• Fort Point
• Tanforan cottages
• R. C. Ruskin house
• Holy Cross Parish Hall
• Quarters 2-4
• Feusier Octagon house
• The Octagon/National Society of Colonial Dames
• Grogan-Lent-Atherton Building
• Burr Building
• Hotaling Annex East
• Abbreviations

Just below the south [Golden Gate] bridge abutment--accessible from Long Avenue in the Presidio. Now restored as a military museum (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 38).

A polygonal brick coastal-defense fort, now a museum. As one of the finest surviving examples of a group that includes Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, it is well worth a visit and has a wonderful view of the bay from beneath the Golden Gate Bridge (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 163).

At Fort Point in 1853, the military began construction ... of a three-fort system that would protect the entrance to the Bay. Although the complex was designed to guard the Bay against invasion from the sea, the first weapons installed at Fort Point were directed instead toward the land south of the fort to forestall a possible attack by Conferederate sympathizers. The orders were given by Brigadier General Albert Sydney Johnston, the Army commander of the Department of the Pacific, who would soon resign to join the Confederate army and be killed at Shiloh. Southerns played an important role in the early history of the city, controlling what was known as the "chiv" or chivalry element of the Democratic Party, and were prominent in the city's social life. Johnston was asked to join the conspiracy by Asbury Harpending, William Ralston's sometime partner, but replied that he would defend his post "with the last drop of [his] blood."

Fort Point did not receive its full complement of weapons until 1868. By that time it was militarily obsolete. Massive brick fortifications could no longer withstand modern, rifled cannons. Fort Point would remain a facility without military justification for years. When the military declared the fort, now abandoned and decaying, surplus property after World War II, a citizens group arranged to reopen the fort for intermittent tours and campaigned to turn it into a National Historic Site--which was accomplished in 1970 (Wiley 2000: 351-52).

Following Captain Vancouver's first visit to San Francisco Bay in November 1792, (he was to pay a second visit in October 1794) work began on the construction of the Castillo de San Joaquin. Perhaps it was the visit of this first foreign representative at the port of San Francisco which stirred the Spanish officials toward a better defense of their long-neglected and most remote claim in the New World.

Erected on a promontory overlooking the entrance to the Bay (the site of Fort Point today), this modest pile of adobe faced with kilned bricks could hardly be regarded as much of a threat to any foreign invaders. Shaped like a horseshoe, it measured only about one hundred by one hundred twenty feet. According to legend, the castillo greeted the arrival of any vessel with a booming salute from its eight antique cannons, whenever powder was available. (Some of these cannons, still to be seen at the Presidio and at Fort Point, date to Spain's conquest of Peru in the 16th century.) The reverberations of a salute sometimes caused large sections of the old castillo to collapse, but portions of the building remained intact for many decades. When preparations were being made in the 1850s for the construction of the massive brick Fort Point, the entire promontory and whatever remained of the old castillo were blasted away (Alexander and Heig 2002: 12).

The most impressive example of military architecture in the San Francisco Bay region is the masonry fort at Fort Point. Built during the 1850's, and somewhat similar in plan to Fort Sumter, it is one of the best remaining examples of the multi-storied fortification of its period.

This great brick battleship occupies the site selected in 1776 by Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza for a presidio. Those who had to live at the Presidio of San Francisco thought better of the location about a mile to the southeast, but the idea of erecting a fortification at the narrows of the Golden Gate was a logical one.

The original Spanish fort, which had been abandoned long before the American conquest, stood some 60 feet above the "modern" fort, the bluff at the point being cut down to bedrock as the first step in the construction that was undertaken in 1853. In 1861 the new three-story brick and granite fort, mounting over 120 heavy guns, was complete.

Three tiers of galleries supported by brick arches, with gun ports pierced through the outer walls, form the sides facing the water. Living quarters for the garrison were along the inside of the wall facing the land. On the ground floor were mechanics' shops; the second and third floors, supported by fluted iron columns, housed the officers and artillerymen. In the central courtyard were furnaces for heating shot.

After 1868 the U. S. Army imitated the wisdom of the Spaniards and withdrew the garrison to the Presidio proper. By the time that the old photograph on Page 13 was taken (about 1886), the fort was obsolete, but it was not until 1893 that work was begun on a new series of reinforced concrete batteries to replace the old Columbiads and Rodman guns at the Point. In 1914 the fort was officially abandoned, though during the First World War it housed some German prisoners, and during World War II it mounted a light battery and searchlight.

Today the ironwork is rusty, the mortar and stone weathering away, the remarkable masonry of the spiral granite staircases unseen except by participants in rare special tours.

At present, the Fort Point Museum Association, having acquired a long-term lease from the Army, is hoping to raise the money needed to rehabilitate Fort Point for use as a military museum which would hold memorabilia relating to California and the West from 1861 to the end of the Indian Wars (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 8, 11-13).

Two very early small cottages, one with a carriage house behind, preserve the look of the early Mission district (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 137).

In the early 1850s Toribio Tanforan, an early Mexican era settler, erected a pair of matching cottages on Dolores Street, north of 16th Street. Set on a very large lot, they served originally as farmhouses for Tanforan. They are among the oldest houses surviving in San Francisco. One of them today serves as a hospice for AIDS patients (Alexander and Heig 2002: 120).

Two very old houses that have maintained their original appearance can be seen side-by-side at 220 and 214 Dolores Street. The "Tanforan Cottages," so called because members of the family of Toribio Tanforan occupied them from 1896 to 1945, are simple frame structures with modified late Classical Revival facades. Though very nearly identical in appearance, they were not constructed at the same time; 214 Dolores is said to have been built a little before 1853, 220 not long after that date. This dating is questionable, though, as the first substantiated date is 1866, when Revilo Wells, owner of 214, had water piped in. There is still a small carriage house behind 220 Dolores--occupied as late as 1940 by one of the Tanforan carriages. The large gardens of these houses have been well-maintained and contain many specimens of turn-of-the-century San Francisco taste in flora (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 104).

This block has a remarkable varied group of houses ranging from one of the city's oldest at 825, through almost every architectural period and style to Don Knorr's late 1970s contemporary (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 71).

One of the oldest homes in the city is the residence at 825 Francisco Street, originally constructed by R. C. Ruskin of lumber salvaged from ships abandoned at San Francisco in the Gold Rush. In 1854 the house was enlarged by a new owner and probably reached its present form at a much later date.

It is said that the house was saved from the 1906 fire by means of wine-soaked sacks applied to the roof and walls. In 1908 its front lawn held grandstands erected by the city so that distinguished guests might view the entrance into the bay of the Great White Fleet on its round-the-world cruise. The front of the house appears much as it did in the 1850's, while the interior has been extensively remodeled (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 45).

The city's oldest church, on the exterior, is this simple frame building, formerly St. Patrick's. Originally built on Market St. where the Palace Hotel stands today, it was part of St. Ignatius College, founded by the Jesuits as the city's first institution of higher education. It was moved here in 1873 and remodeled in 1891 as a parish hall (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 124).

The abandoned Holy Cross Parish Hall (63) at 1822 Eddy is old St. Patrick's (1854), the Catholic church that sat amid the dunes at the corner of Market and New Montgomery before it was moved twice (Wiley 2000: 300-01).

Another noteworthy pre-fab was the small St. Patrick's Church. Built in 1854, with an adjoining orphanage, this Catholic church stood on Market Street at the corner of Third. The little church remained at this spot for twenty years, until William Ralston bought the property to build his mighty Palace Hotel. Ralston had St. Patraick's moved, and it finally ended up at Eddy Street near Divisadero, where it stands today as one of the city's oldest structures (Alexander and Heig 2002: 64).

Along with its rich collection of Victorian houses, the Western Addition has a number of noteworthy churches. The oldest of these is Old St. Patrick's, built about 1852. Early photographs show it standing on Market Street, on the site of the Palace Hotel. In 1873 the little rectangular church was moved, first to Eddy Street near Laguna, and re-christened St. John the Baptist Church. A few years later it was moved again (and thus escaped destruction in the 1906 disaster), to the north side of Eddy, between Scott and Divisadero, where it stands today. For eight more years it served as the Holy Cross Parish Church, until a fine new church was built on the adjoining lot. Since then it has become a parish hall. It is the only surviving specimen of the Greek Revival Style which once prevailed in Gold-Rush San Francisco (Alexander and Heig 2002: 281).

The Spanish armed Black Point, or Punta Medanos, as they called it, with a few guns in 1797. By 1822 only one was left. Although the point was declared a U.S. military reservation in 1850, the Army did not occupy it until the Civil War. In the meantime several houses were built by squatters, the most famous of whom was John C. Fremont, whose house was demolished in 1864 for a Civil War gun battery. Although they have since been altered, three other houses do remain from the pre-Army days. They form an irregular row north from the gate on Bay Street as follows:

• Quarters 2, Brooks house
• Quarters 3, Moody house
• Quarters 4, Haskell house

Walk north on Franklin, turning right on MacArthur. Through the gates on the left is McDowell Hall (18) (1855), the former residence of the commanding general of the Army's western headdquarters. Return to Franklin and turn right. Some of the houses lining both sides of Franklin were built in the 1850s by squatters, albeit well-known ones such as John Fremont. On the right are the Brooks House (1850s), the Palmer House (1855), which was built for a gold rush banker, and the Haskell House (19) (1850s), where David Broderick died in 1859 after he was wounded in a duel with Judge David Terry. When the squatters were evicted, these houses became officers' quarters (Wiley 2000: 340-41).

Fort Mason (formerly Black Point) once captured the eye as does the Black Point on the northwestern shore of San Pablo Bay. Its steep scrub-covered slopes suggested a logical site for a secondary battery to command the anchorages of the port, and it was put to military use by the Spanish in 1797. The existence of this branch fortification of the Presidio down to the American occupation later became the basis of the government claim to ownership of Black Point.

In the beginning, however, the fortification of Alcatraz, directly opposite Black Point, suggested that the Army had no intention of using the site. As a result, some early residents built houses on the brushy point that were among the most pleasant in the San Francisco of the 1850's. Perhaps Black Point may be considered San Francisco's first suburb.

Remarkably, some of the atmosphere of suburban Black Point has come down to us to this day, thanks to the decision of the Army, shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, to fortify the point against any Confederate invaders.

Some of the houses on the Point were razed for the fortifications--among them the "Fremont House," a cottage occupied around 1860 by Mrs. John Charles Fremont while her husband (then California's most famous citizen and unsuccessful candidate for the Presidential nomination on the first Republican Party ticket) was away at the Mariposa gold mines.

But the best of the "squatters'" houses were saved and turned into quarters. And for this reason, and because stingy post-Civil War Congresses looked more favorably upon "repairs" than upon new construction, some of the earliest of San Francisco's homes (much modified by later additions) are still in use at Fort Mason.

Three of the four oldest buildings at Fort Mason are built around houses constructed for Captain Edwin Moody and Joseph Brooks, both of the Gold Rush mining company that came to San Francisco on the ship Balance, Moody and Brooks built their homes at the Point in 1855. The Brooks house (or a little part of it) is now McDowell Hall, the Fort Mason Officers' Club.

The original house is said to have been split in two after the Army occupied the post in 1863 with one part removed and a new quarters for the commanding general built onto the remaining part and the existing foundation. Subsequent improvements have resulted in a structure that dates mostly from the 1880's (with internal renovations that bring us right down to today); yet the building preserves an air of dignity, antiquity, and character.

Quarters Two (directly north of McDowell Hall) is thought to have been built around the removed part of the Brooks house. Quarters Three was built for Captain Moody, later one of the founders of the San Francisco Yacht Club. Moody sold the house in 1857 to Major Leonidas K. Haskell, a close friend of the Fremonts. Haskell was also a close friend of David C. Broderick; because of this, the house figured in one of [the] most dramatic political incidents of the Gold Rush period. It was to this house that the dying Senator Broderick was brought after his duel with California Supreme Court Justice David S. Terry on the morning of September 13, 1859. Quarters Four was built for Major Haskell about 1855, and sold to banker Joseph Palmer of Palmer, Cooke & Co., presumably when Haskell bought Moody's house. Both Quarters Three and Four have been very much modified from their original appearance by the addition of second stories, bay windows and trim of a later period.

Together with the row of small enlisted men's quarters across the road, the four old officers' quarters form one of the most interesting groups of early residences in the Bay Area. If this area eventually becomes a park, these houses would make excellent civic buildings (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 11, 13).

Based on Orson Fowler's A Home for All, or the Gravel Wall and Octagonal Mode of Building (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 69).

Feusier Octagon House (15) (1859) at 1067 Green was designed by an unknown follower of nineteenth-century New York phrenologist Orson Fowler, who wrote in A Home for All that octagon houses provided a salubrious residential environment and a cheap domicile for the "new age." Perfect for California! A second story, the mansard roof, and a cupola were added sometime after the house was built (Wiley 2000: 259).

At 1067 Green, a pioneer named Kenny built a second octagon in 1858. He sold it in 1870 to a French family, the Feusiers, who occupied the house for so many generations that it came to be known as the Feusier Octagon. Mme. Feusier enjoyed recounting to later generations the story of her trip from France, when her young husband, who had already settled in San Francisco, asked her how she would like to live in an eight-sided house. She was understandably astonished when she actually saw it. In later years, while she was paying a visit to France, her husband, as a surprise, added the octagonal mansard roof to give the family more room, making the house quite a departure from the usual octagon style.

Mme. Feusier also recalled the disheartening view from the rear windows in 1906, the barren landscape of a fire-blackened city, but noted that the city had looked just as barren when she had come to it as a bride. The Feusier Octagon was one of a group of houses at the top of Russian Hill which survived the 1906 disaster, but it was threatened in the 1970s, when the owner wanted to replace it with a high-rise apartment tower. It is now a city landmark (Alexander and Heig 2002: 106).

The ten hundred block of Green Street, on one of the three crests of Russian Hill, is one of the most remarkable blocks in the city. The outstanding building on the block is the octagon house at 1067 Green Street. One of the two remaining octagon houses in the city (once there were five), the "Feusier House" was built in 1857-58 by George Kenny and sold in 1870 to Louis Feusier, a companion of such San Francisco celebrities as Leland Stanford and Mark Twain. The plan was developed from the general scheme of Orson S. Fowler, a phrenologist who had succeeded in identifying well-being with the shape and construction of one's domicile. The addition of a Mansard roof, providing a third story, and a small, octagonal cupola during the 1880's does not seem to have affected the original style of the house (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 47).

The Octagon House (17) at 2645 Gough was built by William McElroy, a miller, in 1861 on the east side of Gough facing Union, which was then known as Presidio Road. It is the second surviving structure of a type designed according to the ideas of Orson Fowler. Fowler argued that octagonal houses provided a healthful living environment. The house was bought by the National Society of Colonial Dames in 1951, moved to this lot from across the street, and restored by Warren Perry, the dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Architecture. It is now a museum of the decorative arts from the Colonial and Federal periods (Wiley 2000: 348).

Based on Orson Fowler's A Home for All, or the Gravel Wall and Octagonal Mode of Building.

The fifth octagonal house still stands, at the southwest corner of Gough and Union Streets. Called by the local school children "the inkwell house," it stood on the east side of Gough until 1952, when it was purchased by the National Society of Colonial Dames and moved across the street to a lot donated by the Allyne sisters, whose own splendid Victorian stood on the adjoining property. (Their own house was left to the city by the Allyne sisters, but immediately following their death the Parks and Recreation Department had the house demolished; the garden became a small park.)

The Colonial Dames rebuilt the octagon as their western headquarters and museum, this time leaving out the sand and gravel walls as insurance against earthquakes. The little spiral stair which once led from the center of the house to an observation tower on the roof has been moved to one side to allow more space for an exhibit of colonial antiques. While remodeling the old house, workmen found a metal canister in a wall, left there by the original owner, William C. McElroy, when the house was being built. Inside was a four-page letter which McElroy wrote with an eye to having it discovered by some member of a future generation.

Dated July 14, 1861, the letter gives a fascinating account of San Francisco just after the beginning of the Civil War. Being a Virginian, McElroy refers to President Lincoln as "Old Abe." He says that the population of San Francisco had increased since his arrival in 1849 from 3,000 to 90,000. The mails, having always come by the slow route of the Pacific Mail steamers, were now being sent overland by way of Salt Lake City via the fast new Pony Express. There was talk of building a transcontinental railroad, but he doubts that this will ever occur in his lifetime.

McElroy recalled those inflationary early years when a San Francisco laborer could earn as much as $10 a day, and reported happily that the average daily wage for all kinds of mechanics was now $4. He inveighed against cheap Chinese labor, and thought the day would come when we would make war with the Chinese and "make their pigtails hop." He closed his letter with several bits of advice to young people, one of which is "to read your Bible and be charitable with your neighbors." Apparently he saw no irony in this (Alexander and Heig 2002: 106-07).

The Octagon House (17) at 2645 Gough was built by William McElroy, a miller, in 1861 on the east side of Gough facing Union, which was then known as Presidio Road. It is the second surviving structure of a type designed according to the ideas of Orson Fowler. Fowler argued that octagonal houses provided a healthful living environment. The house was bought by the National Society of Colonial Dames in 1951, moved to this lot from across the street, and restored by Warren Perry, the dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Architecture. It is now a museum of the decorative arts from the Colonial and Federal periods (Wiley 2000: 348).

Octagon House, 2645 Gough Street, is an unusually well-preserved example of a mid-nineteenth century architectural form. Based on ideas in Orson S. Fowler's popular book, A Home for All, it was built for William C. McElroy in 1861, and is one of two remaining examples of its form in San Francisco (see p. 47).

In addition to the octagonal shape, Fowler also advocated the use of concrete walls. These were then often sheathed in another material, in this case redwood siding. The octagonal shape is here accentuated by wooden quoins and the slightly inclined octagonal hipped roof which carries the eye upward to the octagonal cupola.

Formerly situated across the street (at 2648 Gough), Octagon House changed hands many times until 1953 when the National Society of Colonial Dames of America purchased it from the Pacific Gas & Electric Company for one dollar and a promise to move it. The present site was donated by the Misses Lucy H. and Edith W. Allyne, the house was moved, and architect Warren Perry supervised an extensive reworking. Octagon House presently serves as a museum and library as well as the center of the society's activities (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 16, 18-19).

400-01 Jackson St., a post-1906 rebuilding of a c.1882 office structure (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 46-48).

The Grogan-Lent-Atherton Building (14) at 400 Jackson dates from 1859 (Wiley 2000: 151).

(701 Sansome Street) This beautifully maintained rough brick structure provides a meaningful beginning to the 400 block of Jackson Street. Notable are the arched ground floor openings which are framed in white stone (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 274). William M. Lent, President of the Savage Mining Co., organized the financing of the Comstock Lode in this building, Registered Landmark No. 27 (Society of California Pioneers Plaque).

(Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 48).

E. O. I. Building. Originally a warehouse, this yellow brick building is now used for offices. It is Italianate in style and has been carefully restored (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 305).

(Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 47).

The [Anson Parson] Hotaling Annex East (18) at 445 Jackson was originally a stable for a hotel. Hotaling took over both this building and the Hotaling Annex West (19) (1860) at 463-73 Jackson for warehouse space for his liquor business (Wiley 2000: 151).

As the business district moved south on Montgomery Street, the commercial district around Jackson and Montgomery became a kind of backwater and eventually an adjunct of the North Beach bohemian community. After World War II it revived as the center of a flourishing interior design, furniture, and antique business. Business owners began to restore their buildings, and the area was placed on the National Register in 1971. Note that the wall of high rises that marks the beginning of Downtown starts with the Golden Gateway Apartments just east of here on Jackson Street. To the north the skyline remains modest (Wiley 2000: 152-53).

Abbreviations