1198 Fulton Street - 1978

Freshly painted at this point. One of the largest remaining Victorians in San Francisco, and thanks to its tower and its visibility from Alamo Square, a real landmark. This 28 room home was built for William Westerfeld, an prosperous San Francisco banker, circa 1882. Henry Geilfuss was the architect. In the early years of the 20th century, the second owner added the tower and a bathroom and remodeled the front hall. He decided to forego the east side rose garden for "income property." Perhaps the rationale for adding the tower was to convert the stick style to the more fashionable Queen Anne style. This owner, John Mahoney, a contractor who built the St. Francis and Palace hotels in San Francisco, was a friend of Marconi, the inventor of radio. Marconi is reported to have made early radio transmissions from the tower to Marconi's neighborhood of Telegraph Hill. In the 1920s, the house was converted into a nice rooming house and, until the early 1970s, a succession of colorful tenants lived here. The first group were Russian refugees from the 1917 revolution. They maintained a restaurant and nightclub in the ballroom on the ground floor called "Dark Eyes," and used the main floor as a social and gaming club. The upper levels (bedrooms) had the usual auxiliary commercial functions with which San Francisco so long has been associated. Since the Russian consulate in San Francisco closed in 1917, the Russian immigrant community used the building as a de facto consulate; many in the city still refer to 1198 Fulton as the "old Russian Consulate." In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, the building functioned as a "very nice" rooming house with most of the original fixtures (chandeliers, fireplaces, etc.) still intact. But in the 1960s, it was a focal point for some of San Francisco's most (in)famous hippies; Charles Manson was reputed to have lived here for a while as did underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger (Scorpio Rising). It was in the 1960s that much of the interior grandeur was lost. In 1968 Daniele Ducois and partner William von Whalen purchased the house for $45,000 with plans for restoration. When the building transformed back into a single family home with a separate apartment on the ground floor, enormous interior restoration was required. It had several owners in the 1970s and 1980s; in the fall of 1985 it was for sale at an asking price of $849,000. For a brief period in the 1980s, the building served as a bed and breakfast. Today, the interior is as grand as it ever was - possibly grander since most rooms have Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper.