If you’ve already picked out the outfit you’re planning to wear for tomorrow’s Summer Stroll (PRO TIPS: boas, seersucker, vintage Mork & Mindy rainbow suspenders), then here’s a perfect way to get in the strolling spirit …
Tonight, June 17 at 7 pm in the Bernal Heights Library, your time-traveling neighbors from the Bernal Heights History Project are holding a special show-and-tell about the history of Cortland Avenue:
This month’s Bernal History Project meeting is a joint presentation with the good folks at our Bernal branch library. It’s a special evening dedicated to sharing the history of Cortland Avenue. We’ll be showing a selection of photos, ads, and news articles about Bernal’s main shopping thoroughfare. (Sorry, Precita and North Bernal neighbors — we promise we’ll do a slideshow about you very soon!)
We invite you to attend and bring your own memories of shopping and living on Cortland. If you’d like to say a few words on the night, please drop us a line beforehand — maybe we can get a real live show-and-tell going. Audience participation is positively encouraged!We’ll have volunteers from SFPL on hand to record your Cortland-related stories and memories. If you’d like to bring photos and news clippings to share, we can get those scanned for our archives, too.
Oh, in case you’re having a hard time getting oriented to that photo up top, it’s a pitcture of Cortland avenue on October 11, 1909, looking east from Bocana. Here’s an annotated guide:
And because it’s de rigeur, let’s zoom and enhance:
PHOTO: Cortland Avenue, 1909. From the SFMTA Photo Archive
Bernalwood 
I always felt the ur-zoom & enhance was in Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety.
What was in place of Wool Street Grocery and when did it arrive? (Wool and Eugenia) My house at 80 Wool was built in 1900?
Stills blows my mind a streetcar ran up Cortland.
… and another line that ran from Precita Park to the Ferry Building.
It’s the pitch that confounds me. I don’t think it was geared and cabled like a trolly line. Just seems… huh.
Mary, email us at info@bernalhistoryproject.org and I’ll send you all the stuff we have. I was just talking to Don Smith, who grew up at 101 Wool, and he probably has some interesting details to add, too.