But here's what's actually worth thinking about: these homes were built by private developers over 130 years ago, without environmental impact reviews, without a decade-long permitting process, and without a single community meeting where someone objected to the shadow cast on a neighboring blade of grass. They just… built them. Beautiful, lasting, iconic structures that have defined San Francisco's identity for over a century.

Now consider what it takes to build anything in this city today. The average housing project takes years — sometimes over a decade — to navigate the city's labyrinthine approval process. The budget bloats, the timelines stretch, and by the time shovels hit dirt, costs have doubled and the housing crisis has deepened.

The Painted Ladies aren't just a pretty postcard. They're an architectural rebuke to modern San Francisco's inability to get out of its own way. The Victorians who built them understood something we've forgotten: housing is built by people willing to take risks with their own capital, not by planning commissions debating paint colors for three fiscal quarters.

We're not saying every new building needs to be a gingerbread Victorian masterpiece. But maybe — just maybe — if we cut the red tape and let builders build, the city could produce something future generations would actually want to photograph.

The Painted Ladies have stood for 130 years. At the current pace of SF permitting, the next iconic row of homes should be ready around 2157.