Comments on: Part I: Sixth Street

By: tobymarx

tobymarx — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:06:37 +0000

If you delivered mail on Sixth Street until 2006, you were my mail carrier! Thanks so much for sharing your own impressions of Sixth Street, Juste.

Mark

By: Juste Rosei

Juste Rosei — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:58:05 +0000

Thank you for this historical piece.

I delivered mail from 1994 – 2006 in the 94103 zip code. I took over for other carriers on their sick/vacation days and often found myself on Sixth St. and every alley around the area.

Firstly, I love your pictures!!!! They really take me back!!!! Gazing at them I was able to identify so many before reading down to the caption. The staircase of the Sunnyside!!! Wow to think I actually could I D it!!!!! Amazing!!!! Thanks for the looksy inside the rooms also, they are pretty much what I expected to see.
So many times I’d be looking for an address or hidden mail box and end up spending a long time staring at the buildings and you have managed to capture and express what I could only feel while out on the streets.

Even though I’ve left the delivery business, Sixth Street made an indelible impression on me, it did so from the day I first stepped foot onto it and strange to say, but I felt it at the time and wondered at the feeling.

So many great people, many gone now, many moved on, but many still living in the newer SRO’s. All the time I spent down there, I never felt in danger (Even on check day when half of my mail volume was checks,— I would just move a whole lot faster!!!). You just learn to talk to people whether they be drug dealers or

Thanks again for the fantastic pictures.

Juste Rosei

By: tobymarx

tobymarx — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:41:22 +0000

Thanks, Roger. I plan on doing a piece about evolution of the area that includes the Book Concern Building and what is now United Nations Plaza. At this time I’m still researching, so it will probably be awhile before I publish anything. I may end up writing a separate piece about the Book Concern Building. You may have noticed in the unedited section of Part III a little piece sub-headed “Lower McAllister” that includes a brief history of the theater that used to be where the Dorothy Day Senior Community now stands, next to what is now the Civic Center Residence and opposite the Book Concern Building on McAllister. If not, it’s about halfway down the page.

Thanks again for writing.

Mark

By: Roger Barnett

Roger Barnett — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 08:06:10 +0000

Absolutely fascinating material; both photos and your commentary. I stumbled on this article, following a link in the “Curbed SF” newsletter which I receive twice weekly (the link was to your Marshall Square chapter). This item was written by Andrew Dalton, and published this Monday, January 3. We have a small studio in the Book Concern Building (83 McAllister, across from Hastings Law School), a building whose 1907 facade has been preserved, while the interior was totally rebuilt as modern efficiency apartments.

Keep up this excellent work, and I will be following with interest. My long time hometown was/is Stockton, where the downtown area was once full of SRO hotels, quite a few survive, but there is a constant battle between the city and other groups concerning the demolition or conservation of these hotels … both sides win some and lose some, but overall there is no coherent policy and the result is that the downtown area is an incoherent mess, when it need not be.