• Sarah Spooner house
• City Warehouse Company Building
• Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson house
• Lloyd Osborne house
• Double house
• Albert Ehrman house
• Wilson Building
• Cottage row
• 3638 Washington St. house
• Duggans Funeral Service
• Abbreviations

Other manneristic devices are used to counterpoint eighteenth-century reserve in the residence Coxhead designed in 1899 for Sarah Spooner, a rich Philadelphian who had recently moved to San Francisco and deovted much of her time to collecting art (Fig. 152). In its form, the house comes very close to an ideal project presented in Robert Morris's Rural Architecture (1750) (Fig. 153). The facade treatment bears much greater resemblance to the engravings in such books than to buildings of that period. The wall is emphasized as a planar surface. From a distance the smooth clinker bricks offer an even texture similar to that of an engraver's hatching, and the brown sandstone trim is treated in a similar brittle fashion. The windows are isolated, with thin, dark sashes that make each unit read as a single void. Then, in total contrast, rusticated quoins articulate the corners, turning into striations over the bay fronts and bulging out into banded columns at the entrance. Tension is created by a serene particularity on one hand and an exuberant baroque plasticity on the other. Thus, favored devices of Coxhead's contemporaries in England confront Morris's pattern-book Georgian, which former schoolmate Reginald Blomfield had just denounced as "weak and pretentious" in his influential book on English Renaissance architecture.¹³ The irony of combining sources that were considered stylish and banal in London would not be caught by most observers on the West Coast; however, Coxhead developed a more obvious tension between the house and its setting. When viewed frontally, the facade is reserved, even prim, and its planar austerity predominates. Yet when approached from the street, the house becomes a restless series of receding forms that taunt the pedestrian classicism of its neighbors (Longstreth 1998: 197-98).

This corner house in a block of monumental brick mansions is Classic-Revival with Georgian Revival proportions and disposition of ornament. There is a consistent use of brick: for quoines, trim, retaining walls, walks and steps (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 285).

Originally designed by Willis Polk in 1900 and built in 1901, this building underwent extensive interior remodeling by Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum in 1980 and represents one of the fine warehouse buildings in the north Embarcadero district (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 53; Longstreth 1998: 432).

A powerful expression of brick construction is seen in the building occupied by the Merchants Ice and Cold Storage Co. at Battery and Lombard Streets. The owners moved into the existing building in 1896, and though the building does not appear to be substantially older than this, it is entirely possible that evidence of a much older structure uncovered during various remodelings relates to the Greenwich Dock Warehouse. In the horse-and-buggy days, drays drove right into the building through the wide arches, and one can see the ruts their iron tires wore in the stone paving of the floor. To some extent the majesty of this great brick pile has been injured by the placement of square (and outsized) aluminum frame windows wherever it was desired to install modern office space (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 65).

Additions have made a hodgepodge of this house, but the client, widow of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the architect, a staunch member of San Francisco's Bohemia, validate its claim to importance (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 70).

At the northwest corner of Hyde and Lombard Streets, Fanny Osborne, widow of Robert Louis Stevenson, built this fine Mediterranean villa, designed by Willis Polk. It was later enlarged and used as a convent, and is now an apartment house (Alexander and Heig 2002: 141).

There are far too many examples of Polk's work to enumerate them all, but one of his most successful projects was the handsome Mediterranean style house he designed in 1900 for Fanny Osborne, widow of Robert Louis Stevenson, on the northwest corner of Hyde and Lombard Streets. Although considerably enlarged, it has not been altered beyond recognition. Its arched entry and paired, arched windows are Polk's signature details (Alexander and Heig 2002: 337-38).

(1100 Lombard Street.) This stucco residence, often called the "Stevenson House," was built for the widow of Robert Louis Stevenson, perhaps to the design of Willis Polk. Originally the house was two instead of four stories at the Hyde-Lombard corner and had the air of a Tudor-Baroque country manor rather than that of a Mediterranean villa as now (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 274).

By 1899, Polk was rebounding from bankruptcy when a chance came to expand his operations. In December he entered an association with George Washington Percy, a venerable member of the old guard, replacing Percy's design partner, F.F. Hamilton, who had died a few weeks earlier. Overnight, Polk took charge of a sizable staff and plans for numerous commercial and institutional buildings...Percy managed the firm and attended to technical matters, but his conservative nature no doubt influenced Polk's work. Most schemes were quite conventional; Polk's personality emerged only in some details.⁹(Longstreth 1998: 298-99)

9. Two exceptions were the original designs for the Alexander Young Building in Honolulu and a double house for Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne in San Francisco (Longstreth 1998: 392 n.9; 433).

A talented amateur, Bruce Porter, contributed to the First Bay Tradition in architecture, stained glass, and landscape design. His own house, designed for him by his friend Ernest Coxhead, is around the corner at 3234 Pacific Ave. (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 99-100).

A Neoclassical manor house that recalls the London work of the English architect John Nash (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 96).

Designed by Willis Polk for Albert Ehrman, this stone and reinforced concrete house was inspired by Italian Renaissance "palazzos." It has a courtyard and elaborate interior paneling (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 253).

Designed 1900; built 1901; Extant; minor alterations (Longstreth 1998: 433).

The first in the fine group of Market Street loft structures characterized by skeletal facade articulation and modified Chicago windows. The history and authorship of this building is full of conflictiong information, it being variously attributed on good authority to Henry Schulze, Willis Polk, and Henry Meyers, and variously dated as a pre-fire and post-fire structure. It is nevertheless a handsome skeletal design with extremely rich decorative terra cotta panels. A three part vertical composition with Sullivanesque/Byzantine ornamentation. At the ground level it is the long-time home of the Palm Garden Grill. Steel frame construction. A (Corbett 1979: 94).

An engaging gable-roofed row (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 72).

A house that draws on the Classical vocabulary. It has particularly delicate ornamental detail. Note the variety of stair windows on the side elevation of this house (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 100-01).

A house by the architects of the Bank of California (400 California St.), the St. Francis Hotel (Union Square), and the James Leary Flood mansion, which is now the Sacred Heart Academy (Alexander and Heig 2002: 307; 366; 370).

This Bliss-designed house has some finely-executed Period details, among the most notable being the cartouche above the entrance and the oeil de boeuf window (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 306).

Coxhead previewing the Postmodernists in this interesting distortion of Classical elements (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 139).

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