• Goldman Graduate School of Public Policy
• St. Mark's Lutheran Church
• Swedenborgian Church
• George W. Gibbs residence
• Ida and Luella Gillespie house
• Mechanic's Monument
• Whittier house
• 2212 Sacramento St. house
• Former Irving Scott School
• Alonzo McFarland house
• Abbreviations

Although somewhat altered, this is a good example of this first-generation Bay Region architect's work (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 211).

More English in character than other Coxhead designs, this building has fine paneled interiors open to the public. The wing toward Hearst Ave. has been resurfaced (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 263).

Even the variations with which Coxhead experimented could assume markedly different forms. The notions of age evident in the Carrigan house appear again in the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house in Berkeley (1893), but here the mass is divided into four parts, each treated as if it were an individual building along a street in a northern European town (Figs. 109, 110). Opposing masses--the tall stuccoed "tower" and the low pavilion adjacent to it--are balanced by the comparatively unobstrusive shingled wings at either end. The four sections are staggered so that the building's aspect changes considerably when viewed from different angles. In contrast to many of Coxhead's other buildings, the external differentiation reflects distinct internal functions.¹³ (Longstreth 1998: 159).

The building has served as offices for the University of California since World War II; no original plans have been found. According to Stirling Gorrill, who lived there while it was a fraternity in the 1930s, the southern wing (at the right in Fig. 109) housed a den with study rooms above; the adjacent section contained a large, barrel-vaulted living hall; the tall, stuccoed portion included the original dining room with bedrooms above; and the northern wing held the kitchen and additional bedrooms.(Longstreth 1998: 378 n.13).

A High Victorian Romanesque-Gothic church in red brick by an architect mostly known for his houses (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 115).

A beloved landmark of the early Craftsman era, [the Swedenborgian Church] brought together the talents of Brown; Bruce Porter, who sketched the original design and did the stained glass; Bernard Maybeck; and A.C. Schweinfurth, who did the drawings in Brown's office. The prime mover behind it all was the Rev. Joseph Worcester, pastor of the church, and friend and patron of the artists and architects who fostered the Bay Area branch of the California Arts and Crafts Movement. The garden provides an appropriate introduction to the church interior, a living room with a roof supported by untrimmed madrone tree trunks and a great brick fireplace. The stained-glass windows by Porter are complemented by landscape paintings by William Keith. The pegged wooden chairs with seats and backs of woven rushes that Maybeck may have designed were credited by Gustav Stickley as the inspiration for Mission furniture. Rarely have nature and architecture been so well married. (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 101).

No reference to the unique architecture of Pacific Heights would be complete without mention of the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem, located at 2107 Lyon Street, the northwest corner of Washington Street. It was established in 1893 by Reverend Joseph Worcester, occupant and designer of one of the rustic Marshall cottages on Russian Hill. The design of the church was partly inspired by sketches of a tiny village church in the Po Valley near Verona. These sketches, made by Bruce Porter, were left for young Bernard Maybeck to interpret when he was employed in the offices of A. Page Brown.

The hand-made maple chairs, instead of pews, the cheery fireplace, the heavy tile roof and vine-clad walls are symbolic expressions of the elemental nature of the Swedenborgian viewpoint. The delicately modeled campanile, or bell tower, overlooking an inner courtyard, combined with the low, beamed ceilings, creats an atmosphere of truly disarming rusticity. Murals painted by Bruce Porter and William Keith contribute to the prevailing mood of peace and dignity. Today's reader will be surprised to learn that all of this was created within a budget of $9,000, of which $4,500 built the church itself, and $4,500 was expended on a residence for the minister (Alexander and Heig 2002: 307).

Allusions were developed in a more abstract fashion for the Church of the New Jerusalem in San Francisco (1894-1895), one of the last designs Schweinfurth produced in Brown's office (Fig. 212). The exterior suggests several precedents; for example, the low-slung main block and ell might refer to early California ranch houses, and the arcaded entry might be derived from the missions. Contemporary accounts usually described the building in these terms.²⁶ However, the imagery is no less evocative of vernacular building forms in northern Spain and Italy, and only the attached campanile has a clear lineage. It is a rather literal interpretation of Lombard Romanesque design, but it is placed against the least historicizing part of the building--where brick piers flank metal-frame windows, conveying the appearance of a small industrial building. The sanctuary interior further resists a specific referential framework. No one period, place, or function comes to mind so much as an image of the rustic hall or the primitive hut (Figs. 213, 214).

The client was Joseph Worcester, who has often been credited with having a major role in the design. Worcester's aesthetic preferences were reflected in the building's unobtrusive rustic character, and he may also have stipulated the incorporation of certain features. But his primary contribution was probably general ideas about what the design should be. In this respect, his attitude toward architecture may have had a greater effect on Schweinfurth than it did on Coxhead and Polk. Here, and in many of the architect's later works, a primitive simplicity appears that is a more direct embodiment of Worcester's concepts.

There is one aspect of the building that the ever-serious, self-effacing pastor surely did not suggest. Aside from the campanile, the building resembles an artists' club far more than it does a church. The combination of old vernacular and new utilitarian elements; the placement of the entrance at the rear, as if it were on an alley; the exposed, rough-hewn timberwork; board-and-batten wainscoting; landscape murals; folksy chairs (instead of pews); and dominating clinker-brick fireplace all contribute to a setting suggestive of the back rooms and lofts artists were fond of adapting into fraternal halls around the turn of the century. The resemblance to Wilson Eyre's Mask and Wig Club in Philadelphia, converted from a stable in the same year, is striking (Fig. 215).²⁷

The allusion to an artists' club may well have been intentional. Worcester's parish served as an important, albeit unofficial, meeting ground for local artists and intellectuals, most of who had little interest in Swedenborgian doctrine. The pastor's gospel of simplicity and harmony between art and nature, combined with his magnetic presence, were the generating forces. The church itself was a cooperative venture to which William Keith, Bruce Porter, and Bernard Maybeck all contributed their services.²⁸ More than any other building, it became a center for the region's young creative figures. The design was also a pivotal work in Schweinfurth's career, integrating his interest in regional expression with a taste for primitive rusticity inspired by Worcester. The experience had a pronounced effect on his pursuit of a distinctively Californian architecture.

Several months before the church was designed, Schweinfurth had sought to establish his own practice for the third time. The anticipated work never materialized, necessitating a temporary return to Brown's office.²⁹ Although he enjoyed considerable freedom there, the two men may have had some serious disagreements over design matters--reputedly Brown felt that the Church of the New Jerusalem was not "architecture." (Longstreth 1998: 273-76)

The fact that identical chairs have been found in some of Maybeck's houses has led to the commonly held conclusion that he designed these pieces. The chairs were especially designed for the church and were then produced in some quantity for sale by the Forbes Manufacturing Company of San Francisco (interview with Willis Forbes, July 1975). Comparison with both Maybeck's early furniture designs and with Schweinfurth's work suggests that Schweinfurth more likely was responsible for them. On the other hand, the small side table...is similar to Maybecks's work of the period. In the mid-1890s, one of these chairs was sent to a New York furniture manufacturer, Joseph P. McHugh, who used it as a model for his "mission" pieces. McHugh's products, in turn, became a major source for Gustav Stickley's Craftsman furniture (Longstreth 1998: 389, n. 28).

Probably Polk's first major independent commission, this sandstone house has his characteristic rather heavy, spare application of Classical detailing (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 84).

Polk's initial oportunity to design a large city house suffered from his lack of experience in such projects, yet the solution set a new standard for subsequent work in the city. The commission came from George W. Gibbs, one of the leading producers of iron and steel on the West Coast and a prominent figure in philanthropic affairs. Gibbs, upon retirement at age seventy, decided to erect a house that would rival those of his eastern peers--elaborate, dignified, but not ostentatious. Polk drew largely from Italian Renaissance sources, then at the height of fashion in New York. the massing recalls that of a Tuscan villa, with details adapted from Raphael's Palazzo Pandolfini and a portico inspired by the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. But the elementary composition and the particularizing of its components make the façade seem more akin to mid-nineteenth-century Italianate houses than to McKim, Mead and White's work. The plan is equally conservative, with large, boxy rooms opening off a long central corridor.

Nevertheless, the Gibbs house generated a flurry of excitement. The San Francisco Examiner pronounced it to be "the first classical residence in San Francisco." Enthusiasm also centered on the fact that this was among the city's earliest houses constructed entirely of stone and that almost no dwelling of comarable size matched the restraint of its exterior. The Wave summarized prevailing opinion, remarking that the house's "unpretentious solidity ... cheapens the much gabled and turreted mansions surrounding it." In a metropolis of wood, the Gibbs house became an instant symbol of grandeur and permanency. The scheme further set an important local precedent for the collaboration of architect and artist in developing the decorative program. Polk had Douglas Tilden design the Medusa heads for the portico--the sculptor's first commission following his return from Paris earlier that year. Bruce Porter was brought in to create the huge stained-glass window in the stair-hall landing. Lockwood de Forest, who had been a partner in one of the country's first decorative-arts studios, prepared plans for the ornamentation of some of the principal rooms. De Forest's work may not have been executed, and the whole scheme fell far short of the exquisite interiors of McKim, Mead and White's houses, which served as its conceptual model. Still, the work demonstrated to rich San Franciscans that they need not entrust room design strictly to decorators, who often had little concern for architectural cohesiveness (Longstreth 1998: 193-95).

Willis Polk's first grand San Francisco house was the Italian mansion he designed in 1894 for George Gibbs at 2622 Jackson Street. For decades it housed the San Francisco Music and Arts Institute; it has recently been carefully restored, and is again a private home. Its beautifully detailed façade and interiors indicate Polk's ability to work in an academic style equal to that of any finished Beaux Arts graduate, which of course Polk was not (Alexander and Heig 2002: 337).

Designed by Willis Polk for capitalist George Gibbs, this handsome Italian-style mansion was built in 1894. With stone walls and a semi-circular portico, it is beautifully proportioned and was one of Polk's first San Francisco dwellings. It bears no resemblance to the rustic city houses which he would design later. Some people argue that the inspiration for its round porch came from a design by Raphael for the Temple of Vesta. The true inspiration, however, was the work of McKim, Mead and White, and the years Polk spent in New York. The house for many years served as headquarters for the San Francisco Institute of Music and Arts (Alexander and Heig 2002: 304-305).

The Music and Art Institute, 2622 Jackson Street, is reputed to have been Willis Polk's first major commission. Polk came to California in 1889 and designed this two-story Period house five years later as a "country" home for industrialist George W. Gibs. By the time it was finished in 1894, the surrounding area was already so developed that no rural atmosphere existed.

Many features of the house, which is built of Oregon gray sandstone with a roof of glazed tiles, suggest Polk's later work. The most overt example of this is a semi-circular portico based on the round temples of ancient Rome, here with Ionic columns and a half-domed surface with a coffered interior. Terraced gardens were planned for the lot, which originally extended down the hill to Pacific Avenue, but the area's building boom disrupted these plans.

The building was purchased by the Music and Art Institute in 1947 as a center for the study of music, drama and opera (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 26).

(Longstreth 1998: 424).

Polk designed the base of this heroic sculpture by Tilden, a deaf mute who was an internationally known artist. James Donahue gave the monument in memory of his father, Peter, who in 1850 started the state's first ironworks and machine shop, established the first gas company for street lighting in the city in 1852, and later initiated the first streetcar line. Bronze sidewalk plaques note the original shoreline of Yerba Buena Cove (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 32).

Several months after the unveiling [of the Admission Day Monument], Tilden was entrusted with a much larger commission from James Donohue for a monument in memory of his father, which [James] Phelan administered. After about a year's worth of preliminary studies, Tilden again sought Polk's assistance. Phelan was skeptical: "That agreement with Polk is all right," he advised the sculptor, "if his services are worth Two Hundred and Fifty Dollars..., but I would not pay it until his work is performed." Phelan's response may have stemmed from an animosity toward Polk. But the civic leader also seems to have believed that an architect's talents were unnecessary for such work, and he was probably oblivious to the academic movement's idea that a union of allied arts was essential to creating monuments of aesthetic integrity. The personal and conceptual gap that existed between the businessman-politician, who so ardently crusaded for civic improvements, and the architects, who were the most capable of embodying his vision, was San Francisco's misfortune (Longstreth 1998: 231-32).

One of the city's finest pieces of heroic public statuary, designed by one of its best sculptors, with Willis Polk as architect of the granite base. It consists of a group of five men trying to punch a metal plate in a typically well-modeled and energetic composition by the artist. It was a gift to the City by James Mervyn Donahue in memory of his father, Peter Donahue, founder of the city's first iron foundry, street railway, and gas company. It is the focal point of the best of the Market Street plazas. A (Corbett 1979: 239).

Imported brownstone and a composition that recalls the early work of McKim, Mead and White contribute to the eastern look of this rather somber mansion (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 85).

This red sandstone mansion, at Jackson and Laguna Streets, was built in 1896 for William Whittier, a mercantile, railroad and shipping millionaire, at a cost of $152,000. It was the first house in the city to have a steel frame. The Whittier house featured a "Turkish Corner" smoking room, very much in vogue in the 1890s, in the northwest round bay. In the 1930s the mansion housed the German consulate, and later became the headquarters of the California Historical Society. It is now a private residence (Courtesy California Historical Society)(Alexander and Heig 2002: 301).

At the northeast corner of Jackson and Laguna Streets is the red sandstone mansion which for years served as headquarters of the California Historical Society. William Franklin Whittier built the house in the mid-1890s as a gift to his wife, who was killed in a carriage accident shortly before the house's completion. Despite this unhappy beginning, the 30-room house became a San Francisco showplace.

Among ther first San Francisco stone houses to boast a steel frame, the Whittier mansion was fitted out with all the requisite touches of the day. The entrance hall, 24 by 32 feet, is paneled in carved oak; the large drawing room and its adjoining, octagonal smoking room (with a Mudejar ceiling), are paneled in mahogany. The dining room paneling is a rare wood called tamanu. The hardware in all the main rooms is of hand-wrought German silver. Downstairs is a ballroom measuring 36 by 54 feet.

The Whittier mansion was sold in 1940 to the German government. The house served as the German consulate and was the setting for numerous lavish functions given by the popular local consul, Fritz Wiedemann, who had been Adolph Hitler's commanding officer in World War I. Herr Wiedemann burnt all his secret papers in the furnace and fled the country after the outbreak of World War II. For the next decade, the house and its contents were under the jurisdiction of the Alien Property Custodian. It then became the home of Mortimer Adler's Institute for Philosophical Research, before it was passed on to the California Historical Society. It is now a private residence (Alexander and Heig 2002: 302-02).

Further east on Jackson Street is the former Whittier mansion, now the home of the California Historical Society, 2090 Jackson Street. Built in 1895-1896 for William Frank Whittier from a design by Edward R. Swain, this red sandstone Richardsonian residence, with Period (essentially Classical) details, is one of the few examples of almost unchanged late nineteenth century elegance in California.

Particularly notable is the Jackson Street facade, with its rhythmically-columned portico and massive pediment above between two modified Richardsonian Queen Anne towers. Also significant is the fact that this was one of the first town houses in California to be built of stone on a steel framework.

Most of the mansion's many rooms have carved paneling, predominantly mahogany, golden oak, primavera, and tamano. The vastness of the interior is indicated by the fact that each of the mansion's four levels has 3500 square feet of usable space, with a large attic above. The Historical Society has preserved the mansion's glory with great care, revitalizing this noble residence with new uses and minor interior changes that enhance its turn-of-the-century splendors (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 29).

A huge Colonial Revival box including the requisite Palladian window (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 87)

The first of a group of three houses that give a monumental look to this block, this Classic Revival house was designed by A. Page Brown (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 291)

The old wooden school building is a particularly choice piece of old Potrero Hill. The 1100 block of Tennessee Street has a fine row of 1880s cottages (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 157).

Coxhead was influenced by the spirit of the new English classicism, but he generally eschewed its repertoire of details. The Alonzo McFarland house (1895) displays an unusual combination of precedents manipulated to meet the constraints of the program, such as a modest budget of about $10,000 (Fig. 151). A sheathing of enormous painted redwood boards and stucco panels is frankly expressed as a veneer, but it helps orchestrate the grand effect. The composition and many of the details are derived from eighteenth-century Palladian country houses, here given proportions that would have left Burlingtonians aghast. The central zone of the facade receives the most decoration, yet its treatment remains ambiguous. Instead of suggesting a temple front as in its English models, this section is recessed and sits on an unusually high base with engaged columns squeezed between other elements. The most ornate piece is the broken pediment over the entry, which is set to one side, and the door is placed in a narrow slot dropped through the base like a utilitarian necessity. This agitated arrangement is visually contained by flanking sections that falsely appear to be at least as large as the central piece by virtue of their bold scale and comparatively simple treatment. Yet even here the windows resist being confined to the stucco panels that enframe them. The antithesis of Palladian discretion, this constant usurping of boundaries imparts a feeling of tenuousness characteristic of Italian mannerism without alluding to any particular examples. The classical language is celebrated as decoration rather than structure--emotive, imposing, and monumental in its effect. The scheme would have seemed unduly restless in a rural setting, but it is well suited to its compact site in a dense urban landscape (Longstreth 1998: 195-96; 424).

At 400 Clayton Street, on the corner of Oak, is a handsome neo-Georgian house, replete with engaged columns, pedimented windows, and a formal entrance. This house catches the eye because its sober exterior stands out among the riotous Victorians nearby. Designed in 1895 by ernest Coxhead for one Alonzo McFarland, the house is an early example of the Beaux Arts style which would sweep the city after the turn of the century (Alexander and Heig 2002: 352).

Ernest Coxhead's manipulation of Classical ornament was so personal as to defy classification. He delighted in overscaling and intertwining traditional motifs and imposing them on plain, boxlike forms (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 127).

Abbreviations