potrero view
Courtesy Peter Lilenthal

Courtesy Peter Lilenthal

Julia Bergman pictured at her childhood home around 1950.

January 2012

History Lives on Wisconsin Street

Simon Stahl

Potrero Hill began to emerge in its modern state in the mid-nineteenth century.  Because of its foundation of Serpentine rock, many of the oldest buildings from that period survived the 1906 earthquake and fire.  A Hill resident with a little time and curiosity can glimpse a slice of history right next door, or maybe even in their own home.

For Potrero Hill resident Julia Bergman, it all started when she was flipping through a family photograph album. There was a photo of her standing outside 690 Wisconsin Street, her childhood home, with the caption “This is Julia in front of the original De Haro family home” in her mother’s handwriting.  The photo, which appears in the Acknowledgements section of Peter Linenthal and Abigail Johnston’s seminal work San Francisco’s Potrero Hill, set Julia on a quest to prove her mother’s words.

After poring through City archives, water department records, and Sanborn insurance maps, Bergman eventually determined that her mother was mistaken. Bergman now suspects that the actual De Haro house was on the corner of 20th and Carolina streets.  The Wisconsin Street home – a New England clapboard-style house located on a 150 by 200-foot lot, possibly with a water tower in back – dates back to at least 1871, when it was first registered to a Mr. Linsley.  After Linsley’s death, his widow and children continued to live there until around 1920.  In 1948, when Bergman was three, her family moved into the upstairs section of the house, which had been split into separate upstairs and downstairs residences. A small wooden cottage in back served as an additional apartment for other lodgers. They enjoyed living in the house until around 1951, when her father, fresh out of the Merchant Marines, wanted to live somewhere surrounded by trees, and moved the family to Marin.

In 1957, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, beat poet and co-founder of City Lights, moved in down the street. He was friends with the 690 Wisconsin residents at the time, who gathered for dinner parties and poetry readings with Alan Ginsberg and other beats at the house or in the small cottage.

Amy Carr, a photographer who currently lives in the downstairs flat with her 10-year-old son Julian and a roommate, was attracted to the house’s sense of history when she moved in eight years ago. “I immediately felt like I was at home, like it had a history, it had character…I could feel the energy of the families that had lived here.”

The house is set back from the street, and is surrounded on all sides by gardens.  Inside, Carr’s flat feels like a typical cozy Hill residence.  Decorated with Hindu and Buddhist art and Carr’s vivid portraits, smelling of potpourri, the flat exudes a sense of warmth and familiarity.  An old ornate stone fireplace serves as a reminder of the house’s history.  With upstairs and downstairs apartments, plus the cottage in back, the complex is its own self-contained community, where residents host dinner parties and help each other out.  One December night they prepared to host a book club meeting in the cottage, a modern continuation of the house’s literary heritage.

Carr views herself as a steward of the house, caring for it and preserving it; an unusual sentiment for a renter.  “We’re just so thankful to have a place we can call home…I feel safe, enveloped in warmth.” Even if it’s not the actual De Haro house, 690 Wisconsin is filled with character and its own unique history.

Special thanks to Julia Bergman and Amy Carr for their research and assistance with this article.

 

 Subscribe to The Potrero View

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2006 The Potrero View.

Content on this site may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of The Potrero View or its Publishers.