We live on the Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo. How about you?

A little history about the neighborhood, from bernalhistoryproject.org:

In 1839, Jose Cornelio Bernal received a land grant from the Mexican government, the Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo, that made up 20 percent of modern-day San Francisco. It is from him that Bernal Heights gets its name. He built his family home at what is now the site of St. Luke's Hospital.

In the second half of the 19th century, Bernal Heights was largely rural cow pasture, farmed by Swedish, German, and Irish immigrants. The arrival of the railroad and a horsecar line along the old Mission Road in the 1860s linked Bernal to the rest of the city, and it began to grow. While a November 1894 story in the San Francisco Chronicle described Bernal Heights as "this paradise of the agile goat and the speckled hen," tanners and brewers thrived along Army Street and Islais Creek, while Mission Street was already bustling with activity....
After the 1906 earthquake and fire, Bernal Heights grew dramatically in size as city residents flocked to its open hillsides, cheap land, and solid bedrock. More than 600 houses were built in Bernal in the year after the disaster. After that, Bernal continued to expand along with the rest of the city, and is now home to more than 22,000 residents.

City records have Mars House down as one of the ones built in 1907. This map, also from bernalhistoryproject.org, shows the houses in Bernal around that time. The red arrow is (or is a couple lots down from?) Mars House.


For folks interested in the history of the Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo, the yellow arrow points at St. Luke's/the original Bernal mansion.

The orange arrow points at the spot where we're still living for the next 8 days (!). It's about a ten or fifteen minute walk from Mars House. Coincidentally, this particular corner had significance in 1907, as well. Streetcar operators, electricians, laundry workers, metal trades workers, & telephone operators all went out on strike in early 1907 for the 8 hour day. Most of them had won by late spring, but the politicians running the city decided that this was their chance to break the Carmen's union, bringing in strikebreakers from the East Coast in early May, & generally forcing the situation to get more volatile & dangerous as the summer progressed. On Labor Day (interestingly...), after a shooting at a streetcar barn up the street from here, a runaway streetcar barreled down 29th St, derailed where the tracks turned left onto Mission, & crashed into a building (which is now an excellent Peruvian restaurant). A small riot ensued.

A newspaper clipping, also from bernalhistoryproject.org:

For those interested in the ending of the story: The union stayed out until the spring of 1908. By the end, a total of 31 people had been killed & another 1100 injured (the majority of deaths & injuries happened in accidents caused by streetcars being run by strikebreakers), and the Carmen's Union was indeed broken -- it terminated its charter later that year. More info & a couple photos here: http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Bloody_Tuesday

Going to Mars House to clean & putter around tomorrow & Sunday. More photos to come shortly!