Lloyd Federlein
Former Fillmore Resident

On His Grandparents' House in the Fillmore

My grandparents bought a home on Steiner Street near Geary in 1870. My grandfather raised the house up. He kept his horses in the basement for a dressage business. Years later, they built a home in the front where a cottage originally stood. We lived there until 1960 when the city came along, through Redevelopment, and took our home away from us.

On San Francisco's Victorian Houses

They all have very high ceilings, twelve to fourteen feet high. In the front room and in the dining room, there's always a fireplace. And there were all gas fixtures in the house. We had bay windows, and on the corner of each window there was an angel. In fact, when I moved, I removed them. I still have them in my basement.

On the Fillmore Street Neighborhood

My grandmother died in 1935 and then my mother and I moved in the house. It was always the same family that lived in that house all its life. When I was going to grammar school, every night we'd walk over Fillmore Street hill between Broadway and Green. There are concrete steps all the way up. That's how I learned my multiplication tables because I had to practice them when I walked over the hill. Then on Fillmore Street, there were about eleven movie houses that you could go to. We'd go to a soda outfit called Haas. Or on Sunday night we'd go to a Jewish delicatessen and have a smoked salmon sandwich after the movie.

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Photo Credit: Shensen's Deli