national register nomination for boulevard park historic

In 1913, another wave of suburban expansion across the American and Sacramento Rivers took place.
Northern Electric provided streetcar service to the new suburbs of North Sacramento and West Sacramento,
and commuter interurban service to the nearby communities of Elverta, Rio Linda, Robla, Del Paso
Heights, Brighton, and Woodland. Northern Electric later consolidated their operation with a separate
interurban railroad, originally built as the Oakland Antioch & Eastern, later reorganized as the Sacramento
Northern Railway. This interurban network provided service between Oakland and Chico, with Sacramento
at the center of the network.
By the 1930s, PG&E took their streetcar line on G and H Street past Boulevard Park out of service and
replaced it with a bus. The C Street streetcar line, now known as the Sacramento Northern Railway and still
in use as a freight route, remained in operation until 1946. Residents along the southern end of the
neighborhood, generally more affluent than those on the north end, were more able to afford automobiles
than those on the north end. At the same time, the relative inflexibility of streetcar fares (five cents when
streetcars were first introduced in 1870, and still five cents by the 1930s) meant that working people on the
north end of Boulevard Park were more able to afford streetcar transit. This option also expanded
commuting options for working people, previously limited to walking distances for employment. This may
have facilitated the growth of small single-family homes on Boulevard Park’s north end during the later
portion of the period of significance.
In 1943, PG&E sold their Sacramento streetcar lines to Pacific City Lines, a division of National City
Lines, a company incorporated in 1936 that bought streetcar systems across the United States. Both CCT
and Sacramento Northern sold their streetcar lines to Pacific City Lines at the same time, although they
retained the right to operate freight trains on the existing electric freight belt. Pacific City Lines
consolidated the streetcar system under the name Sacramento City Lines. Under SCL, the C Street streetcar
line was combined with the CCT line, creating a single route, No. 15. This route ran from McKinley Park
through Boulevard Park, Downtown Sacramento, Oak Park and the Fairgrounds, terminating at the end of
21st Avenue. SCL discontinued operation of Line No. 15 on July 28, 1946. SCL discontinued its last
streetcar lines on January 4, 1947, completing their replacement of Sacramento’s streetcar lines with
General Motors buses.
The intervening decades brought significant changes to the Boulevard Park neighborhood. In 1905,
Sacramento was limited to its original city limits by levees and rivers. By 1946, the city had expanded to
several times its original size, due to expanded flood control networks that eliminated the old levees, new
bridges that crossed the rivers, and greatly improved networks of paved roads and highways.
Neighborhoods that were remote farmland in 1905 became desirable residential suburbs in the intervening
decades. Neighborhoods that were desirable suburbs far from the urban core in 1905 were uncomfortably
close to the urban center by 1946, and increasingly subject to urban problems. Many wealthy and middleclass
residents had relocated from Boulevard Park to new neighborhoods. During World War II, housing
shortages resulted in greater pressure for housing close to Sacramento’s industrial hubs along the
waterfront and in the Southern Pacific shops. Subsequent owners often subdivided single-family residences
to create boarding houses or apartments for working people. This influx of working-class residents in the
more affluent end of the neighborhood prompted more of the remaining affluent residents to relocate to
newer, less crowded suburbs. In the years after 1946, with the loss of the neighborhood’s streetcar
connection to downtown Sacramento, more large residences shifted from boarding rooms for working
people to homes for poor people who did not work, including orphans, the disabled and senior citizens.
This demographic change in the neighborhood from a mixed-income neighborhood to a predominantly
working-class and poor neighborhood was driven by suburban expansion, demand for workforce housing,
and changes in transportation.
Criterion A: “City Beautiful” Suburban Design
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