RON HENGGELER

December 12, 2023
Honoring and remembering our dear friend Joe Pecora 

On Sunday, December 10th, a group of friends and members of the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association and The Victorian Alliance gathered in Alamo Square near the world renowned Painted Ladies. We had come to remember and celebrate our friend Joe Pecora, and to dedicate a new park bench in his honor.

Alamo Square Neighborhood Association

About Joe Pecora

Alamo Square Neighborhood Association

About Joe Pecora

About Joe Pecora

A good friend and an Alamo Square luminary

In 2014, Joe published his book entitled The Storied Houses of Alamo Square.

A former Alamo Square Neighborhood Association (ASNA) board member and neighborhood historian, Joe filled the pages of his ode to Alamo Square with the house histories that once graced the pages of ASNA's newsletter for which he had served as editor.

Brimming with details about who lived where, this book is a must-have for any Alamo Square aficionado.

I was honored to contribute many of the colored photos in his book.

Alamo Square
It is believed that some San Franciscans who died in the 1906 earthquake and fire are buried in Alamo Square. A temporary camp was almost set up in the square for those who were left homeless by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The terrace of restored three-story wooden homes on the east side of Steiner Street between Hayes and Fulton Streets across from Alamo Square was built by Irish-born property developer Matthew Kavanaugh in the 1890’s. They were originally sold for $3,500. Kavanaugh, who lived at 722 Steiner from 1892 through 1900, couldn’t have envisioned that a century later his houses would be among the most photographed vantage points in San Francisco, known as “postcard row.” The colorfully painted, elaborate Victorians contrast sharply with the skyscrapers of the Financial District looming in the background. The houses have been the ‘homes’ of characters in the motion pictures Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Woman in Red (1984), and Maxie (1985), and the television programs Too Close for Comfort (1980-1986) and Full House (1987-1995). 

Respectfully excerpted from San Francisco Secrets 

by John Snyder  

Chronicle Books 1999

A favorite of Joe's

Cynthia's deviled eggs

. . . this marvelous city.  Bazaar of all the nations of the globe,  (compares) with the fantastic creations of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’. 

Edmond Auger,  French gold hunter seeing San Francisco in 1849

A view of Steiner and Fulton at dawn from Joe Pecora's bench

In February this year, Anita Denz advocated for a grant in the VASF bulletin to achieve ASNA’s fundraising goal of $7,000 with the following appeal.  The Alliance membership unanimously approved the award, a testament to the heartfelt affection and esteem in which Joe is held.

The ASNA board launched a fundraising drive to honor the memory of Joe Pecora, a much admired and loved member of both ASNA and The Victorian Alliance. Joe was lauded for his seminal book, “The Storied Houses of Alamo Square,” a compilation of his neighborhood house histories. He generously opened his own Grove Street Queen Anne, the Aigeltinger House, for Alliance house tours, and graciously hosted holiday open houses to showcase his vast collections of Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s ornaments, decorations and greeting cards.
 
The campaign goal was $7,000 for the design, fabrication and installation of a memorial plaque, along with the refurbishing of an Alamo Square Park bench facing the Painted Ladies on Steiner Street. This amount covers a 10-year term, allowing first right of renewal. Proceeds from a February 12 tour of George Horsfall’s Blue Painted Lady added to the fund, and ASNA is submitting a VASF grant application in hopes of achieving full project financing.
 
Please consider making a personal donation at:  www.alamosquare.org/joepecora, where you can view a very special interview video of Joe captured by ASNA past president Jason Jervis. Checks for the campaign may be sent as follows: Memo should read “Joe Pecora Memorial Fund.”
 
Alamo Square Neighborhood Association
530 Divisadero Street, No. 176
San Francisco, CA 94117
 
And for more on Joe’s Christmas ornament displays and images of Joe, visit Ron Henggeler’s photo gallery: https://www.ronhenggeler.com/Newsletters/2021/12.24/Newsletter.html.  Ron contributed several photos in “The Storied Houses…,” including the Westerfeld House cover image.     

Submitted by Anita Denz

Cynthia Chapman

Jason Jervis

One day if I do go to heaven, I’m going to do what every San Franciscan does who goes to heaven, I’ll look around and say, “it ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.  

Herb Caen

Andrew Akens and Anita Denz

Members of the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association and the Victorian Alliance along with friends of Joe gathered to honor his memory at the bench dedication.

George Horsfall, owner of the Blue Painted Lady

Anita Denz and RH

At Anita's instigation, the Victorian Alliance awarded a $1,500 grant to achieve the campaign goal for the project.  Joe was very active in the Alliance and opened his home several times for their house tours.  

Joe's holiday parties were legendary -- Christmas, Valentine's Day and Easter -- showcasing his wonderful greeting cards and ornaments. 

He is so sorely missed.

San Francisco was not just a wide open town.  It is the only city in the United States which was not settled overland by the westward–spreading puritan tradition . . . 
It had been settled mostly, in spite of the romances of the overland migration, by gamblers,  prostitutes,  rascals,  immigrants,  and fortune seekers who came across the Isthmus and around the Horn.  They had their faults, but they were not influenced by Cotton Mather.  

Kenneth Rexroth   Beat poet

George Horsfall and Anita Denz

George Horsfall and Cynthia Chapman

Anita Denz and Susan Morse

Bill Bonds

San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful.

 Frank Lloyd Wright

Jim Warshell

Dan and Courtney Robinson, Anita Denz, Cynthia Chapman

Dan and Courtney Robinson

Dan and Courtney Robinson

George Horsfall and Cynthia Chapman

Randy Solomon & Joe Mallet, The Victorian Alliance president with their dog Jonah

Randy Solomon with the dog Jonah, and George Horsfall

Randy Solomon & Joe Mallet, The Victorian Alliance with their dog Jonah

San Francisco

That City of Gold to which adventurers congregated out of all the winds of heaven. I wonder what enchantment of the 'Arabian Nights' can have equaled this evocation of a roaring city, in a few years of a man's life, from the marshes and the blowing sand. 

Robert Louis Stevenson

Jason Jervis and Joe Mallet

Cynthia Chapman, Megan Smith, Andra Young, LaVonne Hickerson

Members of the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association and the Victorian Alliance along with friends of Joe gathered to honor his memory at the bench dedication.

San Francisco is the genius of American cities.  It is the wild-eyed,  all-fired,  hard-boiled,  tender-hearted,  white-haired boy of the American family of cities.  It is the prodigal son.  The city which does everything and is always forgiven,  because of its great heart,  its gentle smile,  its roaring laughter,  its mysterious and magnificent personality.   There are no end of ways of enduring time in San Francisco,  pleasantly,  beautifully,  and with the romance of living in everything.  Eat any kind of dish the races of the world know how to prepare.  Drink any kind of wine you like.  Go to the opera.  The symphony.  The concert.  Go to a movie or a stage play.  Loaf around in the high-toned bars,  or in the honky-tonks.  Sail the bay.  If you are alive you can’t be bored in San Francisco.  If you’re not alive,  San Francisco will bring you to life.  San Francisco is a world to explore.  It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure.  It is a city in which the spirit can know refreshment every day.  

(circa  1891)

The end of an era . . . Christmas at Joe's

On November 30, 2020 our friend and neighbor Joe Pecora, passed away. 

Joe was a well-known figure in the neighborhood, and his passing ends a decades-long local Christmas tradition. Each December, in the afternoon on the Saturday before Christmas, Joe hosted an open-house pot-luck Christmas Party for friends, neighbors, and members of the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association, and the Victorian Alliance. 

What made Joe's holiday get-together so special were the decorations. Joe's house was built near Alamo Square in 1893. Joe spent 40 years avidly collecting antique Christmas decorations. Every December, he brought them out of storage, spent weeks decorating each room in his three story old Victorian house, and then had a party. 

Joe's passing is the end of an era.

More photos: Christmas at Joe's

More photos of

19th century holiday decorations on Alamo Square in San Francisco 

The rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting.

Louisa May Alcott 

"Little Women"

More photos at:

Small voices from Christmases Past

Every year, Joe transformed his entire three-story Victorian home into a enchanting wonderland-display of 19th century Christmas ornaments that he’s spent a lifetime collecting.

San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal.

William Saroyan

Alamo Square in 1906

Fulton Street on the left of the photo

San Francisco in the years before the 1906 fire provided a sort of Big Rock Candy Mountain for the entire American people. . . 
Good Americans when they died might, in the terms of the epigram, go to Paris. While they where alive they wanted to go to California.
Oceans of champagne, silk hats and frock coats, blooded horses, and houses on Nob Hill, these were the rewards that came to the industrious, the far sighted, or the merely fortunate. What better scheme of things, at least on this side of the river, could any man ask?

Lucius Beebe

Alamo Square in 1906

Hayes Street on the right of the photo

Joe Pecora

February 21, 1937 - November 30, 2020

Alamo Square Neighborhood Association

Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.

George Eliot 

"The Mill on the Floss"