William Haas was only 16-years old when he and his elder brother Abraham sailed from their Native Bavarian village of Reckendorf to New York City, in 1865. Three years later, he joined the wholesale-grocery firm of Leopold Loupe and Kalman Haas in San Francisco. He found a burgeoning city in need of such supplies and soon found himself being able to live well above the modest means from which he emigrated.
After the Gold Rush, there was a lot of money in San Francisco and land value continued to be speculative. William Haas was not a railroad baron; he was a hard-working immigrant who became an upper-middle classman that could provide for his family very well. With the advent of steam-powered milling, by the time of the industrial revolution, and with local timber and other house-building materials in great abundance, Mr. William Haas was in a position to afford a dwelling that was sufficient for his growing family, and suited to meet his needs as a respectable business man and prominent member of his San Francisco community.
A man’s home is his castle, and when it came time for William Haas to build his, he would not pick his out of a pattern book. Some men of class and taste, both architecturally and otherwise, might prefer a more sovereign architectural plan, one of distinction that is suiting to certain levels of style and desire for function.
Mr. Haas employed a local architect, Peter Schmidt, to design his home. Schmidt was known for his creative ability, as an architect, to manipulate the human eye into believing that his designs were larger than they actually were. Evidence of this talent can be observed as one walks past the Haas-Lilenthal house at 2007 Franklin Street. Schmidt used asymmetrical design tactics and creative geometric placement to make his homes really stand out.
Take the layout of the floors for example: From the outside one might notice the apron-band that runs along the bottom-exterior of the house. Well, the 1st floor starts just below that. Then, above that is the water table, where the 2nd floor is set at the very bottom. With the ceiling of the 2nd floor starting at the bottom of the exterior’s freeze band, the 3rd floor is a lot tighter than the two below, even a lot more than it appears.
On the left-side of the front of the house, there is a rounded tower sitting on an octagonal base. There are square-butt shingles and fishtail shingles mixed, which really helps to break-up the surface and keeps the eyes interested. The windows in the tower are 12-feet off-the-floor (it must be like a grain silo in there).
The Haas-Lilienthal Home is sort of a proto-Queen Anne Victorian, mixed with Eastlake (Stick) style elements. With its rounded tower and rectangular bay windows, the exterior of the property sits today, much as it did when it was first finished in 1886, except for the chimneys and fireplaces on the south wall, which were added in 1900. The interior was remodeled in 1898.
The house is ornamentally decorated with mixed, yet repetitive, geometrics on all four-sides. The home’s elaborate wooden gables, circular corner-tower, and other luxuriant ornamentations are really pleasing to look at
The front-yard is luxuriantly sized, by San Francisco standards. Though many home-owners have previously partitioned-off their larger yards in order to build another house, there are still a few grandiose stretches of private lawn in the city. Have fun trying to find them.
The first two floors of the Haas-Lilienthal home have very high ceilings, as do many Victorians. In the spirit of combing the beautiful and the useful, many of these period homes have a functional need for such expansive ceiling-height. Interior lights, in the old days, were coal-gas burning. If you wanted breathable air at conversation level, you needed a buffer space for the fumes to rise. The higher the ceilings, the higher those fumes could rise, and therefore increase the amount of light and air quality in one’s home. Double-hung windows are also a reaction to that need, because you can open the top half of the window to let the vapors out. Also, medallions on the ceiling acted as a soot-catcher. This way, all you’d have to do is repaint the soot-catcher instead of the whole ceiling when it began to blacken.
The home that Haas built was large indeed (12,000 sq. feet), but with Schmidt’s design, it appeared to be even more spacious and majestic than it actually was, creating a subtle and very impressive effect to all that pass by and care to notice. Those who might pass by and care to notice, by the way, are part of the outermost circle of intimacy within a Victorian environment. That circle of intimacy is actually part of a concentric set which comprises different levels of Victorian social standings and relationships. It was kind of l like a series of spaces within spaces. If you were a close friend of the Mr. Haas, you might be allowed to enter the family parlor, or maybe the formal parlor if you were to conduct very important business with Mr. Haas. Unless you were family, it is more than likely that you would never be able to go upstairs, and unless you were there to work, you’d never be invited into the kitchen.
Once a guest has arrived as far as the portico, you want them to be impressed, which is why the vestibule and the mosaic tile on the floor have been installed so meticulously on the porch. If you were say, a San Francisco grocer, perhaps you might make your vestibule out of redwood, which was not quite a noble wood yet, and then have it faux painted to look like white oak. Materials that were abundantly available on the east coast were extremely pricey to have shipped. Since local materials were very cheap, it was more economical to disguise your home’s dressing than to send for the actual timber
The gateway to the 3rd closest circle of intimacy within a Victorian home such as Hass’, is its tradesman/service alley (less affectionately referred to as the swamp). The service alley is on the right-side of Hass’ home and is quite narrow for such a large home. It would serve as an entrance for the chauffer, the cook and other domestic servants, and a discreet way to get groceries, ice, and other supplies inside the house. No Victorian Lady would appreciate a pair of dirty servant’s shoes trampling through her second parlor on their way to the kitchen. Not even the thought of it.
In the 1890’s, If you had come to the Haas residence to make a social call and found the outside doors closed, you would know that Mrs. Haas was not receiving visitors on that day. However, if you came and the vestibule was open, you might have a pretty good chance of being seen. Unless, by chance, she was already entertaining a caller (who might not be an acquaintance of yours, in which case you would not be invited to join them), Victorian etiquette would require you to leave your calling card and come back at a more appropriate time. Usually a lady would have one or two days per week that she would choose to receive visitors. This was a very important reinforcement of social structure in the days without telephones.
Upon being invited inside, a guest might notice that the entry hall is decked with real quarter-sawn white oak. Since that’s the room where callers are actually received, they might spend some considerable amount of time waiting there, which is why it is more important to use honest materials on the interior. In the hall parlor, there would always have a place for guests to sit and wait, as well as a table where they may leave their calling card.
In those days, just about everyone had a calling card, which was a lot like our modern day business cards. They even had their own type of language, where if you turned down one corner, it meant that you came by and would like a reciprocal visit in return. If you turned down the other corner, it meant that you just stopped in passing, but you couldn’t stay for a visit. There was also a language in giving flowers. Roses meant one thing, dahlias another and everybody knew what the difference meant. Social communication was a much more nuanced and subtle than it is today and it served as a way to efficiently maintain the second most-outer circle of intimacy, where the friendly visitor might be welcome.
To the left of the entry-hall, is the front/formal parlor. Though it is a relatively grand room, it is not likely to be seen by most visitors that would come to the Haas residence. All doors that would expose adjoining rooms would be closed, and navigating about the house was not done at leisure, but with serious regard to ones standing within the family’s circle of intimacy. This room would be used for very formal occasions. It is a classic-looking room with a very renaissance and anatomically correct interior décor. There is a crown of banded-laurel and an egg & dart a façade along the ceiling which lends itself brilliantly to the environment’s sense of formal antiquity. The formal parlor would not have been used very often by the building’s original inhabitants. At the time, the streets of San Francisco were not paved and dust was a major issue. Instead of constantly dusting everything, most doors would be closed, and most curtains drawn and rooms were used according to their owners needs, but with considerable attention paid to the preservation of each room’s purpose.
Adjoining the formal parlor is the family parlor. Here, young children would be washed and waiting for supper by 6:00 p.m. when the dinner bell would ring. It is where the family would sit and have many evenings. Also, this is where guests would be received when they made social calls. It was actually much less formal than the front parlor and is decorated with light-weight furniture that could be moved about to suit the needs of the family and guests. This room’s interior is part of the 1898 remodel, when the house was made half-electric (functioned for about 3 hours a day). All of the wood paneling is stained-redwood. By the 1890s, there was a sense of pride in using things native to California. The Haas family brought that aesthetic into their house during the remodel.
The dining room is a hybrid of different styles. There are ionic columns, Bavarian lion heads, even fruit carvings, more banded-laurel and even bead & water leaf décor. The wainscot is the original, made of redwood which has been faux painted to look classical. The room’s walls are lined with leather-looking patterned linoleum, which apparently goes on like wallpaper. Not only is the dining table beautiful, but the rest of the Victorian furniture is in this room is very whimsical and fun.
Only the civilized dined with the family. Children learned their manners from the servants and would eat with them until they got to be around the age of 10 or 11-years. When the ladies of the house deemed them capable of exercising formal manners, they would be asked to join the family around the dinner table.
At the rear of the dining room is the breakfast/study room where young the children and servants ate. There is a jib door in there which is very unique to a San Francisco Victorian homes and looks more like a huge window than a door. More often found in southern plantations, these jib doors allow air to flow through the house, supplies to be brought in and out more easily, and dirty feet inside the house without tracking through the front halls.
On the way through the butler’s pantry, and into the kitchen, there is a germproof water filter on the counter. As crude as it was, any line of defense against Louis Pasteur’s newly invented germ, was a modern marvel at any rate.
It was also a very modern luxury to have a linoleum floor in the kitchen, as the Haas’ did. It was a lot easier to clean than hardwood floors and with the kitchen being where all the service items were kept, polished hardwood just wasn’t necessary. A little closet was built into the wall of the kitchen where all the dining room table-leaves were stored, and the original hand-written note is still posted inside, detailing how many leaves were needed to accommodate any given number of guests.
Until the gas stove came into the house in 1927, they used a coal-burning stove. There would have been soot, grease and harmful fumes flying around everywhere. It was not a place to entertain guests, as we might do in our kitchens today. There were no cabinets on the walls and the counters would not even come anywhere near as high as my waist The refrigerator would have been cooled by an ice block, chopped from a larger block of ice that might have been brought into the city from the Lake Tahoe area and stored in sawdust at the Ice House buildings on Battery Street.
There is also an enunciator the kitchen so that the family could easily communicate with their servants from anywhere in the house. The kitchen was left as it was when Mrs. Lilienthal passed away in 1973, which is the last time the entire house had been lived in.
Going up to the 2nd floor, take the original colonial revival staircase. Mrs. Lilienthal had an elevator installed in 1927, but that is not what anyone is there to see. In the 1890s, only family members were allowed to go up to the 2nd floor. It wouldn’t be seemly to have some stranger wandering past a lady’s bedroom.
The first room that you come across upstairs is Mrs. Haas’ former sewing room, which is now a room full of period toys and children’s furniture. Inside, there is also an antique phonograph, sewing machine, and baby cradle that belong to the Haas family. Whenever a new baby is born into the family, the cradle disappears and then gets brought back to the house when the baby outgrows it.
There were two orphaned children (nieces and nephews of the Lilienthal family that lived in the addition to the house, which was made in 1927). The chauffer of the family was very fond of the children and built a large dollhouse for Madeline Haas, which is also on display.
Mr. and Mrs. Haas’ master bedroom was turned into a sitting-room, when William Haas died in 1919. Inside, there is a white onyx fireplace, Tiffany lamps, more Victorian furniture, Mr. Haas cedar-lined closet and a beautiful Chinese Screen. The room is at the front of the house, which keeps it well-lit and warmed by the sun. Surrounding the room, are the family’s books, complete with hand-written notes, in some of them. There is a post-humus portrait of Mr. Haas over the mantle of the fireplace.
The bathroom is very much in antiquated style. There are huge porcelain sinks, a gas-burner for heating an old-fashioned curling iron and also to heat water for shaving, an extra large rain-head in the shower, and even a bidet. The walls are lined in porcelain tile and an ornamental porcelain crown and adorned with glass shelves which display a number of antique bottles.
Through the bathroom, toward the back of the house on the left-hand side, is yet another bedroom. It was last used as a children’s bedroom and is decorated with period arts and crafts furniture. There is a Sir Walter Scott needle point piece and a good deal of stained-glass art. There is yet another fireplace in the children’s bedroom.
The rear-half of the 2nd floor, as well as the attic, of the Haas-Lilienthal house has been turned into offices and storage by the San Francisco Architectural Heritage Society and are not available for public viewing.
On the way back down the main staircase, one might notice the only damage that the house sustained from the 1906 earthquake. It is a crack and some bubbling in the wall which runs along the steps. Only a block away from Van Ness, the Haas-Lilienthal house would have surely been consumed by the flames of the Great Fire of 1906, had many of the homes along that Avenue not been dynamited to create a fire-line barrier that would finally stop the ensuing blaze.
The staircase leads you to ballroom. Originally an unfinished basement, there are still heater ducts running across part of the ceiling. At some point, the Haas family wanted to be able to entertain up to 75 guests at a time. They went ahead and installed gorgeous paneling and trim in the basement, creating the ballroom. It is not a very functional ballroom, with its wooden columns running from floor-to-ceiling, but it probably served as an excellent place to hold large parties and other events at the house.
The Haas family train set, which previously took up more than half of the attic space, has been rescaled and reconfigured downstairs to fit in a very small basement room. The train cars are very large compared to most others and the track and terrain are impressive for their age.
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