You've heard us say "there's not much Art Deco in San Francisco" because, well, there isn't. There's the Golden Gate Bridge, of course, and the works of Timothy Pflueger, plus some a few Streamline Modern houses in the mix, but 99 Ord Street is in a class of its own. The Castro-adjacent (Lower Corona Heights?) 3-bed, 3-bath house came on the market yesterday asking $1,595,000. For such a modest stucco box, it has an amazing amount of classic relief decor— crisp, zig-zagging bands of moldings and cornices and bay windows topped with a riot of stylized acanthus leaves and medallions. The foyer has a ziggurat ceiling straight out of Pflueger's Paramount Theater playbook, but according to the city, this "Potential Historic Resource" identifies as the Taravellier House by Fabre & Hildebrand, an undistinguished architectural firm that did stuff like this in the '20s and '30s. The records can't seem to agree if 99 Ord is legally a 1- or 2-family dwelling, but the first floor in-law looks legal to us.
In a house with beautifully detailed public rooms, the garage is also spectacular, looking more like an artist's studio than a place for mere automobiles. Unless you've got a vintage Packard. Up on top, there's a pentroom/bedroom, bath, and a big roof deck. The exterior's been lovingly recorded by Flickr user Anomalous A, and we used one of their photos in the gallery along with a vintage b+w image, plus a shot of the house in 2007, when it sold for $1,450,000.
· Historic Resource Assessment [SF Property Information]
· Anomalous A [Flickr]
· Marlton Manor [Up From The Deep]
· 90 Ord Street [Redfin]
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