The San Francisco Row House is a quintessential part of the city’s fabric. Built on lots approximately twenty-five feet wide, these Victorian and Edwardian homes line the streets of virtually every neighborhood in the city, stacked cheek by jowl, up and down the hilly streets. Often picturesque and covered in ornate millwork, these houses are emblematic of San Francisco domestic life.

The design team began with a laser scan of the existing house, allowing an exceptionally accurate 3D model to be constructed. The design phase was efficiently run, with lighting, electrical, mechanical and plumbing drawings prepared in-house as a design-build service. CWA also provided landscape and interior design services. The robust set of construction drawings was approved by planning and building without a single correction request – a truly novel feat given the city’s Kafkaesque approvals process.

Arrow Builders, led by Eric Friedman & Darin Freitag, expertly completed construction in Summer 2022. Strandberg Engineers provided structural design. Axiom Engineers provided energy use analysis. Furniture was provided by Green Couch. Photos by Lucy Borden & Chris Weber.

For this Pacific Heights home, a new plan was devised that would enable the house to be open from front to back, allowing views of the oak shaded back yard all the way from the front bay window. Existing openings have been enlarged, and new structure inserted to allow for a less compartmentalized main floor. Open plan remodels by others often remove all hints of partitions, resulting in spaces that lack intimacy and purpose. For this house, vestiges of the original plan will remain, allowing each of the house’s individual spaces to feel connected, but not vast. Similar changes are implemented on the second floor.