 March 2010A View from the PastBy Abigail Johnston, The Potrero Hill Archives ProjectThis 1930 Department of Public Works (DPW) photograph, looking from Utah Street south to 18th Street and beyond, supports my belief that Utah never ran straight-and-true across Potrero Hill’s western slope, as most nineteenth-century maps would lead one to believe. Look at that wall of rock there! It appears that DPW’s graders and pavers elected not to cut through that impediment, but did carry on above it to 19th Street, where they threw up their hands. From there on, Utah was a stony, hillside-clinging path, traversable only by goats, before becoming a real road again at 23rd Street, south of McKinley Square and San Francisco General Hospital. In the early 1950s, the uphill stretch of Utah, to the left in the photo, the houses fronting it, as well as a chunk of 18th Street between Utah and San Bruno streets, were bulldozed to accommodate the James Lick Freeway. A short private driveway off 19th Street, overlooking the freeway, is the only reminder of the block that once was. The stairway, lower left, mimics the location of today’s pedestrian bridge that connects this bit of Utah Street to its former neighborhood, Potrero Hill. |
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