Painted ladies

[2] Since then, the term has also been used to describe groups of colorfully repainted Victorian houses in other American cities, such as the Charles Village neighborhood in Baltimore; Lafayette Square in St. Louis; the greater San Francisco and New Orleans areas, in general; Columbia-Tusculum in Cincinnati; the Old West End in Toledo, Ohio; the neighborhoods of McKnight and Forest Park in Springfield, Massachusetts; and the city of Cape May, New Jersey.

As one newspaper critic noted in 1885, "… red, yellow, chocolate, orange, everything that is loud is in fashion … if the upper stories are not of red or blue … they are painted up into uncouth panels of yellow and brown …"[7] While many of the mansions of Nob Hill were destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, thousands of the mass-produced, modest houses survived in the western and southern neighborhoods of the city.

In 1963, San Francisco artist Butch Kardum began combining intense blues and greens on the exterior of his Italianate-style Victorian house.

Kardum became a color designer, and he and other artist/colorists such as Tony Canaletich, Bob Buckter, and Jazon Wonders began to transform dozens of gray houses into Painted Ladies.

One of the best-known groups of "Painted Ladies" is the row of Victorian houses at 710–720 Steiner Street across from Alamo Square park.