Cindy Olnick 00:00
Hello friends, Cindy from Save As here, asking you for a quick favor. Money? No, just three to five minutes of your valuable time to answer a few questions about the podcast. You can also enter to win a highly collectible limited edition Save As mug. So please, click on the survey link in the show notes or at saveas.place. You’ll be doing a great service to not only your save as pals, but everyone who listens to the show now and in the future. Thanks so much. Now on with the show.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:34
Today on Save As we take a visit to our neighbor to the north, San Francisco.
Cindy Olnick 00:47
Welcome to Save As, a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage conservation through the work of graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Cindy Olnick.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:56
And I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick 00:58
So, Trudi.
Trudi Sandmeier 00:59
Yes, Cindy?
Cindy Olnick 01:01
Today, our genius producer Willa Seidenberg talks with Andrea Dumovich Heywood, an alum who researched a lesser known part of San Francisco, called the Richmond neighborhood.
Trudi Sandmeier 01:13
Yeah, you know, San Francisco’s not a very big city. It’s only seven miles by seven miles square. And so when you think of San Francisco, most people think of the touristy part, the like central area downtown where Union Square and you know, the cable cars and all of that. But Andrea is looking at a part of the city that is really where the locals are. It’s a neighborhood that is, you know, full of interesting people and places but off the beaten path for those of us who may go to visit San Francisco, although perhaps after this, you may want to go explore a little.
Cindy Olnick 01:51
Alright, let’s get to it. Here’s Willa Seidenberg in conversation with Andrea Dumovich Heywood.
[music]
Willa Seidenberg 02:01
I have the pleasure of welcoming Andrea Dumovich Heywood, a 2018, graduate of the Heritage Conservation Program at USC. Welcome, Andrea.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 02:11
Hi, Willa. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Willa Seidenberg 02:14
Andrea, this is one of the episodes that we call Where Are They Now, where we talk to our amazing alums like you about their thesis and about their careers. So let’s start out by talking a little bit about your background and what you were doing before you went to grad school at USC.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 02:33
I began as an English major at UC Berkeley, and achieved my undergraduate there. And while living in Northern California, I just fell in love with cities and urban planning. And I knew that was the direction that I wanted to take my career. And so after graduating Berkeley, I spent about five years working in different jobs. I worked for an affordable housing nonprofit in San Francisco. I also worked for the California Historical Society, nonprofit. And yeah, and just tried to figure out what niche I wanted to follow in urban planning.
Willa Seidenberg 03:12
What was it about urban areas and cities that got you interested when you were at Berkeley?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 03:20
I think it was such a strong contrast from growing up in a suburban environment in Costa Mesa. And then moving to Berkeley, California, and not having a car, riding my bike, walking everywhere. And a little bit of that influence stemmed from when I studied abroad in Paris in my undergraduate studies for the summer. And I just loved the walkability and everything, and just, it just really fascinated me. And so living in Berkeley, and being exposed to the environmental movement, and transportation and things like that, it just all kind of clicked for me and got me really excited. And you know, I still love my my English literature studies. But I wanted to pair writing and research with urban planning.
Willa Seidenberg 04:12
So what went into your decision to go to graduate school in heritage conservation?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 04:17
That was an interesting process, how it unfolded. It kind of feels mystical and magical, because I really fell in love with San Francisco. I’m a huge San Francisco advocate. I’ve lived there for about eight years collectively. So my first job in San Francisco was at the California Historical Society, which has a museum, it displays different historical artifacts of California history. And so through that gateway into history, I learned about the nonprofit San Francisco Heritage, which they do really great work and I met someone named Laura Dominguez. She’s actually another graduate of the USC Heritage Conservation Program, who was living in San Francisco at the time working at SF Heritage. And so she really exposed me to the world of preservation. And I just fell in love with it, and looked into the program. And I knew that I didn’t want to leave California because I love California. So that’s kind of what led me to pursue my master’s at USC.
Willa Seidenberg 05:28
Let’s get to the thesis that you spent all that time working on, which I know it’s a big endeavor. What was your thesis called? What’s the name of it?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 05:36
My thesis is called Seeing Beyond the Fog: Preserving San Francisco’s Cultural Heritage in the Clement Street Corridor.
Willa Seidenberg 05:46
I love that you referenced the famous San Francisco fog in your title. I think that’s a great title. Had you spent much time on Clement Street or lived near that area before you started the thesis?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 06:01
It is and was one of my favorite neighborhoods in San Francisco. And it’s located on the west side a little farther away from downtown. So not many tourists know about it. And even my friends who lived in the city, I mean, they would come to visit, but they would kind of complain like, Oh, it’s so far, I have to take the bus, and it’s really not that far. But I was just a strong advocate for the west side and the different ethnic pockets in San Francisco that are not as well represented. And so I started thinking about Clement Street, and seeing if anyone had done research on it, and it looked like there really wasn’t much. So that’s what brought me to that topic.
Willa Seidenberg 06:49
What was it that got you excited about that neighborhood?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 06:52
When you go there, it’s just, it is very charming. It’s very walkable. It feels like a downtown Main Street. I was excited to find a place that felt like home. And then it also has all kinds of restaurants, you could eat from almost any country in the world. It feels very diverse. And there’s a lot of mom and pop stores, not so many chain stores. And so all of that intrigues me.
Willa Seidenberg 07:20
Let’s delve into a little bit about what you wrote about in your thesis. That area around Clement Street is part of what’s called the Inner Richmond neighborhood. Give us more of a sense of where it is in the city, especially as you point out in your thesis, a lot of attention is given to the downtown center part of the city but not so much to these outlying areas.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 07:44
Clement Street is a pretty long street. And it runs through more than one neighborhood. It runs through the Inner Richmond and the Outer Richmond. And my thesis focuses on just the Inner Richmond primarily. But the Richmond District as a whole, which encompasses the inner and outer Richmond, it’s just located north of Golden Gate Park. It’s pretty close to Golden Gate Bridge, just to the south of the bridge, and it’s on the west side. It abuts Ocean Beach. If you take the bus, it’s probably 30, 40 minute ride from downtown.
Willa Seidenberg 08:20
One of the things that grabbed me in reading your thesis was how you talked about how far it seemed in its early days, or in San Francisco’s early days from the city. It was known as the Outside Lands, kind of hard to imagine now given how much the city is built up, but can you just describe what it was like in its early years and its early development?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 08:46
Yeah, so originally, before anything, it was just sand dunes. Even Golden Gate Park was just sand dunes, which is really hard to imagine because it’s such a magical landscape today. But back then there was just really nothing there. No one living there. I think there might have been a few farmers, but really it was it was vacant.
Willa Seidenberg 09:07
So is this area on Clement Street, a commercial district right from the start, or was it residential and then turned commercial.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 09:17
So it started as a sparsely populated residential neighborhood, people moving out west and the earthquake happening. And then what brought the commercial district to the residential was largely the rail transit. There was a man named Adolph Sutro, who was eventually one of the mayors of San Francisco. He was a real estate speculator and he purchased the land out west that’s known as Land’s End, in the late 1800s. And so he purchased what we know today as the Cliff House area, and the Sutro Baths and Gardens and he really advocated for commercial tourism to come out west. And he also brought the railroad from downtown to all the way to the west side to Ocean Beach. And so at the beginning, a lot of wealthy San Franciscans would have a day trip and they’d travel from downtown to the Cliff House, which was a resort, and they’d spend the day there. But he was really leading the forefront and in bringing people out west.
Willa Seidenberg 10:36
So Sutro brings all of these people into the city, and then in 1906, a massive earthquake hit San Francisco. It left about 3,000 people dead, and half of the city’s population was homeless. And that had an effect on the Richmond District, right?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 10:58
The earthquake that occurred in the city was hardest hit in the east and southern parts of the city. So the west was available, vacant land. And so people who were forced out of their homes from the earthquake, a lot of them moved to the Richmond, and then they ended up staying there long term. And that’s what helps develop the outer part of the city.
Willa Seidenberg 11:22
And then how did the area become known as the Richmond District?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 11:26
So the Richmond District got its name from a man named George Turner Marsh. He was originally from Australia and he worked in a Japanese tea shop with his family in downtown. However, he had a home in what was later known as the Richmond and he’s credited for naming the neighborhood the Richmond based off his native land, Richmond, Australia.
Willa Seidenberg 11:54
Eventually this area became as you mentioned, in the thesis, almost a second Chinatown in San Francisco. When did that start to happen and what led to more Chinese moving to the area and opening shops there?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 12:12
What spurred the large Chinese population to the Inner Richmond, during that time period is based on several factors. I would say through my research, I found the first is that there was a large increase in Chinese population in the 20th century from China. People were moving to the Chinatowns throughout the United States, including San Francisco’s Chinatown. And if you’ve been there, you know that it’s very dense, and it’s small. And so they were running out of housing, essentially so that the Chinese population in Chinatown needed another place to live in San Francisco. Additionally, there are several bus lines that link San Francisco’s Chinatown to Clement Street and the Inner Richmond, which I found in my research, probably aided to the migration of Chinese population out west.
Additionally, there were lots of shops and the Chinese population would do their shopping out there. Another factor was that the Chinese population needed larger housing to accommodate their growing households. And so the western part of San Francisco offered larger housing because the lots are larger than the densely sized lots in Chinatown. So that was another reason it was appealing for the Chinese population to look west. And then lastly, with the racial segregation restrictions being lifted in the 1960s, again, the Chinese population, they were then able to purchase homes that otherwise they were not allowed to buy, because of redlining. And so they looked West.
Willa Seidenberg 14:06
And you mentioned in your thesis that at the same time, there were quite a few white elderly residents who were looking to sell and maybe move to smaller places in other parts of the city. And so there was more stock that was coming available as the Chinese residents were needing to move into bigger places.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 14:28
Yes, that’s exactly right. There were a lot of factors leading to the reason why the Chinese moved out to Clement Street.
Willa Seidenberg 14:52
Here in L.A. we often think of San Francisco as a model of good preservation practices and being concerned with preservation. But as you point out, a lot of that has really only taken place in the more downtown central part of the city. And it was surprising, at the time you wrote your thesis, only five landmarks existed in the Richmond District, and only four of those were in Inner Richmond, right?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 15:23
Yeah, I was really surprised when I did that research, how little attention was given to the outer parts of the city. And so that was another main reason why I wrote this thesis was to draw attention for the city of San Francisco to see the Inner and Outer Richmond as a place that they should be paying attention to, and seeing the cultural communities there that we don’t want them to lose that they should be thinking about preservation protections.
Willa Seidenberg 15:52
So starting in the 1950s, there was a lot of demolition happening all over the city, but particularly in the Richmond District. A lot of demolitions and new housing stock being built, what kind of housing stock was being constructed during this time?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 16:11
Yes. So at that time, in the Richmond District, existing housing was being demolished. And what was built in place of it was more dense multifamily housing built side by side. And the city identifies this type of housing as the Richmond special. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good thing. I did live in one when I first moved to San Francisco. But it’s basically it was quick, cheap construction. And it’s almost akin to the Los Angeles Dingbat construction. And the style is kind of all over the place. It doesn’t really have any striking architectural features. It’s similar to stucco box.
Willa Seidenberg 16:59
Very plain.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 17:00
Yes.
Willa Seidenberg 17:02
So in 1990, there was a heritage survey of Inner Richmond, right? Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 17:10
Yeah, so San Francisco Heritage, actually did their first ever architectural survey on the Richmond District, which was great. However, it was not all encompassing. And what I mean by that, is it did not include an in depth look at everything, it did not include cultural heritage. The survey left out parts of the Richmond District. The survey did include three historic context statements, which were economic development, residential and institutional development of the Inner Richmond, which is helpful to have. But as of today, there’s still not an all encompassing context statement of the entire Richmond District.
Willa Seidenberg 17:58
One of the things that you say is that it didn’t get at why it was culturally significant. What are some of the things that do make it culturally significant?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 18:12
Some of the things I’ve already mentioned, but really the meat and bones to me is the ethnic community that lived and lives on Clement Street and enrichment today, the melting pot of the community, mentioning who lived there, and why they moved there. And the businesses, really the commercial, economic history and vitality of the neighborhood, I think is really the strongest cultural aspect of the neighborhood, that should be recognized.
Willa Seidenberg 18:49
So San Francisco created a Legacy Business Program in 2015. And how has that been applied to the Clement Street area?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 19:03
At the time I wrote my thesis, there were four commercial businesses that were added to the Legacy Business Registry. And I know, as of today, it’s the number has increased. The Legacy Business Program is just a really great tool to recognize local businesses, and just give them a little bit extra support for those that are potentially threatened economically. And by adding them to the Registry, it gives the owners a sense of pride, and they get a plaque and it’s just, it’s a way to recognize the cultural history of a business.
Willa Seidenberg 19:48
Do you want to mention a few of the businesses that were initially included in this program?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 19:54
So of the four that were on the Registry when I wrote my thesis they include Toy Boat Dessert Cafe, Green Apple Books, Hamburger Haven and the Plough and Stars. Toy Boat Dessert Cafe is a beloved candy store, ice cream, coffee shop on Clement Streets. And Green Apple Books is one of the most popular bookstores in San Francisco. And then Hamburger Haven is almost self explanatory, but it’s a diner. And the Plough and Stars is a bar/music venue.
Willa Seidenberg 20:33
Your thesis looked at several other projects and areas in San Francisco that you felt had some connections to Clement Street that could be used maybe as models or parts of them as models for giving more protections to the Clement Street area.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 20:56
I was really interested in this chapter I wrote because I felt that San Francisco already, it already has a lot of cultural preservation tools that it can use for Clement Street. Some of the tools that I looked at include cultural heritage districts that are already designated in San Francisco, including Calle 24 in the Mission District, which is a Latino Cultural District, the SoMa, which stands for South of Market, Filipina Cultural Heritage District. I also looked at Japantown. And so all of these reports, you can find them on the city of San Francisco’s website, but they have amazing tools for preserving cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage that I think could be applied to Clement Street or any neighborhood like Clement Street.
Willa Seidenberg 21:58
At the time you wrote your thesis, what were some of the tangible or intangible heritage that you thought were worthy of protecting in Richmond,
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 22:10
I largely looked at intangible cultural heritage and focused on events that take place on Clement Street. Three of which I found interesting and worthy of protecting include the Halloween parade that takes place every year on Clement Street, the more recent Autumn Moon Festival that just began in 2017. But it’s been going strong every year. And the Autumn Moon Festival is a way to connect people on Clement Street with the Chinese American community and food markets. And it’s just a, it’s a big celebration.
And then there’s another more recent event called Clementtime, which is a pun on the name Clement Street, but it’s a holiday stroll event where the stores during the winter season are open later hours and people can go and do meet and greets with the store owners and there’s often hot cocoa and cookies and things like that. And then I’ll also say that the Farmers Market on Clement Street is very robust. And again, that’s a newer event, but it’s something that we preservationists should be thinking about in terms of protecting its cultural heritage decades from now, because it’s such a prominent part of the community.
Willa Seidenberg 23:42
I assume that these are events that draw people from all over the city.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 23:46
Yes, that’s right. These are large, larger events. And so people who don’t normally venture to the far off Clement Street make their way and it draws in a large variety of people.
Willa Seidenberg 24:01
Were there any people that you met in the writing of this thesis that you want to tell us about?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 24:08
One of the most interesting persons I’m that Michael Busk. He is a born and raised Inner Richmond, San Franciscan, longtime resident, colorful character. And you should see the store he runs. It’s not even quite a store, but it’s an art display on you’ll see it when you walk down Clement Street. He was very helpful in chatting with me about the early days of when he grew up on Clement Street, how he remembers going to the Halloween parade when it first started. And he did tell me that it never occurred to him that he needed to leave Clement Street or the Inner Richmond because there was just so much there that he felt like it was his whole world and I thought that was really it. interesting and kind of drives home the point that I’m making of why Clement Street is so special.
Willa Seidenberg 25:27
Was there anything in the research and process of writing your thesis and talking to people that was a surprise to you?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 25:37
I guess what I said earlier was that I was curious as to how Clement Street forms such a strong Chinese identity. And I really just wanted to find out the history of that, and when did it form because it does feel like it’s been there for a long time. And so I was surprised that it’s fairly recent, it’s 1960s. And before that, the Clement Street and the Inner Richmond, it was largely Irish, and lots of other ethnicities. Russian, there’s Vietnamese, it’s just a ton of cultural history. And so I was surprised that the Chinese history was later. The other thing I found surprising was the lack of attention that the city of San Francisco gave and continues to give to the western part of the city, in terms of preservation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. And that, like we discussed, there are only a handful of designated buildings and landmarks. And I think that that’s not fair and that they need to take a closer look at that.
Willa Seidenberg 26:57
Do you think that there are any things that you thought about in your research of Clement Street that are applicable to other places, particularly maybe even in Orange County where you’re living now?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 27:15
Right, so my thesis, although it focuses on a specific geographic location in San Francisco, I feel that it’s also very broad and that it’s applicable to almost any neighborhood or any city, even with or without a main street. Because the things that I researched in terms of intangible cultural heritage, include parades, events, murals, businesses, and every city has some of that. And every city should start thinking, how do they want to protect those ephemeral pieces of their history that could be lost,
Willa Seidenberg 27:58
You finished your thesis and graduated from the program in 2018. What did you start doing once you finish the program?
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 28:07
So my plan was to move back to San Francisco, which is what I did. And I was lucky to get a job right away. I did my last semester of my thesis remotely in San Francisco, while working full time at a consulting firm called ICF. And there I was a, I worked as a historic preservation specialist doing a lot of research and writing and evaluations nominations, mostly focused on large infrastructure projects, because it’s a large scale consulting firm. And then in 2020, when the pandemic hit, my husband and I decided to move back to Southern California, where we’re both from, and from there, I accepted a job at the city of Claremont, California as an associate planner.
So doing more planning, but I’m very fortunate that I am currently running the Mills Act program for Claremont, which is super exciting and fun to me. The Mills Act is a California state program and residents of Claremont, they can either nominate their home to be listed on the local register if it’s not already, because that’s one of the criteria for the Mills Act, you’d have to be local, locally designated. And it’s essentially a tax savings program where homeowners receive a tax benefit, and in turn, they put the money they saved into preserving maintaining their historic home. I’m the only planner with a preservation background at Claremont, so it’s nice that I can bring that expertise to the city as well as gaining broader planning experience there.
Willa Seidenberg 30:03
And also, as I understand it, the city of Claremont is working on its city-wide design guidelines and preservation ordinance.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 30:12
This is super exciting to me. And it’s been wonderful that I’ve been able to contribute to these items and see how a city develops their preservation regulations. So I’m really excited about that,
Willa Seidenberg 30:24
How great that you get to be watching the ground floor of all of that.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 30:28
It’s really great. And I honestly didn’t know they were doing this until after they hired me. So it was like a very nice surprise.
Willa Seidenberg 30:36
That’s fantastic. That’s great. And you’re also now living in Orange County and just recently bought a house in Rancho Santa Margarita, which I would like to point out was the subject of another Save As podcast episode by alum, Krista Nicholds. And you’re also on the board of Preserve Orange County, which was started by Krista.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 31:04
I’m very excited to be working with Krista who I’ve know from grad school, and she’s very passionate about what she does. And so working with her with Preserve Orange County has been a huge learning experience for me. And it’s nice to bring preservation to my home base and bring it back to where I’m from, where people sometimes think there’s no, there’s nothing historic about Orange County, which is not true at all. And so I’m happy to advocate for it and try my best to preserve it and spread the word.
Willa Seidenberg 31:39
Well, Andrea, thank you so much for giving us a peek at our neighbor to the north and all the information about Clement Street, I’m excited to go visit it on my next trip to San Francisco. Thank you so much for giving us your time.
Andrea Dumovich Heywood 31:55
It was so nice talking to Willa. And it’s really nice to take a breather and reflect on my thesis which I kind of forgot about and, and remind myself all the hard work I’ve done. And it’s really nice. So thank you so much.
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Trudi Sandmeier 32:12
Well, that makes me want to travel, I have to say, I really want to go visit other places right now. And I’m ready and raring to go. And this is just one more place I need to put on the list.
Cindy Olnick 32:24
Yeah, but as a building hugger, I’m curious about something. How do you protect a parade?
Trudi Sandmeier 32:30
In conservation, we’re talking a lot right now about getting beyond architectural landmarks, about sort of the landmarks with a capital L and getting to understand and protect and commemorate and acknowledge places that are important to people every day. And this is something that, you know, folks have been doing for a long time in different ways, but it hasn’t really made its way into the mainstream of heritage conservation landmarking. And so why shouldn’t it?
Cindy Olnick 33:04
Okay, but it’s not necessarily making sure these traditions continue forever.
Trudi Sandmeier 33:11
Here in Los Angeles, we just recently designated the site of the Chicano Moratorium March, which is the same idea. It is a series of places along the route where the significant civil rights action occurred. And so it’s not about protecting a recurring thing. It’s about protecting this important place and the places associated with it. And the history of what happened when those marches were taking place. And why.
Cindy Olnick 33:43
Yeah, so that Chicano Moratorium sites were listed in the National Register.
Trudi Sandmeier 33:47
That’s right.
Cindy Olnick 33:48
Yeah. All right. Awesome. Excellent. Well, thank you. You know, learn something new every day here on Save As. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of Save As and if you haven’t already, please subscribe so you won’t miss the next one. If you’re so inclined, please leave us a stellar review. We would appreciate that. For photos and show notes, visit our website at saveas.place.
Trudi Sandmeier 34:22
Our theme music was composed by Steven Conley. And the music on today’s episode was arranged by Danny Seidenberg. The Save As podcast is a production of the heritage conservation programs in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
