#Tiled steps sf Patch
#Tiled steps sf plus

There's the occasional graffiti, or the need to replace broken tiles. gang forever, 1945-50') and affirmations of devotion (' Meher Baba').Īudette has moved back to Rio, but Yee Xavier remains.

Look close and you see the names of families and local businesses but also hints of local history ('16th Ave.

#Tiled steps sf plus

There are frogs and swordfish, leaves and squirrels, plus larger patterns that flow from flight to flight. Animal kingdomsīy August 2005, the old concrete steps wore a new coat of many colors, assembled by Crutcher and Barr and volunteers in mesh-reinforced panels that then were glued into place. Fundraising gained speed when potential donors were told they could put their names on tiled artwork for $150 or $300. They hired artists Aileen Barr and Colette Crutcher, and arranged for the Golden Gate Neighborhood Association to handle the checks. The pair got to work chasing grants, talking to city officials, stirring neighborhood interest through petitions and meetings. Audette saw no reason that her local concrete steps could not be the same. In that city, tiled stairways are community treasures. One of these passers-by was the second catalyst, Jessie Audette, who had moved nearby from Rio de Janeiro. Neighbors would see the work in progress, introduce themselves and sometimes offer to help. They ran irrigation from their house to water the drought-tolerant shrubs while they put down roots. She and her husband purchased a truckload of soil to stabilize the sand. Yee Xavier, who inherited a love of gardening from her parents while growing up in Hunters Point, took on the weedy slope as a personal task. The homes along the 163 steps angle to the north or south, showing little interest in what's between.

The stairs then had a utilitarian feel: Their purpose was to get from point A to point B as directly as possible, Moraga Street on either end. Yee Xavier and her husband moved to 16th Avenue in 1994, drawn by the broad Pacific view and the relative affordability of a neighborhood where tight-packed homes line up on hillsides with little fuss. 'All this started because I like planting,' said Alice Yee Xavier. A native San Franciscan and a newcomer from another continent wanted to make things better, and they kept pushing until things fell into place. Long before that, Grace Marchant spent 30 years making the Filbert Steps of Telegraph Hill into a lush, nearly vertical oasis.īut even in this context, the new look of an 80-year-old staircase three blocks east of 19th Avenue is a potent distillation of what can bring about the changes that then are cherished the most.

#Tiled steps sf Patch

Other transformations of this sort have occurred in the past decade: Quesada Gardens in the Bayview, an abundant palm-shaded median and Potrero Hill's Pennsylvania Garden, a reborn patch of land along a freeway off-ramp. It exists because of inventive neighbors - an aspect of San Francisco's culture that continues to reshape the city in small surprising ways.Ĭlick here to see more images from Golden Gate Heights. The colorful stroke known as the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps is an unexpected sight amid the quiet blocks of Golden Gate Heights, the last ridge before the hilly center of the city descends to what once was a plateau of shifting dunes.