Bohemians Thrived at Carville

By Woody LaBounty

In the 1890s, well before orderly rows of stucco-clad homes were built across the Sunset District, a colorful and unique bohemian community flowered in sandy hillocks near today's 48th Avenue and Lincoln Way. Obsolete horse cars and cable cars were used to create residences, vacation homes, clubhouses, restaurants and even churches. Judges, lady bicyclists, physicians, inventors and some of the most admired artists and writers of the day came to enjoy this odd streetcar colony, which was called "Carville-by-the-Sea."

The seeds of Carville's existence were planted when the electric streetcar made obsolete older forms of public transportation, such as cable cars and horse cars (railed vehicles pulled by horses). Transit companies advertised the old cars for sale - $20 with seats intact, $10 without - and purchasers across the Bay Area found inventive new uses for the vehicles. A cobbler used an old horse car as his shop in Oakland; a father in Bernal Heights surprised his daughter with one as a backyard playhouse; and an imaginative man in Tiburon set four cable cars on a raft to create a houseboat. Such examples inspired a beach hermit by the name of Colonel Charles Dailey to transform a large horse car into a snack bar and coffee house at the end of Lincoln Way in 1895.

Dailey soon had neighbors. A judge rented a car near Dailey as a beachside getaway. A group of lady bicyclists named the Falcons leased an old horse car and used it as a clubhouse to rest in after long rides. By 1898, there were seven old transit cars in the sand dunes around 48th Avenue. The beach dwellers threw formal dinner parties and decorated the inside of their vehicles in the style of high Victorian homes with lace curtains, oil paintings, tapestries and filigree of all kinds accentuating the fine woodwork interiors.

The community of Carville boomed in 1899 when a real estate man named Jacob Heyman saw the success of the rented cars and took the idea a step further. Heyman was trying to sell land around today's 47th Avenue and Kirkham Street and, to sweeten deals for the unimproved property, he began offering old streetcars as part of the package. For $35 up front and just $7.50 a month a person could buy a lot and two cars to move into. Heyman also offered to build "novel seaside cottages" and provided a couple of dramatic examples by raising exposed cable cars up to the second stories of buildings. More importantly to Carville's growth, the real estate man drilled a well to supply fresh water for the new neighborhood.

Artists, writers, musicians and fashionable bohemians looking to revel in the offbeat were all drawn in by Carville's charms. Writer Jack London and poet George Sterling visited; painter Xavier Martinez rented an old horse car as a studio; and novelist Gelett Burgess used Carville as a setting in two of his works.

Magazines and newspapers as far away as London and Paris reported on the artistic quirkiness of its residents and the inventive construction techniques that could employ as many as 10 old horse cars in one "mansion."

Improved transportation, the rise of the automobile and an increased demand for housing after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire brought a population boom to the Outer Sunset District in the first decades of the 20th century. Concrete sidewalks eventually replaced plank paths on the dunes, water mains pushed out windmills, and conventional homes began to outnumber the car houses. The odd "city of cars" melted into a conventional residential neighborhood, and soon only the most intrepid could discover the rare cable car hidden beneath a facade of shingle or plaster.

One car house still stands on the Great Highway. From the street it looks like nothing more than a shingled box, but the interior reveals a unique living room created out of two cable cars while the bedroom is an intact horsecar.

Carville wasn't unique. As older forms of transportation gave way to more efficient methods across the nation, similar car communities arose in Washington State, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and elsewhere. But San Francisco, always a center of eccentricity, innovation and glorification of the alternative, took the idea to its height.

Woody LaBounty is the author of the new book "Carville-by-the-Sea: San Francisco's Streetcar Suburb," available at www.carville-book.com or at a local bookstore.