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SF’s Historic 1901 Muni Car Barn to Become Youth Arts Hub

Provided power for SF’s first electric street cars, survived 1906 quake and now will be youth arts center in Excelsior
By - posted 7/15/2020 No Comment

Work is complete on a meticulous renovation of the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse, part of San Francisco’s railway history in the Excelsior District, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department announced yesterday. 

The historic landmark will open to the public as a hub for creativity, performance, youth arts education, and community connection when health orders allow. In the meantime, Performing Arts Workshop, Rec and Park’s programming partner, is offering online arts education.

Read the full press release.

The $14 million project represents the first of two phases of improvements to the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse, which is made up of two adjoining structures that served San Francisco’s first electric streetcars: the single-story, 3,000-square foot Powerhouse and the two-story, 13,000-square foot office building known as the Car Barn.

Built at a time when streetcars were drawn by horses, the Geneva Car Barn opened in 1901 and its Powerhouse soon began providing electricity to the city’s first electrified streetcars.

Critical to San Francisco’s transportation for 80 years, it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, as well as bloody railroad strikes in the early 20th Century. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake knocked it out of commission. The building was red-tagged, sitting closed and vacant for a decade.

Neighborhood activists who later formed Friends of the Geneva Car Barn saved the building from a planned demolition to make way for a parking lot in 1999. The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department acquired the site from SFMTA in 2004. The restoration of the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse has since been considered a key element to revitalize the neighborhood around the Balboa Park Station.

Watch their reopening video.