
2. A search of the term urban renewal on Proquest revealed a total of 345 dissertations and theses. Of these, 101 deal with some aspect of US postwar urban renewal and most of these (77 percent) were written before 1980. Abstracts are available for works published after about 1983; only four appear to conclude that urban renewal even partially met its goals.
3. A classic view is expressed by architectural historian Spiro Kostof: "With the blessing of municipal authorities and the real-estate industry, they set out to install the Modernist city in American downtowns. Entire neighborhoods were gutted and replaced with commercial towers lapped by vast open spaces, slabs, and cruciform skyscrapers of early Corbusian derivation, grimly executed and with barren parking lots for greenery."
4. Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), 726.
5. For example, the 2007 Conference Society of Architectural Historians and the 12th National Conference on Planning History held in 2007 featured many papers on the subject.
6. Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2007)
7. Jon C. Teaford, "Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath," Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (Fannie Mae Foundation, 2000)
8. Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn't (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1996).
9. Chester Hartman, City for Sale, The Transformation of San Francisco (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002).
10. Work paper from David Hasset, San Francisco Redeployment Agency.
11. The Diamond Heights redevelopment project has never been the subject of a detailed study.
12. San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1986 Fact Book, 1986, 88.
13. "Site Planning and Design," Steven B. McBride, West Virginia University Website, www.wvu.edu/AQ11WebBook/McBride/section3.html.
14. "Redevelopment in Diamond Heights," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, March 1950, v.
15. The Agency wrote "Although only a small portion of those residing in the Jefferson Square area [Western Addition project] can afford new private hosing, any increase in supply will effect [sic] the general housing market and thus aid in solving the re-housing problem of the Jefferson Square neighborhood."
16. San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, "Redevelopment in Diamonds Heights," March 1950, 23
17. Mel Scott, The San Francisco Bay Area, A Metropolis in Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 289.
18. In 1953, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency claimed six other cities were planning to redevelop "open blighted lands," but it did not identify the cities, "Report to Mayor Elmer E. Robinson, for the Fiscal Year 1952-1953," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, p. 3. However, a report by the federal government in 1957 listed three "open lands projects": An urban renewal project in South Pasadena (project R-9) and two slum clearance projects in Puerto Rico (project U-5-27(A) and (project U 5-9), "Urban Renewal Project Directory," Housing and Home Finance Agency, Urban Renewal Administration, March 31, 1957, 23-25.
19. The city owned eighty-nine acres and another ninety-four acres were allocated to streets (although most existed only on paper). The San Francisco Housing Authority owned twenty-nine acres, and the state of California owned twelve acres, for a total of 60.4 percent of the total land.
20. Mel Scott, The San Francisco Bay Area, A Metropolis in Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 6.
21. "New Contours, New Houses for Blighted Hills," Journal of Housing, October 1952, Vol. 9, No. 10, 372.
22. 1986 Fact Book, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1986, 88.
23. "And I object strenuously to the term "blighted area. the people in the area feel they are sort of covered up by tin cans, garage out there," said Mr. Messer in "Public Hearing on the Redevelopment of the Diamond Heights [sic], Transcript of the Public Hearing held by the Redevelopment Agency of San Francisco on January 15, 1952, regarding the Tentative Redevelopment Plan," 21.
24. The derogatory term "cracker box house" refers to small, nearly square shaped, wood framed houses with flat roofs with plain, stucco facades built by small builders in the 1950s. For example, Everett Griffin, chairman of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency told architects, "In case you had any doubts, there will be no punched out, drab, cracker-boxes, row on row, in Diamonds Heights," in a speech before the northern California Chapter of AIA on December 8, 1960, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency archives.
25. "Public Hearing on the Redevelopment of the Diamond Heights [sic], Transcript of the Public Hearing held by the Redevelopment Agency of San Francisco on January 15, 1952, Regarding the Tentative Redevelopment Plan," 36.
26. 1986 Fact Book, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1986, 6.
27. "New Contours, New Houses for Blighted Hills," Journal of Housing, October 1952, Vol. 9, No. 10, 372.
28. "Report to Mayor Elmer E. Robinson, For the Fiscal Year 1952-1953," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 5.
29. Redevelopment Agency v. Hayes (1954) 122 Cal. App.2d 777.
30. "Redevelopment and Blight, The Summary Report from the Joint Interim Hearing of the Senate Committee on Housing and Land Use and the Senate Select Committee on Redevelopment," California Legislature, Sacramento, California, November 16, 1995, 3. According to this report, from 1945 until 1993, state law did not explicitly define blight but listed its characteristics. A law passed in 1993 defined blight in such a way so as to put limitations on the types of projects that would qualify under redevelopment law.
31. Scott. The San Francisco Bay Area, A Metropolis in Perspective, 290.
32. Michael Harris, "First Land Bought in Diamond Heights," San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 1956.
33. "Progress report to Mayor Christopher for the Period October 1955 to September 1963," Redevelopment Agency of the City and County of San Francisco, 1-2.
34. This conclusion is based on a check of the streets of Diamond Heights against a plan map in the report, "Summary of Diamonds Heights Redevelopment Plan, Map A," February 1, 1969, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, and the transcript of the public hearing.
35. "Progress report to Mayor Christopher for the Period October 1955 to September 1963," Redevelopment Agency of the City and County of San Francisco, 2.
36. Garrett Eckbo, Public Landscape: Six Essays on Government and Environmental Design in the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley, 1978), 95.
37. The first report on Diamond Heights stated that the majority of housing would be for moderate-income families although "some luxury" and "some low rent public housing" may ultimately be included. San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, Redevelopment in Diamonds Heights," 20.
38. Roger Montgomery, "Mass Producing Bay Area Architecture," Sally Woodbridge, Bay Area Houses (Layton, UT: Gibbs M. Smith,1988), 232.
39. Carl Feiss, "Critique: The Architecture of Redevelopment in U.S.A.," Progressive Architecture, Vol. 37, No. 8 (August 1956), 123.
40. One contemporary observer suggested that the project was too large to award to a single developer or to sell at once to several developers as was done in other redevelopment projects.
41. George Thomas Kingsley, "The Design Process in Urban Renewal: An Analysis of the San Francisco Experience" (Master's Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1963), 87.
42. "1961 Annual Report," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 5.
43. "to elevate the urban design consequences of the redevelopment process to a higher level than is likely to result without special attention to the esthetics of the ultimate construction," statement by the members of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, "Architectural Advisory Panel Evaluation Report Diamond Heights Red Rock Hill Competition," June 30, 1961, 2.
44. "1961 Annual Report," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 16.
45. "Four Diamond Heights Red Rock Hill Designs Selected by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency From the Ten Winners in the Redevelopment Agency-AIA National Architectural Competition," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, June 30, 1961, 2.
46. "1961 Annual Report," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 3.
47. "Agency OKs Plan for Diamond Heights Center," San Francisco Chronicle, December 13, 1961 and San Francisco Call Bulletin, December 4, 1964.
48. "Developer Guide Statement, Diamond Heights Red Rock Hill Competition," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, [n.d.], 20.
49. "Architectural Advisory Panel Evaluation Report Diamond Heights Red Rock Hill Competitor," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, June 30, 1961, 29.
50. "Diamond Heights Neighborhood Center, an Urban Design and Report," Lawrence Lackey, AIA Urban Design Consultant, Royston, Hanamoto & Mayes, Landscape Architects, 1961.
51. Diamond Heights accommodates the automobile to a much greater extent than is common in San Francisco, For example, the nearby Miraloma Park neighborhood center built in the 1930s has twentythree stores and businesses and only 116 parking spots, of which fifteen are free. From a visual inspection made January 31, 2008.
52. The number and height of the towers vary in different sources.
53. "Diamond Heights Work Resumed," San Francisco Chronicle, December 16, 1964.
54. GE had already held a 10 percent share in the project. During this time period, San Francisco Redevelopers also purchased a Chevrolet plant in Oakland for $2.5 million, hired architects to design a forty-story building for the Chinatown Cultural Center redevelopment project, were in arrears $400,000 to the Redevelopment Agency, and the IRS and state of California filed liens against them for unpaid taxes. Donald Canter, "Projects Stalled Here-No Cash," San Francisco Call Bulletin, December 4, 1964.
55. "General Electric Enters Renewal Field in Big Way," The Journal of Housing, No 6, 1965, 312.
56. Donald Canter, "Diamond Heights Work to Resume," San Francisco Examiner, November 6, 1967.
57. Donald Canter, "New Plan to Solve GE's Red Rock Hill Troubles," San Francisco Examiner, June 6, 1967. "Realistic Red Rock Hill Development," San Francisco Chronicle June 7, 1967.
58. Scott Baillie, "Another Outfit May Try to Develop Red Rock," San Francisco Chronicle, April 23, 1969.
59. Sally Woodbridge, John Woodbridge, and Chuck Byrne, San Francisco Architecture, The Illustrated Guide to Over 1,000 of the Best Buildings, Parks, and Public Artworks in the Bay Area (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), 175.
60. "Last of the Diamond in the Heights," San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, January 17, 1971.
61. Robert J. Keely, "Eichler Comes to the City," San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 1962.
62. "New Standard of Quality in Urban Renewal Design," House & Home 9, no 10 (February 1964): 96.
63. "A Brilliant Use of Textures," San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1964.
64. "Today's Best Built-for-Sale Houses-And What Makes Them Sell," House and Home 24, no.4 (October, 1963): 100.
65. "Diamond Heights Townhouses," San Francisco Examiner, August 2, 1964.
66. For example, the Heyman Brothers built sixteen houses on Cameo Drive priced at $38,000-$40,000, De Narde Co. built six houses at Amber and Turquoise Way for $42,000, and Elm Construction Co. planned to build twenty houses at Duncan and Amber Drives.
67. Donald Canter, "Houses Bloom on Diamond Heights," San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, April 5, 1962.
68. Joseph Bodovitz, "Red Rock Hill Lots on Block," San Francisco Examiner, January 22, 1961.
69. Interview with Allan Unger and Jane Unger (Mr. and Mrs. Unger) on January 5, 2008.
70. "The First Home on Red Rock Hill," San Francisco Chronicle, November 2, 1961.
71. From a speech given by Everett Griffin, chairman of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, before the Golden Gateway Luncheon meeting of the Northern California Chapter of AIA, San Francisco, December 1960, as quoted
72. Kingsley F, "The Design Process in Urban Renewal: An Analysis of the San Francisco Experience," 97-98.
73. For a concise overview of urban renewal and the public housing provisions of Title III of the 1949 Housing Act and its evolution, see Alexander von Hoffman, "A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the Housing act of 1949," Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2, Fannie Mae Foundation, 2000.
74. The San Francisco Public Housing Authority proposed to use 16 acres in Diamond Heights for low rent housing but on March 9, 1950, the Planning Commission refused to approve a zoning change that would have allowed it, "Redevelopment in Diamond Heights," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 7.
75. Herman credited the Housing Act of 1961 with providing new financial tools and techniques that made the scheme feasible. He may have been referring to Section 221(d)(3) amendments to the 1934 National Housing Act that allowed the FHA to insure rental housing mortgages at below market rates.
76. von Hoffman, A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the Housing act of 1949," 319.
77. The Glenridge project is a section 221(d)(3) project.
78. "1961 Annual Report," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 5, 10, 16.
79. "1962 Annual Report," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 3.
80. "Progress Report to Mayor Christopher for the Period October 1955 to September 1963," Redevelopment Agency of the City and County of San Francisco, p. 3.
81. Moderate-Priced Private Housing for Families in San Francisco," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, May 21, 1963.
82. Apparently, changes occurred with the developers and architects involved with "moderate income" projects on Diamond Heights. As built, there are a total of 488 units of subsidized housing under various programs.
83. San Francisco News Call Bulletin, 1963, n.d.
84. Jim Leonard, "Protests Delay Diamond Heights Plan," San Francisco News Call Bulletin, May 28, 1963, 24.
85. "Gold Plated Slum-Glen Park Furor," San Francisco Chronicle, May 23, 1963, n.p.
86. New Standard of Quality in Urban Renewal Design," House and Home, February 1964, 99.
87. "Eleventh Annual Design Awards," Progressive Architecture 45, no. 1 (January 1964): 106.
88. "New Standard of Quality in Urban Renewal Design," House & Home, February 1964, 96.
89. "New Standard of Quality in Urban Renewal Design," House & Home, February 1964, 93.
90. Roger Montgomery, "Improving the Design Process in Urban Renewal," in Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy, ed. James Q. Wilson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), 481.
91. Sally Woodbridge, et al., San Francisco Architecture, 175.
92. Peter Booth Wiley, National Trust Guide-San Francisco, America's Guide for Architecture and History Travelers (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), 382.
93. Sally Woodbridge, ed., Bay Area Houses (Layton, Utah: Gibbs M. Smith Inc, New Edition, 1988), 10, 248-53.
94. Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn't, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 166. The examples he cites are high-rise residential redevelopment projects such as New York's
95. Stuyvesant Town (seventy-five acres, 8,800 units) and Chicago's Lake Meadow (seventy acres, ten buildings with2,033 apartments), and Prairie Shores(fifty-five acres, five buildings with1,677 apartments).
96. Roger Montgomery writing in 1965 said, "In most places, urban renewal experience has produced mixed results, missed opportunities and often shockingly bad design." Roger Montgomery, "Aesthesis in Urban Renewal," The Journal of Housing no. 11 (1965): 602.
97. von Hoffman, "A Study in Contradictions: The Origins and Legacy of the Housing Act of 1949," 2000,
98. Hoffman notes that smaller cities and those in the South and West more often used low-rise designs.
99. Richard Longstreth, "The Difficult Legacy of Urban Renewal," CRM Journal, Winter 2006, 17.
100. Fact Book 1986, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1986, 88.
101. This is suggestive, as no study has been done about the origins of the residents of Diamond Heights.
102. Vernon Armand DeMars, "A Life in Architecture: Indian Dancing, Migrant Housing, Telesis, Design for Urban Living, Theater, Teaching" (Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University California, 1992), 474.
103. Redevelopment in Diamond Heights, "San Francisco Redevelopment Agency," March 1950, p. 24.
104. Diamond Heights accommodates the automobile to a much greater extent than is common in San Francisco. For example, the Miraloma Park neighborhood center has 23 stores and businesses along two city streets and 101 metered parking spots and 15 free spaces. From a visual inspection made January 31, 2008.
105. There are no studies of the value of views in San Francisco.
106. Partick McGrew, "Neighborhoods and Innovators: An Architect's View of San Francisco's Subdivisions before 1915," The Argonaut, San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, 46.
107. Carolyn Loeb, Entrepreneurial Vernacular: Developers Subdivisions in the 1920s (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001).
108. Marc A. Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 2+51+58+120.
109. The Metropolitan Life Insurance company began construction of Parkmerced as a planned community in 1941, one of a number housing projects during the 1940s and 1950s, most famously Stuyvesant Town. However, Parkmerced was not a slum clearance or a low-income project. This 200-acre project was built on a golf course in the southwest corner of San Francisco near the Pacific Ocean and a lake (Lake Merced). Delayed by WWII, the first units opened in 1944 consisting of two-and three-story wood framed apartments. After the war, several thirteen-story concrete towers were added. The complex has a small shopping center (more akin to the convenience store referred to by Gavin) but was not programmed with any other facilities such as schools, parks, or churches. Two other subdivisions were laid out over former cemeteries: Anza Vista, 110 acres bordered by Geary Street, St Joseph's Ave, Turk and Masonic Streets; and Laurel Heights, 54 acres, bordered by California, Geary, Parker Streets, and Presidio Avenue.
110. Hansen, San Francisco Almanac, 123. Finally, a suburban style shopping center with a few apartments, Stonestown, opened in 1952 near Parkmerced.
111. Two active builders were identified in the project area by the Redevelopment Agency, "Thomas Valerga, a private builder, owns 5.2 acres and is in the process of making large-scale cuts for new housing sites on Fairmont Hill," and Atlas Realty owned four acres on Gold Mine Hill. Additionally, the Crocker Estate Company owned twenty-two acres on Gold Mine Hill and "have shown interest in developing this property," from "Redevelopment on Diamond Heights," San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1950, 7-8.
112. Redevelopment Agency v. Hayes.
113. The author was raised in a five-room, one bath, stucco front, rectangle-shaped row house built in 1956, one of the five identical houses built by a father and son builder on vacant lots in Visitation Valley. These homes sold for $16,000 and look nearly identical to scores of others built by builders on the slopes of Twin Peaks in the 1950s.
114. There has been no published scholarly study of San Francisco's postwar development in the outlying residential areas. These observations are based on anecdotal evidence and popular history.
115. Jacqueline Proctor, San Francisco's West of Twin Peaks (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2006)
116. Anna Bland Smith, San Francisco's Glen Park and Diamond Heights (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2007). 100. One of the approved designs for Red Rock Hill did include a provision for a public viewing area but this design was not selected.
117. Berman, et al v. Parker et al 348 U.S. 26 (1954).