Spurred by various as-of-yet unconfirmed rumours about previous occupants, and considering that one of the oldest structures still standing in San Francisco had recently been discovered only a few streets away, we decided to look further into the history of the address which ATA currently calls home.

a valencia street water tap record, dating back to 1886

We began our search on the history of 992 Valencia Street at the California Historical Society at 678 Mission Street (right around the corner from the SFMOMA). Thinking that we could learn everything we needed to know on a lunch break, we figured we would just ask for the file on our particular building and then rifle through whatever we found in it and jot down a few of the more interesting notes. Of course, it took a little more effort than that.

Our first mission was to go through a half dozen files of photographs of San Francisco buildings (catalogued and cross-referenced very meticulously by street names, neighborhoods, types of business, etc). Many of the photographs on file were taken by amateur photographers immediately after the 1906 earthquake, showing the city of San Francisco in complete ruins. These photographs were extremely interesting, but not directly helpful to our case. The purpose of looking through the photos, if you have nothing else to go on when you begin your search on a particular building, is to find some kind of concrete evidence that might be used in further research, like a name of a business on a building, etc. The three photos we found in the vicinity were all either THIS close to the building (maybe five feet too far to the left) or were showing the opposite side of the street. The attendants in the Historical Society were very friendly and knowledgeable but couldn't really help us any further with the resources they had. So they kindly gave us a printout with instructions on what to do otherwise. This printout, published by the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, listed 24 different steps on "How to Research Your San Francisco Building," beginning with a trip to the Assessor's Office in City Hall (if we wanted to be trully thorough on our search). Otherwise, approximately half of the other steps in researching a building can be taken care of in the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library located at Civic Center.

Before we went to the library, we decided to ask Lise Swenson (who was largely responsible for bringing ATA in its current form to the premises in 1987) whether she could tell us anything further about the building, based on her personal experiences and knowledege. She said that she was aware only that the building used to house a bakery (as we'd heard previously) and also that it has been an art space since the mid-70s (where the Cockettes lived and practiced at one time). None of the other people that we asked could remember anything about the building specifically either, leading us to believe that any previous occupants of the building were either really obscure or not all that memorable.

So we made an afternoon trip to the library....

All the way up at the very top floor of the Main Library is the History Room, which could be a bit of an intimidating experience since you have to sign in and pretty much know why you are in there and what you want as soon as you step through the door (luckily we knew!) We told the librarian that we wanted to look up the history of a building please...and she gave us yet another printout with steps that the library recommends to take in researching a building.

Our first step was to find out who signed for the water hook-up on the building (because if we were lucky it would be the original owner of the building, which might give us a clue as to how the building was used originally.) We went through the official San Francisco Tap Records (on microfilm) and pretty quickly found our subject: Valencia Street, with all the listings of the block on one page in big old fancy script writing. Unfortunately, it was a bit confusing since many of the numbers were crossed out and replaced with other numbers, making it unclear as to which address belonged with which name. We found 992 (listed as 992-996) written next to another number which had been crossed out and was no longer legible. So we made note of all the names and numbers in the hopes that things would become more clear as we went along. Going down the line these read: "Feb 3/86, Joe Poheim" (and underneath that name "E.G. Denniston"), "Oct 5 1905" (datestamped), "N.W. Cor 21st, 23 E of W line St, 56 SN line lot, 24 N of 21st" (the direction in which the pipes ran, apparently). So this first step yielded us some years and some names to work with.

We were then instructed to consult the Sanborn Maps which are a collection of survey maps put together by the SF fire department and displayed in gigantic bound books on bookshelves in the middle of the History Room. They are supposed to tell you about the physical aspects of the building (how many floors in the building, whether it was a residency or business, whether the structure had changed over the years, etc. ) but they weren't really much help to us since the one we were told to look at only listed information about the residences above our subject-of-interest.

We then moved down to the Periodicals Section on the fifth floor and started poking through the rows and rows of microfilm on file there. There is so much information compacted into this level of the library, and I highly recommend spending an afternoon in there if you have the time, the patience and the inclination to look through it all. We started with the San Francisco City Directories, which is basically a prototype of the phonebook as we know it and which list all of the residents and businesses in the city each year from 1850 until 1982. In the 1886 directory (the year of the water hook-up, remember) we found both of the names which were listed next to 992 Valencia Street in the Tap Records: "Joe T. Poheim, merchant tailor, residence 1500 Post Street" and "E.G. Denniston, Proprietor, S.F. Plating Works, residence 1224 21st Street." The Poheim listing was kind of baffling since it didn't have anything to do with Valencia Street or even the Mission District, but the Denniston listing placed him right around the corner! We had also noted from the Tap Records that this Mr. Denniston had signed for the water hookups for a few other buildings on the same block of Valencia Street, so we figured that this must be the guy we were looking for. Unfortunately, after looking through a few more years of listings we didn't get any further with our two subjects except to find that there was a "Denniston Boarding" listed at 991 Valencia Street (which might explain his signing for so many water hookups.)

We then discovered that these directories, beginning in 1953, have "reverse listings" in which buildings are listed first by the street address and then by the occupant who lived there that year. We'd hit the jackpot with this one. We went through each year of City Directory listings between 1953 and 1982 and made note of all of the occupants we found. Curiously, this system ends in 1982 with no mention of anything further (that we could find anyway). Presumably the phone book proved more or less to fulfill the role of this system after that.

It was a little difficult to get our bearings at first since, until 1959, there was no mention of 992 Valencia Street (and then it was only listed as "vacant" until 1962 when the Valencia Street Bazaar Antique store moved in for one year.) It was obvious that the system for numbering buildings changed at some point during the 1950s, but without any further research it is hard to say exactly how the buildings and the numbers fit together over the years before the current system fell into place.

1959 city directory

Looking through the other listings for this block of Valencia Street between Liberty and 21st, we noted that for several decades there was a Boyson's Pharmacy at 998 Valencia (now Yoruba, a.k.a. the voodoo store), McCulloch Auto Supply at 999 Valencia (now Valencia Whole Foods) and a slew of residences at both 991 Valencia and 996 Valencia. All of the other listings fall on the north side of Liberty Street (which runs parallel between 20th and 21st Streets). This leads only to the conslusion that either the blocks were smaller back then or the occupied areas were larger (considering that currently there are ten listings for the same area, on one side of the street alone!)

In 1964 the occupants for 992 Valencia Street were listed as Valencia Street Bazaar Used Furniture until 1967 when the listing is "vacant" again for the next several years. In 1970, Helping Hand Thrift Store was listed as residing on the premises and in 1971 this was replaced by Student Mobilization Committee and Bay Area Peace Action Council, who stayed there for several years until 1974 when Rocket Rita moved in. Two years later in 1976 Rchd Wyshosko took over the listing, and then Barbara Mason from 1977-1979, Adrian Craig in 1980, Todd Freeman in 1981 and Christie Siegried in 1982. After this listing our trail went cold...until 1987 when Artists' Television Access moved in, who, much to the chagrin of our landlord, has been there ever since.

992 Valencia Street has been home to thousands of artist exhibitions and screenings over the past seventeen years. As the years go on unfortunately, the history of the building previous to its current occupants becomes increasingly clouded beneath the many coats of touch up paint and lost beneath the crumbling plaster. The building still bears many scars from its years of use however and you can still find the dinner plate which has been embedded in the wall of the kitchen for who knows how long, the ovens in the basement which apparently once belonged to a bakery sometime in the early part of the 20th century, the marks on the doorframe where the height of someone named Seichan was measured for three consecutive years and other fascinating (or not-so-fascinating) things, if you just spend the time in there. There is an official history to the building which may never be trully discovered and then there are the smaller histories which are still being written inside its walls. Fortunately, the artist community which surrounds ATA makes it possible to hear each chapter as the story is updated, making all the speculation that much easier.