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1990 California Street: The poltergeist of Pacific Heights
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1990 California Street
"Dowagers with acres of whitewashed flesh ... bulging above corsets… hips as large as their bustles; girls in voluminous tulle...".
So wrote Gertrude Atherton in her memoirs, recalling the well-heeled habitués who attended one of many lavish parties held at the home of her mother-in-law on 1990 California Street.
1990 California Street was commissioned by Dominga de Goni Atherton, a prominent Chilean émigré and wife to Faxon Dean Atherton, a successful California business man with trading ventures in Chile, California and Boston. Mr. Atherton was also a very shrewd land speculator, and it is perhaps the legacy of his family name to the town of Atherton in Menlo Park that he is remembered today. He unfortunately did not live long enough to enjoy this other testament to his accomplishments. Faxon Dean Atherton died in 1877, after which Dominga fled with her family to their new home in San Francisco.
The Atherton House was completed in 1881 (the architect is unattributed, but a date appears on the window above the principal entrance). The house is characterized by a mixture of Queen Anne and Stick-Eastlake styles, principally the round Queen Anne corner tower with a "witches hat" roof on the west that is balanced on the east by a strongly projecting gable embellished with low-relief ornamentation around the windows and below the eaves. The millwork of rosettes and ornamental trusswork wrap around the entire house, thus lending some consistency to a vision that is otherwise clouded by many architectural sources. The interior had ample bedrooms, a central banquet hall, even a ballroom to entertain prominent members of San Francisco's social and business elite. It also granted a myriad of views to the outside, but the windows were irregular in size and placement, no doubt in deference to Dominga who deemed it improper for ladies of her social standing to be seen from the street.
The Atherton house was purchased by the architect Charles J. Rousseau in 1923 and subsequently divided it into 13 apartments. It received landmark status in 1974, despite the modifications, and notwithstanding the City Planning Commission's own objections to its fundamental lack of a cohesive style. It was however this very eclecticism which made the building unique, one which the San Francisco Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board used in turn to affirm its landmark status.
The building's status was almost derailed for another reason -- ghosts. Indeed, since 1923 tenants have complained of knockings on doors and windows, inexplicable gusts of wind in the hallways, and even fleeting glimpses of a man who was intimately tied to the history of 1990 California Street. His name was George Goni Atherton, son of Dominga and husband to Gertrude, the writer quoted above. At one fateful party, George had a little too much to drink and, suffering from an even larger measure of false bravado, accepted an invitation from his Chilean guests to hop on the next steamer bound for South America. He died overseas of a kidney condition, but it was the looming scandal of his death that prompted his status-conscious family to surreptitiously send back his body in a cask of rum.
George died in 1887, but he is apparently still out there today trying to impress every soul he can.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE
Sources/Links:
Gertrude Atherton
http://www.online-literature.com/gertrude-atherton/
Atherton House Haunting
NoeHill.com
Wallace, Kevin. "It's Haunted -- but Home". SF Chronicle (Oct. 31, 1974), p. 2
Other San Francisco Hauntings
http://www.haunted-places.com
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