Behind palms and ferns on Monterey Boulevard sits San Francisco’s other Victorian conservatory. KQED describes the redwood building as having a two-story octagonal center, about a quarter the size of Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers. Today the grounds feel “like a cloud forest right in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” KQED producer Katrina Schwartz said.

The inventor

William Augustus Merralls, a British-born engineer, made his money designing mining equipment. Sunnyside History Project’s Amy O’Hair told KQED that he bought a house in the then-rural area in 1897, gathered seven lots and built the conservatory in 1902 for his exotic plants. Wikipedia says his first wife, Lizzie, bought the house and lots. He also invented an automobile self-starter. After Merralls died in 1914, the bank repossessed the property.

The con man and the developer

Wikipedia says Ernest and Angele Van Beckh bought the property in 1919. KQED describes Ernest as a scam artist who sold worthless mining bonds and escaped prosecution when witnesses didn’t show up. Neighborhood kids were afraid of him. He died in 1951. By the mid-1970s, the conservatory belonged to Robert Anderson. Neighbors got it named a city landmark in December 1975, but at the end of 1978 Anderson started demolishing it to build apartments. Greg Gaar told KQED he biked past, saw heavy equipment and called City Hall with other neighbors to stop the demolition. Wikipedia says the city used Open Space Fund money to buy the property, though one wing was lost. KQED says the east wing, which crossed onto a neighboring lot, was knocked down at some point in the 1980s.

Restoration

Neighbor Ted Kipping, an arborist, cared for the grounds in the 1990s. The Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory formed in 1999 and spent about a decade raising money for a multimillion-dollar renovation, KQED says. It reopened in 2009 with Mayor Gavin Newsom on hand. A neighbor had kept the original redwood finial in his garage for 30 years. It was too rotten to reuse, so a copper-covered replica now tops the roof. The conservatory no longer holds plants inside and is used as an event and meeting space, often for weddings.

For the bigger conservatory, see our Conservatory of Flowers story. Nearby, see Glen Canyon Park.