Presidio Terrace

Presidio Terrace is a small, very wealthy neighborhood in San Francisco which was the first of the master-planned communities built in the western part of the city. It consists of 36 large lots laid out around a single privately owned street, consisting of a two way access road leading to a one-way elliptical cul-de-sac. The road is also called Presidio Terrace. Access is off Arguello Boulevard.

Construction started in 1905, just south of and adjacent to the Presidio, a former army base which is now a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Amenities unusual for residential developments of that time included electric street lights, underground utilities and roads designed for auto traffic.

The neighborhood was developed by the firm of Baldwin & Howell, a leading San Francisco real estate development company. The neighborhood thrived following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as prosperous families rebuilt outside the destroyed neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city.

In 2015, due to delinquent non-payment of county property taxes by the homeowners association, which they claim is a mix-up where tax bills were sent to a defunct accounting firm on Kearney Street, a couple, Tina Lam and Michael Cheng, were able to purchase the actual street, the sidewalks and all other “common ground,” including garden islands and palm trees, for $ 90,000. The homeowners are worried the new property owners will charge them for parking in the 120 parking spaces on the street so they have complained to city council asking that the sale be voided.

Temple Emanu-El was built on an adjacent parcel on the northwest corner of Arguello Boulevard and Lake Street in 1925, and the Little Sisters of the Poor is also close by.

Presidio Terrace was originally marketed to white residents only. "There is only one spot in San Francisco where only Caucasians are permitted to buy or lease real estate or where they may reside. That place is Presidio Terrace," according to a 1906 brochure distributed by the developer. A 1948 Supreme Court case, Shelley v. Kraemer which banned enforcement of racial covenants in housing later invalidated restrictions of this type nationwide. This led eventually to the absence of legally sanctioned segregation of the city's neighborhoods.

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Wikipedia