2121 Vallejo St.
San Francisco, CA 94123, USA

Albert Wilford Houses - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Albert Wilford Houses are significant for their architecture, a highly unusual variant among the thousands of Queen Anne houses in San Francisco. The ostrich-leather fascia bands and equilateral-arched domical bay roof have not, been documented anywhere else, though they certainly fall within the range of typical Queen Anne treatments for rough-textured plaster accents, turrets and generally varied massing. Their designer-builder-contractor-owner-developer was Albert Wilford, who probably made his own inventive mix of the architectural elements he found in the Newsom Brothers' Picturesque California Homes (No. 2, 1887) and in The California Architect and Building News (hereafter GA&BN), especially the William H. Crocker house on California Street, built in 1888 by Curlett & Cuthbertson. (l) A small-scale developer, Wilford .is very little known, but among his few houses discovered so far, this pair on Vallejo Street are the most unusual and the most intact.

The houses have received some attention as exotic designs. The San Francisco Planning Department's 1976 Architectural Survey rated them '4' (next to highest) on a 0-5 scale, when 90?^ of the city's buildings received no rating at all. The surveyor remarked on his form, "Outrageous," Also the Great Houses of San Francisco devotes a page to 2121 Vallejo's domical turret and second floor details.

The houses' developer Albert Wilford had purchased the land by the late l880s. He owned, in fact, two of the three 50-vara lots (each 137-g-xl37i-') on this blockfront, those at the southwest comer of Vallejo and Buchanan and at the southeast comer of Vallejo and Webster, consisting of the modem lots 1-5, 21-23, 14-18 and 51-57 on the enclosed map of Assessorte Block 565. Wilford never touched the block's center 137i feet. He subdivided the two 50-vara lots into the 23- to 29-foot-wide modem lots (except lot 23 and the two condominium conversions). In I889-I89O he built four houses facing Webster, four on Buchanan and four on Vallejo (two on each, of the 50-vara lots). (3) Of these twelve Wilford houses, five have been demolished and three seriously altered; 2654-2658 Webster, 2751 Buchanan, 2121 and 2127 Vallejo survive reasonably intact. Judging from the remains, all certainly had narrow lots, similar plans, two main stories and polygonal bay windows. The Webster Street ones had roundarched door and balcony recesses comparable to 2121 and 2127 Vallejo's, but there is no evidence of any other domical turrets. The complete water dates, partial sales dates, Sanborn map footprints and present building masses all indicate the twelve houses were a single development.

Wilford (1843-1915) was born in Stockholm, Sweden, immigrated to the United States in I866 and was naturalized in Pennsylvania. (4) In San Francisco directories he appears first in 1871 without occupation, and then not again until 1877. Except for I88O (liquor saloon), I883 and 1890 (no listings), directories through 1915 attribute to him various aspects of his developer status. He was a "carpenter" in 1877-1878, I88I, 1884, 1886 and 1888. He was a "carpenter and builder" in 1882, I885 and 1887. He was a "contractor and builder" in I889 and I899, a simple "builder" in I89I-I892, I896-I898, 1900, 1903, 1908-I909 and 1914-1915. He listed himself as an "architect" in 1893, 1895, 1901-1902 and 1904- 1907. He gave no occupation, presumably living on income or real estate sales, in 1894, 1910 and 1912. He sounds like a self-made man. Between years of constant moving, he lived at 3009 Jackson Street I892-I9IO. His wife Charlotte had immigrated from Sweden in 1873 and had two sons by a previous marriage. Edward and Louis Brader followed their stepfather as building contractors.

3. San Francisco Water Department: Service Installation Requests were signed by A. Wilford for 2660 Webster on 1 June 1889; for 2638-2640, 2642-2644 and 2654 Webster on 29 July 1889; for 2751 and 2753 Buchanan and 2103 Vallejo (then 2715 Buchanan) on 29 March I89O; for 2121, 2127, 2131 and 2133-2139 Vallejo on 24 June 1890; and for 2741 Buchanan on 13 August I89O. These water records are the sole known connection of Wilford to these houses.

4. U.S. Census 191O, California, San Francisco, Roll 101, Enumeration District 283, household No. 116; "Deaths: Wilford," San Francisco Examiner, 24 Nov. 1915: IO/5. Little is known of Wilford's work. GA&BN did not notice him, nor did Architect and Engineer. Sources that do indicate some buildings are Water Department records (subject development, I889-I89O; 1267 and 1273 Fulton Street, 1888 and I889); newspapers (1352-1356 McAllister, 1902); directory listings (3009 Jackson, before I892); the San Francisco Realty Directory of I897 (southwest Fulton and Shrader, demolished); Wilford's McEnemy Judgments file No. 18694 (post-1906-fire land claims on 2319 Anza, 126, I30, 135-137 and I36 Eighteenth Ave.); and his probate file #20002 (2244 and 2260 Leavenworth, 1913; 74 Caselli, 1914; and other property in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda). Further delving may produce more houses. His practice seems to have been to buy plots of land, subdivide, build houses on speculation with himself as contractor, and sell them either outright or on time payments extending a year or more, Wilford retaining title until all was paid. For instance, at 2131 Vallejo, where he signed for the water connection on 24 June I890, the McEnemy indicates he bought (or bought back) the house from Clemence E. and Eveline L. Harrison on 13 Nov. 1895, and on 19 Feb. 1902 he made a time contract with the same people for a $5,000 sale of it on payments of $10 a month at Ifo interest; $4400 was left yet to be paid in September 1909.

The designs of the various Wilford houses mark him a follower of whatever trend was current and easily sold at the time. In 1888 he built Stick houses with garlanded fascial, in 1902 it was three-story flats with curved bay windows, and in 1913 two-story stuccoes flats over garages. In short, the subject houses are Wilford's only known venture out on a limb of the design tree.

He may have gleaned the ideas from local architectural publications. CA&BN had first noticed Queen Anne designs in May of 1882, printing 2-g columns on "The Architecture of the Renaissance" and the illustration of a country house near Boston. In 1884 and 1885 the magazine published a very few eastern country cottages and many little cuts in Queen Anne style, but almost all the major illustrations showed the local adherence to Stick style. The December I886 issue gave a "Design for a Country Seat" with GA&BN's first Moorish arch. In the next three years the magazine devoted more and more of its illustrations to Queen Anne houses, including examples of varied massing, Moorish arches, and balconies recessed into the body of the house, all elements of the Vallejo Street design. Meanwhile S. and J. G. Newsom's first Picturesque California Homes, published in 1884-1885, had advocated largely Stick organization with a multitude of Queen Anne details, like fish-scale shingles, flared bay aprons, projecting chimneys and gabled dormers. There was one Moorish arch—on a fireplace. The Newsom's second pattern book of the same title, published in 1887, was thoroughly oriented toward Queen Anne style; it showed towers with echoing window shapes, Moorish arches, recessed balconies. There were many ideas for Wilford.

Even closer to the elements he mixed and matched on Vallejo Street was the William H. Crocker mansion (destroyed 1906) at California and Taylor Streets, by Curlett & Cuthbertson. It had a Moorish arch at the entry, curve-profiled turret roof with echoing window shape, recessed balconies, bay windows and a multitude of textures. J. C. Newsom published an unattributed photograph of it as "California Street" in Picturesque and Artistic Homes and Buildings of California (I890). In June I889 the same house, properly attributed, had been published in CA&BN, with the comment on p. 79: "The design embraces more originality than is usually observed in such dwellings, inasmuch that it combines six different materials in its exterior, without detracting from the amity of the whole design." Kirker says the house "proved less significant as an original production than as a kind of builder's poster from which regional architects gathered details for their row houses."(5) This seems to be what Wilford did. He may even have derived the "ostrich leather" texture from Crocker's gables which CA&BN had described as "finished in pebbled plaster on iron laths."
Whatever the design's pedigree, Wilford seems to have had little trouble selling the houses. On 24 J\me I89O he had signed for the water supply, an indication the houses were at least under construction, and he recorded their sales on 29 November I89O for 2127 Vallejo, on 6 December 1890 for 2121 Vallejo, and for at least two other houses in the development in November and December 1890. (7) He may have spent the summer on construction and turned his attention to selling during the rainy season. He sold 2121 Vallejo to Annie J. Gabriel, presumably wife of Adolph J. Gabriel, a traveling salesman whom directories list here 1892-1894. The buyer of 2127 was Patrick A. Dolan, a real estate agent who was listed at a different address every year, here in 1891. Dolan sold his house almost immediately to Richard M. Tobin (b. 1866), son of the Hibernia Bank's founder, made a director in 1889 and later Hibernia's president. For Tobin 2127 Vallejo was simply income property; during 1900 he rented it to Joseph O'Hara and in 1904 to Stuart F. Loughborough. By 1906 the house belonged to bookbinder Frank and May C. Malloye, who lived in it and whose descendants finally sold it in 1972. Gabriel sold 2121 Vallejo before 1897, and the next known owner (1901) was John R. Aitken, a lawyer, who turned it over to his own company, California Investment & Finance. Tenants included Charles Simon Levy, another traveling salesman (19OO-I904), Joseph Weissbein (1904-1905) and Joseph Vail Selby, manager of the Boston Woven Hose & Rubber Company (1908-I9IO). The house went through a series of absentee owners until bought by the Youdalls, residents, in 1952. It seems always to have been a single-family residence, whereas 2127 Vallejo was converted to three flats in the 1940s and reconverted in 1978 to a single-family house with basement apartment.