San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
THIS S. F. MANSION MADE WAVES
In a plan for denser housing, S. F. shipped a house across the bay
It looked like a surreal scene from a Pixar film, more than three decades before Pixar films existed. A Pacific Heights mansion, chainsawed into two 85ton pieces, was rolled through several city blocks and then shipped across the bay on a barge to a new home in Belvedere. It was a refugee of a changing San Francisco, captured in 1962 by Chronicle photographers as it floated away from Coit Tower, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The story of the Moffitt Mansion is one of spectacle. But it’s also a bold idea that didn’t get a sequel. Developers hoped the crosswater property transfer would be the first of many, replacing singleoccupancy mansions with multistory apartments — a turn that might be welcomed in San Francisco 2020 by the ( nonmansiondwelling) masses. Instead the journey is a curiosity, documented by dozens of photos, most unpublished until now.
The move began on June 24, 1962, and was frontpage news the next day.
“A stately old Pacific Heights mansion joined the flight to the suburbs yesterday,” Chronicle reporter Dean St. Dennis wrote. “It was cut in two pieces, placed on trucks and trailers, and carried slowly — the whole thing took almost 12 hours — from 1818 Broadway street to Marina Green.” The photos by Bob Campbell show a ring of fascinated onlookers, some hanging out of windows wearing pajamas. City work crews detached power and trolley lines in advance of the glacial crawl, which involved enormous jacks, multiple trucks and men with giant triangular blocks to stop a runaway.
The aging house was purchased in 1962 for $ 3,500, and the move cost more than $ 13,000, including $ 9,000 for the house movers and transport on the 285foot barge. Thieves stole chandeliers, sculpted molding and a marble fireplace hearth from the exposed end of the halfhouse, so a security team was appointed day and night.
“We’re hoping to come out even,” architect Nathan Gilroy said at the time. “What I’m trying to do is show that this type of thing is possible. I hope it will be possible to save other San Francisco homes threatened in the same way.”
Woody LaBounty, San Francisco Heritage’s vice president of advocacy and programs, said moving houses is embedded in the city’s history.
“Pretty much from San Francisco’s beginning, people moved houses and buildings,” LaBounty said. “Land is so precious in San Francisco, it’s a constrained peninsula, and the values have always been so high. There were few places to expand, meaning there were pressures to get rid of a house and build a larger building.”
That includes the old Palace Hotel, which in 1875 displaced the city’s first Catholic church. ( The 10story hotel was destroyed by fire after the 1906 earthquake, but the church has been moved twice, and still exists as Old St. Patrick’s on Eddy Street.)
LaBounty said 5,600 earthquake refugee shacks initially housed in Golden Gate Park were moved across the bay as far south as Santa Cruz.
Between the 1930s and 1960s, when citychanging infrastructure projects included the Golden Gate Bridge, Broadway Tunnel and Central Freeway,
there were at least three companies in the business of moving houses. S. F. Heritage began in the early 1970s, successfully moving and saving a cluster of Victorian houses.
But the dwindling space in Bay Area and increased costs and bureaucratic challenges, have made 21st century house moves relative rarities. Based on stories in The Chronicle archive, most structure moves since the 1980s have been to preserve and relocate historic buildings. Western Neighborhoods Project moved an earthquake house to the San Francisco Zoo. Two homes in downtown San Jose were moved to become part of the San Jose Historical Museum.
The Moffitt Mansion movers were dreaming bigger. The mansion was built for $ 30,000 in 1904 by William Knowles, but had fallen into deep disrepair and was considered for demolition. Gilroy said at the time that elegant homes “have no place in San Francisco today,” predicting a future with ultradense housing. He planned to build a 10story tower in its place, providing residence for as many as 30 families. And then he hoped to move more San Francisco mansions across the water to Bay Area suburbs.
“There would be no point in moving them from one apartmenthouse site to another,” Gilroy said. “You would just be compounding the error.”
The 1962 move had other setbacks. Wind and choppy waters made it impossible to load for more than a week, adding to the shipping and security costs. The Chronicle’s Joe Rosenthal captured a photo of the stranded mansion at night on July 2, with the city’s lights twinkling in the distance.
It finally crossed the Bay on July 3. Chronicle photographer Gordon Peters circled the barge in another boat, capturing picturesque photos with San Francisco landmarks in the background. Photographer Duke Downey took more photos from an airplane.
The house settled at 8 W. Shore Road in Belvedere, and underwent months of extensive renovations. It was listed in early 1963 for $ 160,000, but lingered on the market. Gilroy’s plan for a 10story apartment never came to fruition. It was scaled back to a threestory building, one of the uglier edifices on a block that features a random sampling of flats and apartment buildings seemingly placed at random.
Now surrounded by trees and blending into the neighborhood, the Moffitt Mansion was most recently listed at $ 5.495 million in March 2018. According to Realtor. com, the price dropped three times, before selling eight months later for $ 3.7 million.
Gilroy’s dream never came true. After freeway plans destroyed neighborhoods, and skyscrapers shot up in the 1960s and 1970s — with loud protests involving the Transamerica Pyramid — the desire of city residents to eliminate smaller structures and build big ones waned. Nathan Gilroy, who would be seen as a progressive hero in the 2020s, never barged another mansion across San Francisco Bay.
San Francisco Heritage’s LaBounty said the lessons of history are still relevant. He encourages San Franciscans to pay attention as they walk around neighborhoods, and to look at old photos to observe what has moved and ask themselves why.
“I think it’s what makes history come alive to people,” LaBounty said. “When they see something that’s a little out of place and there’s a mystery behind it, that makes history ( interesting). I think that gets people to appreciate the present and improve the future.”
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic. Email: phartlaub@ sfchronicle. com Twitter: @ PeterHartlaub