RON HENGGELER

December 7, 2024

VASF Holiday Party in an 1886 Victorian in San Francisco

I recently attended the holiday party of the Victorian Alliance at the Brune-Reutlinger house. It has been called "The most famous Victorian home in America."

SAN FRANCISCO in the years before the 1906 fire provided a sort of Big Rock Candy Mountain for the entire American people. . . Good Americans when they died might, in the terms of the epigram, go to Paris. While they were alive they wanted to go to California. Oceans of champagne, silk hats and frock coats, blooded horses, and houses on Nob Hill, these were the rewards that came to the industrious, the far sighted, or the merely fortunate. What better scheme of things, at least on this side of the river, could any man ask?  

Lucius Beebe

The Western Addition house that well-to-do liquor merchant Henry Brune built I23 years ago, a block and a half down from Alamo Square at 824 Grove Street, on what was once the side garden of the neighboring Fay family, has survived to become one of the country's most celebrated Victorian dwellings — a time capsule of period furnishing and ornament. Designed by architect Henry Geilfuss,' and featuring both Italianate and Stick style elements, the Brune-Reutlinger House was constructed 1886 at a cost of $7,500.

From: The Storied Houses of Alamo Square by Joseph Pecora

Welcome to the Brune-Reutlinger House

"The most famous Victorian home in America."

Twas Christmas broach'd the mightiest ale;
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.

Walter Scott

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Charles Dickens

“Thank God we’re all living in San Francisco.

I’d hate to be this annoyed anywhere else." 

Herb Caen

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the bells will start,
And the thing that will make them ring
Is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart. 

Meredith Willson 

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

“Some people become San Franciscans almost immediately,  feeling the poetry,  sensing the specialness,  seeing what makes the city great and not so great,  boning up on the history and walking the streets with glamorous ghosts at their elbows.  Others can live here all their lives and never get the message.”

Herb Caen

First in rapture
And first in beauty
Wayward, passionate, brave
Glad of life God gave.
The sea-winds are her kiss,
And the seagull is her dove.
Cleanly and strongly she is--
My cool, grey city of love.

                            George Sterling

Christmas! ‘Tis the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.

Washington Irving

“To a traveler paying his first visit,  San Francisco has the interest of a new planet.  It ignores the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world.”  

Friz Hugh Ludlow

Each of the house's dozen or so rooms is finished in the style of the 1880s. The spacious fifteen-foot high parlors on the first floor, completely redecorated in 1994 by members of Artistic License, a local artisan's guild, lead into a dining room which features built-in floor-to-ceiling walnut cabinetry. Also on this floor are a conservatory, a morning room and a large kitchen with two vintage stoves. The second floor is composed of five bedrooms, the first of which is decorated with ornate stenciling by artisan Larry Boyce while the others are hung with Bradbury and Bradbury wallpapers. The rear bedchamber, with a full-sized three-windowed bay with a northerly vista, has been transformed into an extravagantly ornate Turkish room.

From: The Storied Houses of Alamo Square by Joseph Pecora

"I think San Francisco is the best place in the whole world for an easy life." 

Imogen Cunningham

"What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States."

H.L. Mencken

"As the years went by, San Francisco became not only my city but also my way of life. From the time I was a boy, I wanted to live in a place like my father's theater world, a magic box filled with lavishly made-up women, extravagant gay men, and other larger-than-life characters. I wanted a world that could encompass all worlds. I found something close to it in this soft-lit city in the ocean mists." 

David Talbot,   Season of the Witch

Mr. Reutlinger, one of the rare devotees of Victoriana in the 1960s, first furnished his home by attending Butterfield auctions and by shopping at the many second-hand stores lining a nearby commercial strip on McAllister Street that dealt in nineteenth century furnishings and ornament. In the early '70s, these stores were vacated so that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency could complete its second phase of Western Addition demolition which eliminated hundreds of Victorian structures between Geary and Fulton Streets. Were it not for community resistance, the agency would have continued its 'renewal' as far south as Market Street, and homes such as the Brune-Reutlinger house would have been lost.

From: The Storied Houses of Alamo Square by Joseph Pecora

"San Francisco was not just a wide open town.  It is the only city in the United States which was not settled overland by the westward–spreading puritan tradition . . . 
It had been settled mostly, in spite of the romances of the overland migration, by gamblers,  prostitutes,  rascals,  immigrants,  and fortune seekers who came across the Isthmus and around the Horn.  They had their faults, but they were not influenced by Cotton Mather." 

  Kenneth Rexroth,   Beat poet

Sing hey! Sing hey!
For Christmas Day;
Twine mistletoe and holly.
For a friendship glows
In winter snows,
And so let's all be jolly!

Author Unknown

Christmas — that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance — a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved. 

Augusta E. Rundel

"First time we came here, we walked the streets all day — all over town — and nobody hassled us. People smiled, friendly-like, and we knew we could live here… Los Angeles? That’s just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for a trip to San Francisco… And the beautiful old houses and the strange light. We’ve never been in a city with light like this. We sit in our hotel room for hours, watching the fog come in, the light change." 

John Lennon, speaking for himself and Yoko Ono

'Twas Christmas broach'd the mightiest ale;
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.

Walter Scott

“Queen of the Pacific Coast! Fair city whose changing skies for half the year shower down mist and rain, and the other half sunbeams of molten brass! Metropolis of alternate sticky mud and blinding dust! In spite of these and more thou art a city of my heart, O Ciudad de San Francisco!”

T.S. Kenderdine

I fell in love with the most cordial sociable city in the Union.  After the sagebrush and alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was paradise to me.   

Mark Twain

For all its contradictions. . . San Francisco remains a beacon,  always with that dangerous streak of insanity,  built in at birth.  

 Herb Caen

"San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful." 

 Frank Lloyd Wright

“San Francisco is a city where people are never more abroad than when they are at home.”

 Benjamin F. Taylor

"It is a good thing the early settlers landed on the East Coast; if they’d landed in San Francisco first, the rest of the country would still be uninhabited." 

Herbert Mye

Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty.  It is also, of all the cities in the United States,  the one whose name,  the world over,  conjures up the most visions and more than any other,  incites one to dream.     

Georges Pompidou

There is a Christmas song upon the air,
There is a joy innate within the heart;
An inner sense of peace, a holy light
Illumines life and sets these days apart.

Edna Greene Hines

  “The city is like a snake, shedding its skin, changing constantly, moving about in unexpected directions. However, if it is a great city, which San Francisco forever is, it retains its basic qualities---a sense of adventure, a delight in its own history, an air of freedom and a rare tolerance for divergent views and actions. The city dances on its hills and unashamedly enjoys its own beauty, which has survived many a long night of excesses, both joyous and tragic.
    San Francisco, a great writer’s town---tantalizing, just out of reach in its misty aloofness. A city so small and yet so varied, from block to block. Cross a street and enter a different world. Every writer about San Francisco strives to capture its essence and, on occasion, feels he has succeeded---but the city is always one step ahead, laughing, disappearing into the fog.”    

Herb Caen  January 25, 1992     

From HERB CAEN’S SAN FRANCISCO 1997-1991  

"There is no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. Its the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons."

Dave Eggers, A Heartbeaking Work of Staggering Genius

San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.   

Paul Kantner of the rock band Jefferson Airplane

“It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.” 

Oscar Wilde

One day if I do go to heaven, I’m going to do what every San Franciscan does who goes to heaven, I’ll look around and say, 'it ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.'”  

Herb Caen

Let us have music for Christmas … 
Sound the trumpet of joy and rebirth;
Let each of us try, with a song in our hearts,
To bring peace to men on earth.

Mildred L. Jarrell

"San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal." 

William Saroyan

In 2014, Joe published his book entitled The Storied Houses of Alamo Square.

A former Alamo Square Neighborhood Association (ASNA) board member and neighborhood historian, Joe filled the pages of his ode to Alamo Square with the house histories that once graced the pages of  ASNA's newsletter for which he had served as editor.

Brimming with details about who lived where, this book is a must-have for any Alamo Square aficionado.

I was honored to contribute many of the colored photos in his book.

Alamo Square
It is believed that some San Franciscans who died in the 1906 earthquake and fire are buried in Alamo Square. A temporary camp was almost set up in the square for those who were left homeless by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The terrace of restored three-story wooden homes on the east side of Steiner Street between Hayes and Fulton Streets across from Alamo Square was built by Irish-born property developer Matthew Kavanaugh in the 1890’s. They were originally sold for $3,500. Kavanaugh, who lived at 722 Steiner from 1892 through 1900, couldn’t have envisioned that a century later his houses would be among the most photographed vantage points in San Francisco, known as “postcard row.” The colorfully painted, elaborate Victorians contrast sharply with the skyscrapers of the Financial District looming in the background. The houses have been the ‘homes’ of characters in the motion pictures Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Woman in Red (1984), and Maxie (1985), and the television programs Too Close for Comfort (1980-1986) and Full House (1987-1995). 

Respectfully excerpted from San Francisco Secrets 

by John Snyder  

Chronicle Books 1999

The Brune-Reutlinger House

The Victorian Alliance of San Francisco was delighted to once again hold the 2024 Holiday Party on December 7 at the stunning Brune-Reutlinger house.  The Western Addition house that well-to-do liquor merchant Henry Brune built 130 years ago has survived to become one of the country's most celebrated Victorian dwellings - a time capsule of period furnishing and ornament. Designed by architect Henry Geilfuss and featuring both Italianate and Stick style elements, the Brune-Reutlinger House was constructed in 1886 at a cost of $7,500.

Longtime Victorian Alliance Member the late Richard Reutlinger found his new home in severely dilapidated condition and restored, renovated, decorated and furnished 824 for fifty years.  His efforts, which have been illustrated in a number of national publications, so impressed a former publisher of the Old House Journal, that the latter declared 824 Grove to be "the most famous Victorian home in America."  Each of the house's dozen or so rooms is finished in the style of the 1880s.  The spacious fifteen-foot high parlors on the first floor, completely redecorated in 1994 by members of Artistic License, a local guild of artisans, lead into a dining room which features built-in floor-to-ceiling walnut cabinetry.  Also on this floor are a conservatory, a morning room and a large kitchen with two vintage stoves.  The second floor has five bedrooms, the first of which is decorated with ornate stenciling by artisan Larry Boyce while the others are hung with Bradbury & Bradbury wallpapers designs by Paul Duchscherer. The rear bedchamber has been transformed into an extravagantly ornate Turkish room.  The ballroom is now a music hall, stocked with music boxes and player pianos of all kinds, including a FotoPlayer which was used in movie houses of the silent film era.  In addition to playing piano rolls, it can produce, when operated manually, an array of vintage audio effects: horns, whistles, drums, hoof-beats, pistol shots and castanets.  Mr. Reutlinger first furnished his home by attending Butterfield auctions and by shopping at the many second hand stores lining a nearby commercial strip on McAllister Street that dealt in nineteenth century furnishings and ornament.  In the early 1970s, these stores were vacated so that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency could complete its second phase of Western Addition demolition which eliminated hundreds of Victorian structures between Geary and Fulton Streets.  Were it not for community resistance, the agency would have continued its "renewal" as far south as Market Street, and homes such as the Brune-Reutlinger house would have been lost.
 
In 1991, Marion Brune, Henry Brune's niece, celebrated her 85th birthday at 824 Grove.  So touched was she by her host's fascination with his house's history that she declared him to be "a gentleman of sentiment." 
 
Richard hosted our Holiday Parties for VASF as long as anyone can remember.  Our beloved friend passed away on June 29, 2019.  Richard saw to it that his home would be protected and it is now lovingly cared for by our 2024 Holiday Party hosts, Robert Pritchard and Rafael Parocha.

Adapted by Gary Goss from "The Storied Houses of Alamo Square" by Joseph B. Pecora; reformatted from the 2015 House Tour Program by Catherine Accardi for the November/December 2017 Bulletin; further excerpted & revised by Megan Smith for the November/December 2021 Bulletin and updated for 2024.

 YouTube video link.  Video produced by Victorian Alliance Media and Outreach Director, Fiona McDougall.  (This was shot at the 2023 Victorian Alliance Holiday Tour of Alamo Square Victorians.)  

2023 Victorian Alliance Holiday Tour of Alamo Square

"There's just no doubt about it. Sanfransensual it is." 

Herb Caen

Happy Holidays!

“....this marvelous city.  Bazaar of all the nations of the globe,  (compares) with the fantastic creations of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ ” 

Edmond Auger,  French gold hunter seeing San Francisco in 1849

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!

Charles Dickens

 The Pickwick Papers