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"Nobby" Clarke’s Mansion (250 Douglass Street) – There are many ornate Victorian houses in the Castro but the hands-down winner of the “Most Baroque” title is the huge, eccentric mansion at the corner of Douglass and Caselli Streets, known in its day as "Nobby Clarke's Folly."
Built in 1892, the four-story, multi-towered house has an eclectic architectural style that has been described as "Baroque-Queen Anne." It boasts a magnificent entrance, with stained and etched glass panels in the doors, and has an interesting exterior shingle pattern, where bands of plain shingles alternate with scalloped shingles.
The mansion was built by Alfred "Nobby" Clarke, an Irish sailor who came to San Francisco in 1850 and sought his fortune in the California gold fields. He didn’t strike it rich, however, until 1856, when he joined the S.F. Police Department. Retiring from the department 31 years later with an alleged $200,000 in savings, Clarke purchased 17 acres in rural Eureka Valley (now known as The Castro) and used $100,000 to construct his ornately shingled mansion.
Alas, Mrs. Clarke refused to live there: some locals say she was embarrassed by the house’s ostentatious style, while others maintain she objected not to the mansion but its unfashionable location. By 1904, the building had become the "elegant and commodious" California General Hospital. At later date it was turned into a rooming house for Standard Oil employees, and finally became what it is today: the most unique apartment house in the Castro.
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