Balboa Terrace

One of the earliest subdivisions on Mount Davidson, Balboa Terrace, was filed by Baldwin & Howell in 1912. However, most of the homes were built by Hueter Homes and designed by Harold G. Stoner in the 1920s, with Lang Realty Company in charge of promotion and sales. “A pleasant place to go home to, this neighborhood has the respectability of St. Francis Wood at a lesser scale and, one might hope, price. Its homes are set back from the street. Wiring is underground. Streets are landscaped and include some grassy pedestrian ways.” The subdivision map for Balboa Terrace was created in 1912. Adjacent to St. Francis Wood, with large entrance gates and a central landscaped pedestrian parkway, it was built by Lang Realty with Harold G. Stoner as supervising architect. Architect Patrick McGrew writes of these new neighborhoods being created west of Twin Peaks, “Between the years 1900-1915, without any government intervention or direct support, thousands of San Francisco’s most beautiful homes were built, creating dozens of the city’s most attractive neighborhoods. These homes will never be found in the tourist brochures that describe the sites of San Francisco, for none are located in the tourist zone. These are the homes where San Franciscans live a “Home City, a good place in which to live,” in the words of the 1915 Chamber of Commerce Publication.”