Henry Doelger (pronounced DOLE-jer; June 23, 1896 – July 23, 1978) was an American real estate developer and builder known for the creation of large low-cost housing tracts in San Francisco and

Daly City Daly City () is the second-most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its northern border with almost all of San Francisco's southern ...

. He worked alongside his brothers to form the company Doelger Homes.

Biography

Doelger was born on June 23, 1896, in San Francisco, California; birthed behind his parents' German bakery. After his father's death when he was 12 years old, Doelger left school in the 8th grade in order to help support his family. Henry Doelger went into business with his two brothers Frank and John Jr, eventually becoming a major real estate developer in San Francisco. The 1932

art deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

" Doelger Building" on Judah Street was

designated Designation (from Latin ''designatio'') is the process of determining an incumbent's successor. A candidate that won an election, for example, is the ''designated'' holder of the office the candidate has been elected to, up until the candidate's ...

in 2013 as an official landmark by the

City of San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in the ...

. During the 1940s, Doelger built large sections of San Francisco's

Sunset District The Sunset District is a neighborhood located on the West Side of San Francisco, California, United States. Location The Sunset District is the largest neighborhood within the city and county of San Francisco. Golden Gate Park forms the neighb ...

, in the same part of the city where he had set up his headquarters since the 1930s. In the 1940s, Edward Hageman worked as the architect on the Doelger Homes Sunset District project. In 1947, Doelger and his associates started building what is now known as the Westlake district in

. This is one of the earliest examples of a large-tract

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...

and manifestation of

urban sprawl Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted ...

Life Magazine ''Life'' (stylized as ''LIFE'') is an American magazine launched in 1883 as a weekly publication. In 1972, it transitioned to publishing "special" issues before running as a monthly from 1978 to 2000. Since then, ''Life'' has irregularly publi ...

featured photographs of the numerous rows of houses in the 1950s, which were immortalized in the song ''

Little Boxes "Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962. The song was first released by her friend, Pete Seeger, in 1963, and became his only charting single in January 1964. The song is a social satire about the developm ...

'' by Malvina Reynolds. Doelger died on July 23, 1978, in Borgaro Torinese, at the age of 82 while traveling in Italy.

References

External links

"Streetwise: Doelger City"
by Steve LaBounty, ''Western Neighborhoods Project'' (website), November 1999.

by Lorri Ungaretti, ''Encyclopedia of San Francisco'' (website), 2004. * American businesspeople in real estate Businesspeople from San Francisco 20th-century American businesspeople 1896 births 1979 deaths Sunset District, San Francisco Daly City, California Architecture in the San Francisco Bay Area {{US-business-bio-1890s-stub

Biography

See also

References

Further reading

External links