SFC Graffiti: A Documented Legacy

Jeloe started appreciating graffiti in 1983. He and his father were leaving a San FranciscoCandlestick Park, on a bus headed home. At 5-years-old, he looked up, and on the roof of the bus he saw an entire world of colorful lettering and characters. His dad explained “tagging,” and that it was “wrong;” and also that people get away with it by just hitting anyone who gives them any lip. Jeloe remembers thinking: “cool…” 49ers game, at

Since then, Jeloe has become a recognized graffiti artist in the bay area, and all over the world. But San Francisco was his training grounds; his alma mater, if you will. He’ll never forget the graffiti scene that The City breathed for most of the last three decades. It was an open-minded melting pot of crafty colors, arrows and flow; moving doo-dads and bits blasting into a free-formation of art, birthed in the city by the bay, by way of paint and ink, and the minds of its young creators.

Like the city itself, San Francisco street art has transformed a lot over the last 25 years. Between 1993 and 2000, people from all over the world flocked there to do graffiti, and the scene they found was already in full bloom. The local styles became internationally known for their diversity and unique flare. The City was a serious Mecca for the art form. But things have changed. Harsh penalties keep only the heaviest risk takers active on the streets. It’s not what it once was. And it will never be that again.

“It’s in a stagnant phase now,” says Jeloe. “A lot of the people who were into it got pushed out because of the risk of catching a strike on your record. Some of the people with a lot less to lose stayed behind.”

Jeloe says there are still a lot of talented people grinding out graffiti in San Francisco, but a lot less than there used to be. It’s just a lot different now, he says; this was before the dot-com boom, and post-millennial gentrification set in. Nowadays, just about every piece of property is protected by some anti-graffiti watchdog.

“It was a fun and exciting place to be,” says Jeloe. “The schooling I got from paying attention to, and being a part of, what was going on there is priceless. You can go to DeVry or you can go to Harvard. For graffiti, San Francisco was Harvard.”

“But, I don’t have anything to show for it except my pictures and my words.”

Because of the inherently temporary nature of illegal graffiti, many artists photograph their work whenever possible. But gathering a comprehensive collection of media that truly illustrates San Francisco’s graffiti movement is not a task to be taken lightly, and especially not without the right connections.

Nic Hill’s film “Piece by Piece,” part of KQED’s “Truly CA” series of independent documentaries that showcase The Golden State, delves deep into this rich history alongside the people that lived it. Over 100 hours of interview and footage have been cohesively edited into a journey through art, culture and controversy. Piece by Piece is a living record of a time lost. It premiers Sunday night at 6:00 p.m. on KQED channel 9.

“The film offers a good opportunity to learn what the movement was all about,” says Hill. “It’s a celebration of the beauty of art that is gone forever, and the lives of the people who created street art in San Francisco.”

Hill says it’s more difficult than ever to do graffiti in San Francisco. Mayor Gavin Newsome’s zero tolerance position on graffiti has driven a lot of talented writers out of town, he said. And while new graffiti emerges almost every night, The City tries to paint over as much as possible, almost every day.

“The entire N Judah tunnel used to be covered with burners; it was like a preserved art gallery in there,” says Hill. “But about a year ago, the city painted over everything; and now anytime someone gets up, it gets covered up right away.”

“Graffiti is an important part of our society. It’s free artistic expression in a land of consumerism and big business control. It’s arguably the last form of free speech.”

Hill used to write graffiti in San Francisco, but found that his artistic expressions were not limited to that medium in particular.

“Graffiti was sort of a stepping stone for me,” says Hill. “I was really able to gravitate toward graffiti, and I got into filmmaking from there. It’s all about channeling creativity—there’s a similar connection.”

On Monday afternoons, Dave Warnke, a local street artist who recently “retired” to start a family, teaches high school students to look at their own graffiti a little bit differently. At Street Styles, an after school visual arts program at Root Division in San Francisco, teenagers explore the line, color and composition techniques used by popular graffiti artists and taggers.

“A vast majority of the kids are, or have been active vandals,” says Warnke. “The goal is to tunnel their interest in art into something more legal.”

Four years ago, Warnke created Street Styles to offer a class that he never had the opportunity to take. And by actively separating the art and the act, he helps students find a middle ground between graffiti and vandalism.

“Graffiti is very fashionable now, and accepted in the mainstream culture. It helps sell movies, clothes and even sodas. It’s getting more respect than ever, from the art world, but the act is still illegal.”

Warnke says the goal of Street Styles is to get young artists off the streets and away from other crime. He wants to teach them skills and create a positive safe place to create and share their work, with context. He helps them understand the concerns of property owners, as well as the laws and other risks associated with graffiti.

According to Warnke, The City’s Graffiti Advisory Board is getting increasingly “hardcore” about cleanup and punishment. He plans to meet with the board’s chairperson, Mohammed Nuru, this week to discuss graffiti issues, and to advocate on behalf of young graffiti artists like his students.

“These kids want to make art,” says Warnke. “Many cops, teachers and residents want to stop them. I want to be a bridge between those two warring factions.”

Nuru is also the Deputy Director of Operations with San Francisco’s Department of Public Works. Under his leadership, the 25-member Graffiti Advisory Board meets once a month at city hall to share information and advise the city on possible legislations and ordinances to abate illegal graffiti activity.

“Graffiti is not art. The main difference between graffiti and art is permission,” says Nuru. “There’s nothing good about going and defacing someone’s property.”

According to Nuru, the number of graffiti related arrests the city makes increases every year, and more often than not, the apprehended artists are from out of town.

“Our city is a destination for a lot of these vandals,” says Nuru. “We’re spending millions of dollars fighting graffiti, when we could be using that money to make the city more green and clean, and to help the homeless.”

Nuru says that the city is doing everything they can to arrest as many illegal graffiti artists as possible, and that they’ll follow up with prosecution. That can mean a minimum of 100 hours of community service, probation, curfews and restraining orders from certain parts of town, a year without a driver’s license; and even time in prison.

“This isn’t about us not accepting the art; it is how it’s done that’s the problem,” says Nuru. “Without permission, it’s completely unacceptable.”

In the early 1990s, with the closure of such legally overlooked graffiti venues as “Psycho City,” which was a series of empty lots on Market Street where artists threw up huge burners and tags in broad daylight, illegal street art exploded in San Francisco. This was when many young artists became overnight criminals.

The San Francisco Police Department states that up to $400 worth of graffiti damage is punishable by up to 1 year in jail and a $10,000 fine. More than $400 worth can be punished as a felony, even for minor, by up to 3 years in state prison and a fine of up to $50,000. Parents and guardians of minors arrested for writing graffiti can also be fined, and even jailed, for failing to supervise their children.

San Francisco residents are also being encouraged to help the city curb illegal street art on their own. The city offers its residents monetary compensation for anonymous tips leading to the conviction of anyone doing illegal graffiti in San Francisco. Other programs give local volunteers the ability to paint over street art themselves.

Merle Goldstone heads the Department of Public Works’ Graffiti Watch Program, through which residents are encouraged to adopt four city blocks where they would work to prevent and remove graffiti from public property.

“We notify private property owners of graffiti, and give our volunteers the training, supplies and permission to remove it from public property,” says Goldstone. “We want the city to look clean, and keep people feeling safe.”

But beyond the immanent threat of graffiti, and beyond cleanliness, there is also the soul of a city to worry about. There was a time when a local a grassroots art movement grew into a microcosmic legacy that is purely San Francisco. This was when tolerance and appreciation of abstract beauty seemed to take precedence over the status quo, and over urban development; before “quality of life issues” became such a high priority problem.

“When graffiti is done right, it’s a reminder of the liberality of the city, where there really is diversity and options,” says Jeloe. “Graffiti is physical proof that there are people who are deeply rooted in culture, and they’re not just sheep.”

Nimby Neighbors Fight Institutional Creep in the Panhandle: Day School gets Shafted

On a sunny day in the North Panhandle neighborhood of San Francisco, Larry DeSpain is in the upstairs flat of his home at 911 Central St. His antique dining room table is covered with stacks of flyers, postcards, and other literature that promote a cause that he and his newly formed neighborhood group care very deeply about: stopping the San Francisco Day School from expanding its campus as they have proposed to.

San Francisco Day School at 350 Masonic Ave has plans to demolish a small Victorian building at 2130 Golden Gate Ave., which they had purchased in 2001, in order to construct a new science building with a 20-car parking garage in the basement. The addition would be a 2-story glass and steel building with a learning garden on the roof. The project would allow them to increase their enrollment cap from 400 to 430 students.

Several of the school’s neighbors are frustrated with the proposition and have combined their efforts to ensure that the expansion of the Day School does not compromise the residential quality, and quality of life, in the neighborhood. They call their alliance Neighbors United to Stop Day School Expansion, NUTSDE or simply Neighbors United for short.

“If we are going to take on the school, we are going to have to be a lot better organized, and use a lot of time and energy, and invest some money into the whole thing,” says Larry DeSpain of Neighbors United, standing over the pile of propaganda on his dining room table. “From buttons to T-shirts, we’re building a stronger case.”

DeSpain, who has lived at his residence for more than 30 years, says that he and several of his neighbors tried to prevent the school from even opening in 1985.

“If you live in this neighborhood, and you’re at home during the day, you pray for rain. You look forward to summer vacation and other school holidays when the children are not here because they scream” says DeSpain, who recently retired. “You go outside and it’s just constant screaming. The noise reverberates throughout the entire neighborhood.”

Nearly 300 residents in the North Panhandle neighborhood have signed petitions, and sent letters to the group, expressing support of Neighbors United’s position.

Carolyn Sasser, Business Manager at San Francisco Day School, says that the private K-8 is interested in the concerns of its neighbors.

“We went to meetings and worked with them to address their suggestions, and then all of a sudden they took a stance against our proposal,” says Sasser. “It’s been an uphill battle.”

Tom Stack, who lives 3-doors-down from the Day School, says that the expansion project will only make matters worse. Stack says that noise, traffic hazards, night-time light pollution, as well as obstruction of sunlight and views are just some of the problems that the Day School creates for its neighbors.

“They never addressed the existing problems,” says Stack, a member of Neighbors United.

With only 8 spaces of off-street parking on the Day School property, many parents resort to double-parking when picking up, or dropping off their children.

Michael Helquist, of the North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association, says that he has a big problem with the Day School’s parking situation, and that his driveway has been blocked on several occasions because of it.

“The Day School is located on a on a particular corner that has 2 major thoroughfares,” says Helquist referring to Masonic Avenue and Golden Gate Avenue. “Most of the kids that go there are not from the immediate neighborhood.”

Helquist says he is not opposed to expansion, or children, but would like to see San Francisco Day School design something that works for them, and for the neighborhood.

“I don’t like the idea of a massive block of a building in the neighborhood,” says Helquist. “Institutionalism changes how people see and relate to where they live.”

Marta Fry, a landscape architect who owns a home on Turk Street, right behind the Day School, says that their expansion proposition is unacceptable.

“I would like to see the school seriously reconsider its configuration and be more creative with the space they have,” says Fry. “They should stay within their own footprint.”

San Francisco Day School first proposed its expansion project to the San Francisco Planning Department February 15, 2005, says the school’s database manager Meredyth Skemp. At that time, they expected to have to wait through a lengthy environmental review process, but the Planning Department insisted that categorical exemption was the appropriate vehicle for them.

Categorical exemption (or Cat Ex) would require a non-extensive historical review of the building that the school plans to demolish in order to receive a conditional-use permit. Once permitted by the Planning Department, the school would be allowed to demolish the existing building at 2130 Golden Gate Ave., and use the space to expand their campus as planned.

Since then, San Francisco architect Joe Butler, of Little House Committee, has taken interest in the Day School’s 117-year-old Victorian. He met with Neighbors United earlier this year and they have since joined efforts to stop the Day School expansion project right in its tracks.

Butler has stopped numerous pre-1906 homes in San Francisco from being demolished by producing reports that illustrate their historical significance and appealing to the city’s Board of Supervisors, according to articles written by the San Francisco Examiner.

“The school needs to work within the law, and with its neighbors, to expand in a way that acknowledges both the history of the site and the needs of the community that they are a part of,” says Butler.

Neighbors United, through Butler, have contracted a secondary historical report on the building at 2130 Golden Gate Ave., and its immediate neighborhood. Butler submitted the report to the Board of Supervisors in an appeal last March.

In April, San Francisco Planning Department rescinded the Day School’s application for categorical exemption, stating that it is necessary to determine the historical significance of the property they plan to demolish, as well as its neighborhood.

“Now they are going to have to hire a consultant and do an EIR (environmental investigative review) that concentrates on historical relevance,” says Mary Woods of the San Francisco Planning Department. “This is going to set them back at least a year.”

While Larry DeSpain says Neighbors United is going to celebrate the Planning Department’s decision, Carolyn Sasser says that the Day School faculty is busy wrapping up the academic year and appointing a new Head of School.

Sasser says that the San Francisco Day School is very disappointed by the decision. She is not sure when, or how, they will resume their expansion efforts.

“Do we take a step back?” says Sasser. “Right now we just don’t know.”

San Francisco's Early Homes and Families: Haas-Lilienthal

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 1^st floor starts just below that. Then, above that is the water table, where the 2^nd floor is set at the very bottom. With the ceiling of the 2^nd floor starting at the bottom of the exterior’s freeze band, the 3^rd 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 3^rd 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 2^nd 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 2^nd 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 2^nd 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.