Prior to the 1906 Earthquake and Fires[1], San Francisco’s neighborhoods were dominated by three types of architectural styles: Italiante with flat roofs, cornices, false fronts and curved bay windows; Stick with square or rectangular bay windows and ornamental strips attached to exterior gabled rooflines; and Queen Anne with decorative gingerbread detailing and a signature rounded corner tower topped with a “witch’s cap”.
William Haas was 16 years old when he and his brother came from Bavaria to America in 1864 to seek opportunities denied them in their homeland due to bigotry and restrictive laws against Jews. In October 1868 they settled in San Francisco and began working at their cousin’s general supply company, one of the largest in the American West. William began working as a clerk and eventually became a partner.
In 1880 Haas married Bertha Greenebaum. They had three children and were active members in a healthy San Francisco Jewish community (in the 1880s San Francisco had the largest Jewish population in the nation outside of New York).
In 1886 Haas hired a Bavarian architect to design an 11,500 square foot home on a narrow hillside lot at 2007 Franklin in Pacific Heights. Made of redwood, it combined Stick and Queen Anne features including tall rectangular windows, gingerbread detailing and a corner tower. The house was three stories with a ballroom in the basement, parlors and a dining room on the first floor, bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor and a playroom, gym and servants quarters on the third. The Haas family had 5-6 people in their employment who lived on the premises and included a chauffeur, an upstairs maid, a downstairs maid, a cook and a nanny.
The house withstood the 1906 Earthquake with minor damage, but the family was forced to evacuate when the ensuing fires threatened their home. They camped with neighbors at Lafayette Park for three days until firefighters were able to stop the blaze at Van Ness a block away.
The Haas’s youngest daughter Alice, who married Samuel Lilienthal, moved into the house when William died in 1916. When Alice died in 1972 the family donated the house to the Foundation for San Francisco’s Architectural Heritage (now SF Heritage). SF Heritage set up the top floor as its headquarters and opened up the rest of the house as a museum and venue for private events. The Haas-Lilienthal House[2], fully restored in 2017, is open for tours on the weekends and gets about 6,500 annual visitors.
——————
[1] 1906 Earthquake and Fires: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2849 [2] Visit them at https://haas-lilienthalhouse.org
