Grab Bag #37

These days, my age, sartorial inclinations, and posture have me looking like Luke, the Hotel Belvedere’s house detective in the Maltese Falcon:

But rather than roust two-bit gunsels, I spend too much time being a different kind of house detective. Researching something else, I found mention in a 1922 article of an early San Francisco house built with lumber shipped around Cape Horn:

“The old Sullivan homes, which was located on Ellis street, where now stands the Century Theater [then between Powell and Stockton streets], was first moved to a location at Oak and Buchanan streets and was then moved to its present site at the corner of Baker and McAllister streets.”

A house from the Gold Rush days was still standing in 1922. Could it still be standing in 2024?

On the four corners of McAllister and Baker Streets only one building could be a candidate. The southern corner buildings are handsome structures that by style and composition seem very much to date from the 1890s:

The northwest corner building has a sibling right next door, obviously built in place.

As for the southeast corner, I wouldn’t have picked 1798 McAllister/702 Baker Street, for an 1850s building. The deep eaves, the window surrounds, and the roof brackets are all more late 1890s, maybe early 1900s.

Could this building have been moved and modified over the decades, hiding its Gold Rush era pedigree?

The Planning Department has a 1900 date for year of construction, but that’s the year used for almost every building pre-1906 when the earthquake and fire destroyed most of the records. In Planning Department code, 1900 means “old, but we don’t really know how old.” 

After a bit of research, I found that in 1892 a contractor named Owen McHugh bought a 122' by 137½' lot encompassing the northeast corner of McAllister and Baker Streets from the estate of…aha!...John Sullivan.

The purchase price was $10,250 (about $354,000 in 2024 dollars), high enough that we might assume the sale came with a house. 

Looking at the earliest Sanborn fire insurance map for the block, 1893, which was the year after McHugh’s purchase, we can see a building standing on the southeast corner of McAllister and Baker. Well, at least near the corner:

By the Sanborn notations, the main body of the building is two stories over a raised basement (“2B”). There’s a one-story front porch and the building steps down again at the back with a separate skinny porch section at the rear and what appears to be a small outhouse behind.

Based on directory listings, McHugh lived with his wife Bridget and their many children in the house as far back as 1884. They must have been renters before buying the property from John Sullivan’s executor. 

On the surface, the 1893 Sanborn map building doesn’t exactly match what we have on the corner today. For one thing, it isn’t even at the corner proper. But let’s look at the next Sanborn map in 1899, just five years later.

Now we have a three-story building, a drugstore, snug up against the corner. Note the way it steps down to a single story at back, connected in the same way, and has that same skinny back porch section and the old outhouse.

This seems to be our building with some modifications, changed from a house in the country to a neighborhood-serving business with living space above.

The blocks around Golden Gate Park’s panhandle experienced a building boom in the 1890s and our contractor McHugh apparently decided to capture some income from the new neighbors by installing a ground-level store to lease out.

Bridget McHugh died in 1896 and in the 1900 census the McHugh family address is on the Baker Street side of the building, likely reflecting a new entrance to the upstairs residence.

If Owen McHugh eliminated the front entry porch, raised the building to make the ground-floor store, and pushed the whole kit-and-caboodle to the corner, then he had to have blocked up the old front door or replaced it with a window, right? 

Since the building is so balanced, I’d suspect the center window was where the door was, but maybe it was on the right, the only window set which doesn’t have that decorative beading along the top. Maybe not. It’s all very matchy-matchy.

The window frames and brackets which I thought dated to the turn of the 20th century may have been added during the 1890s remodel by contractor McHugh, disguising the building’s 1850s roots.

According to the 1922 article that started all this, the building had a stop-over at Oak and Buchanan Streets after being moved from downtown.

John Sullivan died at his last home, 525 Oak Street, in 1882. That’s closer to Webster than Buchanan, but real estate baron Sullivan probably owned most of the block at one time. Maybe our building was moved shortly after Sullivan’s 1882 death and the McHughs’ residency on McAllister in 1884.

As for when the mystery house moved from Ellis Street to Oak Street? That story might be more than one Grab Bag can handle.

Am I sure about all this? No. But the building was just sold in April (for $1.6 million) and the store space is currently available for lease. Maybe the new owners or tenants can dig around to see if old photos or 1850s moving permits are squirreled away in the walls.

Right Place, Right Time

So, who was John Sullivan who had that old house on Ellis near Stockton Street in ye olden days? Basically, a guy who got himself to the right place at the right time.

Sullivan traveled through the Truckee Pass into California in 1844, two years ahead of the tragic Donner party by which that gateway is now known. He was a commission merchant in sleepy Yerba Buena village when the United States moved in and when gold was discovered. 

He beat the hoards to a claim that netted him a reported $20,000 in one day. (That is about $816,000 in 2024 dollars.) He then mined the miners by selling goods, secured a good chunk of prime real estate in Yerba Buena before it became San Francisco, and ended up a millionaire real estate magnate and the first president of Hibernia Bank.

You may know this 1880s lithograph showing Yerba Buena before the Gold Rush. John Sullivan’s first house is depicted on the land he owned around today’s Pacific Avenue and Grant Street. 

Sullivan was a very charitable Roman Catholic and donated land for some of the earliest churches and institutions. He outlived two wives and had a dozen kids, one of whom ended up a California state senator.

His children were still wheeling and dealing his vast land holdings 20 years after his death in 1882. 

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund

Thanks to Bill B. (F.O.W.) for chipping into the make-Woody-be-social fund. I have 514 emails in my in-box this morning, you know... So I always appreciate an excuse to leave my desk and have a chat. Let me know when you are free!

Somehow as a kid I always thought it was the sign of a well-adjusted adulthood to be able to buy someone a drink. You know, “it’s on me, I’ll get this round,” etc. I haven’t ever bought an entire bar a round, like the TV or movie character does when he makes the big score (usually followed by a hubristic fall). Maybe soon...

Sources

“Powell-Eddy Corner Only Valley in ’50,” San Francisco Examiner, March 12, 1922, pg. A9.

“San Francisco Real Estate,” San Francisco Examiner, May 14, 1892, pg. 12.

“Death of John Sullivan,” Daily Alta California, July 29, 1882, pg. 1.