Painted ladies
The most famous row of houses in America was almost painted beige. In the decades after World War II, San Francisco's Victorian and Edwardian homes were routinely covered in drab, uniform colors, their ornate woodwork concealed under coats of battleship gray or institutional cream. Starting in the 1960s, a colorist movement began repainting these houses in three or more contrasting colors, highlighting the architectural details that mass-produced paint had buried. The term painted ladies was coined by writers Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen in their 1978 book of the same name, and it stuck to San Francisco the way the colors stuck to the houses.
The Postcard Row
The most famous painted ladies are the row of Victorian houses along Steiner Street facing Alamo Square, often called Postcard Row. The view from Alamo Square Park, looking east across the row of brightly painted houses with the downtown skyline rising behind them, is one of the most reproduced images of San Francisco. The houses appear in the opening credits of the television series Full House, in countless movies, and on practically every San Francisco tourism brochure. They were built in the 1890s and survived the 1906 earthquake and fire because the fire line stopped just blocks to the east. Their survival was luck. Their colors were a choice.
The Colorist Revolution
The colorist movement that created the painted ladies was led by artists and homeowners who saw the Victorian ornamentation as art worth revealing rather than concealing. Butch Kardum is credited with starting the trend in the 1960s when he painted his Italianate Victorian on Steiner Street in bold blues and greens. Neighbors were horrified, then inspired. By the 1970s, professional color consultants were working with homeowners to develop palettes that highlighted the layers of decorative woodwork, from the cornices and brackets to the window surrounds and balustrades. What had been mass-produced housing for the middle class became, with paint alone, something that looked handcrafted and individual.
More Than One Row
While Postcard Row gets the attention, painted ladies appear throughout San Francisco and in cities across the country. The term applies to any Victorian or Edwardian house repainted in three or more colors to accent its architectural details. San Francisco has approximately 48,000 houses built in Victorian and Edwardian styles, many of them candidates for the treatment. The Haight-Ashbury, Pacific Heights, Noe Valley, and the Castro all have concentrations of colorful Victorians. Each house tells a micro-story about its owner's taste: some go for historically accurate period colors, others for bold contemporary palettes that would have startled the original builders. The painted ladies movement proved that preservation does not require museum-piece reverence. Sometimes it just takes three good colors and a willingness to let the trim speak.
From the Air
The famous Postcard Row is located at approximately 37.78°N, 122.43°W along Steiner Street at Alamo Square in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood. Alamo Square Park's green rectangle is identifiable from altitude. Nearest airports: SFO (KSFO, 11 nm south), Oakland (KOAK, 12 nm east).