The real estate in Forest Hill is exceptionally fashionable and lavishly landscaped. Twisting lanes traverse the hills containing the homes in this elite Forest Hill neighborhood. There are four structures in Forest Hill designed by noted architect Bernard Maybeck. One of them is located at 51 Sotelo Avenue, another at 270 Castenada Avenue, another at 381 Magellan Avenue and the Forest Hill Association
Clubhouse located at 275 Pacheco Street. All these structures built in the early 1900s are located near the Laguna Honda Hospital.
This wealthy neighborhood is centrally located in the city of San Francisco bounded on the north by Ortega at the Laguna Honda Reservoir, on the east by Laguna Honda Boulevard and Woodside Avenue, on the south by Portola Drive and on the west by 15th Avenue.
The Forest Hill Association is meticulous about the maintenance of the streets and community and keeps them in the same fashionable condition as the elegant homes in the neighborhood. West Portal Avenue is a commercial area near by that gives inhabitants places to shop, dine or take in a movie.
Noted landscape architect Mark Daniels designed the Forest Hill residence park. He included a grand staircase at the official entrance on Dewey Boulevard that connects Castenada Avenue to Magellan Drive. The Grand
Pacheco Stairway is most graceful in San Francisco. A vase of flora 20 feet in width begins the extensive flight of stairs placed in the middle of woods and lawns. The stairs are about 180 feet wide, with banisters, columns, and stone designs recurring into the distance, which lends to the ornate quality this magnificent setting. This beautiful stairway curves and circles its way through the elegance that is Forest Hill.
Forest Hill began when a portion of the forest planted Adolph Sutro and his Arbor Day volunteers was thinned out considerably, opening up the view and creating the sense of being in the country. The genius of landscape architect Mark Daniels dealt with complicated engineering and building problems so that the most esthetic result possible would be the artistic end to this project.
The Forest Hill Association has established home construction principles that include a minimum fifteen hundred square foot interior and a 19-foot setback from the sidewalk. Following the philosophy of banning everything other than single-family homes no commercial, commercial buildings, apartments, stables or saloons. The roads and lanes followed the natural curve of the land in easy wide curves rather than using a grid of streets that ignored the hills.
Forest Hill homes run between $900,000 and $3,000,000.
Golden Gate Heights Real estate on Larsen Peak, known as either Sunset Heights Park or Golden Gate Heights, sits atop a two hundred and twenty-five foot high bluff. On this knoll you will see a lot of huge retaining walls and majestic views of the San Francisco area. The roads here are steep and twist around comparatively new and chic homes. Most of the homes here were constructed between 1950 and 1970. The homes on the slope facing Forest Hill are older and more old-fashioned. The majority of homes here are for single families but there are a few duplexes and some apartments.
In Golden Gate Heights you will find varied structural design from the conventional to modern with magnificent vistas of the Pacific, downtown San Francisco and San Francisco Bay. A lot of homes here face one of the most beautifully landscaped neighborhoods in San Francisco, Forest Hill.
Homes here cost between $400,000 and $1,900,000.
West Portal Sitting on the western slope of Mt. Davidson
with rolling hills and tree-lined streets West Portal is an unusual
mix of contemporary stock brokerages, java shops and household furniture
boutiques are along with taverns right out of the nineteen fifties.
West Portal inhabitants are firmly middle class with most of the occupations
here being firefighters, educators, health-care providers along with
small enraptures. This neighborhood fights against the big chain stores.
West Portal is ninety-five percent single-family homes, with very
few multi-plexes or condos.
