The Theodore F. Payne House, also known as the Payne Mansion, is a

Victorian house In Great Britain and former British colonies, a Victorian house generally means any house built during the reign of Queen Victoria. During the Industrial Revolution, successive housing booms resulted in the building of many millions of Victorian ...

in the

Lower Pacific Heights Lower Pacific Heights, also known as Upper Fillmore, is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, between Pacific Heights, the Fillmore District, Laurel Heights, and Japantown. The neighborhood is centered on the commercial corridor of Fillmor ...

neighborhood of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, California, United States. Built in 1881 and designed by William Curlett in a mix of

Stick Stick or the stick may refer to: Thin elongated objects * Twig * The weapon used in stick fighting * Walking stick, a device to facilitate balancing while walking * Shepherd's crook * Swagger stick * Digging stick * Swizzle stick, used to stir d ...

, Eastlake, and Queen Anne styles, it survived the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

and was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1980. It has been adapted to house a hotel and a restaurant.

House

The Theodore Payne House was designed by William Curlett and his brother-in-law

Theodore Eisen Theodore Eisen (July 10, 1852 - March 14, 1924) was an American architect. He designed many houses in Los Angeles, California. Early life Theodore Augustus Eisen was born on July 10, 1852 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Augustus Ferdinand Eisen ( ...

The authors give the date of completion as 1882. in a blended Victorian style, with Stick, Eastlake, and Queen Anne elements. It is the last of several mansions along its section of Sutter Street, and one of the few surviving upper-class houses from before the 1906 earthquake and the ensuing fire. It was built with modern conveniences including heating, hot and cold running water, and indoor toilets, and had a

porte cochère Porte may refer to: *Sublime Porte, the central government of the Ottoman empire *Porte, Piedmont, a municipality in the Piedmont region of Italy *John Cyril Porte, British/Irish aviator *Richie Porte, Australian professional cyclist who competes ...

(now removed), many

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...

s, and an open octagonal candle-snuffer turret. The interiors include Tiffany stained-glass windows.

History

The mansion was built in 1881 for Theodore Fryatt Payne, whose father, also called Theodore Payne, had become wealthy in the

Gold Rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Z ...

and who made his own fortune manufacturing nuts and bolts, and his wife Mary Pauline O'Brien, who inherited the largest share of her uncle William S. O'Brien's silver fortune from the

Comstock Lode The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada (then western Utah Territory), which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United ...

. A March 1882 article in a builders' magazine projected the cost of construction at $16,500; both the lot and the building contract were in Mrs. Payne's name. The Paynes moved out of the city after the 1906 earthquake to Menlo Park, where they had a house built out of reinforced concrete; Theodore Payne died in 1907 and his widow sold the San Francisco house in approximately 1909, after which it was owned by Edgar and Ida Anderson and by 1933 had become a Japanese

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

. In about 1940 it became Karl Lengfeld's antiques store, a use that continued into the late 1960s and involved some alterations to the interior. It has also been the headquarters of the San Francisco Medical Society and an alcoholism treatment center; in the 1990s it was available for rent as a wedding venue. Its exterior having been little altered, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. In 2011 it was purchased by Jing Yao and her husband, Chinese hotel entrepreneurs who converted it into their first venture in the United States, a ten-room hotel oriented toward Chinese business travelers called Leader House. Leader House and a Chinese restaurant on two floors within the building received the necessary city permissions in late 2013 but never opened; instead it was operated as the Payne Mansion Hotel, the most expensive

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...

rental in San Francisco at $10,000 a night for the entire building. It was bought in 2018 by Bernard Rosenson, a Southern California hotelier, and late that year the Mansion on Sutter hotel opened there, with a French restaurant named 1881.

House

History

References

External links