• 83 Hill Stick Style house
• 87-89 Hill St. house
• 91 Hill St. house
• 15 Napier Ln. house
• 21 Napier Ln. house
• Angelo Barreta home/store
• 49 Hill St. house
• Pacific Union Club
• Haas-Lilienthal house
• William Pluns house
• Abbreviations

Another fine group: Italiante on the even side and Stick Style on the odd as a visual foil (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 143).

Virtually twins, these two [83, 91-93 Hill St.] Stick homes have squeezed pediments (over the second level squared bays) filled with delicate Pennsylvania-Dutch filigree (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 274).

Another fine group: Italiante on the even side and Stick Style on the odd as a visual foil (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 143).

This unusual Stick Style home is between two others, which it resembles. It is notable because it was either altered or was created with an extremely wide squared bay at the second level (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 274).

Another fine group: Italiante on the even side and Stick Style on the odd as a visual foil (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 143).

Virtually twins, these two [83, 91-93 Hill St.] Stick homes have squeezed pediments (over the second level squared bays) filled with delicate Pennsylvania-Dutch filigree (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 274).

The oldest house (1875) in the lane would appear to be 10 Napier Lane, a very simple Italianate structure similar to 293 Union Street (1860's). Other houses which should be noted along this charming boardwalk are 15 (1884), 16 (1872), 21 (1885), 22 (1876), and 32-34 (1890, and considerably remodeled) (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 63, 65).

The oldest house (1875) in the lane would appear to be 10 Napier Lane, a very simple Italianate structure similar to 293 Union Street (1860's). Other houses which should be noted along this charming boardwalk are 15 (1884), 16 (1872), 21 (1885), 22 (1876), and 32-34 (1890, and considerably remodeled) (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 63, 65).

(Personal observation).

Another fine group: Italiante on the even side and Stick Style on the odd as a visual foil (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 143).

A Stick Style home, this is most notable for its panels delicately incised with Pennsylvania-Dutch swirls and patterns. The original iron fence, gates, and posts add to the attractiveness (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 273).

Because it was built of Connecticut brownstone and not wood, [Flood's] mansion survived the 1906 fire that devastated the more ostentatious homes of his neighbors. When the gutted shell was to be restored as the new home of the Pacific Union Club, William Bourn, Willis Polk's great patron who was on the building committee, got him the commission. Polk's sensitive remodeling, which consisted of adding wings and altering the top floor, improved the proportions and changed the architectural character from that of a dry, tightly drawn 19th-century town house to a more free and gracious Neoclassical 20th-century manor house. The interiors, accessible only to members, are the quintessential image of a gentleman's club. The bronze fence surrounding the property is the city's finest; Flood allegedly employed one man just to polish it. West of the club is Huntington Park, where stood the Davil Colton house later purchased by Collis P. Huntington, who gave the land to the city after 1906. This oasis features a replica of the Tartarughe Fountain in Rome minus the tortoises. To sit in the park on a sunny day is to feel on top of the world (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 61).

The James Flood mansion at California and Mason Streets, built of Connecticut brownstone and surrounded by the most expensive bronze fence in the city, survives today in altered form as the Pacific Union Club. After the interior burned in 1906, Willis Polk designed substantial changes: he placed curved wings on the sides and added a third floor, replacing the squat tower on the original (Alexander and Heig 2002: 207).

Even before building their Nob Hill mansion, the Floods were well known to San Franciscans, for the genial and handsome pair had once been proud owners of the popular Auction Lunch Saloon on Washington Street. Originally from New York State, where Mr. Flood had built fine carriages, they had moved to San Francisco during the Gold Rush. On the dignified premises of the Auction Lunch, Flood and his partner William O'Brien tended bar while Mrs. Flood supervised the production of those fine collations which San Francisco's saloons always proffered along with the purchase of a nickel glass of beer. No doubt everybody rejoiced for this hard-working trio when Flood's and O'Brien's investments in the Comstock Lode paid off. Flood became the founder of the Bank of Nevada, with headquarters on California Street. Most Californians thought that the Floods had already made their architectural statement some years before when they stunned the Old Guard down the Peninsula at Menlo Park. In the midst of this sacred enclave of "old" San Francisco society rose the Floods' Linden Towers, an immense white frame mansion that resembled nothing so much as a huge wedding cake. Now, with his bold addition to the Nob Hill palaces, Jim Flood had struck again.

"Yielding precedence to none," said the San Francisco Newsletter, "this massive mansion standing on California Street, between Mason and Taylor, is a monument to wealth!" Architect Augustus Laver included every luxurious detail that Comstock silver could buy. This new building stood out in startling contrast to its wooden neighbors, for its walls were of dark, reddish-brown Connecticut sandstone. The house was long celebrated as the only brownstone dwelling west of the Rockies, but its most outstanding feature was a magnificent $30,000 bronze fence. Tradition has it that the Floods retained a servant whose sole duty was to keep this fence polished to a dazzling brightness. Otherwise, the exterior was a model of restraint compared with the appointments within.

Once again, the Newsletter reporter went into paroxysms of delight. The grand entry hall boasted vaulted glass ceilings upheld by enormous, carved caryatids. Naturally, there were the requisite silk-hung walls, acres of jewelled art glass, marquetry floors and sliding doors which could be thrown open to create one vast salon of the entire ground floor. The whole effect was indeed overpowering. (Laver, also the architect of San Francisco's disastrous 19th-century City Hall, did a much better job on the Flood mansion.)

During the 1906 fire, it was hoped at first that the thick stone walls of the Flood house would withstand the flames, but unfortunately the many paintings and furnishings moved from the neighboring Hopkins Art Institute and piled on the Flood lawns by the militia spelled the doom of the Flood house as well. The art works were ignited, and the fire leaped to the mansion. The walls survived, but the interior was destroyed, leaving a masonry shell.

After the fire, the members of the Pacific Union Club purchased the Flood property. Willis Polk, by then one of San Francisco's most prominent young architects, convinced the club directors to spare the ruined walls. By adding a third floor, Polk modified the awkward "millionaire's tower" with an elevated roof line. He also extended the rooms to the right and left of the central mass into rounded wings. Despite the restraint used in the redesign, the sheer scale of the interior is still overwhelming. The imposing house with its bronze fence is the only pre-fire Nob Hill mansion still standing today (Alexander and Heig 2002: 206-09).

Polk also designed a number of buildings for the Spring Valley Water Company and the San Francisco (later Pacific) Gas and Electric Company, as well as the new quarters of the Pacific Union Club, at a time when Bourn was either president of or active in these organizations. Much of the credit should probably go to Bourn for Polk's chairing the Architectural Committee for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (Longstreth 1998: 379 n. 21).

After the [1906] fire, the members of the Pacific Union Club purchased the Flood property. Willis Polk, by then one of San Francisco's most prominent young architects, convinced the club directors to spare the ruined walls. By adding a third floor, Polk modified the awkward "millionaire's tower" with an elevated roof line. He also extended the rooms to the right and left of the central mass into rounded wings. Despite the restraint used in the redesign, the sheer scale of the interior is still overwhelming. The imposing house with its bronze fence is the only pre-fire Nob Hill mansion still standing today (Alexander and Heig 2002: 209).

All the great mansions but one were destroyed in the fire of 1906. The survivor was the Italianate-Baroque brownstone palace of James C. Flood, which was gutted, but stood with its shell intact. Bought by the Pacific Union Club in 1909, it was remodeled by Willis Polk and is today one of the architectural landmarks of San Francisco.

The Flood Mansion, at 1000 California Street, was designed by Augustus Laver and built during 1885-86. Flood, not to be outdone by the magnificoes of New York, ordered the building constructed of Connecticut sandstone. As one of the four proprietors of the "Big Bonanza" of the Virginia City mines, he was quite able to afford a reputed $1,500,000 on the house.

As it stands today, the house that Flood's mining millions financed is a much handsomer building than the long-departed homes of the other Nob Hill millionaires. In part this is the result of good initial design, but at least as much credit should go to Willis Polk, who restored the building, as to Augustus Laver. To accommodate the Pacific Union Club, Polk added the impressive wings on either side, and incorporated a third floor by raising the floor line four feet (at the same time removing the central tower in front). A close look reveals these changes as flaws in the majesty and proportions of the building, yet the general effect is a structure more pleasing than the original (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 66-67).

Hardly had he [James Flood] moved into Linden Towers [in Menlo Park] when he was laying plans for a town house that would overshadow its Nob Hill neighbors as completely as his country estate dominated the Menlo plains. In 1882 he bought the block bounded by California, Mason, Sacramento, and Cushman streets and began building a forty-two room mansion: a square, three-story structure with outer walls of Connecticut sandstone, topped by an eighty-foot tower. Through the middle and late eighties every Californian who read his newspaper at all attentively was familiar with the dimensions and decor of its vast rooms: a forty-foot reception parlor finished in East Indian style; a Louis XV drawing-room forty-six long; a twenty-six by forty-six-foot dining-room paneled in carved San Domingo mahogany, and--not least--a smoking-room done in authentic Moorish style, with domed skylight of iridescent glass...

Curiously it was not the house itself that enthralled the town, but the block-long fence that surrounded it. "Flood's thirty-thousand-dollar brass rail" remained for years a major civic landmark. "The beautifully wrought metal," wrote Amelia Neville, "flashed for the entire length of ... the square where the brownstone mansion stood, and it was the sole task of one retainer to keep it bright. Passing any hour of the day one discovered him polishing away at some section of it." A pretty legend sprang up about this fence and did much to broaden its fame. Generations of San Franciscans believed that Flood (in a mood of humility that was hardly characteristic) had caused his Nob Hill house to be encircled by a polished brass rail as a reminder of his saloon-keeping days. Unfortunately for this pleasant fancy, the fence is in fact not brass but bronze. It passed undamaged through the 1906 fire and remains today as sound as ever, though much less highly polished. The mansion itself was gutted, but the sandstone walls suffered little damage. The interior was reconstructed and two wings were added; today it houses the most luxurious of the city's clubs, the Pacific Union (Lewis 1959: 232-33).

One of the great monuments of the city's Victoriana, this queen of Queen Anne villas is owned by the Foundation for San Francisco's Architectural Heritage and is open for tours. (Call 415.441.3000 for information.) These two families were among the founders of the city's influential Jewish community and were related to the owners of the cluster of houses at California and Franklin streets (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 85).

A happier fate awaited its adjoining neighbor, the Haas-Lilienthal House. This perfect specimen of San Francisco Victorian design, described by its architects Schmidt and Shea as "Modern Gothic," was built in 1886. Because of its red brick "Colonial" chimneys, Gothic, bay-windowed tower, and several Elizabethan appurtenances, one is tempted to describe it as "Queen Anne." Members of the Haas family donated this wonderful house on Franklin Street to serve as headquarters for the Foundation for San Francisco's Architectural Heritage.

The Haas family, which established its early fortune in wholesale groceries, and the Lilienthals, who established theirs in banking, were among the most prominent members of San Francisco's Jewish aristocracy. Through intermarriage, this community became one big, though not always happy, family. The results of the many confusing alliances of Haases, Hellmans, Sterns, Branstens, Koshlands and Lilienthals may be perplexing, but all these families contributed greatly to San Francisco's cultural development. In 1887, the Examiner noted "were it not for the large Jewish patronage, we should seldom see a First Class tragedy or famous opera rendered in our Thespian temples." This patronage has continued to the present (Alexander and Heig 2002: 294)

The Haas-Lilienthal house, at 2007 Franklin Street, now the home of the San Francisco Heritage Foundation, is perfectly preserved, with the original furnishings in most rooms. Designed by Peter Schmidt for William Haas, it still has its ample side yard and wrought-iron fence. It is open to visitors on Sundays and Wednesday afternoon. This photograph is from Artistic Homes of California, published in 1888, which contains photographs of 38 San Francisco houses; only three remain standing. (Author's collection) (Alexander and Heig 2002: 276).

The Haas-Lilienthal House, 2007 Franklin Street, is among the great houses of San Francisco and by all standards one of the finest examples of late nineteenth century architectural opulence in California. The house, enhanced by the large garden lot to the south, was built in 1886 for William Haas, a Bavarian merchant who came to San Francisco in the 1870's, and has been a family residence for all of its more than eighty years.

A fascinating combination of wooden details was erected upon the brick foundation, with sharp gables, dormers, and sidings which range from horizontal lapped types on the first floor, to fish-scale shingles on the third. The structure is dramatically capped by a corner Queen Anne tower, the top of which contains an additional room reached by an interior staircase from the attic. The wood trim of the house is richly ornamented with Eastlake, Baroque and even late Italianate forms, and stained-glass panels adorn the second-story windows. An iron fence with granite retaining walls and pillars still borders the sidewalk.

The elaborate exterior is more than matched by the interior, with floors of tile and marble, marble fireplaces, golden oak and mahogany woodwork, stamped leather walls, and a dining room dominated by an oak-beamed ceiling. (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 32).

The tree-shaded Eastlake-Queen Anne residence at 3020 Washington Street is somewhat less visible. This three-story clapboard house was built in 1886, possibly by William Pluns, a carpenter and builder who lived in the house. The exterior retains its original charm, although the original entrance on the west is now on the east and a former coach house has been removed. Extensive remodeling of the interior has left little of the original character with the exception of the colored glass windows and nineteenth century moldings (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 33).

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