$11,550,000

This distinguished shingled residence blends so subtly with the facades of its turn-of-the-century neighbors that its own lean, latter-day outline is scarcely remarked by the casual passerby. On the inside, however, architect Joseph Esherick's considerate deference to the street's rich, cloistered past unfolds as an unmistakably dynamic spatial expression of the present. Here, transparency is the medium, and an abundance of interior light is the message. Tall windows let the message come through soft and clear into the principal living spaces, and a large skylight over the central stairwell brings a cerulean patch of sky down into all levels of the house. Despite the large windows, perpetual visual privacy from across the street is maintained by the parklike presence of San Francisco's famed Presidio, whose evergreen waves of cypress carry the eye across the red-ochre Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands. - House Beautiful, September 1968