Iconic S.F. Odd Fellows building up for sale
A historic building on a troubled corner of downtown San Francisco is up for sale for the first time since the structure rose from the ashes of the city’s great earthquake and fire more than a century ago, as the fraternal organization that owns it, now dwindling in number, seeks to relocate.
The six-story Odd Fellows Temple at the corner of Seventh and Market streets is the longtime home to the San Francisco district of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, one of the nation’s oldest fraternal and philanthropic organizations. Constructed in 1909, with a tall blade-shaped sign bearing its name, the building replaced a structure that was blown up to stop the fires raging in the aftermath of the 1906 quake.
But the group’s membership in San Francisco is declining and aging, most of the building is leased out — mostly to artists and art organizations — and the neighborhood, plagued by crime and drugs for decades, has become a center for the fentanyl trade and people selling stolen goods.
The state of the neighborhood has scared away some tenants, including CVS, which vacated a large ground floor retail space a couple of years ago. It also has made it more difficult to attract new occupants, according to Peter Sellars, the building manager for 26 years and now a consultant to the Odd Fellows.
Some members have grown increasingly uncomfortable traversing the neighborhood to attend meetings, added Sellars, who is also an Odd Fellow.
So the board that runs the sixstory building has decided to place it on the market.
“It’s a number of things,” Sellars said. “It’s really more building than we need.”
The building’s price is not specified on the real estate listing from Colliers, and representatives of the real estate brokerage did not return multiple calls and e-mails requesting more information about the listing. But Sellars said, “It’s fair to say it’s a multimillion-dollar building.”
The building was officially put up for sale in February 2023, he said — adding, “We’ve kept it low profile, though.”
Two offers have been made so far, Sellars said, but the Odd Fellows decided they were too low.
“This is an excellent opportunity for an investor to own a historic landmark building located at the intersection of South of Market and the Civic Center,” Colliers wrote in the executive summary for the listing.
The new owner will take over a building with a rich history. The Odd Fellows started construction of a temple at the corner in 1880, said Sellars. The building, with a tower and spires adorning its blocky shape, was dedicated in 1884.
But in the wake of the great San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the building was intentionally blown up as part of a desperate effort to build a firebreak and save the city from multiple blazes that raged uncontrolled for days.
The Odd Fellows rebuilt their temple on the same corner but with a smaller footprint and a simpler structure, one that lacked some of the adornments of the original. It was dedicated in 1909. The temple, which contained nine formal lodge rooms, was used by San Francisco’s then 36 lodges.
Today that number is down to eight with a total of about 1,100 members, about a quarter of the Odd Fellows’ national membership, Sellars said.
Just two lodge rooms remain in the building to house meetings. The rest have been converted to dance studios for the internationally known Alonzo King Ballet, which operates a dance center on three floors of the temple.
About a dozen artists and photographers — including painter Richard Perri, a longtime tenant — rent space in the building, which also has a podcasting studio in the basement. A few offices for Odd Fellows lodges remain, along with a clubroom that serves as a social area and museum.
When the building is sold, the tenants, all of whom have longterm leases, will remain, Sellars said, but the Odd Fellows will move out. The group is already looking for a home elsewhere in the city, he said.
Perri, also an Odd Fellow, has occupied a corner suite in the building for nearly 36 years, looking out at the intersection of Seventh and Market with a straight-shot view of City Hall through United Nations Plaza. “It’s a great location,” he said. While Perri has a lease that should protect him and his combination office-gallery-studio, he’s worried that the sale could result in the end of the building’s existence as an unofficial arts center of sorts.
“I’m apprehensive about the sale of the building,” said Perri, who just turned 80. “I’ve been here 35 years and I have a lot of ideas and work to do.”
With an old-fashioned elevator — the original, complete with an operator — and tall arched windows, the Odd Fellows Temple wears its age well. The interior is utilitarian — with linoleum floors and long, almost spooky hallways devoid of most decoration or embellishment.
While it’s not “gorgeous inside,” Sellars said, “it’s very functional, well maintained, like a ship. We keep doing the maintenance.”
Over the decades, the building has also been used to film movies and TV shows, Sellars said. In recent years, they include “Big Sur,” a 2013 cinema retelling of Jack Kerouac’s novel of the same name; “The Evidence,” a 2006 cops and crime TV series with Martin Landau; and “Contractor’s Routine,” a 2011 film about a man who commits violent crimes in his fantasy life and his mentor who prevents him from enacting them in real life.
Sellars said he’s not looking forward to clearing out more than a century’s worth of Odd Fellows memorabilia. Items include hats, masks, photographs, paintings, documents and even skeletons — which represent mortality, a key concept in the Odd Fellows, and are used in secret initiation ceremonies. Much of the memorabilia is displayed or stored in the clubroom.
“No one is happy with the mountain ahead of us,” he said.
Sellars admits he’ll miss the old building.
“Every time we lose an original property, it’s tough,” he said. “It’s a familiar place. As organizations like this diminish, it’s sad.”