In Alamo Square, an architect embraces all things vintage

San Francisco’s Alamo Square is most famous for its iconic row of Painted Ladies, the colorful Victorian homes that run along its east side, which became a pop culture icon when they appeared in the title sequence of the late-’80s, early ’90s television show Full House.

But just on the other side of the park sits another stately building, with an arched entryway of marble and dark wood, its large bay windows hugging a corner of the building. This yellow-brick pile has been home to architect John Toya for the last decade.

After moving to San Francisco from New York and spending time in what he calls an “insipid one-bedroom” elsewhere in the city, a friend who managed the building on Alamo Square had an apartment open up.

“The typical apartment in San Francisco is in a row house, and has windows in the front and the back [with a few units] in the middle that usually just look right [into] another building,” says Toya. “This one was different.” Toya says it felt like a mansion, with a great layout and lots of natural light streaming in through the broad windows. He snatched it up.

Over the past 10 years, Toya has filled it with furniture from the ’60s, objects from his travels, vintage stereo equipment, artwork, and various thrifted finds.

“I lived in 300 square feet in New York for over 10 years,” Toya explains, “and it really trained me to not keep anything and to store everything super efficiently and be really thoughtful about where everything was placed.”

“And so after that experience—moving from a 300-square-foot apartment into 1,000 square feet—I exploded into picking up everything.” He’s spent the last few years editing this collection down to things that have a story, that he loves, and that go together.

Though some contemporary homes have a narrative-less trendiness, Toya’s apartment tells a refreshingly different story, one drawn from the past, from family, and from the bones of a building that has seen its city grow and change.

“I’m a very analog-minded person,” Toya says. “I love old machines, gears, steam engines... And it applies to electronics, too.” Toya started collecting tube amplifiers for stereo systems 20 years ago, and went through a few until he got the one has has now. “I just love the simplicity of it and the quality of the sound.”

While some of his furnishings are inherited, others he found with his keen eye for vintage. “I was literally rocked as a baby on that thing,” Toya says of the blue Harry Bertoia lounge chair in his living room. He was given the chair as a 40th birthday gift from his parents. “They paid for the shipping from Chicago. That was my gift from them.”

Across from the lounge chair is a 1962 South American paneled sofa, with another vintage sofa tucked into a little alcove between them. “I’m kind of drawn to them,” Toya says of the nooks he’s utilized throughout the apartment. “They all have some kind of quality that suits certain things.”

In his case, some of those items are records, from ’80s alt-pop and Greek records from his parents, to ’70s soul, funk, classic rock. His favorite towork of art in the apartment, a steel armature that holds onto a prayerbook, hangs above the amplifier and his 1974 Dual 701 turntable.

A vintage French cafe chair sits at his ’60s-era Danish desk (“It was my first big furniture purchase back in Chicago, when I was right out of college”) which is nestled in the bay window, flanked by speakers and plants. The chair’s twin is in the kitchen, where Toya spends a lot of time cooking and hosting.

The red prep table—also vintage—next to the stove was originally a parts cleaning bin at an auto body shop. He uses it as a cooler for parties. “I fill it with ice; it has a foot pedal and the whole lid comes out and all the beers are inside,” Toya says.

Toya went a bit cart-before-the-horse with his dining chairs and table: The chairs, a sort of ’60s take on the American Windsor chair, “were literally stacked up in a window in a store in San Francisco,” he says. “It was about six months later after kind of looking around town for a dining table, I found one that pretty much went with them exactly.”

Though hallways are often simply transitional spaces that go undecorated, the corridor in Toya’s apartment offer some visual intrigue: they’re painted a dramatic, bright blue, and hung with artwork, like a orange and blue painting from his father.

The hallway, which was previously painted white, was never going to get convincing natural light, Toya explains, so he decided to embrace the darkness and went with a brooding vibe. “Everywhere else is kind of calm and bright,” he says. But as you move through this space in the apartment, you get to experience some depth and color, says Toya.

The bathroom, too, displays beautiful, functional objects Toya’s picked up during travels, including several combs made from water buffalo horns from China and a window curtain from Japan. In his bedroom, belts rest on the back of a Marcel Breuer Wassily Chair, which is positioned beside the root of a beloved pine tree from a property in New Paltz, New York, Toya lived on for a few months.

While there are some things he’ll keep around forever, his home has somewhat of a revolving door—things come in, things go out. “I just like to collect things over time,” says Toya. “And if I end up overdoing it, then I either give it away or put it away.”