Liberty Street Historic District

Liberty Street in San Francisco holds 51 detached frame houses and flats spread along two sloping, tree-lined blocks west of the Mission District flatlands. Built between 1867 and 1911, the buildings show a sequence of styles: early and standard Italianate, San Francisco Stick, Stick-Eastlake, Queen Anne, and vernacular Classical Revival. Lots were sold to individual small builders and investors, so no developer built rows of identical houses, and each design is distinct. The original owners were middle-class: attorneys, foremen, small manufacturers, skilled workers and government employees. Only thirteen of the 37 contributing buildings can be tied to specific architects, none of them among the city's best known. The district was listed because so complete a range of intact middle-class housing in a small area is highly unusual. Later changes, including garages, some re-siding and a few newer apartments, have not altered its residential character, and gardens and street trees still define the setting.