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Parkside Branch Library
Architects Appleton and Wolfard designed eight modern libraries in the 1950s and 60s for the San Francisco Public Library.
Parkside Library Parkside branch of the San Francisco Public Library at 1200 Taraval Street., circa 1950 -
Architects Appleton and Wolfard designed eight modern libraries in the 1950s and 1960s for the San Francisco Public Library, the largest number completed by a single firm. The first, the Parkside branch at Taraval Street and 22nd Avenue, set the pattern for the rest. In the early 2000s, these buildings faced rehabilitation to bring them into compliance with current codes and ADA rules under a bond passed by voters in 2000. The upgrades did not alter their modern character significantly.
On the Map (click marker for larger map)
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by Woody LaBounty
July 2005
In 2002, an old-timer bought me a beer in Fahey s bar and we got to talking about the older businesses along Taraval street. I asked how long he lived in the Parkside and he gave me a canny sideways squint. You grew up out here, he nodded, otherwise you d have called it the Sunset . People forget that this is the Parkside. Parkside real estate map showing transit lines, published by G. H. Umbsen & Co. Parkside District Improvement Club scrapbooks, circa 1908 -
The Parkside as a neighborhood started in July 1905 when a syndicate led by William Crocker announced they had quietly bought land from the estate of Adolph Sutro and others to create a new million-dollar development. The park of Parkside was not Golden Gate Park, but rather the stand of trees and plants around Laguna Puerca (now called Pine Lake, and often called Mud Lake by old-timers). The area s remoteness at the time is obvious in this quote from a
My COVID-19 anxiety dream starts off innocently. I’m talking with Dr. Fauci and of course we are wearing masks. Then I accidentally trip him and he tumbles, mask falling off, all hell breaking loose in some vague, infectious, dystopian way like Alice down the rabbit hole. I believe the dream is a metaphor for our epic collective failure in responding to the pandemic.
As an epidemiologist, I am acutely aware of how chronic disparities in the U.S. have imposed a far greater risk of COVID-19 on some communities. But I have also had a chance to see our potential to deepen civic society, if we get our act together.