Stairway across from the Ritz Carlton on Nob Hill.
by James A. Bacon
I am fascinated by small urban spaces that normally elude the attention of city planners, star architects and travel magazines. In low-density settings where low value is placed on land, inhabitants pay little heed to the small spaces. But in densely settled cities, residents apply loving creativity to making the most of the nooks, the crannies, the alleyways and the odd bits of land around them. The accumulation of detail in these small spaces is part of what makes a city like San Francisco great.
Some of the most interesting sights I saw here were tucked away in alleyways and in-between spaces. Many of them were stairways. The photo above shows a particularly beautiful stairway that led between two houses to a destination up the hill. (I was too tired trudging up and down hills to see where it led.) With manicured trees and flowers along the edge, this stairway was a significant enhancement to the neighborhood.
The stairway below is all the more interesting because it is all the more ordinary, part of an alleyway on a steep hillside that provides access to several nondescript apartment dwellings. It shows few signs of anyone having lavished money upon expensive materials or landscaping upon it, yet it is visually interesting nonetheless.
I love the front doorway shown at right. The house opens almost directly onto the sidewalk, leaving only a tiny transition space. The owner framed that space with a short brick wall and carefully selected plants. I was particularly struck by the way a heavy vine branch had been trained across the door well. It must be spectacular when the vine is in full bloom.
In my perambulations — I perambulated a lot because I am navigationally challenged and wound up in off-beat places — I came across this little shrine. I have no idea who placed it there or why, but I found it heart-warming. Someone’s private faith had inspired them to create a small thing of public beauty.
One more shot, this also of a narrow stairway. The open space is a little wider here, giving it a plaza-like feel. The ornamental trees and planted fringe (presumably maintained by the property owners) frame it very nicely.
We saw nothing like this in Silicon Valley where the public realm is dominated by roads and parking lots (I’ll have more on that shortly). The corporate campuses have lots of landscaping, some of it very attractive, but there is so much acreage that no one tends to the small spaces. You need an older, denser city to find places like these.
Beautiful examples!
I’m inspired to bring two of my favorites from Charlottesville, VA, whence I come:
The courtyard behind the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society (enter from the south side of Jefferson Street between 2nd and 3rd Sts. NE). Really, given the footprint of the building and the property line, this amounts to only a few dozen square feet, but they’re nicely laid out and the space features well-planted containers and patches of ground. A lovely place to enjoy a pipe or execute a watercolor or just sit and think for a bit.
The alleyway behind the Teahouse on the Downtown Mall. This alley goes between 4th and 5th Sts. SE, and someone who owns or anyway is responsible for the ground floor of the property nearest 4th has made a lovely small container garden off the alley. The alley proper has no place to sit, but I still find it a nice place through which to walk and for a moment, shake the noise and bustle off of me.
Mr. Bacon– I would love to hear you expatiate a little about why you think the kinds of spaces you’ve described were evident in SF and not in Silicon Valley. The particulars, of course, are contingent, but perhaps we can discover some “rules of thumb” beyond simple brute density.
Great examples — my wife and I love the Charlottesville malls and get there at least once a year. I’ll have to check out the examples you talk about.
I cannot speak with any authority about Silicon Valley, where I spent less than a single day, so I cannot say that S.V. has no examples of beauty in small spaces. All I can say that I didn’t see any beautiful small spaces. Still, I think the key differences are these: the value of property and the age of the property. S.V. has lots of space compared to San Francisco. Everyone uses land-extensive landscaping techniques. When property is perceived as really valuable, people make more intensive use of it and use their creativity to enhance what its appearance. The other factor is age. The longer a piece of property has been developed, the more time someone has had to come up with a cool idea of what to do with it. Often, I’d wager, improvements are laid down piece by piece, almost in geological layers. That’s why so many old cities of Europe have so much charm — people have been working on them for centuries!