Charming and deeply informed, part historical detective work and part gossip column, this storied tour of 110 of Pacific Heights’ grand old edifices offers an architectural and social history of one of San Francisco’s most fabled neighborhoods.
The neighborhood of Pacific Heights has long tickled the imagination of locals and tourists alike with its painted Victorians, chateaux, and mansions, and stories populated with the most famous of San Franciscan names. Enter the world of Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, Houghton Sawyer, Julia Morgan, William Wurster, and other great architects, along with the moguls, entrepreneurs, artists, mariners, recluses, and charlatans who lived in their creations.
Anne Bloomfield, for many years a member of San Francisco’s Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, was a highly respected consultant in architectural history and an effective preservationist responsible for a number of San Francisco’s landmark designations. For a period of fourteen years, she wrote the “Great Old Houses” column for New Fillmore, a neighborhood monthly. Before her death, in 1999, she had intended to collect, edit, and revise these columns for a book.
Arthur Bloomfield is a San Francisco native, a celebrated critic of both music and food, and the author of several books. His completion of Anne’s Gables and Fables has resulted in a work that he describes as “a phantasmal composite…of her cabernet and my merlot.”
