Take Part | Take Part asked "Is there room for San Francisco in

1833 Page St, San Francisco, CA 94117

In the late 1890s, wealthy residents of San Francisco built grand homes in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, lured by its proximity to vast open spaces like the nearly mile-long Panhandle; the hilltop Buena Vista Park; and Golden Gate Park, whose miles of sand dunes had been replaced by lush, verdant landscaping. Most of the homes in the Haight survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, and many displaced citizens subsequently found temporary housing in the neighborhood. By the 1920s, large apartment buildings and subdivided Victorians provided multifamily accommodations, which helped sustain citizens during the Great Depression. The scale model of the neighborhood showcases all of these features, as well as historic Lone Mountain, a former cemetery and current outpost of the University of San Francisco.

What isn’t visible on the 1938 model is the Haight’s transformation in the 1940s and ’50s as a working-class, African American neighborhood where many black homeowners acquired properties after being ousted from the Western Addition. Similarly unrepresented is the Haight-Ashbury that would rise to fame in the 1960s as the nation’s counterculture epicenter, thronged by hippies, especially during the 1967 “Summer of Love.”