Moving into Prentiss Street, 1966
By Jerry F. Schimmel
Our new house at 40 Prentiss Street was two stories on the uphill side and three on the downhill -- and no trees. There must have been an outhouse to begin with, because all drainpipes were tacked to the outside of the building like an afterthought. It had/has a useless attic. Like most older structures in Bernal Heights, the house had been added to over the years, originally starting with three large rooms on the bottom floor and four small ones upstairs. And I'm not sure every change was legal. But that was Bernal Heights. As long as your neighbor's construction didn't interfere with your life, you never squealed. And frankly, my dear, the city didn't give a damn, to paraphrase Rhett Butler.
An inside stairway on the uphill side led from the front door to the upstairs. Next to it was a short hallway leading straight back to the smallest downstairs room, a kitchen during an earlier incarnation. In time the hall was closed off and put to use as a closet and storage cabinet for the downstairs rooms, the upper rooms having served as the original bedrooms. A 25-by-12-feet addition was added in back on the ground floor probably in the 1920s or 1930s, which made room for the current first floor kitchen, a second bath, and tiny porch. The basement was large and at one time must have been a garage with road access from what is now the top of Banks Street. I added a back deck in 1968, lots of shingles and dark brown paint.
Cabell left Nancy and I with a mess. As we proceeded to plant in our lower lot we uncovered a mountain of old tires, kitchen garbage, lathwork, rotten plaster, and bathroom tiles which had been deliberately buried and had to be dug out by hand. A lot of tiles are still there, camouflaged now by an exuberant growth of jade plants and Myoporum laetum. I bequeath whatever lies under them to the next owner.
According to water department records, a service connection was made to an earthquake cottage at 38 Prentiss Street in 1908. By 1912, a Driscoll family is noted in the telephone book for 40 Prentiss. Directories show old man Driscoll, an ironworker, living on the north side of the hill in the 1890s and moving to the south side after 1906 where he lasted until the 1920s. One or several Driscolls continued to live in the family house until the 1950s. There were at least two changes of ownership between the late '50s and the time we got there, maybe more.
In the mid-1930s the house was moved downhill to make way for Bernal Heights Boulevard. The current parking spaces were its original location. Forty Prentiss was not the only one to be moved according to Lee Egger. Her home on tiny Waltham Street had to be relocated, and she said there were others.
We fell in love with the views, views, views, the isolation and sheer rawness of the surroundings. We liked that there was no paved street in front of 40 Prentiss, only a treacherous dirt track that led a half block down from the boulevard to a patch of potholed blacktop just above Chapman Street. Our original purchase included a downhill empty lot between us and Alice and Mike Matas, which we purposely left as an unimproved buffer between the house and the rest of the world.
The best views are from the upstairs front windows. Looking east you see most of the south bay across to Oakland, Hayward, and Fremont, even Mount Diablo when it's clear. There are ships of various sorts at anchor all the time, or moving about, mostly those long container jobs. The nicest time is at night on a warm evening when the bay is like glass, and ships' running lights reflect on the water like tethered fireflies.
From the roof over the first-floor kitchen, the view extends south to San Francisco Airport, San Mateo Bridge, and at times Mount Hamilton. To the southwest lies the ridge of San Bruno Mountain, an irregular line across the horizon. Like Bernal Heightsers, citizen groups around the mountain are doing their utmost to save their hill from developers and off-roaders.
Closer to Bernal Heights are the rooftops of the Portola District stretching south to the borders of McLaren Park. You can't see I-280 or Alemany Boulevard because they lie at the bottom of Alemany Gap. When wisps of fog come through the narrow opening, you can count on a late-evening fog.
The clearest view is of rooftops descending into the gulch that is Cortland Avenue. To the left east of Cortland Avenue is the busy I-280/101 freeway interchange which emits a constant shushing noise like waves at the beach. Beyond that is Candlestick Point and the stadium. On calm Sunday mornings when the freeways are quiet, you can hear bells from St. Kevin's rousting the faithful.
Most of the homes near us were constructed before World War II, with the exception of 51 Prentiss Street, some houses along Chapman Street, and the newest on Rosenkranz and Carver streets. In front of 40 Prentiss Street across the new stairway and behind the house to the west were and still are large patches of unimproved open land, except for 51 Prentiss Street owned by Irene Matas and later by Andee Wright. Above and across the boulevard was the huge empty space that six years later would turn into an official park, complete with 35 years of quarreling community groups, Supervisor- and Mayor-level hardball politics, and an unnecessary residue of hard feelings from residents whose karma put them next to a city-dictated park gate.
The blocks surrounding 40 Prentiss were occupied by an oil-and-water mixture of hip young 1960s couples and blue-collar families who settled here before World War II. Aidan and Ann Kelly lived over the back fence at 87 Banks Street; Aidan was a poet and Ann a part-time artist who grew up there. Next door and downhill from them was "Freddie" Oroszi, a retired construction worker and his unmarried daughter Kathy at 89 Banks. There was no "across the street" from the east side of Banks Street, simply an open field stretching west to Folsom Street and the back windows of Gates Street. On the southwest corner of Chapman and Banks streets was Mr. Boyle, a retired Irish-born contractor, and his family. His son, Jack, was alcoholic by the time he was fourteen and a royal pain in the neck.
Below us on Prentiss Street at 64 were Alice and Mike Matas. Mike was in some kind of blue-collar job, though I don't recall what it was. Mike had a drinking problem, too, as did most of the older homeowners, or so it seemed. At 80 Prentiss Street were Joe and Glenn, a young, live-together couple, who were well into the recreational drug scene, lots of pot and LSD.
Across from 40 Prentiss at 51 was Irene Matas, Mike and Alice's oldest daughter, strictly working-class and hard-boiled like her mother. Down on the corner opposite Joe and Glenn were Robert and Ruth Castro at 67, and two sons, another retired working man. On the southeast corner of Prentiss and Chapman were Bill and Pat Helton and their young children, Melody and Jeremy. Bill was a white liberal refugee from Mississippi, and Pat probably local. Both, while on the relaxed side of things, were willing to get serious about neighborhood issues from time to time.
At the top of Nevada Street at 49 was another blue-collar family: Henry and Eleanor Funk and their two youngest sons, Harry and Chris. Three doors down from them lived another young couple, Norm and Judy Astrin, who visited back and forth with Aidan and Ann, the Heltons, and Joe and Glenn. The younger, newer residents had a small local community that did a lot of partying. We were accepted immediately because of our liberal/left views and willingness to share the occasional joint. None of us communicated well with the blue-collar veterans.
Social relationships aside the hill and roadside slopes were the closest thing to living in the country that anyone could find in San Francisco.
Read more by Jerry Schimmel.
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