Vistas and Byways Review - Fall 2025.
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PHOTO ESSAY  - PLACES OUT OF TIME 


A San Francisco Victorian Style House - Showing Its Age
                            ​Photo by Linda L. Day                            

Victorian Style Houses Out of Time
by  Linda L. Day

San Francisco Victorian houses still stand and show evidence of change after more than 100 years. These houses were built for upper middle-class families that needed many bedrooms for children and servants and big entertainment rooms.
A carriageway went through the Panhandle to Golden Gate Park, attracting people with money.
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A Victorian on Fell Street at Central Avenue
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that was subdivided into apartments and has not been maintained well. In the 1960s, when many people were fleeing the city for the suburbs, big old houses were subdivided into apartments.
1


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A Victorian on Central Avenue at Fell Street
​ has a sunroom in an Arts and Crafts style perched on its roof.

2


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A Page Street Victorian after 1906.
A circa 1870s slanted Bay Victorian built as a single-family house that was converted to up and down flats after the 1906 earthquake. This was a common and creative response to the desperate need for housing. Note the narrow front doors,
​a giveaway to the conversion.

3


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Page at Ashbury: 
​Note the Queen Anne Victorians, built at the same time: one restored to perfection and the other not.

4


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1478-1482 Page Street:
​built for Mary Anne Cohen Magnin of the I. Magnin family by the Newsom brothers, 1899, certainly without garages. The garages were added later.

5

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​Linda L. Day earned her PhD in urban policy from Syracuse University and her Masters in Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Day is Emeritus Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She teaches architectural and urban history for SFSU and UC Berkeley OLLI. As a San Francisco City Guide, she often goes on walks led by other guides. A recent walk in Golden Gate Park included seeing this statue of John McLaren. 
Other works in this issue:
Genre 1
​Title and link
Genre 2
Title and link

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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of creative writing and photography by members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways  ​volunteer staff.
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