From the Joplin building, continue north on Ashbury one short block to Page. On the northeast corner is a Queen Anne Victorian, three stories with a corner tower, built in 1890. This is the Cranston-Keenan house, named for its builders.
Robert Dickie Cranston and Hugh Keenan were a pair of contractor-architects who built dozens of houses in the Haight starting in 1890. They worked in Queen Anne and Stick-Eastlake, sometimes blending the two. Their houses share a vocabulary: square towers, decorative bargeboards, fish-scale shingles, deep cornices, and elaborate window surrounds. If you start noticing one Cranston-Keenan, you’ll start seeing them everywhere in the neighborhood. There’s a sister house with the same design at 701 Broderick, and another Cranston-Keenan two blocks south at the southeast corner of Page and Cole.
The historical detail that gets the most attention: Robert Cranston was the grandfather of Alan MacGregor Cranston, the four-term US Senator from California (1969 to 1993) who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. The senator was born in 1914 and died in 2000. The house his grandfather built was 124 years old when he died and is still standing today.
This is a private residence. View from the sidewalk only.