Merry Chirstmas

For as long as I can remember, back to the early 1990's, this house has at 34th & Quintara has been elaborately decorated for Christmas.


It's a tradition of mine, no matter where I live in the area to drive by at least one evening to enjoy the lights. But there's a lot see in the daytime, too.



We've been by twice so far after a Christmas events this year. It was raining both times which made for some lovely reflections.


Wisely, the Holy Family is up high, keeping the Baby Jesus safe from naughty tricksters.


I've spoken to the home owners a few times. They have the lights on timers.


Keep your eye on this house. It gets decorated for many other holidays as well.

26th and Moraga

Remember when I said that it was rare to see the same misspelled street name on all four corners of an intersection? Well, I was at the corner of "Z6" and Moraga toady and guess what?

This last one is really weird. It looks like the "Z" was initially left off, giving the opportunity to put in a "2". Instead, yet another Z was scratched in.

I also said that Moorish arches are rare in the Sunset. Not so much it seems. Here they are mixed with faux half-timbers.


Here's the reason I was at 26th and Moraga.


Another curlicue (more here and here):

Classical

I thought I had seen pretty much everything in the Sunset, and it would just be a matter of re-discovering, or looking at things in a different way from now on. But I really have no memory of these houses on 29th Ave.

I wonder when I see two houses painted the same color. Are they owned by the same family? Do neighbors just want to coordinate? Did they get a discount by hiring painters for two jobs at once?

But there is more than that going on here. Look at the statues. My Greek and Roman mythology is a little rusty, but I think that's Venus and Zeus.



The house on the left has some other additions. A cherub:


And these guys:

The house on the right isn't quite as fancy, but they've added gold paint here and there.


But it has statues of Artemis (or is that Diana?) and Apollo.


I love it when people go that extra step to make their homes stand out.

Knights

This building on Judah has a lot of neat details.


I like the round windows, the little balconies, and the wavy rooflines.


But I especially like the knights.

Nameless Detail

I shot this on Irving Street a month or two ago. I haven't been able to find a name for the stacked trim. They kind of look like ribbons. I couldn't recall seeing it anywhere else.


Yesterday I saw this building. It's a different application, but similar effect. Except this looks like fondant ribbons on a fancy cake to me.

Favorite of the Moment

This house caught my eye because it is so geometric and Art Deco compared to so many of the meditarranean influenced Sunset homes.

Trying to Blend

While this is obviously new construction, I like how they tried to make it blend in to the neighborhood a bit with roof tiles and ornaments

Wivern

These dragons caught my eye. I believe they are wivern, two legged dragons.

It was hard to get a good photo of them. Here they are in place:



It's kind of hard to see the details so I altered this photo to make them stand out:


This commercial building was erected in 1926.

Edited on February 4, 2008:
You can spot the left side of the building on page 43 of "San Francisco's Sunset" in a photo of Kieser's Colonial Creamery dated 1946.

Garland

I'm attempting to catalog all the shields; rosettes; swags; garlands; etcetera that I can find. It seemed like there were many different styles, but I thought I would find that actually it was limited. Each builder in the 1920's and 30's would have had a few stock styles, I assumed. It doesn't seem true, there is a lot of variety. This is my favorite so far:


This building had several different ornaments:

Awesome Details

It's amazing what you can see if you just look up. This apartment building, constructed in 1928, is just full ornaments.




The entry is amazing.


It's a treasure trove of all the ornaments I've been documenting.