The Oddest Suburban Town in America
PROBLEM; Given a Sandlot and an Old Street Car, Make a Comfortable and Pretty Home Therefrom,
What has been done by the people of that most unique town Carville-by-the-Sea
Down among the sand dunes it lies, between the wide ocean driveway and the bowery tangle of green
which hems in Golden Gate Park on the southern side. The electric cars buzz
merrily Cliffward and cityward just behind it, and in front the blue
Pacific stretches away into infinity. Above is the benediction of
California's summer sky, and around it and through it is always the free
invigorating sweet of the salt sea wind.
It is a settlement which has grown with almost the rapidity of a mining camp
there the fortunate first-comers have been unselfish enough to announce that
they have "struck it rich."
Six months ago in this locality the ever-shifting sand mounds lay bare and smooth along the line of shore, unmarked by human habitation save a roadside refreshment place or two, and one house of a style of architecture so odd as to make it a special object of interest to all who rode or drove or wheeled past on the broad highway which it faced.
Street cars of the type superseded by cable and trolley were the foundation of this residence, which was the practical expression of an original idea of a progressive physician who was and is a firm believer in the efficacy of sand baths in assuaging divers ills of poor humanity.
Two of the large "double-enders" which used to bear amusement-seekers back and forth from Woodward's Gardens in the zenith of that place of entertainment's fame were placed side by side on a foundation of solid timbers. These, one of them used as a reception and sleeping room and the other as dining hall and kitchen, formed a nucleus around which has been built a commodius summer cottage, which painted white and surrounded by a bit of garden coaxed into being in spite of sandy discouragement, forms a gracious ornament to the landscape at the present time.
Where the enterprising doctor led others were swift to follow. The sincerest of flattery - that of imitation - was bestowed upon him almost at once. The prospect of enjoying all the beautiful pleasures of a seaside resort free from the hovering horror of a prospective bill so large as to cloud one's happiness for months proved alluring. The certainty of being able to accomplish this within so short a distance from the Pacific Coast metropolis as to make business and amusement there merely the matter of a little over a brief half hour proved irresistible to several San Franciscans even before the winter rains ceased and summer smiled on the land.
To own or rent a house at the seaside is a charming thing, even more charming than to live under the hospitable roof of the most attentive and agreeable of seaside bonifaces, but houses in desirable localities, whether owned or rented, usually come high. Then, however, one can, without going through the agonies of house-hunting or the miseries of house-building, order a cozy yet commodious "hand-me-down" residence one day and have it delivered on the lot the next ready for occupancy, one of the problems of civilization seems to have been solved.
A mild boom in sandy real estate and discarded street cars followed public understanding and appreciation of Dr. Cross' happy thought, and the settlement of Carville sprang into being.
One of the first to step from the wilderness of civilization into the civilization of the wilderness was a school-teacher, who had temporarily been conquered in an unequal battle waged between the instructors in the various schools of our city, and the "solid seven" of our last year's Board of School Directors.
With a grown daughter to support and numerous other calls upon her generous but slender purse, this lady had yet managed to save enough out of her earnings to buy a "south of the park" lot, feeling sure that it would prove to have been a profitable investment in years to come, but having no thought of its present possibilities.
When, however, it became impossible to collect the moneys justly due her from the city, and the question of paying rent out of an invisible income became a serious one, the teacher took a Saturday car ride out to the Cliff House with a vague idea of putting up a tent on the one spot of earth that she could call her own and living there in primitive fashion until right conquered might and she came into her own.
She came back to the city with a new idea which she had gathered by the wayside, and she put that idea into execution without delay. From the window of the electric car she had seen the house of the disciple of Esculapius nestling among the sand hills, and the sight had been an inspiration.
A day or two later another car made its unwilling appearance in the solitude of the sands, and then on the next Saturday an express wagon came from the city loaded with a few simple articles of furnishing and a flat-topped trunk, and on the next car out came the teacher and her daughter and took possession of their new home. There was no rent to pay now, and for a little while the heroic daughter bravely sold papers to help out household expenses and the mother's necessary car fare to and from her, at that time unremunerative, work. These two live in Carville still, but under happier auspices, and their home, beautified inside and out by the exercise of woman's wit and a wisdom, is one of the “show spots" of a the locality - a monument to the resourceful bravery of a thoroughly independent and self-reliant human being.
The two houses made a brave showing from boulevard, beach and car line and awakened envy in many an erstwhile peaceful and city-contented breast, and soon the tide of urban emigration turned that way.
At first the plain and simple car, made stationary by certain mysterious - to the lay mind - bracings and complications of timbers was considered perfectly satisfactory as a residence. The interior of a street car is far more spacious than such persons as have only tenanted them for purposes of travel can easily realize.
When one rides on vehicles of this description only during the crush of a morning and night and holiday the predominant impression retained by the mind is of their limitations rather than of their true dimensions. A double car, freed from its late and early tangle of uncomfortably crowded passengers and their bristling array of encroaching knees and elbows and baskets and bundles, is a pretty good sized apartment after all when it comes down to a matter of actual measurement. By a little arrangement of portieres two people, and possibly three, can dwell in one quite conveniently and pleasantly, provided always that they are of amiable dispositions to begin with, and this fact has been proven by the inhabitants of Carville-by-the-Sea time after time.
At first where the family to be sheltered was actually too numerous to be tucked away anywhere inside one car another was wheeled alongside and an aristocratic double house was the admirable result. This idyllic simplicity of thought expression, however, did not long satisfy the vaulting ambition of the progressive beach dwellers. At least those of them who had become landed proprietors and owned their own unique habitations. The chief pleasure of owning one's home seems to the generality of men to lie in hammering on it and adding to it and taking from it and changing it about according to their own sweet wills, and this pleasure the Carville people fairly revel in.
Loads of lumber began to appear and shift themselves from cart to sand. Busy men in shirt-sleeves, with two-foot rules sticking out of their pistol pockets and an arsenal of wicked looking implements of steel, began to flit about and go through strange and inexplicable performances of kneeling and bending and squinting along imaginary lines and finally figuring on boards with queer, wide pencils, the like of which ordinary people never saw before.
And then changes began. Car was added to and planks to frame in every imaginable way that human fancy, as exemplified in Carville, could suggest.
Cottages, villas, Swiss chalets, castles and towers began to rise in every direction, and the decorated as well as the utilitarian possibilities of a corporation's discarded rolling-stock were exploited to the utmost. "Bobtails" and "double-enders" were both pressed into service, and the result of this original exercise of brains and ingenuity has been to give the city and county of San Francisco a suburban village unequaled
anywhere for picturesque originality of situation, design and material.
At the present date there are over seventy houses made wholly of street cars
situated between Boulevard station, Forty-eighth avenue. K street and the
ocean. In Cartown, which is the farther north of the two sister settlements which combined from Carville-by-the-Sea, the original idea of the
carhouse pure and simple is almost without exception adhered to. Undoubtedly
the fact that the lots here, as well as the houses, are leased from the
Sutro heirs and not owned by the tenants accounts for the fact that less
attention is paid to exterior than to interior decoration in this part of
the community. But no cozier and prettier apartments can be found throughout
the length and breadth of the land than those of which one catches
tantalizing glimpses when toiling through the pathless sands of this queer
corner of the world.
Across a mutable wall of yellow-drab sand which one day, rising high, shuts the two settlements sternly apart
from each other, and the next, by a sudden whim of the never-idle wind, is
leveled so low as to bring them into harmonious union, lies the larger and
more pretentious Heymanville.
Here lots are sold on deposit and installments, and thirty-five dollars more
than the money necessary to secure the right of occupation of a
parallelogram of Mother Earth's unstable covering gives the intending
citizen of Carville a house sufficient for all his needs until he shall be
seized with the mania for planning picturesque and peculiar architectural
efforts which is apparently rife among his fellow dwellers on the shore.
The now old-fashioned span of cars placed soberly side by side is not
particularly popular now, though this method of arrangement still has its
conservative adherents. Common variations are cars set tandem fashion,
with a canvas-covered passageway between, and cars set end to end, forming
three sides of a hollow square, with a garden, or a chicken yard, or a
swinging hammock in the sheltered space between.
The prevailing idea, however, seems to be to see in how many varieties of
ways a car may be used in the construction of a building for either
usefulness or beauty, or both. The curving top of a car, its dashboard and
storm shelter and its rows of sliding windows, make it ornamental wherever
it may be placed in the construction of a building once the mind resolutely
puts away the thought of what it really is. Used as a mansard roof, they
lend a distinct touch of dignity to the plain board structure beneath.
Grouped together and piled upon each other, they make, with the addition of
a little paint, wonderfully attractive dwelling places, far and away better,
even from a purely artistic standpoint, then the swell-fronted, gingerbread
decorated monstrosities that offend the eye on many city streets.
Mr. Robert Fitzgerald, a clerk in Judge Hebbard's court, owns a residence
composed of two cars perched in airy fashion side by side on an elaborate
trestlework, the height of which enables him and his to obtain a glorious
view of the wide expanse of ocean. Four cars placed two on two form the home
of Mrs. A. K. Staples, a school teacher, while a retired school teacher,
Mrs. S. D. Rodgers, lives with her daughter in an oddly beautiful house
consisting of two cars placed end to, with a roofed frame connection, and
supported by a roomy and well-lighted basement of ordinary rustic lumber.
George W. McCallum, a park employe, has used cars simply as L's to a
two-story frame dwelling of the old Dutch style, and E. P. Taber has been
even more inventive, his house being a singular but pleasing combination of
styles and material which attracts special notice even in all-attractive
Heymanville.
"Dad's Home," situated in a sheltered nook away from the sweep of the
ocean's breath, is one of the prettiest cottages in the place. Cars form its
upper story, mighty antlers adorn its outer walls and sweet peas, mignonette
and carnations, watched and tended with loving care, surround it with the
blessing of nature's sweetest perfume. George H. Robinson, a clerk in the
freight auditor's department of the Southern Pacific, is the "Dad" who finds surcease from his arduous labors
here among the scrubby bushes and ever-changing changeless scenery of the
ocean beach.
While many of the residents of Carville-by-the-Sea intend making it their
abiding place the year around, there are others who seek their seaside
residences only on Saturdays and holidays, passing their leisure hours in
and around their quaint abodes in true "camping-out" style and enjoying to
the utmost the emancipation which they there find from the artificial
restraints and obligations of city life.
For the children it is a veritable paradise. There is the creeping,
crawling, splashing, foaming water to paddle about in with their small,
blue-veined, white feet; there are the wild flowers - the yellow and blue and
white lupins, the golden California poppies, the fringe-petaled, cerise-hued
beach asters and dozens of other blossoms - to pick when and where they will; there are the steep sandhills to slide down fearlessly without danger to
life or limb. and there is room in that wide expanse of freedom for all
their pets and all their plays.
To them, as to their elders who have grasped the true secret of its charm,
Carville-by-the-Sea is the ideal home.
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