The brick apartment tower on the northeast corner of Mason and Sacramento, across from the Fairmont, is the Brocklebank, built in 1926. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), this is where Madeleine Elster lives: Jimmy Stewart waits in his car on Mason Street watching the entrance, and Kim Novak’s green Jaguar glides out of this driveway. Hitchcock shot the exteriors here, and the building appears throughout the film’s first act.
The Brocklebank has been one of the hill’s prestige addresses since it opened; Herb Caen lived here, and it turns up in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. It is a private residence: the stop is the sidewalk view and the recognition. Stand near the Fairmont’s corner for the same angle Hitchcock used.
Part of a self-guided walking tour
