2007 Noe Valley Horner's Addition Tour

From its beginnings as a blue-collar village, Noe Valley has gained a reputation as the quintessentially charming San Francisco neighborhood, with central location, the City's best climate and a large stock of Victorian homes. Once the rancho of San Francisco's last Mexican magistrate, the eponymous Don Jose de Jesus Noe, the valley was developed in the 1850s by John Meirs Horner who laid out the present streets. This architectural heritage survived the 1906 fire due to underground streams, a lot of effort and a single working fire hydrant, which is ceremonially painted gold each April.

Homes open for the event included Italianate, San Francisco Stick, and Queen Anne styles, primarily built between the 1870s and the turn of the last century. Visitors saw interiors which range from classic Victorian to sleek contemporary. Decorative touches include elegant wallpapers, dramatic hand-stencilling, vintage and state-of-the-art kitchens, and domestic taxidermy in the Victorian taste.

There will be a landmarked home which also earned the San Francisco Beautiful award... the home which boasts the tallest palm tree in the Valley, a garden lovingly pampered by a Golden Gate Park professional, and the panoramic views for which Noe Valley is renowned. The tour also included two historic churches.

House Tour Acknowledgements

Our usual tour requires hundreds of volunteers, house captains and their docents, selecting a neighborhood and the houses, researching the house histories, house drawings, design and layout of our catalogue, and more. The Pandemic challenged the Alliance to adapt and find new ways to get out our message of exterior and interior preservation, for the purpose of protecting our collective cultural memory.

Our much smaller volunteer group has produced a ground-breaking series of videos, in a format the organization couldn't have imagined even one year ago. So, we'd like to honor all those volunteers who came before us, keeping the preservation flame alive, and having the confidence to take new risks for calling attention to the Alliance's mission. And a special honor to two long-time members, Richard Reutlinger and Jo Ann Vandenburg, who both passed away since our 2018 tour. And Richard Zillman, longtime member gone now for several years, who foresaw this time of going beyond the Bay Area in our marketing efforts. Dedicated volunteers and visionaries, our tour acknowledges their contributions to the founding and on-going activities of the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco.

Virtual House Tour Committee, 2020

This tour could not have been possible without the professionalism of our members Fiona McDougall and Jonathan Villet, of One World Communications owcom.com

  • Chair: Gail Baugh
  • House Selection Committee: Gail Baugh, Anson Moran, Ray Zablotny, Bonnie Spindler, Bathsheba Malsheen
  • House Histories: Gail Baugh, Leah Culver, Ray Zablotny, George Horsfal, Joseph Pecora; editing and owner interviews Tamara Hill
  • Legal: Megan Smith, Derek Schaible, Fiona McDougall, Anson Moran
  • Development Committee: Mike Hammond, Callie Enders, Ray Zablotny, Bonnie Spindler, Joe Mallet
  • Creative and Production Committee (branding assets, web design, pre-production, filming and production/editing): Amy Firman, Fiona McDougall, Jonathan Villet, Christina LaLanne
  • Webinar: Yana Rathman, Mimi Sparrow, Gail Baugh, Jennifer Lindsay, Jamie Lopez, Rob Thomson
  • Marketing outreach/social media Committee: Fiona McDougall, Gail Baugh, Mimi Sparrow, Jennifer Lindsay, Megan Smith, Christina LaLanne, Jonathan Villet, Amy Firman, Kyle McGuire
  • Newsletter editors: Megan Smith (mail version) and Andra Young (digital version)
  • VASF website: Kyle McGuire
  • Still Photography: Anson Moran, Project Turtle
  • And our lovely host for each video: Bonnie Spindler

Contractors

  • Videographer & Editor: Jonathan Prewitt, Jmphilms
  • Grip and Lighting: Michael June Vallejo
  • Social Media: Victoria Spillman, Spillman Digital