Residence in Sunset District

 

Jennie Lewis

  1892 - 1944 (biography)

1940  

lithograph 

8 x 13 3/4" image size 

pencil, lower left 

about 28 impressions 

titled, lower right 

Hite Art Institute FA12198; listed under Lewis 21 on the Newark Museum's Allocation Control Cards for this artist 

Warren's Olde Style 

published 

California WPA 

14510 

$600.00 

Jennie Lewis captures the quiet, broad streets of the Sunset District of San Francisco in this WPA-era lithograph. Markedly different from the rest of the city, with its famed hills and valleys, the low-lying neighborhood was long considered a sleepy outlier to the bustling metropolis, featuring modest houses whose yards at the far west edge abutted ever-shifting sand dunes of Ocean Beach.

When Lewis worked for the WPA she often turned her lens on the neighborhoods of her hometown. In the late 1930s it was still sparsely populated, and its affordable housing was an attraction to immigrants, artists, and university students. Today, though it has become more developed and populous, it retains much of its quietude owing to the peaceful seaside location.