• 3153 Pacific Ave. house
• 2820 Pacific Ave. house
• Klockars Blacksmith and Metal Work
• James Kennedy Moffitt house
• Napthaly house
• 3277 Pacific Ave. house
• Tobin house
• Insurance Exchange Building
• Flatiron Building
• E. C. Young house
• Abbreviations

The exigencies of hillside sites encouraged a remarkable freedom in plan and massing that, when combined with fine traditional detail as in Coxhead's work, produced houses that were truly original without self-consciously making a great point of it (Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992: 99; Wiley 2000: 278).

(Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992: 99).

A traditional blacksmithing shop in San Francisco. Founded in 1912, it was designated San Francisco Historical Landmark No. 149 in June of 1982 (personal observation). The following plaque was placed on the front of the shop in 2005.

Klockars' Blacksmith Shop

Beginning in the 1860's foundries south of Market Street fabricated mining machinery, railroad cars, and ships. This 1912 machine shop is the last. Fred V. Wilbert forged fine tools here. Edwin A. Klockars (1898-1994), a native of Munsmo, Finland, joined Wilbert in 1928. His precision-made tools helped construct the Emperor Norton and Golden Gate Bridges and hundreds of ships during World War II. Still in production is his 1938 San Jose Jam Tongs that enable canning companies to clear convulsed conveyor carriers. Ed Klockars had one motto: "Anything you need we make." This shop still does.

Dedicated March 26, 6010 (2005)
Capitulus Redivivus verba buena #1
Ancient and Honorable Order of E. Clampus Vitus
Credo Quia Absurdum

The house on Sea View was built for James Kennedy Moffitt by Willis Polk in 1912 and the gardens, I believe, were designed by [William Hammond] Hall, who laid out the gardens for Golden Gate Park. Moffit choose the address '86' because it was the year he graduated from Cal Berkeley (Mario Palestini, personal communication). For many years J. K. Moffitt was president of Crocker Bank and served as a U.C. Berkeley regent. A great book collector, he left the first large bequest to the bancroft library ($100,000).

A delightful pink Mediterranean villa (Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992: 96).

This steep block is one of the city's most harmonious. Only in New England or in the South does one expect to find such a group of fine houses; perhaps nowhere else can a group from this particular period be found. The mixture of elegance in detail with informality in materials and window arrangements is peculiarly San Franciscan (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 43; Wiley 2000: 279).

Half of a Gothic double house Polk designed for the de Young sisters, one of whom moved away from the city and never built her half (Woodbridge & Woodbridge 1992: 89).

Many passersby have wondered about this odd structure in the 1900 block of California Street, built by Michael De Young as a wedding gift to one of his daughters. Its grey faç and Gothic Revival design are unique in the city, but the mysterious half of a Gothic arch makes people wonder whether part of the building was demolished. Actually, the second half was never built: Mike De Young's second daughter simply changed her mind. (Courtesy James Heig) (Alexander and Heig 2002: 299).

A very fine street building with a facade designed to relate to the Merchant's Exchange Building (F32) across Leidesdorff, also by Polk. A two part vertical composition with a giant order over a remodeled base, and a shaft consisting of courses of variously detailed terra cotta panels. Ornamentation is derived from Renaissance/Baroque sources. The giant order picks up the rhythm of the columns on the Merchant's Exchange and the Bank of California (F28), and the shaft improves on the textured wall of the Merchant's Exchange. The building exemplifies the aims of the City Beautiful Movement in its simultaneous success as urban architecture, achieved through form and composition, and as an individual building, achieved in the quality of its details. The handsome 2-story interior exchange space has been subdivided and remodeled. Steel frame construction. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 197)

Where Sutter strikes Market, creating a small triangular lot, is the Flatiron Building (23) by Havens and Toepke (1913). Viewed from the right angle, the characterless high rises on the south side of Market provide a fitting backdrop for this finely detailed building (Wiley 2000: 163; Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 32).

One of the best of several fine buildings by this firm, and one of several fine flatirons on the gore blacks created by Market Strreet's diagonal intersection of the original grid of the city. A steel frame building with skeletal expression of the facade, lightly ornamented with Gothic detail except at the cornice which projects out from the wall and drops like a curtain, foreshadowing the Hallidie Building's cornice. In composition, a two part vertical block. It relates to the remaining older buildings on Sutter, to the longer street facade on Sansome, and to its Market Street block as far as the Hobart Building. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 79).

An intriguing play on the half-timber, with some features (the pulpit-like corner balcony with quatrefoils and the half-timber supergraphics) that are architectural puns (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 173).

A long, informal cottage with its main wing perpendicular to the street. A pulpit-like balcony dominates the street facade (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss_1985: 112).

With the Young House (17) (1913) at 51 Sotelo, Maybeck again combined a half timber and shingle exterior with the lavish use of redwood on the rustic interior (Wiley 2000: 386).

Abbreviations