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Friday Slide Show: Portola Hothouses Share This on LinkedIn   Tweet This   Forward This

9 December 2022

Rome has the Forum and Athens the Parthenon but historical ruins are rarely preserved in San Francisco. The soon-to-be-demolished Portola Hothouses are a case in point.

A private group raised $15 million to buy the property from the developer but hit "an impasse in the negotiations" before the Oct. 31 deadline to close the deal.

So the hothouses will be razed, apart from a small section in which "two of the greenhouses plus the steam house with its metal chimney will be saved and restored by the developer when they eventually construct the condos," according to Elisa Laird of The Friends of 770 Woolsey, which tried to save the site.

The area, just west of 101, gets a lot of sun and is protected from the winds off the ocean by the hills to the west of it. It was the prime agricultural area in the city for many years when the area was full of family-run cut-flower nurseries, some 21 of them, operated by Italian immigrants.

This particular lot at 770 Woolsey was owned by the Garibaldi family. They grew roses in these 18 hothouses for 70 years from 1922 to 1992 when the property was sold to L37 Partners to build housing.

In Operation. Colorized version of what the greenhouses looked like when roses were growing in them.

In Feb. 2019 an attempt was made to protect the site as a historical landmark but it eventually failed.

We've long wanted to visit the site to photograph it before it disappeared. So when we heard it was about to be demolished, we drove over there on a sunny day and walked around the block with our camera.

It was an enchanting walk, despite the site of the dilapidated hothouses.

It really is a warm neighborhood, one we frequently visited after we first got our driver's license and, not long after, a girlfriend who lived in the neighborhood.

We'd only been back once, during our college years, when a friend we made in high school was recuperating at her grandmother's house there after she had her wisdom teeth out. Confident she would find us more interesting without her wisdom teeth, we took the opportunity to visit her.

Just before we went back this time, we asked her for the address of that house. And when we got home, we sent her a black-and-white of the old family home in time to share for Thanksgiving.

Brussels House. It was moved from its original site where the reservoir was built.

It turns out, her grandfather owned one of those nurseries himself. Here's her story (edited to protect the innocent):

As it happens, my grandfather had a nursery business right where you were. The city seized it by eminent domain in about 1935. I have to ask my mom today what the city needed it for -- maybe the reservoir.

At any rate, that was when at the city's expense the house that's now on Brussels was moved to its present location. My mom grew up in that house -- first on the property of the nursery and then where it is now.

That nursery business (it wasn't flowers, it was greens, which I didn't know people grew as a business) was where my grandfather started when he came from Italy. He ended up buying it (or one like it) and made enough money to send for his brother. Then they made enough money to send for the next brother and it kept going until all the sibs who wanted to come got here. One sister stayed. We look like her grandchildren.

My own father had the receipts pad from that business forever.

And Mr. Garibaldi! I remember him from small childhood. He grew dahlias on the dead end corner of the street we lived on when I was born. (Maybe he got moved too?). I think it might have been his house and the roses were his business. Gosh what a trip down memory lane.

Rome has the Forum and Athens the Parthenon but to visit our ruins you have to stroll down memory lane -- or look at the photographs.


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