To the woman who opened her door while the others remained closed
fairway
quaint
9
dawn
dawn
DAWN
TOO EARLY
11
M
y
eyes cracked opened .
Instantly, I reach for the phone slapping everything in
site until I feel its familiar surface. The face reads 02:30
am . “Oh,
I got some time.”
I say to myself with slight relief. My body instantly slips back into dream world. My reflexes loosen and the sweet bliss of rest spreads through out my body. Would I dream and what dreams would I have? Sometimes my mind likes to play crude jokes on me. I have dreams about my past. My dreams allow me to witness the current status of a person I have long since spoken to. My first love would fight with his wife. Meanwhile, I idly stand by with mixed emotions and regrets. My alarm jolts me out of my realm. I quickly snatched my phone and stare at the time, 03:00
am . “Fuuuuck!”
I scream in my head. Constantly, I yell within “I don’t
want to doooo stuff.” Sluggishly I creep out of by bed and into my closet. I scavenge
quaint
through my clothes piled up on the floor inspecting each item inquiring whether it is clean enough to wear to work. Finally, I find an acceptable pair of pants and a clean shir t. I throw the items onto by body and make my way to the bathroom.
14
The light from the bathroom shrinks my pupils almost to quickly. I stare into the mirror to see what damage the night has done. My hair has been molded into an abstract sculpture by an imaginary night troll. My beauty regime begins. Although, I can hardly call it that. Everyday when I wake I tame my monstrous mane into a fairly decent ponytail. I’ve won victoriously. Now the mission was to find my shoes. Naturally, when I arrive to my home the shoes are the first things to go. Consequently, I can never find them in the morning. I began to scan the living room floor. Tracing every item with my eyes I still find nothing. The clock in my head ticks louder and louder when finally I think to look under my bed, mission complete. Typically, I would take the bus in morning to save sleep but it was too early. I began my morning commute down to the Bar t station. In order to remotely be on time
through the vacant Westlake Shopping Center. The sun has yet to rise and it feels like I shouldn’t be awake at all. The streetlights illuminate the darkness with an orange glow. Finally, I reached the intersection before Fairway. It is eerie looking the road so empty. When the sun is out the cars speed through and it’s always difficult to cross, but now Westlake was sleeping. People alone in their dreams. Some sleep loudly with big breathes while others quietly slumber. All the cars are parked in their rightful spaces and Westlake remains as quiet as its ever been. I squeeze in between an apar tment and a gated electrical facility to get to Fairway. Her roads are littered with belongings that her inhabitants leave behind. Grocery car ts are abandoned and left for dead for they no longer serve a purpose. At this point I am speeding through her overlooking her grace. I do not have the time to marvel at her beauty just for a moment while she sleeps. I can’t feel any remorse for my actions.
dawn
for my job at Starbucks at 4:30am, I have to walk briskly. I quickly make my way
15
quaint
When she is at her best she ignores me. Fairway may sneak a glance on occasion. Why would she? Everyday commuters like myself take her trail. They don’t stop and stare. The music blast into their ears. They can’t hear what she saying. The commut-
16
ers have no regard for her unique architecture. Nor do they notice the antique cars on her path. Fairway is simply a route from here to home.
dawn
17
quaint
23
day
MEETING WITH A STRANGER
I
day
DAY
25
t
was a perfect day
in Daly City. The clouds filled the sky in a light grey tint.
Ferrous in its pursuit to brighten the city, the sun’s ray peaks through each cloud.
I walk cautiously maneuvering through the complex to reach my utopia. My feet strike the pavement lightly being cautious of my swelling feet. The pain shoots up legs I curse myself for wearing heels earlier that morning. I finally reach the last intersection before my destination. Quickly, I click the arrow on the cross walk to signal the driver of my desires. Earlier that week I received an anticipated un-anticipated call. On the other end of that phone was a woman whose hear t had to be made of chocolate. She spoke in a soft tone. Her words steady and slow. She happened to see one of the many flyers I posted on Fairway the day prior. The flyer simply stated:
quaint
“Hi! I’m Destini Lynch and a student at California College of the Arts. For my studies, I’m creating a book based on the evolution of Daly City and this block. I need to gather
28
information about the histor y of this great city. I would love to have a inter view with you and share your experiences.” If I were a betting man, I’d think no one would of answered. However, I remained hopeful. She gave me almost too many resources on information about Daly City. Some of which were quite obvious like the Daly City library. Too often I get glued to the computer forgetting about many other traditional resources. She offered to speak with me for she has lived on Fairway for almost thir ty years. As I crossed the street, I wondered how she looked, how she was, and how did her house looked on the inside. I have walked along Fairway over thir ty times admiring the home’s beautiful skin, but never knowing their essence. I approached the door cautiously. In her driveway was a bright orange Camaro (at least I thought it was). It was one of the oldest cars on the block.
thought, “That’s one antique fruit.” The door slowly opened and a charming, pale elderly woman greeted me. A snowwhite cat with pale blue eyes glided across the living as I entered. The woman momentary introduced her feline. All the while, I was awed by her magnificent home. It looked I had gone back in time. The house didn’t look a day over 1950. Everything glistened as if It was brand new. The carpet showed no blemishes. It looked even better than my own, and mine was fifty years younger. She greeted me with a smile and invited me to sit down in the kitchen. Most her what she said was similar to the information given on the phone. Information on this quaint city was stored at the museum, library and the ar ticles she thought to keep. The woman kept them in a pink folder. Some of them were yellowed with age. Titles included “Ticky-Tacky” and “Safest place to live”. Soon after we had began the interview. She’d come here for the reason that most do. Daly City offered not only the commerce of the ever so convenient Westlake
day
I had often passes by her bright orange house and the bright orange car. I first
29
quaint
shopping center but simply safety and quiet. She wanted to be near good schools for her children in a big house to keep them in. In a quiet neighborhood to care for them. That’s the simple story of this city guess. Nice and quiet.
30
Her kitchen remained unchanged by time, from the tile on the floor, to the light brown chairs we were sitting in. The kitchen lead to an impressive backyard filled with tiny ceramic figurines. The yard overlooked the golf course behind her house. Par ts of the yard had been replaced with decorative rocks a trend most houses on the block conduced. We then ventured into the living room. It was filled with South American ar t. She told me about her travels and how she obtained each piece. One hundred photographs later, we waved each other good-bye. I also didn’t want to leave. Her home reminded me of a home I once had. A home filled with family and meaningful relics.
day
31
quaint
37
dusk
dusk
DUSK
SIMPLY EXHAUSTED
I
39
t
was around
11:00
am too damn
late at H&M, a very popular clothing store.
Unfor tunately, happen to work there and even worst I was closing. Closing involved
very horrible task such as combing through every aisle and making sure the clothes were aligned in addition to returning the clothes left in the fitting room. People at H&M tend to try on the entire store before selecting one item needless to say there was usually a lot to put away. At this point I am completely exhausted. It is almost midnight but also I have homework for class due tomorrow; since I am in ar t school, these are very elaborate homework assignments. Long story shor t no there was no sleeping scheduled for tonight. Today, I was assigned to close the Men’s depar tment second floor, my depar tment. Which was fabulous because men don’t try on nearly as much as women. With a
quaint
handful of clothes in one arm I quickly disperse the items in the fitting room to the racks. Meanwhile my co-workers are doing the same. After a fifteen minutes rolled by I finally completed my rack when my floor supervisor says, “Hey you guys that are
42
done head down to the women’s floor to help them out.” While my mind blur ts out obscenities I follow his orders down stairs. As I reach the bottom of the escalator, I can’t believe my eyes. The women’s floor is covered with racks of clothes from the fitting room. I have no idea where these clothes go since my depar tment is usually Men’s. My eyes grow heavy and my body weak. The will to work is steadily declining. I look down at my clock. 11:30
pm .
Suddenly, a burst of energy spreads throughout my entire body. I
rush to the elevator door along with my co-workers to clock out. The supervisors’ yell at us to stay. However, their pleads are ignored. The elevator is stuffed with retail workers. The door slowly star ts to close when another faithful employee runs after it. We all hope it closes in her face. One of us presses the close elevator button rapidly. The door shuts just as she approaches only to open again just for her. A roar of sighs fills the room.
dusk
43
quaint
We all rush out of the elevator into the break room. Some of us gather our things from the locker to juice the clock. Others form a line in front of the punch machine. Its high pitch scream echoes as employees enter their credentials. The workday is
46
finally complete. Each of us began our commute. Many us take BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train. It reaches not only the city but Oakland and south of San Francisco. The majority of the workers live in Oakland. However, I take the train to Daly City. My feet pulse with pain with each step to the BART. My back joins in. I am both relived and worried. My day has ended however more waits. I try to figure out a game plan. Maybe I work on most of my homework tonight and complete the rest tomorrow? “You know you won’t want to wake up early for that,” I say to myself. “Then what?” Thoughts race through my mind. Upon my arrival to the platform, my eyes dar t up at the bright red board. It reads, Daly City 3,17 SFO Airpor t 8,20. Good, my train is almost here.
mindless exploration. After only a few moments the train blows pass my face. The
dusk
My hands creep into my pocket to locate my phone. Nothing passes the time like wind runs against the train touching each passenger along the away. Finally, it comes to a stop and the doors retract. I sink into the seat. My back gets the relief it needs. My eyelids grow heavy and muscles relax. “Daly City. Daly City. This is the last stop. This train will be out of service,” the conductor announces. I regain conciseness and sit up in my seat. That nap was just what I needed. The train begins to decreases its speed gradually. I stand up to prepare for the halt. Only a Fairway away. I look forward to her. She gives me hope. Welcomes me after a long day. Fairway feels like my bir thplace. She has beautiful lawns to be cut, traditional houses with loving families much like the family I left behind. She’s taken me home throughout my journey. My back is turned to her, to work, to school, and to my past with only my future ahead.
47
Quaint Fairway was written by Destini Lynch, and History was combination of writings sited in the bibliography. Photographed in Daly City’s Westlake. Typeset in Gill Sans ten points over sixteen leading. Designed and typeset by Destini Lynch. Bound by Key Binding and Printing 1934 Park Blvd, Oakland, CA 94606.
table of contents FAIRWAY 9
Dawn Intense worries as a recall a typical morning commute
23
Day A wonderful mid-afternoon with a neighbor who opened her home to me
37
Dusk Many nights after a hard days work same walk very different experiences
57
Copyright © All rights reserved. No part of this product my be reproduced scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. This is a student project. The book will not be published for any profitable use. Printed and Bound in U.S.A. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Princeton Architectural Press Books. Lynch Destini Quaint/ Destini Lynch Includes bibliographical references. Fairway – San Francisco – California – Pictorial works. City and town life – San Francisco – California – Pictorial works. San Francisco (C.A.) – Pictorial works. San Francisco (C.A.) – Social life and customs – Pictorial works.
quaint attractively unusual or old-fashioned
quaint Destini Lynch
quaint
4
5
history
7
daly city
daly city
HISTORY
OVERVIEW by ken gillespie & bunny gillespie
D
9 aly city is a coastal community
located at the nor thernmost edge of San
Mateo County. Sharing a common border with the City/County of San Francisco, Daly City is known as the “Gateway to the Peninsula.” The City’s area extends from the Pacific Ocean on the west and nearly to San Francisco Bay on the east. Daly City abuts on San Bruno Mountain, a State and County Park which features the highest peak in the area’s hilly terrain. Much of Daly City occupies what were original Spanish land grants, largely unoccupied in the years that followed the sighting of San Francisco Bay by members of an explorator y par ty led by Gaspar de Por tola in 1769. A militar y post, the Presidio, was established near the entrance to the bay, and with a mission founded near a small lake in the center of what became San Francisco, European settlers inhabited this nor th peninsula.
quaint
The few Indians who foraged and hunted around San Bruno Mountain soon disappeared, and their lands were used for cattle grazing. The road leading nor th
10from
other settlements was dubbed Mission Road, and its general location has
changed little from Spanish days. Mission Road forked at what is now known as “top-of-the-hill” in Daly City, one route headed to the mission, the other to the Presidio. Much of the foodstuffs that supplied those outposts was grown in a fer tile valley near the coast in today’s city of Pacifica, a score of miles southwest. While other locations down the San Francisco Peninsula were being settled, ver y little was happening to the area just over the county line from San Francisco. The soil wasn’t too receptive to crop plantings, and it wasn’t until the California Gold Rush that any interest was paid to the open spaces west of San Bruno Mountain. In the early 1850’s a few settlers claimed lands on the old Spanish grants. Among the first was a blacksmith named Rober t Thornton, who set up business
daly city
11
Lake Merced from Daly City Shoreline
quaint
near the south end of San Francisco’s Lake Merced. He was of Irish extraction, as were most of the early score or so of settlers nearby. A moment of fame occurred when a duel between two prominent California political leaders was
12fought
not too far from the county line.
David Broderick, U.S. senator from California, and David Terr y, former chief justice of the State of California, engaged in a period of insults over the role of California as a free or slave state. Their arguments set up two camps in San Francisco, and the duel was considered at the time to be the “first shot to the Civil War.” Broderick was mor tally wounded in a little dale only a mile from Thornton’s original claim, and adverse public reaction to his death kept California on the free side. This was in 1859, just prior to the Civil War. More and more settlers were taking residence in the area, mostly men whose gold dreams didn’t pan out and who sought a living from the soil, or by opening small businesses along Mission road. Many were Irish, and when a potato blight
much better. But, with an increasing population the demand for some organized community benefits was being heard on all sides. Fur ther down the peninsula there were already towns being built, some around the abundant forests west of the road that ran nor th along the San Francisco Bay. Among those working farms in the mid-peninsula was a young man named John Daly. He had star ted out from Boston in 1853 at the age of 13, accompanying his mother by ship. His mother died on the Panama crossing and the youngster found work on a dair y farm on arrival in what became San Mateo County. He learned the dair y business well and married the boss’s daughter. By 1868 he had gained enough knowledge and money to purchase some 250 acres at the “top-of-the-hill.” The enterprise was known as the San Mateo Dair y and was soon supplying milk and its products from the dair y’s own cows and from a consor tium of other dairies. Daly became a prominent businessman and leader among the burgeoning population of the area.
daly city
hur t their already-meager diggings, they sold out to Germans, who didn’t do
13
quaint
14
15
Daly’s Quarry and Gardens
quaint
In the early 1860’s a railroad ran south to San Jose, passing around the westerly edge of Daly’s ranch. Stores, hotels, butcher shops, and other businesses
16blossomed
at the bottom of the hill, a cluster of activity that embraced a new
schoolhouse, railway station, and a Catholic church. The nor th peninsula was growing in population. Many of the newcomers were Italians, who managed to grow crops where others had failed. By the early 1890’s streetcars were running from San Francisco to communities as far south as San Mateo, coming right over Daly’s Hill, as a stop was appropriately named. Daly moved into San Francisco in 1885, seeking better schooling for his children, but maintained his business at the “top-of-the-hill.” He helped establish a bank in the new community, donated funds for the first librar y, and was a political leader if not a resident. Among new businesses in the adjacent Colma area towards the turn of the centur y were cemeteries, recently banned from San Francisco, where land was deemed too valuable for dead folks. Movement now was underway to form a community, but many of the farmers feared city-type taxes and fought against such issues. It wasn’t until the 1906 ear thquake and fire
opened his farmlands for emergency use by the scores of refugees who fled the devastation. Supplying temporar y shelter, milk, butter, eggs, and kindness, Daly began to realize that his lands were far more useful for living on than grazing cattle. He subdivided his proper ty in 1907, and streets were quickly laid out. Many of the original houses were dragged out from mass refugee camps on public lands in San Francisco. A drayer named H.H. Smith bought a number of 14’ x 20’ temporar y houses, dragged them out and set them on inexpensive lots on many locations across the county line. Now the pressure to become a city was growing, and by 1911 there was sufficient suppor t to incorporate. By a slim margin a new town was voted into San Mateo County. It was named Daly City, in honor of the residents’ good friend John Daly. Streets were paved, sewers and a water system were introduced, police and fire protection became a reality, and Daly City was on its way. More schools were built, the city council erected a City Hall half a block away from Daly’s former dair y ranch, and other subdivisions began to fill in the gap tooth’s with new housing.
daly city
in San Francisco that the population surged around the “top-of-the-hill.” Daly
17
quaint
Prior to the ear thquake, dog racing was a big attraction, with trains and streetcars bringing thousands to the sparsely-populated hills of the area across the
18county
line. Boxing matches were held in quickly-built arenas near the edge of
San Francisco, where gambling was less restricted than in the City. John Daly died at home on New Year’s Day 1923. Smith the drayer was now mayor, in his fifth year of an 18-year stretch. Population gradually increased, but ver y little land had been added to Daly City by World War II. There was vir tually no war industr y. That was centered over the southern ridges of San Bruno Mountain, in South San Francisco. Its location by the Bay had fostered heavy industr y, steel, packing, paints, and shipping. Whatever growth there was in Daly City came from temporar y militar y boarding in people’s homes. The young men answered their nation’s call, however, and Bond drives brought enormous per-capita contributions from the citizens of Daly City. The only time the war came in any tangible form was when a U.S. Navy blimp crashed on a Daly City street in 1942, its two-man crew myste-
daly city
19
Daly City fire wagon 1909
quaint
riously missing from an undamaged gondola. A year later two fighter planes crashed in thick fog on the slopes of San Bruno Mountain.
20After
World War II moderate-cost housing began in Daly City as well as in
most other Bay Area communities. A San Francisco builder, Henr y Doelger, purchased some 600 acres of sand dunes and cabbage patches that occupied much of the land between the original Daly City’s westerly edge to the ocean. He built a community called Westlake, which was annexed to Daly City in 1948. He doubled his land purchases and continued building west and south. An earlier settlement, Broadmoor Village, had been under construction for some years but was not par t of any Daly City annexation. Other builders contributed thousands of homes and satellite shopping centers. A huge hospital, Seton Medical Center, came originally from San Francisco as Mar y’s Help Hospital and is now a prominent landmark on the Daly City scene. Regional shopping centers link St. Francis Height and Serramonte subdivisions. Outside the War Memorial Building on Mission Street there is a mission bell commemorating the original route of El Camino Real, “The King’s Highway,” which has not
and soldiers more than 200 years ago. A Bay Area-wide rail system, a huge new freeway complex, and the use of almost all the open space on the westerly side of San Bruno Mountain for housing has raised the population of Daly City to more than 100,000. Much of the increase is an ethnic diversity of newcomers from the Asian and Latin countries. Daly City’s climate is cool, with few extremes. Proximity to San Francisco is unbeatable, and although there is little room for growth in the 7.43 square mile area, the residents do not feel hemmed in. The reasons for settling that Rober t Thornton, John Daly, and other early residents might have felt are probably different from the reasons of latter-day arrivals, but by and large there is a sense of great pride and satisfaction in Daly City reflected by those who live here.
daly city
changed by more than a few feet from the original dir t path used by the padres
21
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22
23
Red Cross Workers
25
westlake
START OF SUBURBIA by rob keil
A
westlake
WESTLAKE
27 fter
W orld W ar II, ten million American militar y personnel returned
home to a contrar y recovering from a long shor tage of materials, manpower, and frankly, domestic innovation. The previous fifteen years of depression and war had sapped the countr y’s industrial resources building including the home building industr y. The cities that most Americans had called home prior to the war were already becoming overcrowded. With the return of soldiers who were finally ready to “settle down”, the housing crunch reached critical mass. Legions of large and small developers rushed to fill the demand for homes , For better or worse, they would ultimately change the American landscape “With a new paradigm living the suburbs. Most developers’ solutions to the postwar housing crunch were far from elegant. Many builders under took ill conceived developments in an effor t to produce as many houses as quickly as possible at the lowest possible cost,
quaint
regardless of the results. Quite often, the creation of infrastructure and amenities ser ve these massive new communities was inadequate, poorly planned, or non-existent. Even in their day, such neighborhoods were criticized as shoddy
28and
irrelevant suburban wastelands devoid of architectural value many cases,
they were. Some builders were forward thinking enough to plan for the needs of the residents of the homes they’d build resulting in “master-planned” communities and cities that included commercial centers, schools, and other amenities. A number of these suburban developments sprung up a round the countr y, among them Park Forest Illinois, near Chicago, and Lakewood, California, near Los Angeles. The most iconic of these was Levittown, New York, which is generally regarded as the “original” postwar suburb, the onto which all subsequent developments would be compared. 1947, the same year the first homes went up for sale at Levittown, land grading began for Westlake.
westlake
29
Henry Dolger (far right) with his friends
quaint
30
31
View of Alemany Blolevard, prior to Westake 1947
quaint
San Francisco’s incarnation of the postwar suburb. Westlake, developed by San Francisco builder Henr y Doegler, was the largest development in Nor thern California. It was built in an unincorporated area that was annexed to Daly City
32in
1948. Westlake was one of America’s first large scale suburbs, and was des-
tined at the outset to include vir tually ever y modern civic amenity. Westlake was also notable because its architecture had style-a quirky mid-centur y look developed by a core team of architects to encompass ever y building in the giant development. Long roof overhangs adorned Westlake’s restaurants, stores, and community buildings. Repeating wood frame corner windows, zigzagging roof lines, and pseudo-deser t landscaping appeared time after time in nearly ever y building in the neighborhood. But Westlake’s most famous architectural icons were its endless rows of boxy houses the inspiration for Malvina Reynolds’ folk song “Little Boxes,” which became an anti-suburban anthem in the 1960s. Magazines and newspapers published ar ticles about Westlake’s “ticky-tacky’’ landmarks to suburban conformity. Famous photographers including Ansel Adams came to the neighborhood and
far as calling Westlake’s thousands of homes an “unchecked desecration of the landscape.”
westlake
captured them on film. Most architects hated the houses. One critic went as
33
Despite its detractors, Westlake has enjoyed considerable praise over the course of its sixty year histor y. In1958, the neighborhood’s architecturally innovative schools began appearing national magazines, like Life, Architectural Forum, and on the cover of For tune. In 1975, Ladies’ Home Journal named Westlake one of the ten best suburbs in America. In 2003, The New York Times ran an ar ticle about Henr y Doelger and his impact on histor y, citing Westlake as one of his most iconic neighborhoods. Recognition of Westlake’s architects and its status as a classic mid-centur y suburb has also gained momentum in recent years due to a resurgence of exposure in newspapers, magazines, and books. Taken in historical context, Westlake upped the ante on what post-war tract houses could be. For example, while Levittown offered home buyers a single floor plan for the first three years of its development, Westlake offered eight.
quaint
Early Levittown houses didn’t include garages, landscaping, or even telephone ser vice. Westlake houses offered all these amenities, and were located literally at the border of a major city, allowing easier access to urban oppor tunities than
34most
suburbs did.
Clearly, Westlake was more than a vast architectural wasteland born of haste and greed, as some believed Thorough examination of the neighborhood and its development process show that it was actually an attempt to deliver the best possible version of the post-war suburb, offering a high standard of living with an absence of obvious class distinctions. Henr y Doelger and his associates aimed to create an almost utopian vision of middle-class affluence, order, and pleasantness. Although they failed to create the “perfect” suburb, it might be said that they came surprisingly close to succeeding.
westlake
35
Henry Dolger’s birthday, age fifty-seven
quaint
HENRY DOLEGER In the years before World War II, American industrialism gave bir th to a new
36breed
of businessmen, the so-called “captains of industr y.” They appeared in
newsreels, adver tisements, and magazine ar ticles hard working self-made men in fedoras who were invariably looking to the horizon, their steely gaze of vision and ingenuity. Although largely a creation of the media, a number of these “captains of industr y” did actually exist. Henr y Doegler, the man who built Westlake; was one of them. Henr y was born into a working-class family in San Francisco in1896. His parents, John and Julia Doelger, owned and operated a small German baker y in the city’s Barbar y Coast area. Henr y’s family, which included his older brother Frank and younger brother John, lived on the second floor above the baker y. At that time, it was a tough neighborhood lined With bars and brothels that catered to the sailors who came to por t a few blocks away.
small grocer y store. The store operated until 1908, when Henr y’s father died. Henr y quit school in eighth grade to help suppor t the family after his father’s death. This would be the end of Henr y’s formal education. He never came close to earning a high school diploma, let alone a college degree. Later in life he admitted, “I’d flunk a fifth grade arithmetic test.” Henr y held a variety of jobs in his early years, including a stint in the merchant marines and another Henr y Doelger with friends on a 1912 camping trip on the coastal dunes south of San Francisco. As fate would have it, Doelger purchased and developed these dunes 33 years later as a bar tender. When Henr y was in his twenties, he and his younger brother John operated a hot dog stand at Seventh Avenue across from Golden Gate Park. A long standing San Francisco legend holds that the menu included bootleg liquor, which is true according to some of John Doelger’s descendants who recall his stories of brewing gin in the family bathtub. Regardless of what they were selling, Henr y was successful, and managed to save up a little money.
westlake
The Doelger family moved to 543 Hugo Street in San Francisco and opened a
37
quaint
38
39
1965 Westlake apartment building
quaint
Meanwhile, Henr y’s older brother Frank had begun a successful career in land speculating and was teaching Henr y the business. Frank helped launch Henr y’s career as a real estate investor. Tragedy again struck the Doelger family when
40Frank
suffered a severe leg injur y and died of gangrene.
Henr y bought his first piece of proper ty in 1922, a small lot at 14th Avenue and Ir ving in San Francisco’s Sunset District. This area in the southwest quadrant of the city was little mo;e , than empty street and sand dunes at the time, but Henr y had heard that a movie theater would be built across the street from the lot. He paid $1,100 for the proper ty and sold it two months later for $25,000. In 1926, Henr y took a huge gamble and bought four teen blocks in the Sunset at $10,000 each. He was deep in debt, but his $140,000 investment was wor th nearly a million dollars within three years. After five years of buying and selling acres of empty lots, Doelger found that the undeveloped land he had so heavily invested in was becoming difficult to sell. It became clear that the best way to sell his lots was to build houses on them. Regardless of . the economic climate, people would always need places
westlake
41
quaint
42
43
Westlake Shopping Center, 1956
quaint
to live. To avoid having his proper ties foreclosed on, Henr y formed a construction company and went into the home building business. He and his brother John built simple but solid houses that suited moderate-income buyers. Henr y
44did
triple duty as contractor, salesman, and head of the company. From 1934
to 1940, Henr y Doelger Builder, Inc was repor tedly the largest home builder in America construction crews routinely finished two houses a day in the 1930s, a remarkable feat of efficiency at the time. Doelger earned the nickname “the Henr y Ford of housing.” In one year alone, his company used over 17 million board feet of lumber. By 1940, Doelger’s payroll had grown to over 500 people. During “World “War II, Doelger offered his ser vices to the Anny corps of Engineers, resulting in about 3,000 units of militar y housing in south San Francisco, Benicia, Vallejo, and Oakland Then came more houses and apar tments in the sunset and Richmond Districts. Doelger’s total output in San Francisco eventually reached about 11,000 homes. But buildable land in the city was quickly becoming scarce. As the war came to a close, a 1,350 acre tract of land just south of San Francisco’s city limits became .available. Doelger placed a bid on this surplus proper ty of the Spring Valley “Water Company. Industr y exper ts
of the Doelger Estate recalls, “People thought he was out of his mind. He’d bought some lots in the Sunset, but this was something new again.” For many years, he would continue to purchase thousands of acres far ther down the coast to fuel his future building plans. Henr y Doelger was a bona fide “tycoon” by this time. Like many tycoons, he had a number of quirks that made the newspapers. Henr y and his wife Thelma lived with a pet monkey named Chi-Chi, who was later replaced by another monkey named Mittens. Henr y was always impeccably dressed and owned hundreds of wild polychromatic neckties. After some point in the 1940s, he wouldn’t be caught dead in public without a toupee. He had a series of hairpieces in graduated lengths, one for ever y day of the week. Each mannequin head in his elaborate dressing room. Doelger felt that his appearance and public persona: determined the value of his most impor tant asset his reputation as a businessman. James Greenish, a Westlake resident who had a business relationship with Doelger, said of him,
westlake
warned that the site was too remote for development. Edward King, executor
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“Henr y’s word was gold. If he liked you and you had a handshake deal, that’s al1 it took...a lot of his business was just done without contracts.” One for mer employee described Doelger this way: “He wanted ever ything associated
46with
his name and his company to be right. He had no tolerance for
mediocrity.” His son Michael recalls, “He had quite an ego. But he’d earned the right to have that ego. Because he was so successful, he was a man who believed he was always right.” He was right again with his purchase of the land that would become Westlake. Doelger had made his move at just the right time, placing himself squarely at ground zero of the postwar housing boom that was poised to begin. But he was not interested in simply building a sprawling suburban housing tract. He envisioned Westlake as a complete community come and help me build a city,” he repor tedly told his employees. This would prove to be no small task, even for a group of people accustomed to Doelger’s high expectations and ambitious under takings. The Westlake development would take Doelger 25 years to complete. He and his employees
westlake
47
Corner house in Westlake
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eventually built 6,500 houses, 3,000 apar tments, two shopping centers, churches, restaurants, office buildings, a medical facility, and several parks.
48Henr y
worked twelve hour days much of the time. He often spent the wee
hours of the morning in his home office, making notes about what he needed to accomplish the next day, and formulating ways of staying on top of the industr y. Michael Doelger explains, “Keep in mind where he came from. He didn’t come from affluence. He’d created it on his own. He came from a side of town and a par t of life that he didn’t want to return to.” Doelger’s competitiveness in business was equally evident in his passion for boats. When Henr y Stoneson, a competitor in the home building industr y, challenged him to a boat race, Doelger had a boat constructed just for the occasion (and won, of course). He also took great personal interest in the design and construction of his yachts. These included the $225,000 eighty-five foot “Westlake I,” which was replaced by the $750,000 one-hundred-eighteen foot “Westlake II” in 1956, and finally the $2 million one-hundred-for ty foot “Westlake III.” When Doelger took deliver y of the Westlake III in Monaco and discovered
docked next to that of Onassis again. Although Doelger was highly competitive, he rewarded those who helped him succeed. Many employees were given unannounced large bonuses, trips, or gifts of down payments on houses. He was almost universally admired by his staff, some of whom stayed with the company for decades. Jack Kendree, who worked with him for 20 years, said simply, “I’ve never met a finer man in my life.” Doelger was on a first name basis with vir tually ever yone in his company, from executives to the men who dug ditches. Kendree’s wife recalled, “It didn’t make any difference if you were someone in the construction depar tment or someone in the clerical section or whatever it was. He’d invite people on the boat or up to the ranch he had,at Healdsburg. Ever ybody went along like a family.” Henr y Doelger considered Westlake the greatest achievement of his half-centur y career. Unlike most developers, he chose to live in the neighborhood he’d
westlake
that Aristotle Onassis’ yacht was larger than his, he insisted his yacht never be
49
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built. His children attended Westlake’s public schools, and he was a familiar face in the daily goings on of the community.
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53
cultural changes
cultural
CULTURAL CHANGES
LITTLE MANILA by benito manalo vergara
O
55 ne will hear the joke
told, eventually, though it hardly ever sounds like
one. It’s almost always delivered casually, thrown out like an off hand rhetorical question, as a matter of incontestable fact. “You know why it’s always foggy in Daly City, right? Because all the Filipinos on their rice cookers at the same time.” This par ticular teller of the joke (Wally, a newsp aper photographer)and I (a student of anthropology) are sitting in scuffed plastic chairs in the living room of his cramped apar tment in the Pinoy capital of the United States. We are both among the 33,000 Filipino residents of Daly City, California, where one out of three people are of Filipino descent. It is a freezing afternoon in late August, and we are looking through the damp glass of the window that faces out onto the quiet suburban street. Out side the fog swirls, tugged by the wind into gentle twists of cotton, spilling over the roofs and parallel-parked Hondas. But inside, it is warm, as it does not take
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much time to heat up the small room cluttered with boxes of bulk food purchased from Costco, cassette tapes, photography books, and an open balikbayan box addressed to Wally’s parents in Quezon City. Wally, with a half-consumed
56bottle
of beer in one hand, leans back in his chair after delivering the punch
line, and waits for my reaction. I grin widely, because it is hard not to. I’ve always found it really funny. Wally is not the first person to tell me the joke. Almost ever y single one of my inter viewees inevitably asks me the question about fog and Daly City. There is ver y little variation in the way the joke is told, whether in English or Tagalog, whether there is a pause between the question mark and the answer. There is nothing here for linguists to savor or puzzle over. In this instance, for the anthropologist, perhaps what counts most is the teller, not the tale; it is in the teller that the kind of cultural difference wor th studying lies. The tale is something we all already share. And yet, despite its silliness, despite its meteorological absurdity, the joke begins to acquire a sense of both political and semi-religious gravity: it inÂv ites us to
cultural
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envision the peculiarly affecting image of thousands of Filipinos depressing the rice cooker switch simultaneously, about half an hour before dinner is ser ved, in a daily culinar y ritual that comes almost as naturally as breathing. And the steam
58collectively
rises up and out, the fog becomes a unanimous, quiet declaration of
ethnic presence. In this city, you may not always see the Pinoys. They may be hard at work at their jobs, they may be huddled in privacy behind their drawn cur tains, they may be inside the warmth of their kitchens. But they are there. The fog proves it. My anthropological standards, Daly City may not seem par ticularly exciting not the street violence of Naples, or the humid rain forests of the Amazon, or the urban grit of Spanish Harlem, or the harrowing war zones of Angola but sometimes what seems deeply ordinar y to the reader can yield the most ethnographically fascinating data. The relative placid足ity on the surface of Daly City is matched by the pleasant orderliness of rows, by the way the candycolored homes wriggle along the brown spines of the Colma hills. But unlike
anger and American adulter y (and perhaps a murder or two) Daly City has an alternate, more fixed ident ity: it is known, both in the Philippines and in America, as “the Pinoy capital of the United States.” Filipinos live and work among Filipino rest aurants, television shows, video stores, newspapers, and concerns that allow them to imagine a life in many ways indistinguishable from life “back home.” This was because many Filipinos had already shown their disapproval with their feet. Whether those nineteen percent, or about eight million, would indeed join their (at the time) seven million compatriots living and working overseas was another matter. Nonetheless, their inclin ation to leave indicates the crisis in which the Philippines found itself-the continuation of a long discontent that impelled people to seek th their for tunes elsewhere.
cultural
cinematic suburbia-where the trimmed hedges are mere facades foil: repressed
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Many of the people who left-specifically, those who left for the United States have a complicated, ambivalent relationship with the countr y and the people they left behind. They are accused of betrayal, are tugged in different direc-
62tions
by familial and national obligations, experience nostalgia and guilt, and
repeatedly turn between the homeland and their adopted countr y. Pinoys in the United States live their lives as migrants caught up, willingly and unwillingly, in a network of sometimes competing definitions of identi足t ies, connections, and loyalties. The Filipino community in Daly City also exemplifies the ambiguities produced by the intensification of connections between Filipinos in the United States and in the Philippines. I contend that these intensified links-and the act of migration itself-are not necessarily a direct result of colonialism, as many scholars of Filipino American studies have argued. Moreover, these transnational links, which supposedly characterize a new form of migration, do not necessarily lead to a redefined, more fluid concep足t ion of Filipino (and American) identity and belonging.
bibliography bib
Chandler, Samuel C. “Gateway to the Peninsula;” a History of the City of Daly City, San Mateo County, California,. 1973.Gillespie, Bunny, and Dave Crimmen. Daly City. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub., 2011. Print Gillespie, Ken, and Bunny Gillespie. “History of Daly City.” History of Daly City. Accessed March 18, 2015. Keil, Rob. Little Boxes: The Architecture of a Classic Midcentury Suburb. Daly City, CA: Advection Media, 2006. Rossman, Deborah S. Images of America: Westlake. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2008. Pinoy Capital: The Filipino Nation in Daly City. Asian American History and Culture. Temple University Press, 2009
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D
66
Daly City 9 David Broderick 12 David Terry, 12
F Filipinos 53
G Gaspar de Portola 9
H Henr y Doegler, 32 H.H. Smith 17
J James Greenish 45 John Daly 13
L Lake Merced 10
Mission Road 10
P Pinoy 53 Presidio 9 Pacific Ocean 9
R Robert Thornton 10
S San Bruno 9 San Francisco 9 San Jose 13 South San Francisco 18
T Tagalog 54 The New York Times 33 top-of-the-hill 10
W Westlake 28 World War II 18
index
M
67
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68
69
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table of contents
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HISTORY Daly City A overlook on the very beginning of Daly City and its development Westlake Henry Doelger constructed the Westlake homes and transformed a neighborhood Cultural Changes Over the pass few years the Filipino population in has grown emesly, becoming Filipinotown