Pacific Heights San Francisco: Mansions, Views & Fillmore Street

Pacific Heights is San Francisco's most exclusive residential neighbourhood — a ridge of Victorian and Edwardian mansions, consular residences, and landmark estates running from Presidio Heights in the west to Van Ness Avenue in the east, with views across the bay toward the Marin Headlands and, on clear days, all the way to the Marin County hills. The neighbourhood has been home to San Francisco's elite since the 1890s, and its architecture is the finest concentration of pre-earthquake Victorian residential buildings in the city.

The 'Haas-Lilienthal House' on Franklin Street is the neighbourhood's finest Victorian mansion open for tours — a Queen Anne-style masterpiece from 1886 whose interior has been preserved with extraordinary fidelity to the period. The Spreckels Mansion on Washington Street (built for the sugar fortune of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels and now privately owned by author Danielle Steel) is the neighbourhood's most famous private residence, regularly included in San Francisco architectural tours.

Fillmore Street is Pacific Heights' commercial backbone — a street that transformed from post-earthquake rebuilding thoroughfare to 1950s jazz hub (the 'Harlem of the West' was centred here) to contemporary boutique shopping and dining corridor. The California Honeydrops and other acts still play the Fillmore Auditorium. The Clay Theatre is one of San Francisco's last surviving neighbourhood movie houses. Alta Plaza Park, set on a stepped hillside at the neighbourhood's heart, offers panoramic city views and a popular dog park that reflects the neighbourhood's highly domesticated character.