It was standing room only for the quarterly Burlingame Historical Society meeting Tuesday night in the Lane Room. More than 100 people showed up to hear local historian Joanne Garrison describe photographer Gabriel Moulin's documentation of the early days of the Easton Addition as part of the effort to sell building lots around Hillside Dr. The genesis of the presentation was a book of said photographs that was donated to the Society. That kicked off Joanne's effort to take current day matching photos to show the similarities and the changes. Over 50 minutes, she added details about the Mills, Easton and Howard families--the original land owners in B'game.
The crowd included 17 descendants of Moulin, some of whom travelled from as far away as San Diego, plus a number of local residents of the Hillside-Summit-Canyon area. Ms. Garrison was able to locate several houses that still exist on Cortez and Cabrillo, but the sad news that an important one on Hillside is schedule for scraping and sub-dividing was the downer of the night. As the saying goes, "You'll miss it when it's gone".
It was great to see so many people come out to learn about and appreciate B'game history. Here are the tram tracks going up Hillside drive that carried potential buyers.
Wow it all looks so different! All the little sapling trees.
Wondering if anyone on this blog remembers what Bayswater Avenue looked like in the early 60's with the large Canary Palms planted in a median in the center of the street. Does anyone have a photo of that?
Posted by: Joanne | June 01, 2023 at 05:47 PM
Yes, I do, but it is very poor newspaper quality photo, unfortunately. Somebody who spent his whole life as a resident on the block made a short movie of the trees coming down, very sad. But it, too, is pretty poor quality. As you probably know, it was not long thereafter when people started complaining about all the speeding cars on the (newly widened) block. All the unintended consequences few thought about.
Posted by: Jennifer Pfaff | June 02, 2023 at 08:17 AM