Exceptional San Francisco Home

Step into this stunningly reimagined 1912 Craftsman in the heart of Parkside. This detached, three-level home has been completely transformed with a down-to-the-studs renovation, offering 5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, and 3,122 sq. ft. of refined living space. A sleek glass-railing staircase welcomes you into the open-concept main level, where spacious living, dining, and family areas flow seamlessly. The chef's kitchen features navy-blue shaker cabinetry, quartz countertops, a large island with seating, and high-end Thermador appliances. The upper level boasts four bedrooms, including a primary suite with a walk-in closet and spa-like bath with a soaking tub and separate shower. Downstairs, enjoy a versatile lounge with a wet bar, an office/guest bedroom, a full bath, and a one-car garage with a 220V EV charger. Designed for indoor-outdoor living, the low-maintenance yards are perfect for play and entertaining. Every detail has been updated, including a new foundation, central heating, updated plumbing and electrical, designer fixtures, a new roof, and Toto heated bidets. Don't miss this incredible Parkside home!

House History
As one of the farthest neighborhoods from San Francisco’s downtown core, the Outer Sunset District remained a vacant expanse of sand dunes for decades after the city was well established. Only a few blocks south of present day 2418 21st Avenue, a man named George Greene homesteaded the parcel of land now known as Stern Grove. He had very few neighbors in the 1890s, but established the Trocadero Inn as an isolated roadhouse offering dancing, gambling, hunting, and other recreation far from San Francisco's bustling downtown. The Inn closed as anti-saloon sentiments escalated toward Prohibition and bootleggers began to trouble the place, but George Greene stayed on, watching as the surrounding neighborhood began to develop.
 
The house at 2418 21st Street, constructed in 1912, was also present to witness the transformation of the neighborhood. By 1905, 140 contiguous blocks in the surrounding area were owned by the Parkside Realty Company, which was largely controlled by William H. Crocker, president of Crocker National Bank and the son of Charles Crocker, one of the Southern Pacific Railway's “Big Four” tycoons. The Parkside Realty Company unveiled plans to create a vast residential neighborhood, called Parkside. In 1909, they petitioned to have the previously alphabetically named streets within their holdings given full names; T Street became Taraval Street, and U Street, Ulloa. They graded those streets and installed infrastructure – sewers, water and gas lines, transportation – to support their new neighborhood. The entire block on which the subject property sits was owned by the Parkside Realty Company and began to be developed within a few years. The 7 October 1912 edition of Daily Pacific Builder reported that 
 
“Architect J.M. Geary... is preparing plans for a number of dwellings, ranging in cost from $2,500 to $5,000, which are to be erected by the Parkside Home Building Company on their property at 21st Avenue and Taraval Street. The dwellings will contain from 5 to 8 rooms and will be finished in pine and redwood. The higher class houses will have furnace heat. Exteriors will be covered in rustic and shingles. Plans for two dwellings are completed and work will be started at once.”
 
The house at 2418 21st Avenue was likely one of these two houses, as fire Insurance maps from 1915, show only two houses in close proximity to the intersection of Taraval and 21st Avenue (the shingled house across the street being the other.)
 
By 1913, 2418 21st Avenue had been purchased and occupied by Martin Schmitt, a salesman of dry goods and furnishings who ran a shop on Mission Street. In 1918, David J. and Mary Tobin purchased the house. The 1920 census shows the Tobins living at the subject address and indicates that David was born in California in 1859 and worked as a real estate agent. Mary was born in Canada in 1867. David died in February 1930 and Mary appears to have lived at the house for a while longer. In 1936, the house was occupied by Louis F. and Ellen G. Macon, who may have been renters. Louis was a janitor and the couple had two teenage children. The Macons soon divorced, however; and in 1937, the house was sold by M.E. Coleman (the possible owner) to Louis J. Condrotte, Jr. and his wife, Amelia. The Condrottes were in their 50s and their two adult children, Camille, age 20, and Charles, age 18, lived with them. Louis was a truck driver for a wholesale liquor business and Charles worked as a retail clerk. Also living at the house were three children, unrelated to the Condrottes, who were described as lodgers. They were Robert and Donald McCarte, ages 12 and 10, and Sylvia Pedersen, age 6. (The McCarte brothers were found in the 1930 census, as mere infants, living with their mother and father, grandmother, and an older sister, but it remains a mystery as to why they were on their own and living with another family just ten years later). The Condrottes lived at the house through the mid-1940s. It may have stood vacant for a time, but by 1953, was owned and occupied by Joseph W. and Doris E. Watson. Joseph worked as a building mechanic for Pacific Telephone. He died in 1971, which precipitated sale of the house to John J. and Charleen Dowling, who lived at the address until the early 1980s. In 1982, the house was purchased by Timothy F. Lyons, a San Francisco fireman, and his wife, Gloria, who owned it until her recent death in 2022.
 
The house at 2418 21st Avenue was designed in the First Bay Tradition style, which was a Bay Area-specific derivation of the East Coast's Shingle style and was strongly influenced by the Craftsman style. It was popular around the turn of the twentieth century, between about 1880 and 1917, and was popularized by Bay Area architects such as Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, John Galen Howard, Bernard Maybeck, and Julia Morgan. The style is evident in the house's tall profile; wood shingle siding; eaves adorned with decorative bargeboards, knee-braces, rafter tails, and purlins; rectilinear bay windows; grouped windows with heavy mullions; flared wall bases; heavy brickwork at the entry steps; and a dormer.
 
The organization of the front facade conforms to a urban arrangement of living quarters elevated above the street, with a garage at the raised basement level. Brick steps with staunch brick cheekwalls ascended to the entrance, which is housed with a gabled porch with thick square posts. Large, multi-part, front windows are located on each story of a shallow rectilinear bay, with a bracketed pent roof topping the first story window. Broad bracketed eaves with other associated roofline ornament tops the facade, while a small shed dormer peeks out from the attic level at the left side of the roof.