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Victorian San Francisco

Seven thousand survivors of the Gold Rush boom — the densest Victorian streetscapes in the American West.

San Francisco built most of its Victorian housing stock between the 1860s and the 1890s, when Gold Rush and railroad money turned sand dunes into streetcar suburbs. Italianate row houses came first, then the exuberant Queen Anne and Stick-Eastlake styles of the 1880s and 90s, all in redwood and all painted in the earth tones of the day.

The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed much of downtown but spared the western neighborhoods, so today some 14,000 Victorian-era buildings survive — more than anywhere else in the American West. Walk Alamo Square at golden hour, tour a perfectly preserved 1886 mansion, and see why the rest of the country calls them Painted Ladies.

What to see

Painted Ladies, Alamo Square
Painted Ladies, Alamo Square — The postcard row: seven Queen Anne and Italianate houses built between 1892 and 1896, facing Alamo Square park with the downtown skyline behind them. They are the most photographed Victorians in America, stars of countless films and the opening credits of Full House.
Photo: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Haas-Lilienthal House
Haas-Lilienthal House — Completed in 1886, this Queen Anne mansion at 2007 Franklin Street is San Francisco's grandest surviving Victorian house museum. Built for merchant William Haas, it keeps its original redwood interiors, gas lighting fixtures, and a ballroom — all shown on docent-led tours run by San Francisco Heritage.
Photo: Daderot, CC0 1.0 Universal, via Wikimedia Commons
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Westerfeld House
Westerfeld House — An 1889 Stick-Eastlake showpiece at 1198 Fulton Street, designed by Henry Geilfuss for confectioner William Westerfeld — all gables, brackets, and patterned shingles. It has lived many lives, from mansion to Russian nightclub to apartments for jazz musicians, and remains one of the most ornate private Victorians in the city.
Photo: Jet Lowe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Mission District Italianate row houses
Mission District Italianate row houses — The Mission holds some of the city's oldest surviving Victorians: flat-fronted Italianate row houses of the 1870s and 80s, with tall narrow windows, bracketed cornices, and bay windows added as the style evolved. Walk Capp, Liberty, and Dolores Streets for the densest runs of them.
Photo: Paxson Woelber, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Pacific Heights Victorian mansions
Pacific Heights Victorian mansions — Above the bay, Pacific Heights collected the city's grandest Queen Anne and Italianate mansions in the 1880s and 90s — turreted, many-gabled piles on Franklin and Steiner Streets. Several now serve as consulates and institutions, but the streetscapes are fully public.
Photo: Nicolas Lannuzel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Octagon House
Octagon House — Built in 1861, the McElroy Octagon House at 2645 Gough Street is one of only three octagon houses left in San Francisco. Saved and moved across the street in 1951 by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, it is now their museum of decorative arts — a Civil War-era curiosity in Cow Hollow.
Photo: Jaredzimmerman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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