Duboce Triangle Survey and Historic Context Statement

Duboce Triangle is a Victorian/Edwardian enclave in San Francisco. Adjoining the Castro District, Duboce Triangle’s boundaries include Duboce Avenue to the north, Market Street to the south and east, and Castro Street to the west. Duboce Triangle contains a little over 550 individual properties. This area began to develop during the 1860s as a prestigious rural exurb. The extension of cable car lines up Market Street in the 1880s inspired merchant builders to develop rows of functionally identical Victorian rowhouses.

After the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, Duboce Triangle witnessed the construction of several dozen flats and apartment buildings. By the 1960s, Duboce Triangle had become a “blighted” neighborhood and it was threatened with redevelopment. In the 1970s, Duboce Triangle began to gentrify as people began to fix up the Victorians. Today, the neighborhood is known to contain some of the best nineteenth and early twentieth century residential fabric in the city.

The Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association (DTNA) hired VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting in 2019 to survey the neighborhood and prepare a historic context statement. The historic context statement, which documents the history of the neighborhood from 1776 to the present day, identifies several properties for potential local landmark status, as well as several potential historic districts. VerPlanck completed the deliverables in 2020, and the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission adopted it in 2021.