13 Best Sights in San Francisco, California

The somewhat quirky design of this Victorian-era house incorporates Queen Anne, Stick-Eastlake, and other architectural elements. Many claim the house—now apartments—is haunted by the ghosts of its 19th-century residents, who (supposedly) regularly whisper, glow, and generally cause a mild fuss. It's not open to the public.

This mauve house was built in 1877 by William Axford, a Scottish immigrant and metalsmith whose Mission Iron Works made cannonballs for the Union Army during the Civil War. The house, perched several feet above the sidewalk, was built when Noe Valley was still a rural area, as evidenced by the hayloft in the gable of the adjacent carriage house. The original iron fence, made in Axford's foundry, remains.

Broadway uptown, unlike its garish North Beach stretch, has plenty of prestigious addresses. The three-story palace at 2222 Broadway, which has an intricately filigreed doorway, was built by Comstock silver-mine heir James Clair Flood and later donated to a religious order. The Convent of the Sacred Heart purchased the Grant House at 2220 Broadway. These two buildings, along with a Flood property at 2120 Broadway, are used as private school buildings today. A gold-mine heir, William Bowers Bourn II, commissioned Willis Polk to build the nearby brick mansion at 2550 Webster Street. Two blocks away, movie fans will surely recognize the "Mrs. Doubtfire" apartment at Broadway and Steiner ( 2640 Steiner St.). It's the home where Robin Williams donned his disguise as a lovable British nanny in the beloved 1993 comedy.

Built for attorney Alfred "Nobby" Clarke, this 1892 off-white baroque Queen Anne home was dubbed Clarke's Folly. (His wife refused to inhabit it because it was in an unfashionable part of town—at the time, anyone who was anyone lived on Nob Hill.) The greenery-shrouded house (now apartments) is a beauty, with dormers, cupolas, rounded bay windows, and huge turrets topped by gold-leaf spheres.

The Coleman House is an impressive twin-turret, 7,000-square-foot Queen Anne mansion that was built for a gold-rush mining and lumber baron. Don't miss the large, brilliant-purple stained-glass window on the house's north side. The house is not open to the public.

On the outside, this is just one more well-kept Victorian on a street that's full of them, but true fans of the Dead may find some inspiration looking at this legendary structure. The three-story house (closed to the public) is tastefully painted in sedate mauves, tans, and teals—no bright tie-dye colors here.

A small display of photographs on the bottom floor of this elaborate, gray 1886 Queen Anne house makes clear that despite its lofty stature and striking, round third-story tower, the 11,500-square-foot house was modest compared with some of the giants that fell victim to the 1906 earthquake and fire. San Francisco Heritage, a foundation to preserve San Francisco's architectural history, operates the home, whose carefully kept rooms provide a glimpse into late-19th-century life through period furniture, authentic details (like the antique dishes in the kitchen built-in), and photos of the Haas family, who occupied the house for three generations until 1972.

You can admire hundreds of gorgeous San Francisco Victorians from the outside, but this is the only one that's open to the public, and it's worth a visit.

You can download free maps of two nearby walking tours highlighting the neighborhood's historic architecture on the house's website.

On the west side of the 1800 block of Laguna Street, these oft-photographed private houses cost between $2,000 and $2,600 when they were built in the 1870s. Nowadays, you'd need to add three zeros to those prices; an entire house might sell for upward of $5 million. No bright colors here, though—most of the paint jobs are in soft beiges or pastels.

This eight-sided home sits across the street from its original site on Gough Street; it's one of two remaining octagonal houses in the city (the other is on Russian Hill), and the only one open to the public. White quoins accent each of the eight corners of the pretty blue-gray exterior, and a colonial-style garden completes the picture. The house is full of antique American furniture, decorative arts (paintings, silver, rugs), and documents from the 18th and 19th centuries. Note that the home is only open on the second Sunday and second and fourth Thursday of each month, and is closed all January.

Not to be confused with the Spreckels Mansion of Pacific Heights, this house was built for sugar baron Richard Spreckels in 1887. Jack London and Ambrose Bierce both lived and wrote here, while more recent residents included musician Graham Nash and actor Danny Glover. The boxy, putty-color Victorian—today a private home—is in mint condition.

Shrouded behind tall juniper hedges at the corner of winding, redbrick Octavia Street, overlooking Lafayette Park, the estate was built for sugar heir Adolph Spreckels and his wife, Alma. Mrs. Spreckels was so pleased with her house that she commissioned George Applegarth to design another building in a similar vein: the Legion of Honor. One of the city's great iconoclasts, Alma Spreckels was the model for the bronze figure atop the Victory Monument in Union Square. These days an iconoclast of another sort owns the mansion: romance novelist Danielle Steel, whose dustup with local columnists over the size of those hedges entertained aficionados of local gossip in 2014.

Two Italianate Victorians stand out on the 1800 block of California Street. The beauty at 1834, the Wormser-Coleman House, was built in the 1870s. Coleman bought the lot next door, giving this private property an unusually spacious yard for the city, even for this luxurious neighborhood.

These identical white double-peak homes (joined in the middle) were erected in the late 1870s or early 1880s by dairy rancher James Cudworth as wedding gifts for his two daughters, down the street from his own house at 2040 Union Street. These days the buildings house a bar and a restaurant.