Bunny Gillespie

Westlake (Images of America: California) Bunny Gillespie

The Westlake section of Daly City is the quintessential postwar suburban-modernist development, and it was the singular vision of Henry Doelger that made it so. Westlake was to the San Francisco Bay Area what Levittown was to New York after World War II, providing affordable housing for thousands of service veterans and war-industry personnel who remained in California after their tours of duty. The area abuts San Francisco's Sunset District, where Doelger built thousands of homes in the shifting sands before battling the dunes in northern San Mateo County in 1948. Doelger was lauded as the Bay Area's best known builder of homes, apartments, and shopping centers. Daly City increased in size almost by half when Westlake was annexed in 1948.