Former Bootlegger Home in the Mission Filled With Imagination Heads to Market

The big, Classical Revival home at 242 San Jose Avenue in the Mission has a long and storied history, one that its most recent owners, Danny and Steve, only added to in their nine years in the home. We visited them back in March for a House Calls feature and marveled at the Knoll chair mounted upside-down on the ceiling, the collection of homemade lights made out of espresso pots and other finds, and the collection of posters and signs from defunct local establishments. Now, most of those wild touches are gone because Danny and Steve have decided to put their house on the market for $2.995 million and move to Minneapolis.

The house has been notable ever since it was built back in 1916, when it was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle under the heading "Mission Home has Pleasing Arrangement." Large stained glass windows, period tile flooring, and detailed woodwork still remain from that time. Steve and Danny found a trove of other historical bits in the house during their time there. While doing work on the home, they discovered Carta Blanca beer bottles from the 1920s inside a wall, a sign of potential bootlegging activity. Then, during a kitchen renovation they found a copy of the San Francisco Examiner from July 5, 1945 inside another wall. It had been put there as a time capsule, and so Steve and Danny put a copy of the current Chronicle in the wall before closing it up.

Although there are no ceiling-mounted chairs or old posters used in the home's staging, bits of the house's quirkiness remain. One wall is covered with of fish, and a bedroom wall is covered with an image of shelves of books. Potential buyers will likely be more attracted to the conventional aspects of the home, like its stunning three-story facade, four bedrooms plus guest quarters, backyard, and one-car garage. Here's hoping that whoever takes over this home cares for it as well as Steve and Danny did.

· Where Bootleggers Once Dallied, an Island of Awesome Castoffs in the Mission [Curbed SF]
· 242 San Jose Avenue [Official Site]