Looking north on Mission at Cesar Chavez (the heart of La Lengua) at the new facade of the 3400 Cesar Chavez building, soon to be apartments and a Walgreens:
Here’s the same intersection in 1931 via SFPL:
Even the Palace Steak House was there! (kidding).
I rather like the reestablishment of the rounded building corner. A bit different from 2 years back, with an abandoned paint store on the left that was once a car dealership.
Here’s the Sanborn map of the intersection in 1915. It shows a saloon on the NE corner, (though it looks more like a produce store in the 1931 shot — I’m slammed right now but feel free to dig around the 1927 and 1938 city directories and post in the comments if you find anything interesting.)
Click for PDF of a wider map.
Per TK’s request, red are saloons, yellow are liquor stores. In fact, the North Star Brewery was on Capp between Mission and 26th:
Here’s the same intersection in 1930-1950 — the building in the black and white photo was torn down and turned into a used car lot. (Green are car-related businesses — dealerships, repair shops, gas stations. Mission and Army seems to have been the Richmond Auto Mall of the day.) Click for a PDF of a wider slice of the area:
(If you are running Firefox, you may see the above animated PNG that blinks back and forth IN TIME showing the rather dramatic widening of Army Street as noted by Gillian in the comments. But you may need to click and open it in another window. And unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work in Safari, no idea in IE. I used the APNG editor in Firefox, and I do know Safari can show animated PNGs, so if anyone has a clue, pipe up.)
UPDATE: I just discovered a detailed site history in the city’s Preliminary Mitigated Declaration for 3400 CC:
Historically, the building has been used for both new and used automobile sales and service until about 1990, when it was briefly used as a furniture rental business. From 1991 until early 2006, it was used as a Kelly-Moore paint store. Previous uses included “Jesse C. Lanning Autos” (1930s), “Phil Frates Plymouth” (1950s), “Jim Wessman Lincoln Mercury” and “Auto City Wholesale” (1960s), “K&C Chrysler/Dodge (1969 – 1982) and “Rent-a-Center” (1990). There is no documentation indicating that 3400 Cesar Chavez is associated with any historic event, especially since the building was built in a more modern style and in a more outlying neighborhood than other historic Beaux-Arts style auto showrooms located along Van Ness Avenue.
And 80 years later we get apartments again.
Hey, does anyone know if the Walgreens will move from 30th and Mission? Or will there just be two in four blocks?
Posted by Burrito Justice 
