Parkmerced’s Original Landscape: How Streets, Towers and Courtyards Formed One Plan

By Matthew Martinez, Founder, CEO & Managing Broker, Diamond Real Estate Group. California DRE #01869679.

Parkmerced’s original design is easier to understand as a sequence of spaces than as a list of apartment buildings. Major streets lead from a common center, residential blocks contain smaller courtyards, and towers relate to broader open ground.

The arrangement gives southwestern San Francisco a residential pattern quite different from the conventional street grid. Buildings and landscape were conceived as parts of the same composition.

The central circle organizes the larger plan

The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s site research identifies Leonard Schultze, Thomas Church and Robert Royston with the architectural and landscape collaboration. It describes major streets radiating from Juan Bautista Circle and an oval wooded park at the center.

A radial pattern creates a hierarchy. The central place becomes a point of reference, while streets and smaller spaces take their position in relation to it.

That is a different organizing idea from a grid in which many intersections have a similar form and importance.

Movement passes through several scales of space

The city’s 2010 environmental-setting description distinguishes broad landscaped drives, secondary streets and the routes leading to apartment courtyards, terraces and units. It explains that the original circulation plan discouraged through traffic.

The result is a progression from a larger shared setting toward more localized residential space. The journey to a front door can include several changes in enclosure and scale.

This helps explain why the development cannot be understood fully from a drive around its perimeter. Some of its defining spaces lie within the residential blocks.

The garden apartments and towers perform different roles

The same city document identifies two principal building types: two-story garden apartments and cruciform residential towers. It describes changes in the garden blocks’ wall lines, roof forms and entrance details, together with interior and laundry courtyards.

These elements establish different relationships with the ground. A low building can define the edge of a courtyard directly; a tower concentrates accommodation vertically and takes its place within a larger landscape.

The contrast is central to the plan’s visual character. Height and open space were composed together rather than treated as unrelated features.

The measured landscape record preserves those relationships

The Historic American Landscapes Survey held by the Library of Congress includes twenty-five measured drawings and associated documentation. Its significance statement treats buildings, landscape and other features as a connected cultural landscape.

Measured plans make relationships visible that an architectural photograph can miss: the alignment of a path, the shape of a courtyard, or the way planting links separate structures.

They also provide a record of the historic arrangement through which later proposals and changes can be understood.

Original design and redevelopment proposals need separate dates

The Planning Department’s project page distinguishes the 1941–1951 community from the redevelopment approved in 2011. It describes a long-term program implemented through phases and a development agreement.

The original landscape account should therefore not be read as a current construction-completion report. Likewise, a redevelopment rendering illustrates an intended future arrangement rather than proving that it has been built.

The useful starting point is the physical design and its documented history, followed by the status of the particular later project being discussed.

Explore real estate and home for sale in San Francisco and our nearby Lakeside neighborhood guide. Contact Diamond to compare the city’s distinct residential settings and building arrangements.

Sources checked October 28, 2026. This is a design-history account of Parkmerced, not an inventory of homes for sale or a determination of present tenant rights or construction progress.