Pacific Heights

About Pacific Heights

Pacific Heights sits on the ridge between the Marina to the north and the Western Addition to the south. It developed as a wealthy residential district starting in the 1870s, once cable cars made the steep hills practical to live on. Builders filled the blocks with Victorian and, later, Edwardian houses, many of them large.

The neighborhood kept much of its early housing because the fire after the 1906 earthquake was stopped at Van Ness Avenue, to the east. The Haas-Lilienthal House on Franklin Street, an 1886 Queen Anne Victorian, survived and is now a museum run by San Francisco Heritage, the only intact private home of its period open to the public on a regular schedule.

Larger mansions followed as the money grew. Adolph Spreckels, son of sugar magnate Claus Spreckels, built the Spreckels Mansion at 2080 Washington Street around 1913, designed by George Applegarth in a French style. The stretch of Broadway along the north ridge holds some of the highest real estate values in San Francisco.