Victorian Homes (Located throughout the Castro/Upper Market Area) – Developed in the late 1800s, the Castro is a neighborhood whose buildings are predominantly Victorian in character but with a uniquely San Francisco twist: their exteriors drip with ornamentation and sparkle with color. Any tourist’s visit to the Castro/Upper Market should include time for taking in the area’s beautiful "Painted Ladies."

An estimated 48,000 Victorian houses were built in San Francisco between 1849, when the Gold Rush population explosion started, and 1915, the date some architectural historians pick as the end of construction of Victorian-style buildings. Stylistically, almost all of the San Francisco Victorians followed architectural fashions on the U.S.’s east coast, with three styles in predominance: Italianate in the 1870s and 1880s, Stick Eastlake in the 1880s, and Queen Anne in the 1890s.

Affluent homeowners commissioned architect-designed houses on larger lots, but middle-class houses were often selected from books of patterns provided by contractors. For working class areas such as Eureka Valley (as the Castro was then known), builder-developers focused on small-to-medium sized tracts, erecting rows of nearly identical residential buildings. Constructing rows of homes on 25 foot lots, San Francisco’s residential builders perfected two light-seeking features: elaborate bay windows, which swelled outward from the house front, and a light-well along the side of the house that became known as "The San Francisco Slot."

By the 1880’s, the city’s Victorians were known for their flamboyant exteriors. San Franciscan’s festooned the front of their houses with every possible architectural flourish, including false fronts, crests, ornamentation, scrolls, fretwork, stained glass, cut and beveled glass, and rosettes. Architectural details, as well as the different features of the house, were highlighted by painting each one a different bright color. "Red, yellow, chocolate, orange, everything that is loud is in fashion," commented the California Architects and Builders News in 1885.

With enough gingerbread and bold paint, even a workingman’s modest cottage could look opulent. "Nobody seems to think of building a sober house," wrote a journalist from the New York Times who visited the city in 1883. "Of all the efflorescent, floriated bulbousness and flamboyant craziness that ever decorated a city, I think San Francisco may carry off the prize." But locals loved it and, as the San Francisco Chronicle noted in 1887, "…one was forced to admit that the town did look better for it."

Moving into the 20th century, styles began to change. Thousands of redwood Victorian’s burned in San Francisco’s 1906 Fire and Earthquake, and most of their replacements were more sober. In the 1950s and 1960s, 28 square blocks of Victorians in the Western Addition neighborhood were deemed urban blight and fell to the city’s redevelopment bulldozers. Hundreds more vanished one-by-one, eliminated by modern construction. Of the approximately 16,000 that remain, it is estimated half had their gingerbread millwork and decorations removed so that their exteriors could be modernized with the latest look: stucco in the 1920s, asbestos shingles in the 1950s, and aluminum siding in the 1960s.

In the late 1960s, a few brave San Franciscans began restoring their Victorians to gaudy glory. Their neighbors watched in amusement or horror, comparing the houses to Christmas trees and psychedelic hallucinations, while six or even 10 loud colors were applied. But some locals were intrigued and began to follow suit. Young gay men, moving into careworn Eureka Valley in the early 1970s for the cheap housing, helped propel the Colorist Movement. They highlighted the whimsical gingerbread details of their new homes with multi-colors, revitalizing buildings that had been camouflaged for years under coats of white or gray paint. When other San Franciscans realized that restored Victorians sold for a lot more money than the un-restored variety, the coloring craze was on.

An industry has grown up around restoring Victorians, including painters that specialize in color designs, suppliers of materials (both authentic and reproduced), and providers of specialized services, such as restoring Victorian lighting and stained glass windows. The movement has also resulted in a number of preservation societies dedicated to conserving the buildings.

Beautiful examples of Victorian architecture abound in the Castro. For a gorgeous example of a Queen Anne flavored mansion, complete with towers, balconies, and art glass windows, walk by “Nobby” Clarke’s Mansion (250 Douglass Street). Another outstanding Queen Anne located in the heart of the Castro is the McCormick House (4040-4042 17th Street between Castro and Collingwood Streets). For good examples of Italianate, Stick Eastlake and Queen Anne styles, walk up Liberty Street, between 20th and 21st.