Painted Ladies

Those seven Victorian houses across the street, lined up with the downtown skyline behind them — you've seen this view a thousand times. It's on every San Francisco postcard, every tourism brochure, every establishing shot in every movie set in this city. But the houses have a color history that would surprise most people.

They were built between eighteen ninety-two and eighteen ninety-six by a developer named Matthew Kavanaugh. Originally, Victorian houses in San Francisco came in all kinds of colors — bold greens, deep reds, ornate gold trim. That was the style. But during World War One and World War Two, the Navy had huge supplies of surplus gray paint. It was cheap, it was available, and it was patriotic. Thousands of San Francisco Victorians got painted battleship gray. The whole city went monochrome.

The color revolution started in nineteen sixty-three, when an artist named Butch Kardum decided to paint his Victorian house in bold, contrasting colors that highlighted the ornate architectural details. Neighbors were horrified. Then they were intrigued. Then they started copying him. A movement spread across the city, house by house, block by block. By the late seventies, the trend had a name — the term "Painted Ladies" was coined in a nineteen seventy-eight book about San Francisco's colorful Victorians.

Here's a number that puts it in perspective: San Francisco has roughly forty-eight thousand Victorian and Edwardian houses. These seven get all the fame because of the view and the filming locations, but the real joy is wandering the neighborhoods — the Haight, Pacific Heights, Noe Valley — and discovering thousands more, each with its own personality. These seven are the ambassadors, but the whole city is the gallery.