Room Additions in North Park

A lemon grove that became a streetcar suburb

James Monroe Hartley bought 40 acres here in 1893 for a lemon grove. Stevens & Hartley began developing it in 1911, and streetcar lines built between 1907 and 1911 drove the subdivisions. By 1924 North Park was the fastest-growing neighborhood in the city. Building mostly stopped from 1930 to 1945, then FHA "minimum houses" filled the leftover lots after the war.

The result is a mix you can read street by street: Craftsman and California bungalows, Spanish Colonial Revival houses, bungalow courts, and small Minimal Traditional homes from the late 1940s. The North Park Community Plan was adopted October 25, 2016, and the North Park Planning Committee is the community's advisory group.

North Park's designated districts

More districts are in process, including Altadena, Kalmia Place, 28th Street, St. Louis Heights and Wabash Mesa. A street that isn't designated today may be later, so check the City's historic districts page for your address.

What this means for your addition

The Secretary of the Interior's Standards are written for the whole country, so they don't hand you dimensions. In practice, designers working under them in San Diego aim for an addition that reads as new but fits in, and that leaves the street face of the original house alone. That points to a few patterns:

• Build at the back. A rear wing or a primary suite at the back of the lot leaves the porch, front gable and windows untouched. On a deep lot, this is usually the simplest approval.
• If you go up, step back. A second floor set well back from the front wall, with its roof below or behind the original ridge, keeps the bungalow in front. A full second story flush with the facade is the hardest case in a district.
• Match materials without copying. Wood siding, trim depth and window proportions that relate to the original help, but reviewers generally expect the new part to be distinguishable from the old.
• Check the foundation type. IB 140, the City's bulletin for one-story additions, covers houses above grade or above a crawl space as well as slabs. If your bungalow sits on a raised wood floor, the new floor usually needs to line up with it, which affects steps, foundation design and cost.

Rooflines cost money too. Matching a complex Craftsman or Spanish roof costs more than a simple shed roof, which is one reason rear additions with lower, simpler roofs are common. Review runs in parallel with the building permit, but it adds design time, so budget for it in the project timeline.

The upside of being a contributor

Designation brings tools along with the review. The City lists by-right setback deviations, use of the State Historic Building Code and Mills Act property tax savings as possible benefits for contributors. On a narrow lot, a setback deviation can be what makes a rear addition fit. Ask about all three at the start, not after plans are drawn.

What a North Park addition costs

Ground-floor construction runs about $300, $400 and $550+ per sq ft for basic, mid and high-end work, before design, fees and contingency. On this site's planning numbers, a 450 sq ft primary suite at the rear comes to roughly $262k–$343k all-in. Historic design work pushes toward the upper part of a range rather than adding a fixed fee. Put in your size and finish level in the room addition cost calculator.