Last night we celebrated a successful, collaborative launch event with the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco (VA) at SF Heritage’s Haas-Lilienthal House headquarters.
With both of our organizations forming in response to the early days of redevelopment in the 1970s, this event, focused on the VA’s upcoming annual house tours, was a wonderful way to celebrate our shared preservation mission to protect and preserve the places the make San Francisco special.
VA President Rob Thomson shared the Alliance’s work to highlight historic homes in San Francisco, and introduced new self-guided walking tours in three neighborhoods: the Western Addition, Pacific Heights, and the Haight-Ashbury. These tours are available now on the VA’s Open Victorians website. He also premiered originally-produced short videos of Victorian homes in San Francisco and the moving of an intact Victorian over the course of several blocks (The Englander House, from 807 Franklin to 635 Fulton).
SF Heritage’s Communications and Programs Manager Kerri Young and Museum and Tour Manager Pam Larson also shared the organization’s preservation work in these three neighborhoods to preserve the city’s heritage. This included SF Heritage’s first big house-moving project in the Western Addition, the acquisition of its first historic property in Pacific Heights, the Haas-Lilienthal House, and its new arts-focused programming at the Doolan-Larson Building and recent Heritage in the Neighborhoods spotlight in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
The VA surprised SF Heritage by presenting a special piece of original artwork by Alliance member Kit Haskell, a local artist who has long worked with the VA to create special line drawings of the facades of each home on VA home tours. The piece features SF Heritage’s historic Doolan-Larson Building, located on the iconic intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets.
We closed out the night by giving guests an opportunity to tour the Haas-Lilienthal House; the headquarters of SF Heritage, this landmark is open to the public every Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM (except when closed for private events), and is available for special event rentals. Find out more about the house here.
Please mark your calendars for the VA’s upcoming in-person talk at the San Francisco Public Library, “Finding a Sense of Place in San Francisco,” happening Saturday, October 22, 2022 at 10:00 AM. This will close out their hybrid house tour programming, and will include home owners, professional historic interior restorers, a developer and architect involved in the Englander House moving in 2021, and more. Learn more details and register here: https://www.tourvictorians.com/2022-presentation-at-the-library
