Ernest Coxhead's 1895 house design is a spare, sharp-edged
composition that he enlivened with a little well-placed and often
exaggerated classical detail. Note the enormous keystones above
the windows in the foreground, the generous string course halfway up
the building, and the grandiose entrance portal on the right.
Historians usually describe the design as a Jacobean or Georgian
Revival. The Georgian label is not too convincing; the design
lacks the perfect axial symmetry, paired end chimneys, and broader,
more horizontal massing that typify the style.
The influence of the English Arts and Crafts Movement is
also visible in the design. The general forms and massing take
their cues from the English Queen Anne style that had become one of
the movement's primary sources of inspiration. This influence
is also evident in the design's "honest" brick construction,
its relative lack of surface decoration, and its somewhat asymmetrical
and seemingly functional arrangement of doors and windows. Coxhead
enjoyed making his designs look as if they had evolved over time, which
meant he was not afraid to introduce a certain level of quirkiness to
his designs. This may account for the boxy, big windowed appendage
along the street corner and the oversized front door (see next image),
whose offset placement play nicely against the implied symmetry of the
main block. The house was one of the first houses in San Francisco
wired for electricity. It must have been remarkably well built,
surviving major earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Photograph taken
from the adjacent park in 2001 by Howard J. Partridge.
