• Eli Sheppard House
• Horatio Livermore house
• Batten house
• Mrs. Virgil Williams-W. J. Polk house
• Katherine Atkins house
• William Joliffe house
• George W. Gibbs residence
• William Bourn house
• Barreda house
• Lloyd Osborne house

This steep block is an architectural treasure trove. Nowhere else in the city is there such a harmonious stand of houses from what has been termed the First Bay Tradition, a west coast "Shingle style" that mixes elegance of detail with informality in materials and form--don't miss the back side for real vernacular informality. The designers' names are a roster of the turn-of-the-century group of eastern immigrants who brought forth a first flowering of regional design (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 97-98).

Bruce Porter, Polk's artist friend, ... had a hand in designing 3203 Pacific, across the street from this wedge-shaped row [3232 and 3234 Pacific]. 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 rustic 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 (Alexander and Heig 2002: 336-37).

At the corner, 3203 Pacific Avenue, is the house designed and built in 1902 by E. T. Sheppard, a retired diplomat, as a wedding present to his daughter. The engagement was broken and Sheppard sold the house to the Porters, who commissioned Willis Polk to enlarge and remodel it. Polk moved the entrance around to the Pacific Avenue side, jacked up the house and added a full story underneath--and otherwise completely remade it.

The resulting three-story house has floor-to-ceiling windows and two decks, one of them off the dining room. The front door is particularly noteworthy, with its broken pediment and urn-shaped finial over which is placed a small arched window with its own balustrade, wrought iron grill, and pediment (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 144, 145).

The Livermore house on the back of the lot at 1045 Vallejo dates from 1865. Willis Polk remodeled it c. 1891, and Robert A. M. Stern designed significant additions and alterations in 1990—the entrance is now on Florence (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 67).

[Polk] advised Horatio Livermore, a rich Oakland businessman, to remodel an adjacent house in a manner that avoided any reference to formality.¹⁹ Livermore and other residents devised yards with much the same unaffected, rural character as the Atkinson property. In little more than a decade, Russian Hill had become "a veritable wilderness" rising amid San Francisco's dense urban fabric (Fig. 72). Reached by long flights of steps and narrow paths, with plants growing over everythng in sight, the compound conveyed a sense of age, even slight decay. Its cultivated rusticity, laced with urbane counterpoints, suggested an old, remote, somewhat neglected residential quarter on the fringe of a European city rather than a pastoral retreat. The arrival of the Livermores and other socially prominent families signified that this setting now appealed to the well-to-do, as well as to artists and others of limited means. Russian Hill's character remained an anomaly only in degree; it had a considerable influence on new work in other parts of the metropolis (Longstreth 1998: 126-27).

Horatio Livermore had Polk design a set of ramps, stairs, and balustrade for the Jones Street approach to the block. Horatio Livermore's wife told her grandson, George, that Polk had been involved with the ca. 1897 alterations to the family house; however, photographs of work done at that time suggest that neither Polk nor any other architect actually designed the changes. Instead, he probably served as an informal consultant. Polk was responsible for alterations made ca. 1891 for himself and his family prior to construction of their own residence next door. See Overland Monthly, May 1893, p. 460, for an illustration (Longstreth 1998: 376 n.19).

In 1890, Willis Polk rented the Livermore House (7) (1865) at 1045 Vallejo, which is secluded behind trees just south of the corner of Florence and Vallejo. Having become a friend of Worcester's, Polk remodeled the entryway and living room of the Livermore House in late 1890 and early 1891 in a manner similar to Worcester's. (Robert stern remodeled and added to the Livermore House in 1990.) (Wiley 2000: 257-58).

After arriving in San Francisco, the mercurial Willis Polk quickly tired of working for others, Brown included, and set out to start his own firm in 1890 at the age of 23. After a lackluster first year, Polk decided to make a name for himself in San Francisco by starting an architectural periodical, entitled Architectural News. Although the periodical folded after the third issue, its steady fare of often-acerbic criticism of the Establishment architects in San Francisco and their Victorian confections won him a considerable amount of praise and notoriety, especially from the city's bohemian set. After meeting local business magnate and Russian Hill property owner Horatio P. Livermore, Willis Polk moved to leased quarters in Livermore's vacant residence at 1023 Vallejo Street (now 40 Florence Street) in 1891. Polk quickly set to work remodeling the interior of the already much altered house originally built in 1854 by contractor David Morrison. Polk's remodel of the first floor soon attracted the attention of San Francisco's high society for its grace and avoidance of cheap Victorian frippery. Polk soon began to attract a social circle to events at 1023 Vallejo, including other rising architects such as Ernest Coxhead and John Galen Howard (Christopher VerPlanck. nd. Architectural Series: Russian Hill. California Apartment Association).

The Horatio P. Livermore home, at 1045 Vallejo Street and 40-42 Florence Street, is a grand shingled house built around 1860, and later remodeled by Willis Polk. At the height of its glory this country house on the highest nob of Russian Hill was situated on an exceptionally large lot, planted with fruit trees to provide a park-like setting (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 49).

A study in the subtle manipulation of facade elements to create balanced asymmetry (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 100).

One of Polk's earliest buildings in the Bay Area is the 1891 Batten house. The image, like that of two houses which Polk worked on while in Coxhead's office in Los Angeles, is strongly Queen Anne/Colonial Revival. But the elements have been played with, distorted. The tiny dormer in the large, slightly splayed roof plane and the non-corresponding sizes of the superimposed bays foretell mannerist tendencies which Polk would soon explore. Spatially too, the house is prophetic: the circulation and stair areas are combined in a slice of space which pierces all levels of the house, creating a spatial variety which would normally be associated with a house of considerably larger scope (Beach 1988: 56, 57).

A landmark of the Second Bay Region Tradition is the Polk-Williams house... Willis Polk designed it for his family, which, at the time it was built in 1892, included his father, mother, brother, and wife. The client for this double house was a painter, Mrs. Virgil Williams, whose husband had founded the California Institute of Design. Polk apparently waived the commission in exchange for the eastern frontage of the lot. The shingled facade does not divide neatly in two parts, but rather suggests a street row in a medieval village. The old saw about the house with the Queen Anne front and the Mary Ann behind fits well here. The back tumbles down the hillside, taking advantage of the slope to add layers of space. Polk's studio was on a lower rear level. The interior of the house is a remarkable sequence of vertically organized spaces (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 67-68).

An integration of these influences [postmedieval vernacular dwellings in northern French and English towns and classical sources as well] was first achieved by Polk in a double house on Russian Hill (1892) directly across from Worcester's cottage. The commission initially came from Mrs. Virgil Williams, a painter, whose husband had founded the California Institute of Design and who was herself a prominent figure in the local artistic community. Her property, which contained a change in elevation approximately equal to its width of 44 feet, had long been considered an impossible site for a building. Polk accepted the challenge, convincing his client that a party-wall house with two units could be erected on the premises, and reputedly waived payment to secure the eastern 20-foot frontage for his family. Polk's parents purchased the property, financed the work, and may well have taken charge of building the entire complex.

The front elevation of the Williams-Polk house is treated as a single residence (Fig. 62). The Williams (west) side is dominant; the Polks' unit has fewer and smaller elements, and a front door that is tucked beneath an understated secondary entrance. Bands of simple casement windows stretch across both sections at a uniform height, concealing the actual difference in floor levels of about 3 feet between the two apartments. With all its elements unified and at a tiny scale, the house appears considerably larger than its actual size. The facade is like a condensed Norman streetscape, and its picturesqueness is accentuated in a seemingly casual manner, almost as if it were a stage set (Fig. 63). This playful, mannered quality is balanced by the taut, rectilinear articulation and reductive simplicity of its elements, aspects that are similar to recent English work, especially that of Charles Voysey.

There was no obvious precedent for the house's six-story rear portion (Fig. 64). Polk designed it as a loose piling of masses, with balconies and terraces, suggesting an accumulation of hillside shacks. The reference here is to the mid-nineteenth-century houses clustered on the slopes of Telegraph Hill and other promontories, which had been favored haunts of artists for several decades. The composition particularly recalls a block of cottages on Pine Street erected by the Austrian consul, Edmund Vischer, where he maintained a studio and published his famous Pictorial California (1870) (Fig. 65). Considered to be among San Francisco's "most romantic retreat[s]," the complex sheltered a small colony of writers, painters, and diplomats. Beyond the street lay interior courts with lush, unkempt gardens reached by narrow, stepped passages—it was "a veritable wilderness," now tenuously perched at the edge of the expanding commercial center.¹⁷ Polk's design proclaimed Russian Hill's growing prominence as a Bohemian enclave, with this new house as the dominant landmark (Longstreth 1998: 117-21).

Willis Polk's own home was the romantic shingled house just beyond the circle at 1013-1015-1017 Vallejo street. It is said that when Mrs. Virgil Williams commissioned her house in 1892, Polk agreed to do the job for the eastern twenty feet of the sixty-foot lot. The result was two houses under one roof--the Williams house, 1019 Vallejo Street, being the larger, western portion of what appears to be a single building. Polk's house was much bigger than it appears, as the hill drops off so steeply that it is seven stories high in the rear. It would also seem that Polk got the better part of the bargain so far as the view was concerned (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 49).

Though generally more staid and "respectable," Coxhead's contemporaries Willis Polk and A. C. Schweinfurt often used a similar rich and contradictory visual vocabulary in their buildings of the late 1890's. Polk's own house in Russian Hill in San Francisco (1892, actually a double house) represented another case of miniaturization (Woodbridge 1988: 10, 12).

In 1892 Polk built a double house for Mrs. Virgil Williams. Mrs. Williams, a San Francisco artist, had her studio and living quarters in one half of the building; Polk and his family lived in the other half. The house climbs an impossibly steep site on Russian Hill: it is three stories high in the front; six at the back. The street facade is respectable enough: "quaint," in the language of the time, with elements rather loosely adapted from the medieval vernacular. The rear shows a playful, joyous acceptance of the visual and material elements of San Francisco's hillside shacks. It is difficult to reconstruct its original interior configurations exactly; it has been altered considerably through the years. But in the upper levels of the house it is still possible to experience the complex vertical interlocking of the living spaces (Woodbridge 1988: 57, 58-61).

Polk orchestrated the play between contrasting qualities in a somewhat different manner in the alterations he designed in 1893 for a small Italianate cottage situated on an adjacent property. The owner, Katherine Atkinson, was Gelett Burgess's cousin and a well-known supporter of local literary efforts. For several decades her house had been a favorite gathering place among artists, writers, and kindred spirits. Polk's remodeling was modest, yet it resulted in a major transformation by making a small house seem grand, with discrete spaces that are simultaneously integral parts in a circuitous sequence. Each room is tiny and is adorned with classical details in redwood--scaled to acknowledge the diminutive confines while imparting the elegance of an English country house. Thresholds are placed at the corners, enhancing a sense of spatial continuity. No terminating focus exists at either end of this sequence. In the hall a stair winds up to the second floor through a tiny arcade, and in the dining room an oversized fireplace, medieval in character, is set off to one side, abutting a dark passage to the pantry and a china cabinet that is the most sumptuous appointment in the house.

The plain, unpretentious exterior of the Atkinson house was left virtually intact. Polk admired the straightforward simplicity of such buildings, and his client valued her cottage's historical associations. He designed a plaque commemorating Atkinson's parents as the builders and bearing the date of construction (1853) to be placed over the front door, omitting any reference to the alterations. At about the same time, Bruce Porter probably designed the informal garden, enclosing the yard with an assortment of trees and thick shrubs. A classical balustrade and a delicately rendered wrought-iron gate separated this verdant enclave from the street. The total effect imparts a sense of both ordered elegance and elements that had been accumulated over time (Longstreth 1998: 125-26).

In 1853, a contractor, Joseph Atkinson, built an ell-shaped house near the site of the observation tower, on the eastern slope of Broadway. With its low-pitched roof, wide overhanging eaves, and bay windows, it was the perfect embodiment of the new Italian Villa style. Over the front door he placed a lintel bearing the date of construction, 1853. It is still there.

In 1893 the house suffered considerable damage from a fire. Atkinson's daughter, Katherine, commissioned the young architect Willis Polk to rebuild the house in a style in keeping with the spirit of the mellow old place. No more suitable architect for such a project could have been found anywhere. Polk, who lived just a stone's throw away, was the perfect choice. He left the exterior largely untouched, but redesigned the interior to add a feeling of spaciousness without detracting from its many warm historic associations. Here, in one of San Francisco's oldest dwellings, Polk managed to impart the rustic charm of the "countrified" city house, a style which he established in San Francisco. ... Bruce Porter, another talented young designer, did the landscaping, which remains to complement the old house (Alexander and Heig 2002: 107).

On the steep hillside at 1032 Broadway is a house built by James Atkinson in about 1853. Originally a frame Italian villa, it was extensively remodeled by Willis Polk in 1900 (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 49).

The Polks [W.W. Polk, Daniel Polk, Willis Polk] acted as general contractors for the San Francisco houses of Adam Grant and William Joliffe (Longstreth 1998: 372, n. 13).

Willis Polk designed this Period residence. The overhangs of each story, molded brackets and grouped casements are specific expressions of Tudor Revival (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 284).

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 facade 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 comparable 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. Gibbs. By the time it was finished in 1894, the surrounding area was already so developed that no rural atmosphere existed (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 26).

Another grand town house by Polk is the William Bourn house, built in 1894 at 2550 Webster Street. This massive Georgian style house shows Polk's astonishing versatility. The Georgian style town house of klinker brick, with massive chimneys, seems a bit ponderous by modern-day standards, but it makes an impressive statement. Obviously the Bourns liked his work, for they commissioned him to design a stone house at the Empire Mine, which they owned, near Nevada City, as well as a large country house, "Madrono." Finally they called him in as a consultant for their magnificent country house, Filoli, built in Woodside in 1917, now the property of the National Trust. At about the same time (1916) Polk was busy with the design of Carolands, the enormous mansion built by Harriet Pullman in Hillsborough, which has perhaps the grandest stair hall in the Bay Area (Alexander and Heig 2002: 337).

William Bourn, who was head of the Spring Valley Water Company, had made a fortune from his Empire Mine near Grass Valley. In 1897 he commissioned young Willis Polk to design this handsome town house in the Carolingian style, at 2550 Webster Street. It is a masterpiece of the bricklayers' and stonemasons' arts, with beautifully carved decorations and fine fixtures, such as the bronze lantern... Nothing like it was being built in the city in 1897. Polk also designed the offices and main residence at the Empire Mine, and contributed much of the design for Bourn's magnificent estate, Filoli, on the Peninsula (Alexander and Heig 2002: 258).

A compact clinker-brick block with Willis Polk's bold Classical detailing, this was designed for the president of the Spring Valley Water Company for whom Polk also designed two great estates: Filoli, near woodside, a few miles from the city, and the so-called Empire Cottage at his Empire mine near Grass Valley (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 84).

Following the [George W.] Gibbs house, the one opportunity Polk had to realize such a project was for William Bourn's residence in Pacific Heights. The budget was generous, over $50,000, but the site still presented a challenge. Bourn had purchased a relatively small and inexpensive lot on a side street, where far more modest dwellings and service buildings normally were located. In response to this situation, Polk designed the house with an English basement, which eliminated the need for extensive excavation and allowed the principal rooms to be placed well above the street, thus receiving more natural light and better views. The arrangement, similar to that of many larges houses in eastern cities, fills almost the entire property in front and on both sides. However, since the lot abuts the rear yards of neighboring residences, three elevations are visible from the street. The exterior thus needed to have both a formal facade and an overall treatment that acknowledged its freestanding position.

Polk's design reflects this dual role, with front and side elevations that are differentiated from, but also complementary to, one another. The facade is rigorously ordered, but in contrast to many urban houses of comparable size, the order is implied. The repertoire of classical devices often used to achieve continuity from one zone to the next is minimal. The main floor is enunciated by a single, very large window ornately enframed; above, there is a triad of openings rendered like sharp incisions in the wall surface. These opposing strata are sandwiched between a heavily rusticated basement story and an equally pronounced cornice and attic. Contrasting materials enliven the play. Delicately carved sandstone trim rests amid expanses of rough clinker brick, which transposes the animated surface effects of shingles in rustic buildings to a monumental context. Clinker bricks afford a rich, durable veneer that was also cheap, for the standard practice at that time was to discard them after firing. Rather than using an expensive material on the facade and turning to a less costly one for the sides, Polk employed these bricks on the whole exterior. Their textural qualities are as appropriate to the picturesque side elevations as they are to the symmetrical street front, and thus give a rare sense of cohesiveness to the entire building. The studied, but seemingly casual, relationship between these elevations is equally unconventional for a house of this type. The idea may well have come from postmedieval vernacular precedent, in particular from the Eastgate House in Kent, a work Polk was familiar with from publications.

Passage into and through the house conveys a sense of its owner's prominence and love of power. Set beneath the living room window, the entrance is subordinated to the point of imparting an act of submission. The front door is deeply recessed and flanked by striated courses of brick that appear to eat into the sandstone trim, turning inward toward the vestibule. Beyond lies a low, lavishly decorated corridor extending to the rear hall, where the main stair is situated in dim light. Right by the entry are two reception rooms, one vaguely Georgian, the other aggressively rustic. A third, more private, upstairs reception room was for friends, but other visitors were kept entirely apart from the principal rooms of the house.

In contrast to the warren at ground level, the main floor is unusually open for a city house of the period. The central hall affords the essential unifying element, with wide thresholds connecting to each room so that the entire layout can be perceived at once. Wood trim painted ivory forms a visual frame, defining the boundaries of the space. The wall surfaces are covered with a dreamlike landscape mural by Bruce Porter, which creates an ethereal interplay between spatial progression and pictorial illusion. The other rooms are given a strong architectural order. elaborate, large-scale elements are accentuated by contrasts of light and dark zones. The effect is especially pronounced in the dining room, with all the natural light concentrated at one end where a wall of glass surrounds a massive freestanding fireplace. The space recalls Stanford White's dining room at Kingscote in Newport, Rhode Island, updated with a contemporary taste for classical order, yet retaining a sense of freedom and of being integrated into a sequence of spaces that characterizes the best Shingle Style work (Longstreth 1998: 211-17).

The massive brick structure at 2550 Webster Street was built in 1896 for William B. Bourn, President of the Spring Valley Water Company. Architect Willis Polk, who also designed Bourn's palatial Peninsula estate, Filoli, created a powerful variant of Georgian forms for this residence on property which then embraced the entire block. The house has been maintained in superior condition perhaps because it has had so few owners during its life (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 24).

Fernando Barreda was minister from both Spain and Peru to the Court of St. James and the U.S. This house was remodeled by Polk when the architect married Barreda's daughter (Woodbridge and Woodbridge 1992: 87).

Of particular interest to this brief account of Polk's life and work is the house which still stands at 2139-2141 Buchanan Street, which he remodeled at the turn of the century for his new in-laws, the Frederico Barredas.

Gertrude Atherton, in Golden Gate Country, devotes pages to the "romantic Barredas." Señor Barreda had brought his family to the U.S. when he had been appointed the minister from Peru. He had also served as Peruvian minister to Spain, France and England. After his retirement, Barreda had built a great house on Madison Avenue, New York, and a great country house, "Beaulieu," at Newport.

In the 1870s some colossal debacle wiped out Barreda's fortune, and he moved his family to San Francisco, where he felt he might better recoup his losses. The New York mansion was sold at a profit, and "Beaulieu" was purchased by Mrs. Astor, a close friend of Madame Barreda, "for sentiment's sake."

Of course, the remarkable Barredas were lionized by San Francisco society. There were four beautiful daughters and a son. Christina, the youngest daughter, became Mrs. Willis Polk in 1900. She was to share Polk's triumphs and frequent vicissitudes until her husband's death in 1924 (Alexander and Heig 2002: 338).

This finely detailed Italianate was the setting for many lavish parties when it was owned by Federico Barreda, Minister Plenipotentiary from Spain and Peru to the Court of Sant James and the United States. After 1904 Willis Polk married the Barreda's daughter, Christine Barreda Moore, and Polk proceeded to remodel the house, making it into two flats. The upper flat was used by Madame Barreda and her daughter, while the Polks lived in the lower (Olmsted and Watkins 1969: 253).

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).