• Belli Building-Langerman's Building
• Solari Building West
• 31 Alta St. house
• Blackstone house
• Golden Era Building
• Stanyan house
• Ghiradelli Building
• Bank of Lucas, Turner and Co.
• Captain Leale house
• Old St. Mary's Church
• Abbreviations

(Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47).

Around the corner on Montgomery Street between Jackson and Washington Streets is a row of buildings of the same ancient vintage as those of Jackson Square. The most striking of this set of four adjacent buildings is the two-story brick structure now identified as the Belli Building, 722-724 Montgomery Street. According to its owner, attorney Melvin Belli, there is reason to believe that at least part of the brick shell of the building dates from before the disastrous fires of 1851; certainly, there seems little doubt that the building is one of the earliest still standing in the downtown district. In December of 1857 the Melodeon, a resort of variety entertainment, opened for business on these premises.

The building had long since fallen into neglect when it attracted the attention of Belli in 1958. Since then he has lovingly rejuvenated this relic of Gold Rush days. The antique texture of the brick and cast iron architectural ornamentation is enhanced by window boxes and vines, a handsome wrought-iron gate, and colorful gas-lamps. The effect is highly nostalgic, but old Montgomery Street was never quite like this! (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 55).

The Solari Building West (12) (1852) at 472 Jackson was built by a French wine merchant. It served as the French Consulate from 1864 to 1876 (Wiley 2000: 150).

Although most of Telegraph Hill's buildings are post-1906, two clusters of houses on the eastern flank of the hill reveal what it looked like in its early period. The simple wood-frame buildings of almost miniature scale resemble the prefabs shipped from New England to this Yankee outpost. Few have escaped alterations, but they have a time-bound quality that matches their setting (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 50).

A simple "Yankee" wood-sheathed dwelling (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 58).

Photographs taken in the 1850s show the south sides of Telegraph Hill dotted with a fair sprinkling of peak-roofed cottages and, here and there, more impressive houses with two-story galleries. These larger houses were said to be the homes of "the river kings," men who controlled transportation on the vital inland waterways leading to the gold country. One river king's residence still stands at 31 Alta Street, at the crest of the hill, and has altered little from its original appearance. Built in 1852 for a Captain Andrews, it contained a kitchen and dining room in the brick ground floor section, with bedrooms and a parlor above, and a room for servants fitted under the steep gabled roof (Alexander and Heig 2002: 90).

Architecturally and historically, the little old houses on Telegraph Hill are of particular interest in that they carry a strong flavor of the San Francisco of the 1850's, before the Italianate and Stick Style rows came to dominate residential streets. Early San Francisco was something of a jumble, and so is Telegraph Hill. The photograph on page 62 of the view from Telegraph Hill in about 1862 gives a good impression of the hill's casual, almost haphazard, style.

The house to the right of center, with the double-decker balcony, is still standing, at 31 Alta Street. This house is one of the oldest residences in San Francisco, having been built by a Captain Andrews in 1852. The balconied facade of this plain house is quite characteristic of the early 1850's, and very similar homes may be seen in the earliest photographs of San Francisco.

Originally, the dining room and kitchen were in the brick semi-basement, the living room on the second floor, the family bedrooms on the third floor, and the maid's quarters in the attic. From before 1860 to 1935 the house was owned by the Maass family, glove makers (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 62-63).

A simple two-story cottage that is a rival of the Phelps House at 1111 Oak for the title of the city's oldest intact house (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 46).

In the 1860s, Pacific Heights' northern slopes were a network of nurseries, small vegetable farms and open fields called Golden Gate Valley. A great sand bank separated Black Point (Fort Mason) from Washerwoman's Lagoon, bounded by Franklin, Lombard, Laguna, and Filbert Streets, and useful not just for laundry but also as a source of fresh water for livestock.

The oldest house still standing in this area--dating to the early 1850s, and thus a rival of the Abner Phelps house for the title of oldest dwelling in San Francisco--is the two-story Black cottage. This modest frame house with a cantilevered balcony stands at the end of a little cul-de-sac known as Blackstone Court, opening on the west side of Franklin Street, just half a block south of Lombard. The house once stood on the bank of Washerwoman's Lagoon. Early records concerning land disputes in this area show a man named Black as the owner of the property before 1852 (Alexander and Heig 2002: 290-91).

In the northeast corner of the Pacific Heights area is Blackstone Court, a blind alley which intersects Franklin Street just south of Lombard at an angle. One of San Francisco's oldest homes is 11 Blackstone Court, a two-story frame structure dating to about 1851. Its origin is not clear, but Captain Nathaniel Blackstone lived here as early as 1853, according to legal documents concerning disputes over the land title.

Until its recent remodeling, the delicate split pilasters (with modified Tudor arches above) on the second-story veranda and the casement windows--characteristics of the occasional touches of Victorian Gothic on certain early San Francisco houses--substantiated the early date (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 16).

Mark Twain and Bret Harte were among the contributors to The Golden Era, an early literary magazine (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47).

The Golden Era Building at 732 Montgomery Street also appears to date from the 1850's. The cast iron pillars in the front bear the marking "Vulcan Iron Works 1892"; as the building is obviously much older than this, it seems likely that the front was remodeled to provide wider openings for warehouse use. the Golden Era was the most substantial literary periodical published in San Francisco during the 1850's and 1860's. Bret Harte, Mark Twain and Thomas Starr King were among its celebrated contributors (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 55).

One of the oldest houses in the area. Its large lot was developed into rental housing by the original owners (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 91).

Though it is well known that many prefabricated houses were shipped to San Francisco from New England during the Gold Rush era, this house is one of the very few that has been so identified. The interior has typical mid-century detail but is scaled down, as are the room sizes, to New England proportions. The exterior and interior detail was prefabricated in New England and sent around the Horn. The Stanyans, who owned the house from 1854 to 1974, replaced their large garden with the flats built on speculation in 1892. Then as now open space was vulnerable to real estate pressures (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 111).

By far the oldest house in this area is the pre-fabricated Stanyan house (San Francisco Landmark #111) at 2006 Bush Street. This is a true "Boston House," shipped in sections around the Horn to California and built in 1852. The original occupants were the family of San Francisco Supervisor Charles Stanyan, who helped the city acquire the lands for Golden Gate Park, and gave his name to the street on the park's eastern border. When the house was built, Bush Street was a toll road, so the Stanyons may have been toll collectors during the time when the costs of the road were being met. The Junior League book Here Today offers a charming view of the Stanyon place before its gardens on the east were subdivided. It remained in the Stanyan family for more than 100 years (Alexander and Heig 2002: 279-80).

The area in and about Bush Street has a number of important buildings which vary widely in age, style and use. The Stanyan House, 2006 Bush Street, for example, among the oldest structures in the Western Addition, was built about 1852 for Charles H. Stanyan, one of San Francisco's leading citizens. Stanyan, as chairman of the Outside Lands Committee, had been one of those responsible for the acquisition of Golden Gate Park. This simple, well preserved Victorian Gothic house has been held by the Stanyan family ever since (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 113).

Preserved in the Jackson Square Historic District (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47).

What was once the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory stands at 415 Jackson Street. Domingo Ghirardelli moved his burgeoning chocolate business into this building in 1857. He also moved his wife and family into the spacious second story quarters: which illustrates an important characteristic associated with the handsome commercial architecture of old San Francisco--that the upper floors of business, or even light industrial premises, very frequently were used as flats by the owners or other prosperous citizens. The combination of business and residential use in the downtown area is one that is only now being revived as one of the answers to the problems of urban living and of fulltime use of scarce and expensive "core city" lands (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 53).

On the south side [of Jackson St.], Domingo Ghiradelli started his chocolate factory at 415-31 Jackson (15) in 1853 and then constructed a second building at 407 Jackson (16) in 1860. In 1894, Ghiradelli's sons moved the chocolate factory to a new building just west of Fisherman's Wharf (Wiley 2000: 151).

Now the home of the west coast's premier architectural bookstore, William Stout's Architectural Books (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47).

The Lucas Turner Bank Building (8) at 800 Montgomery was built under Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman's supervision. All that remained of this building after 1906 was the granite façade on the west side of the first floor. William K. Stout Architectural Books, one of the two fine architectural bookstores in the city, is located on the ground floor (Wiley 2000: 150).

A recent West Point graduate, [William Tecumseh] Sherman was stationed in California as a junior officer in the years [late 1840s] of American occupation which preceded statehood and remained until he was called to serve the Union army..., never dreaming he was to lead the march across Georgia in the most decisive campaign of the Civil War. After marching through Georgia, he returned to San Francisco, retired from the army, and became an officer of the Lucas Turner Bank. (That fine old brick structure, minus its third story, still stands on the northeast corner of Jackson and Montgomery Streets.) He lived in a two-story gabled cottage on Beale Street at Harrison (Alexander and Heig 2002: 151-52).

The buildings at 441, 402 and 470 Jackson Street would be worthy of special note were they located in a less distinguished block, but details concerning them must, in this case, be removed to the Appendix. A final Jackson Square building that should be noted is the one that originally housed the bank of Lucas, Turner & Co. at 498 Jackson Street. Built in 1854, this Italianate structure was originally three stories high. The first-floor Montgomery Street facade is of white stone, the remainder of the building being plain red brick. This Montgomery Street face, with its elegant flattened arches and central doorway surmounted by a chaste classical pediment, has a substantial air well befitting a bank.

William T. Sherman, soon to earn a reputation as one of America's greatest generals, was the resident partner in the bank, and it was his native caution in fiscal matters that kept it strong in the midst of one of the city's most turbulent periods (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 53).

One of the few remaining early dairy farmhouses, this one had its facade modernized c. 1875 (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 84).

The Leale House (29) at 2475 Pacific, the house for a 25-acre dairy farm, is one of the few reaming early farmhouses. Built circa 1853, it was remodeled two decades later (Wiley 2000: 276).

One of the oldest houses in Pacific Heights is the Captain Leale house, at 2475 Pacific Avenue. Set back from the street on a high rise of land, the house is thought to have been built in the 1850s, when it served as the farmhouse for a 25-acre dairy. In 1883, Captain Leale, a popular ferry boat captain, purchased this house and apparently added the bracketed false front, trimmed with wooden finials. In his back garden, Leale built a little house which he fitted out as a study and furnished with ship's fittings to resemble a pilot house (Alexander and Heig 2002: 292).

One of the oldest houses in Pacific Heights is the Leale House, 2475 Pacific Avenue. Dating possibly from the 1850's, it was originally the farm house for a twenty-five acre dairy ranch. Set back from the street on a high rise of land, enhanced by lawns and a few trees, the beautifully-preserved house looks small but actually has four bedrooms, a library, living room and dining room.

John Leale, a famous Bay ferry boat captain, purchased the property in 1883. The false-fronted late Italianate facade would seem to date from that time, although it could conceivably date from the 1860's, and the interior may be even older. Captain Leale had an elaborate play house built for his children which was later converted to a replica of a pilot house where he met with friends after his retirement (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 24, 26).

Old St. Mary's preceded ... post-fire Chinatown by half a century. Although it too burned in 1906, the granite foundations from China and the brick and iron walls imported from the eastern U.S. survived. The church was soon restored, was remodeled and enlarged in the 1920s, burned again in 1969, and was again restored. St. Mary's academic Gothic Revival form was complemented in 1964 by the addition of a respectful but clearly contemporary brick rectory (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 42).

On the northeast corner of Grant and California is Old St. Mary's Church (3). Designed by Englishman William Crain and Irishman Thomas England in the tradition of the towered Gothic church, it was built between 1852 and 1854 by Chinese workers on a foundation of granite imported from China. The church served as the city's Catholic cathedral until 1891. It has been gutted by fire twice, in 1906 and 1969, and is being restored for the third time (Wiley 2000: 185).

The most famous landmark of Chinatown is not at all Chinese in character--for it is Old St. Mary's Church, at Grant Avenue and California Street. This red brick Gothic structure has some Chinese antecedents, though, as the granite for its foundations was imported from China, a practice not at all unusual in the Gold Rush years. Brick and iron for the church came from the East Coast, as did the bell, and stained glass from Europe.

St. Mary's was dedicated at a Christmas midnight mass in 1854, and until 1891 was the cathedral of the Archdiocese. The great fire gutted the church in 1906, but the walls and tower remained intact. The church was rebuilt promptly, and in the 1920's was extensively remodeled and enlarged towards the rear.

Yet Old St. Mary's stands very much today as it did in the Gold Rush decade, somewhat overshadowed, to be sure, by new skyscrapers, but still San Francisco's best-loved ecclesiastical landmark (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 77).

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