Painted Victorian and Edwardian houses climb steep blocks above the bay, and the house used for the exterior of Mrs. Doubtfire stands at Steiner and Broadway.
What Pacific Heights looks like
Painted Victorian and Edwardian houses stand shoulder to shoulder on hilltop blocks. falls steeply north from Broadway, and down the hill the bay shows between the rooflines.
Victorian houses date from the 1860s to 1900, and Edwardian houses from 1901 to 1920. Victorians carry projecting bay windows and ornate wooden trim, while the Edwardians fill continuous infill blocks near Fillmore Street and Jackson Street.
Some corner buildings are clad in grey wood shingles over a red brick base, with bay windows above. Patterned shingles also appear on Victorian walls, and Victorians carry decorative turrets and gables. Front gardens sit behind stone walls and metal fences, and palms show above some of them.
The showpiece residences take the prominent corner lots near and . Beaux-Arts mansions have heavy limestone or rusticated stone facades, not wood.
Alta Plaza Park covers 12.9 acres between Jackson, Clay, Steiner and Scott streets. Its wide concrete staircase climbs a grassy hill toward a line of trees and a palm.
Shot in Pacific Heights
The house at 2640 , on the northeast corner of Broadway, stood in for the Hillard family home in Mrs. Doubtfire. Bullitt used a house at 2700 Vallejo Street as Chalmers' residence. What's Up, Doc? shot a chase down the steps of Alta Plaza Park.
Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993
Steiner Street at Broadway
The interiors were shot on a soundstage in a converted Bay Area warehouse, so only the exterior is a real place. It is a private home, so photograph it from the street.
What's Up, Doc?, 1972
Alta Plaza Park steps
In the film's chase, cars speed down the park's concrete staircase. The steps were badly damaged during that shoot, and the damage can still be seen today.
The Innes House at 1329 Carroll Avenue was the exterior of the Halliwell Manor in Charmed, a series set in modern San Francisco. Built in 1887, it stands among Victorian houses of the same period, close in scale to the blocks above the bay. Carroll Avenue has no bay in view, so keep wide frames on the street itself. Try searching Victorian houses Carroll Avenue now.
Yamate preserves eight Western-style buildings. The Yamate History Archives is one of them, a wooden house from around 1900 that overlaps the Victorian range here. Eight is too few for a block of matching facades, so the comparison holds on single houses. With only eight preserved buildings, frames should hold one house and a few neighbours rather than a block. Try searching Western-style wooden houses now.
