Sacred Heart Church

1. 1886

   The first pastor of Sacred Heart parish, founded the year before, bought the core of this property at the corner of Fillmore and Fell Streets and moved the parish's first home onto it — a derelict one-storey Methodist chapel from the corner of Linden and Buchanan Streets. A further lot on Fell Street, bought in 1889, completed the church's frontage as it stands.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
2. 1891

   The parish announced plans for a masonry church at the corner of Fillmore and Fell Streets by Thomas J. Welsh and John Carey, together with a new rectory and a future parish school; the church was expected to cost $60,000.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
3. 1896

   Excavation of the basement for the brick church began, the parish having raised enough money to start building.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
4. 1898

   The church's stained-glass windows were installed, among them three memorial windows made by the Riordan Art Glass Studios of Cincinnati, Ohio, for the nave walls; all of the church's surviving stained glass dates from this year.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
5. September 25, 1898

   Sacred Heart Church, Thomas J. Welsh's buff pressed-brick Romanesque Revival church, was dedicated by Archbishop Riordan, its cornerstone having been laid on 7 September 1897. Money ran out with only 126 feet of the planned 169-foot nave built, and a temporary wooden wall closed the east end; the parish then counted 1,800 families.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
6. 1900

   Built.

7. 1904

   The bell in the campanile was dedicated and rung for the first time.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
8. 1905

   Father John McQuaide became pastor, serving until 1922; an Army chaplain in the Spanish-American, Philippine-American and First World Wars, he raised the money to finish the church to its original plans.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
9. October 1906

   A fire in the rectory next door did minor damage to the church's rear wall; the church itself had come through the April earthquake and fire unharmed.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
10. 1909

    The church was finished to Welsh & Carey's original plans and rededicated: George Goodman built the rest of the nave, the transepts with their rose windows, the sanctuary, the sacristies and a large above-ground basement hall, work begun in 1905 and stopped by the earthquake after the foundations went in, and the sanctuary was reinforced that year to carry 55 tons of marble altars.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
11. 1909

    Rose windows made by Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich were installed in the two new transepts as memorials given by parishioners: the Nativity on the north side and the Resurrection on the south. The Archdiocese took them out before selling the building in 2005.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
12. 1910

    The parishioner and church decorator Michael O'Sullivan painted murals on the sanctuary ceiling as a backdrop to the new altars — a pale blue ground with old-gold trim, a chalice and host, and a purple Latin cross with golden rays. They no longer appear to survive.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
13. May 21, 1910

    For the parish's silver jubilee three new altars of Carrara marble, designed by the San Francisco artist Attilio Moretti and carved by the Italian firm Gighli & Vanelli, were blessed and unveiled; the high altar was 25 feet long and 37 feet high, and a parishioner's gift of $15,000 paid for them.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
14. 1915

    A wood-frame bridge was built from the third storey of the rectory to the church's choir loft, so the priests could reach the sanctuary for early mass without going outdoors.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
15. 1920

    The San Francisco mural and landscape painter Achille G. Disi, born and trained in Rome, painted the nave ceiling: Cain slaying Abel, Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac, the Paschal Lamb, and the Twelve Apostles and angels around the coving. The frescoes survive.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
16. 1922

    The church got a new heating system, new pews and new altar furnishings, and its roof and windows were repaired.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
17. 1923

    A Hook & Hastings pipe organ was installed.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
18. 1931

    The old Methodist chapel that had been the parish's first church, later the priests' lodging and finally a shed off the school yard, was demolished.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
19. 1948

    The sacristy was enlarged, the altar and the back of the sanctuary remodelled, and a new baptistery built with new stairs to the choir loft.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
20. 1968

    Father Eugene Boyle, the Catholic civil-rights activist, became pastor and until 1972 made the parish a centre of activism in the Western Addition — opening it to Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who had an office here, to conscientious objectors and to the student groups behind the San Francisco State strike, and turning the parish school into a community school.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
21. 1968

    Father Eugene Boyle set up a team ministry at the church; one of its members was Sister Margaret Cafferty of the Sisters of the Presentation, who worked here on civil-rights organizing in the Black community and on United Farm Workers labor activism.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
22. March 10, 1969

    The Black Panther Party's Breakfast Program for Children opened in the church's basement hall and kitchen, feeding 75 to 100 children a day. The coloring books depicting police as pigs, which the police told a Senate committee that year were being handed out here, were shown in 1975 to have been planted in the basement by the FBI.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
23. September 1970

    The United Farm Workers' Bay Area lettuce boycott was launched here: about 500 farm workers met at Sacred Heart three days after the boycott was announced on 17 September, with a mass and a sermon by Father Boyle, a press conference and a march, and the boycott kept its first local headquarters in the parish.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
24. April 9, 1975

    Partition walls were put into the basement hall to make a kitchen.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
25. 1985

    Father Kenneth Westray Jr., the first African-American priest ordained in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, became pastor, serving until 2000; the parish was by then one of the city's more predominantly African-American congregations.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
26. Aug 1986

    Permit 8610230 $$$ $15,000

    Rehab/expand exist restrooms/add to classrooms into existing.

27. 1989

    After the Loma Prieta earthquake black safety netting was hung under the nave ceiling to catch falling plaster; the damage, and the cost of a seismic retrofit, put the parish on the Archdiocese's closure list from 1993.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
28. Sep 1989

    Permit 8917782 $$$ $12,500

    Modification of boys' and girls' toilet rooms.

29. December 15, 1993

    The Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board issued its final case report on making the church a city landmark, after the parish landed on the Archdiocese's closure list and plans surfaced to replace it with a smaller church; state legislation led by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown barring the landmarking of religious buildings stopped the effort.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
30. 2004

    The Archdiocese closed Sacred Heart Church at the end of the year, citing the cost of earthquake repair and a shrinking congregation, and most parishioners moved to St. Boniface in the Tenderloin; the parish school had already been merged with St. Dominic's in 2003.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
31. 2005

    The Archdiocese sold the closed parish complex — church, rectory, school and convent — for $5 million to a lawyer and winemaker who opened the Megan Furth Academy, an independent Catholic school, on the site; the Archdiocese removed the fourteen Stations of the Cross paintings and other art first.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
32. Nov 2010

    Issued Permit M231066

    Streetspace.

33. 2012

    The academy that had run a school on the parish site sold the church, which was later resold and leased for recreational use.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
34. Jun 2012

    Issued Permit 201206082175 $$$ $100,000

    Construct new garage @ basement level & new garage opening @ north side of structure. repair existing foundation. relocation of fdc and gas service is required on a separate permit. maintain existing egress and life safety systems.

35. 2015

    A wide opening was cut into the basement of the north transept and the basement gutted for a parking garage, after the altars, the transepts' rose-window glass, the pews, the organ and other fittings had been removed between 2009 and 2015.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
36. Jan 2017

    Permit 201701267945 $$$ $1

    Assembly permit for dmj skate roller skating use. comply with sffd violation id 2105-0022.

37. Feb 2017

    Permit 201702139262 $$$ $2,000

    Replace north facing window & south facing window rose window with glass to comply with nov#201049987. n/a ordinance #155-13.

38. September 28, 2017

    The church, rectory, school and convent were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places as the Sacred Heart Parish Complex: for the growth of the Catholic Western Addition, for Father Eugene Boyle's civil-rights ministry, and as a Romanesque Revival parish group whose church is Thomas J. Welsh's only surviving Romanesque Revival building.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
39. May 2020

    Filed Permit 202005067322 $$$ $8,000,000

    Conver vacant church building to residential use comprised of group housing & dwelling units. install new floor & internal construction within existing envelope. partial seismically strengthen existing umb structure. include existing bell tower. minor change to exterior to provide light & air to units.newmep, fire.

40. 2024

    Designated San Francisco Landmark No. 316, Sacred Heart Parish Complex.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
41. 2024

    The church was found eligible for the National Register of Historic Places through a consensus determination, which listed it on the California Register.

    SF Planning, landmark designation

13 nominal $1 street-space or sidewalk permits are omitted from the timeline. 1 cancelled permit is not shown. The assessor's roll gives 1900; the church was dedicated in 1898 and finished in 1909. The planned church is given both as 88 by 169 feet and as 65 by 137 feet with a 125-foot campanile; Welsh's partnership with Carey is also dated to 1903. The high altar's painting is credited both to Moretti and to Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich. The connector is dated both to about 1915 and to some time between 1913 and 1920.