Ingleside, San Francisco: Homes, History & Local Life

The neighborhood named Ingleside takes its identity from a horse racing track that closed before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. The Ingleside Racetrack opened Thanksgiving Day 1895, attracted 12,000 spectators on its first day despite “defective transportation facilities and a steady rain,” and hosted the first automobile race in California in 1900. The 1906 earthquake ended it permanently. The racetrack’s 148-acre site was sold to developers who turned it into Ingleside Terraces. The adjacent residential neighborhood that grew up along Ocean Avenue and toward the present-day City College campus became simply “Ingleside,” per Western Neighborhoods Project’s Ingleside Racetrack history. Today it is a densely residential neighborhood where 70.6 percent of residents have Asian ancestry and 46.3 percent were born in another country, per NeighborhoodScout.

Is Ingleside right for you?

Ingleside is a working neighborhood in the best sense: owner-occupied single-family homes, attached row houses, and some multi-unit buildings, occupied by professional households, immigrant families, and CCSF students and faculty who are within walking distance of City College’s Ocean Avenue campus. NeighborhoodScout places the median at $1,293,000, more expensive than 75 percent of California neighborhoods. The housing stock includes some of San Francisco’s older surviving residential structures, with NeighborhoodScout noting that many residences were “built no later than 1939, and in some cases quite a bit earlier.”

How do you get around Ingleside?

The K Ingleside and KT Ingleside-Third Muni Metro light rail lines run along Ocean Avenue through the heart of the neighborhood, connecting to Balboa Park BART to the east and to downtown via West Portal. The K Ingleside line opened February 3, 1918, as the first line to use the Twin Peaks Tunnel, per Wikipedia’s K Ingleside entry. The 29 Sunset bus also runs through the area. There is no BART station in the neighborhood itself. Balboa Park BART is accessible via the K line.

Walk Score: 83. Transit Score: 78. Bike Score: 54. Source: walkscore.com, Ingleside.

The neighborhood Walk Score is 83.

For a two-career household, Ingleside is solid for anyone who commutes downtown via the K Ingleside/KT, and practical for I-280 Peninsula car commuters given the freeway’s adjacency to the neighborhood’s eastern edge. NeighborhoodScout notes that 33 percent of working residents commute 15 to 30 minutes, shorter than average for Americans.

The history of Ingleside

Ingleside’s early identity was tied to the institutions built on the broad, flat land between Ocean Avenue and the hills to the south. The Ingleside Industrial School (county juvenile detention) was followed by the Ingleside Jail, and then by horse racing, gambling venues, and the roadhouses along what was then a muddy track called Ocean Road. Once gambling on horse racing was banned in California in 1908, the racetracks closed and the land opened for residential development.

The K Ingleside streetcar, which opened February 3, 1918 through the new Twin Peaks Tunnel, was the catalyst for residential buildout. By the 1920s, Ocean Avenue had transformed from a road of seasonal roadhouses into a commercial strip for a growing residential neighborhood, per the OMI Historical Context Statement. The 1920s and 1930s saw construction of detached Mediterranean Revival residences with clay-tiled rooflines and decorative wall reliefs. The neighborhood continued to fill in through the 1940s and 1950s.

City College of San Francisco’s Ocean Campus is immediately adjacent, bordering the Sunnyside, Westwood Park, and Ingleside neighborhoods, per CCSF’s campus description. SFSU is approximately one mile south. Both institutions have profoundly shaped the neighborhood’s demographic character, with a large Asian immigrant and international student population.

What does the housing look like in Ingleside?

Detached single-family homes on the residential streets between and around Ocean Avenue represent a range of vintages from the 1910s through the 1950s, in Craftsman, Mediterranean Revival, and modest stucco bungalow styles. These tend to be 1,000 to 1,700 square feet on 25-foot lots, with garages, front yards, and rear gardens. Some blocks have older Victorian cottages from the 1890s-1910s era.

Attached row houses and flats are also present in Ingleside, which NeighborhoodScout notes has a higher proportion of row houses than 98 percent of US neighborhoods. Two- and three-unit buildings with attached flats are common, reflecting the denser residential fabric near Ocean Avenue.

Multi-unit buildings exist along the Ocean Avenue corridor. A Whole Foods at 1150 Ocean Avenue anchors the retail end of the strip and has drawn additional mixed-use development to the corridor in recent years.

Where locals eat, drink, and shop in Ingleside

The Ocean Avenue corridor from Balboa Park BART west to Plymouth is Ingleside’s commercial spine and one of the deepest small-strip food rosters on the south side of The City. The mix runs Cantonese roast meat counters, Lao and Thai kitchens, retro burger spots, Neapolitan pizza, Chinese bakeries, Italian restaurants, craft beer bars, and a Whole Foods Market at 1150 Ocean for grocery runs.

City College of San Francisco sits directly to the south, and the surrounding apartment and family-block density supports a steady daily rhythm. The Ingleside Light is the local independent newspaper, and the corridor has been a working neighborhood spine for decades. Specific operators cycle on a normal restaurant timeline, but the depth of the strip and the family-first character have held through multiple waves.

Ingleside Pros:

• K Ingleside light rail on Ocean Avenue provides a direct connection downtown, to Balboa Park BART, and to SFSU and CCSF without a car
• Some of San Francisco’s oldest surviving residential housing stock, with Victorian-era cottages on some blocks
• Whole Foods on Ocean Avenue and a developing commercial strip provide solid grocery and errand access from the corridor
• Strong community identity anchored around City College, the Ocean Avenue commercial corridor, and community publications like The Ingleside Light
• Among the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in The City, with one of the highest foreign-born populations and strongest Asian-American community concentrations in SF

Ingleside Cons:

• The neighborhood Walk Score is 83 at the corridor but drops substantially on interior street. Practical walkability depends heavily on specific address proximity to Ocean Avenue
• Some of the older housing stock carries deferred maintenance issues and may require renovatio. Buyers should inspect carefully
• BART access is at Balboa Park (via K line) rather than in the neighborhood directl. This adds transit time for anyone needing BART connectivity
• The commercial strip has improved significantly but still lacks the destination dining and nightlife density of neighborhoods like the Mission or Noe Valley
• I-280/Junipero Serra Boulevard at the eastern edge introduces freeway noise on blocks closest to the highway

What’s the Ingleside market doing?

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Ingleside’s market operates in tiers based on vintage, proximity to Ocean Avenue, and lot configuration. The pre-1940 housing stock and the more recent postwar infill are different markets in the same zip code. I have worked throughout southern SF for over two decades. Reach out when you are ready for a specific read on any block or property.

Ingleside frequently asked questions

What is Ingleside like to live in?

Ingleside is a working neighborhood in the best sense: owner-occupied single-family homes, attached row houses, and some multi-unit buildings, occupied by professional households, immigrant families, and CCSF students and faculty who are within walking distance of City College’s Ocean Avenue campus. NeighborhoodScout places the median at $1,293,000, more expensive than 75 percent of California neighborhoods.

Who is Ingleside right for?

The housing stock includes some of San Francisco’s older surviving residential structures, with NeighborhoodScout noting that many residences were “built no later than 1939, and in some cases quite a bit earlier.”

How do you get around Ingleside without a car?

Ingleside has a Walk Score of 83, Transit Score of 78, and Bike Score of 54. The K Ingleside and KT Ingleside-Third Muni Metro light rail lines run along Ocean Avenue through the heart of the neighborhood, connecting to Balboa Park BART to the east and to downtown via West Portal.

What kind of homes are in Ingleside?

Detached single-family homes on the residential streets between and around Ocean Avenue represent a range of vintages from the 1910s through the 1950s, in Craftsman, Mediterranean Revival, and modest stucco bungalow styles. These tend to be 1,000 to 1,700 square feet on 25-foot lots, with garages, front yards, and rear gardens. Some blocks have older Victorian cottages from the 1890s-1910s era.

What’s one thing people don’t know about Ingleside?

Ingleside’s early identity was tied to the institutions built on the broad, flat land between Ocean Avenue and the hills to the south. The Ingleside Industrial School (county juvenile detention) was followed by the Ingleside Jail, and then by horse racing, gambling venues, and the roadhouses along what was then a muddy track called Ocean Road.