Richard Brandi
Garden Neighborhoods of San Francisco

At the November 25th SHARP meeting, Richard Brandi presented a talk and signed his book, Garden Neighborhoods of San Francisco, the Development of Residence Parks 1905-1924. San Francisco is not known for having picturesque streets, landscaping, detached houses, and setbacks to convey the feeling of living in a park. But 36 such neighborhoods, called residence parks, including St Francis Wood, Seacliff,  and our own Forest Hill and Windsor Terrace, were proposed but not all were built.

Brandi’s discussed how the developers went about the business of building residence parks, on different sites, for different markets, and how they succeeded or failed. About 7,500 houses were built comprising a substantial component of the city’s residential fabric.

Richard Brandi is a historic preservation consultant and served for 20 years on the board of the Western Neighborhoods Project. He is the author of San Francisco’s St. Francis Wood. and many other book about San Francisco neighborhoods.