Preservation isn't NIMBYism
Welcome to our Special City newsletter for paid supporters! Today, we are sharing:
- Landmarking + new housing can coexist
- Bring a little Greens into your home with a new recipe
- New Archives Project scans
- A Where-Am-I reveal
To read the full email and access all the special content, join us at the Local Hero or Landmark Club level.
At capacity for next week’s program
We are a little under a week away from our next (free!) Page Memorial Lecture at Donaldina Cameron House on Wednesday, August 26 at 7 pm. Thanks to your enthusiasm, we are now officially at capacity for this RSVP-only program. You may add yourself to the waitlist here. Those who have registered should have already received a reminder email with more details.
Encounter the unexplained
We also have a few dozen tickets left for special evening events at the Haas-Lilienthal House on Friday, August 28 and Saturday, August 29. Explore the house's historic rooms in small, intimate groups with a special guide: world-class magician and mentalist Steve Marshall. Echoes of the Past is in partnership with the Gregangelo Museum. $75 plus fees, 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm timeslots.
Come to Doors Open California and learn about docent life
A reminder that SF Heritage will host Doors Open California the weekend of September 5 and 6 at the Haas-Lilienthal House! This free event is a great way to experience our treasure as well as other historic sites around SF and Bay Area. This is also your opportunity to learn from us in-person about volunteering and joining a new cohort of Haas-Lilienthal House docents! Our docents are a crucial part of our preservation mission to keep the house open and accessible. Free. 2007 Franklin Street, 11 am - 2 pm each day. Walk-ins welcome. Receive full access to all sites for a $20 donation to the California Preservation Foundation here.
Interested right now in volunteering? Send Hannah an email at hwoodall@sfheritage.org
The truth about landmarks
Above: The housing project underway at 1101-1123 Sutter Street incorporates the former Heald College building and claims historic tax credits.
The facts are these: 1. San Francisco needs to add more housing. 2. Good cities change and adapt as they grow. 3. We need to do all we can to preserve our special places in times of changes and growth.
Sweeping programs and legislation recently passed by city and state leadership to increase density and expedite housing production have also increased the vulnerability of historic places. Every step of the way, SF Heritage has advocated that special places need special attention so as not to be lost to indiscriminate demolition.
This does not mean that we are anti-housing. We want to make sure all the new residents coming to live in this amazing city are able to experience the beauty and cultural richness we enjoy.
Earlier this year we were very happy to appear at a press conference with Mayor Daniel Lurie and Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman to announce new initiatives to streamline city landmark designation.
These common-sense and limited measures to speed up the cumbersome legislative process—landmarking one property often takes more than a year—have recently been misrepresented as a political effort to obstruct new housing.
These claims are unequivocally false.
We always strive to find productive ways for San Francisco to grow AND preserve what makes it special. Take a look at this FAQ we have written up to address common misunderstandings and inaccuracies regarding city landmarking.
Please read, share with friends, offer additional questions you have, and give us your thoughts.
Soup-er cool
A recipe from a Zen Center-rooted legacy restaurant
Above: Greens historic home in Fort Mason was a challenging build-out in a 4,000-square-foot historic warehouse. A 28-inch raised floor was installed to capture panoramic views over the marina and San Francisco Zen Center carpenters designed much of the interior furnishings.
Kerri: Greens Restaurant, located in Building A at Fort Mason Center, is one of those surprising veggie-only restaurants that successfully achieves founding chef Deborah Madison’s original goal to create food “whose complexity and interest [leaves] the diner feeling that nothing [is] missing.”
Opened in 1979 by the San Francisco Zen Center, Greens was the nation’s first vegetarian fine-dining restaurant. Like the Center’s other enterprises opened in the 1970s, Green Gulch Grocery (1975) and Tassajara Bakery (1976), Greens was intended to extend Zen practice into the workplace for monastery students while introducing contemporary Zen tenets to the public through its garden-to-table philosophy.
Katie Reicher upholds Greens’ culinary legacy today as executive chef, and has kindly allowed us to reproduce her recipe for tomato gazpacho as featured in her new cookbook Seasons of Greens (2025).
Now, gazpacho doesn’t really have a reputation as exciting or inspiring cuisine, and I was certainly a skeptic before I made this recipe. But the flavors will surprise you, and it is surely the best gazpacho I’ve had and perfect for a warm day.
