• Bruce Porter house
• Freeman house
• Rieber house
• House
• St. John's Presbyterian Church
• Torrey house
• Continental Hotel
• Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Building
• Dettner Printing Co.
• Golden Gate Valley Branch Library
• Abbreviations

The next two houses, 3232 and 3234 Pacific Avenue, were built in 1902, at the same time as 1 Presidio. This pair was designed by architect Ernest Coxhead, who here adapted the Georgian theme to the native frame-and-shingle style. Bruce Porter, well-known San Francisco artist, writer and critic, is thought to have contributed heavily to the design of the houses, one of which was built for his brother-in-law, Julian Waybur, the other for himself.

In the Waybur house (3232) the interior staircase and its landings are employed for a most unusual external decorative effect, the form of the stairs being carried right through the Palladian window above the elaborate doorway.

In Porter's own house (3234) one finds the same plain front with the same simple but elegant window pattern highlighted by an imaginative central decorative device, in this case two pairs of Corinthian pilasters and a pattern of narrow windows that is artfully repeated at the entrance level and in the central third-floor window. A number of new ideas were incorporated into this house when it was built: floor-to-ceiling "picture" windows, all built-in wardrobes, and what may have been the first roof garden in San Francisco (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 143).

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 ... at 3234 Pacific Ave. (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 100).

Bruce Porter, Polk's artist friend, contributed strongly to these designs [3232 Pacific St. and 3234 Pacific St.]; he lived at 3234. He also had a hand in designing 3203 Pacific, across the street from this wedge-shaped row. Eli Sheppard, owner of the House of the Flag on Russian Hill, built this house as a wedding present for his daughter. When the engagement was broken, Sheppard sold the house to Bruce Porter, who in turn commissioned Willis Polk to remodel it. Polk changed the entire structure while maintaining its rusitc appearance. Later Sheppard's daughter became Mrs. William Hilbert, and with the help of Bruce Porter designed her own rustic house at 3343 Pacific. Bernard Maybeck designed 3233 Pacific a few years later. This block of houses facing one another across Pacific Avenue is one of the most arresting areas in San Francisco. Most of the houses predate the 1906 fire, and thus dramatically mark the end of the eclectic Queen Anne style, dominant in San Francisco architecture until the turn of the century.

This change from Victorian to Beaux Arts architecture must be mainly attributed to the three men--Polk, Maybeck and Coxhead (Alexander and Heig 2002: 336-37).

Another work by the Coxheads, this one a large Colonial Revival house of strong character in a suitable setting (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 211).

This manorial house derives much of its visual strength from the bold statement of the gambrel dormers. The lath garden houses along the east edge of the property are worth noticing, and the wall on Ridge St. is fine street furniture (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 262).

This large house follows the rim of the hill with unusual grace. The angled stair window is an interesting element of the design (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 268).

An unassuming design whose visual interest is concentrated in an elegant entrance composition. It is slightly altered by a second story bedroom addition (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 226).

The interior of Coxhead's last Shingle Style church is much starker than his earlier ones, but is climaxed by the wonderful clerestoried tower (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 218).

Ernest Coxhead's last Shingle Style church has an unusually stark interior culminating in a clerestoried pyramidal tower. Its entrance arch is truly groovy (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 210).

This house is Coxhead's farewell to the shingle style. A major aspect of its design is the subtle entrance approach which leads the visitor up a zig-zag path to an entrance at the rear of the house. Only after entering could he see the magnificent view of the Bay through the living room windows (Gebhard, Winter and Sandweiss 1985: 267).

One of the few executed commercial designs of the Coxhead office, distinguished by an exuberant cornice. In composition, a three part vertical block with differentiated end bays and modified Renaissance/Baroque ornamentation. Like so many buildings in this area, the building functions well as a part of the urban fabric. Brick Construction. B (Corbett and Hall 1979: 124).

Although superficially in the style of other urban buildings of the period, this stands apart from most in its self-conscious, mannered treatment of ordinary details. Most of San Francisco's downtown buildings use historical ornament in a purposefully "correct" way, in a way designed to achieve contextual objectives, as a decorative veneer, or unconsciously, merely as the prevailing style of the time. Few attempt the sort of assertively, intelligently "incorrect" use of detail achieved in this building. The oversized details and the unexpected juxtapositions of the scale of parts of the facade result in a complexity of design that manages to be successful in several ways at once--from its function as a part of the urban fabric to its interest as an isolated object. In composition, the building is a three part vertical block surmounted by an attic, with a giant order in the shaft. Its ornamentation is Renaissance/Baroque. It is a steel frame structure clad in Colusa sandstone. The rich plaster lobby ceiling is hidden by a drop ceiling, but is still intact. This was one of at least three designs by Coxhead for the Home Telephone Co., for which this was originally the headquarters building. A (Corbett and Hall 1979: 136).

A facade composed of boldly scaled Classical elements in projected and recessed forms. Coxhead's skill at manipulating the Classical vocabulary is nowhere better shown than in the entrance composition, where an elegant portal with a swan-necked pediment is fused with an arch tied at the top by an outsized keystone to the belt cornice above. Don't miss the giant columns' capitals (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 15).

The headquarters of the Home Telephone Company was Coxhead's only significant contribution to the massive rebuilding effort in San Francisco²⁴ (Longstreth 1998: 304).

The architect's fondness for exaggerated detail appears here in the giant keystone over the entrance, perhaps the only opportunity afforded by the budget to add a little drama to a typically utilitarian building type. The metal-framed ground floor is handsome and well-proportioned (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 152).

This terra cotta-clad branch library shows Ernest Coxhead in a less inventive format than his other, more freewheeling works that draw on Classical sources (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 81).

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