Portola Greenhouses

The site you are approaching at 770 Woolsey Street is a living relic of a time when the Portola District was known as the Garden District of San Francisco. In the early twentieth century, this neighborhood featured a Mediterranean climate shielded from the city's famous fog by rolling hills, which created an ideal environment for delicate horticulture. Starting in the 1920s, Italian and Maltese immigrants established dozens of nurseries here that supplied the majority of the city's cut flowers. The greenhouses you see today were constructed by the Garibaldi brothers, and they represent the last physical remnants of that agricultural era. While most similar nurseries across San Francisco were sold to housing developers by the 1960s, the Garibaldi family continued to cultivate roses on this specific block until 1990. Locals often referred to the property as the Rose Factory, and after the owners locked the gates decades ago, the structures were left to fall into a state of quiet, glass-shattered decay. The property remains a focus of intense community advocacy today, with nonprofits working to transform the long-vacant block into a permanent urban farm. This effort aims to honor the neighborhood's history by restoring the land to its original purpose, providing a space for food production and education. You are looking at a rare, surviving fragment of San Francisco's immigrant history and a site that continues to define the identity of the surrounding community.