This 53 foot wide mural is 14 feet tall. It was painted around 1917. A red milk truck being driven by a toddler was an advertising mural for the Severn Lodge Dairy. A detailed story can be found at the
Burlingame’s Dairy Past
At the turn of the last century, Burlingame was a rural, bucolic community. Like other nearby suburbs of San Francisco, the blossoming town had a handful of local dairies, serving the growing population.
One of these dairies was owned by the Howard family, that once owned thousands of acres of land in San Mateo County, acquired during the Gold Rush. In 1856, widowed after William Davis Merry Howard died, Agnes Poett-Howard married his brother, George. They had four children. The eldest, George Howard, Junior, would later became a prominent architect in Burlingame and Hillsborough.
After having been widowed once again, Agnes married Henry Pike Bowie in 1879. Bowie was a prominent San Francisco attorney, with whom she shared ownership of the Howard land and dairy. In 1888, Henry and stepson George designed a grand estate in Hillsborough that reflected Mr. Bowie's affection for Japanese art. It had terraced gardens, designed by John McLaren. Bowie would name it “Severn Lodge” after Severn Lane, the street in Hillsborough that bordered part of the tract on which the estate was built. The estate would also have a dairy.
Early pictures show cows grazing on the Severn Lodge property in Hillsborough. His cows also grazed at Coyote Point and the Delaware area of San Mateo. The Severn Lodge Dairy, though located on the Bowie estate, had offices on Burlingame Avenue as early as 1914. By 1917 the creamery and distribution plant are listed at 220 California Drive in Burlingame. In 1921-1922, the structure became a parking garage concession (Severn Lodge Garage) for the short-lived Pacific City Amusement Park at Coyote Point. The dairy is listed at 222 California, next door to the south. Bowie died in 1920.
In 1922, the Dairy Delivery Company, in business since the great quake, erected a large pasteurizing plant and garage on the southeast corner of Howard Avenue, a block away (198 California Drive). The company had formed in San Francisco in 1906, as a way to distribute free milk from several dairies to earthquake refugees. In 1925, the Regan building was erected on the lot adjacent the “Dairy Boy” wallscape, covering him from view for several decades.The Dairy Delivery Company continued to process and deliver the milk of several Peninsula dairies, and was purchased by Borden in 1938. It eventually closed in 1970.
The Severn Lodge in Hillsborough was demolished in 1985 and the lot was subdivided. In June 2000, workers clearing rubble from the Regan Building discovered the Dairy Boy, looking quite pristine after 75 years in darkness.
A nearby street sign notes this point of historical interest. It reads: