Hamilton Penthouse, Estate of the Day

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Mar 1st 2010 at 1:01PM

Today's San Francisco penthouse has to be one of the most fabulous creations I have ever seen. It sits atop the Art Deco Hamilton building on O'Farrell in the Tenderloin District. The building was built as a hotel in 1929 but it was converted to condominiums in 1962. The crowning glory of the building is a 3,879 square foot penthouse. Socket Site has the story of the apartment which was created for a wealthy heiress by the name of Marcia McDonald. She combined four proposed units on the top floor into one full-floor unit with its own private elevator access. She also added the glass barrel-vaulted solarium with imported Greek-style columns. McDonald didn't finish the unit in her lifetime and never lived there. Instead, when she was told she had to spend another $500,000 to finish it she decided not to an lived in a pair of apartments lower in the building. The unit was finished after her death. The residence has three bedrooms,a library, two working fireplaces, formal dining room, gourmet kitchen and a pair of terraces, one of which has an antique fountain. It first hit the market in November and is still listed at $4.5 million.

Gallery: Hamilton Penthouse

Tags: california real estate, CaliforniaRealEstate, estate of the day, EstateOfTheDay, hamilton building, HamiltonBuilding, san francisco, SanFrancisco, Tenderloin district, TenderloinDistrict

Filed under: Estates

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

brad Mar 1st 2010 3:07PM

Looks like it would be quite the ride down in an earthquake.

Syd Mar 1st 2010 5:12PM

Dear God! That place is an absolute mess.

Mark Perkins Mar 3rd 2010 11:16AM

I agree. Yuck.

kenny17995 Mar 1st 2010 7:43PM

The only nice thing is the glass barrel-vaulted solarium.

my real estate blog - http://www.homesoftherich.net

queenbee1941 Mar 2nd 2010 8:33AM

It's looks more livable than some!!!!

Spectacular Bid Mar 2nd 2010 10:41AM

I'll concur with another that the addition of the glass barrel-vaulted was brilliant and is a significant draw. Just me but I never noticed that the views of the other low rise dwellings making up city - and away from the bay - was so bland.

Perhaps its the pictures (or furniture choices) but despite combining several units it still seems very narrow in its presentation. The odd layout likely was dictated by the building itself with walls and supports that could not be removed.

If there was a home that could benefit from better staging it would be this in my view. The optimistic view of 'you could do so much more' likely is enhanced when you see the existing (and ill-suited) over the top choices of color and wall details.

When I first read that this was a penthouse assembled by heiress Marcia McDonald I presumed she passed away more recently. The reality is that Marcia died in 1971 at the age of 65. As such this penthouse has been occupied and resold multiple times. Most recently it was sold for $2.5M in 2ndQ 2000. Before that it sold for $750,000 in 1989.