[4] The San Francisco Scottish Rite Masonic Center and West Portal Lutheran Church and School lie diagonal from the northeast corner near the Stern Grove entrance.
An overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.
[7] With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored.
The most prominent early settler was Alfred Augustus Greene (c. 1827–1899), a miner and farmer who's named in the 1850 document (paying $84) and listed as the head of household in the 1852 census.
According to William's son George, his "father came here in '47, staked off the land, and worked it",[12] converting it from sand dunes into a ranch for potatoes and barley.
In 1856, Alfred was abducted from his bed by the Vigilance Committee after threatening certain wealthy San Franciscans that he could invalidate their land claims with his Delores papers.
He left for a short while to Mexico and stayed in Santa Barbara in 1860, switching careers from farming to law, then soon returning to San Francisco.
In addition, George (later having a "drooping white mustache") further recounted: "We built a fort, just east of where the Trocadero Inn is now, and we lined it with metal.
When William was away, a Federal Marshall brought 22 men to the property with an order of eviction and his wife Susannah barricaded the house and threatened to pour boiling water on them.
In 1877, the Spring Valley Water Company started buying the surrounding watershed and at the same time William's wife Susannah M Waterbury died, leaving him with at least 5 children.
The first residents at the inn were millionaire lumberman Charles Appleton Hooper, then Adolph Bernard Spreckels (1857–1924), then Hiram Cook who made the place an attractive Sunday breakfast area.
Due to the area's low population and distance from downtown, not much is known about damage from the 1906 earthquake other than crack development on the Lake Merced Tunnel arch and the Great Highway.
George Greene eventually died in a shack somewhere on the corner (perhaps in the southeast plot) on November 3, 1934[26] as Herzig homes were completed on the east side of 20th Avenue.
His sister filled out his death information which proves his identity (commonly severely mistaken as the son of William's brother George M Greene who moved to Mexico).
[34] Unlike many in the Sunset district, the houses are detached from one another with alleyways in between, making for ease of transportation, deliveries (formerly milkmen), and fire prevention.
[35] Herzig homes were initially constructed on 21st Avenue (around the time he was called to testify as a witness for the trial of Jessie Scott Hughes' murder in 1932).
[36] Main entrances tend to be on the second story and the houses were constructed from redwood framing and stucco walls, topped with ceramic shingles and furnished in cooperation with the Hale Brothers and Sterling Furniture Company.