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Noe Valley History
Read about Noe Valley from longtime resident, historian, and author Bill Yenne to learn why this neighborhood is so unique.
The Noe Valley Story
By: Bill Yenne
Bill Yenne and his wife Carol have lived in the same home in Noe Valley since 1975. They raised two children here, and their three grandsons each took their first steps in Noe Valley. Carol and their daughter, Azia (who also lives in Noe Valley) have owned and operated Small Frys Children’s Store on 24th Street for three decades.
Noe Valley, which is occasionally and proudly referred to as “the Village within the City,” has a well-earned reputation as a charming and friendly residential neighborhood, a place where neighbors greet neighbors, and where it takes a long time to walk down 24th Street, our major shopping street, because you’re always running into people you know and who want to talk. Noe Valley is known for its warm and friendly ambience, its coffee shops, good schools, weekly farmer’s market, pleasant walking streets, independent retail shops, and for nice people.
Our neighborhood is uniquely situated in the heart of San Francisco. In fact, the geographic center of the City and County of San Francisco is within Noe Valley’s boundaries. Having said that, just where are those boundaries? There are nearly as many answers as there are street names on Noe Valley. Because of the popularity of the neighborhood, realtors have nudged those lines almost to Bernal Heights and halfway to Daly City. However, there is a broad consensus that our neighborhood is bounded on the west by a line that aligns generally with Grand View Avenue and Douglass Street, and on the north by 21st or 22nd Street. On the east and south, Dolores Street and 30th Street provide the widely accepted dividing lines.
Noe Valley’s main business corridor is that part of 24th Street roughly between Diamond and Church Streets, but by some reckoning the retail district may be stretched a couple of blocks either way. Though less busy than 24th Street, Church Street between 24th and 30th Streets is also home to many businesses that enrich the character of the community.
Once, Noe Valley was served by two streetcar lines, complemented by a cable car ran across the hill from Market Street. Today, Church Street is the route of the J car, as well as of cars from the San Francisco Municipal Railway’s historic streetcar fleet making their way north to their own scheduled runs along Market Street and the Embarcadero.
In the evolution of our neighborhood through the last century, there have been the inevitable changes. Noe Valley was once home to at least four movie theaters, including the grand Noe, a classic movie palace on 24th Street that entertained patrons from 1937 to 1952. Today, however, we have a vibrant program of live music and other entertainment in the Noe Valley Town Square on 24th Street.
Historically, Noe Valley evolved from a portion of the old Rancho San Miguel land grant that once sprawled across the south central part of the City that was owned by José de Jesús Noé (1805-1862). He was twice the alcalde (mayor) of Yerba Buena, the settlement that became the City of San Francisco in 1847. In turn, Noe Valley’s street grid was laid out in the Victorian era by entrepreneur John Meirs Horner (1821-1907), who arrived in California in 1846 with the group of Mormons led by Sam Brannan, the newspaperman who became famous for publishing the news that sparked the Gold Rush of 1849.
Horner acquired part of Rancho San Miguel from Noé in 1854, subdivided the land into blocks and lots, named it Horner’s Addition, and gave names to the streets. Many of Horner’s street names remain today, but in around the 1870s, the city government intervened to change some of the names to numbers. For instance, in Horner’s vision, 24th Street was originally “Park Street,” while 22nd and 23rd were originally “John,” and “Horner.” Elizabeth Street, named for Horner’s wife, still remains. Being a Mormon, he named present 25th as “Temple,” and he named four streets “Silver,” “Cristal [sp],” “Pearl,” and “Diamond.” These became Church, Sanchez, Noe, and Castro. When Horner’s Diamond became Castro Street, the parallel street one block west became the present Diamond Street.
Horner lost his fortune in 1857, liquidated his holdings and headed westward to Hawaii. However, the neighborhood that he had imagined was built. The vast profusion of Victorian-era homes in Noe Valley is his legacy. By the 1870s, Italianate Victorian homes could be found on the streets of the Horner’s original map, and by the 1880s, more Victorians of the Eastlake style were going up.
The housing stock in Noe Valley was being augmented in the 1890s by two and three story Queen Anne Victorians with their distinctive peaked roofline. By this time, the famous homebuilder Fernando Nelson, who built thousands of homes across San Francisco, was putting his own mark across Noe Valley.
Another Victorian-era historical event came when the Pioneer, the first automobile to be produced on the West Coast was built in Noe Valley in 1896. J.A. Meyer, a German machinist and engineer, created the vehicle in a garage at 4181 24th Street that is still owned by the Meyer family. The Pioneer itself is now part of the Oakland Museum collection.
The vast Victorian cityscape that the nineteenth century builders brought to Noe Valley survived, as did much of the neighborhood, the great Earthquakes of 1906 and 1989. It still remains in the twenty-first century, having been home to several generations of families, and having come to help define the character of the neighborhood.
As we walk the Noe Valley residential streets today and climb through the surrounding hills and dales, we cannot but enjoy the distinctive architecture that has been a part of our neighborhood for over a century. The classic Victorians remain in the majority, and with them, the character of our neighborhood remains intact.
