Alfred ‘Nobby’ Clarke’s Mansion

I was raised two blocks away from the mansion. A close friend whom I went to school with lived half a block up the street on Douglass.
A fellow named Behrend Joost owned several streetcar lines in the city. One of the lines ran to the stockyards in San Mateo. He was in real estate and built the streetcar lines to help develop his interests.
Joost owned a construction company, a land company, a bank and trust, and Mountain Spring Water Company, and Real Estate. The Spring was at Clayton and Corbett Streets, up the hill about half a mile. The spring ran down to Caselli Street. Nobby Clarke did not get along with Joost and started his own water company, after purchasing 17 acres around Caselli and Douglass. He also build his mansion there.
Neighbors in that neighborhood complain of underground flooding. We know why but the City Engineers have no clue! :)

It honestly doesn’t get much better than this. Built in 1891 at a ridiculous cost of $ 100,000, the Alfred Clarke mansion was one of the few buildings to survive the 1906 earthquake. Nicknamed «Nobby Clarke’s Folly» because he never lived in it (his wife hated it), it was eventually converted to a hospital, and then in the 1920s to individual apartments.
I was lucky enough to have friends renting, and the interior is surprisingly untouched.

Unfortunately, this baroque Queen Anne has been divided up into 14 apartments now and I’m hoping to make friends with one of the occupants so I can get a tour inside. It was built by Alfred Clarke, an immigrant from Ireland who became a San Francisco cop whose beat was the waterfront. He had his hand maimed in a tussle with a seaman which left it practically useless. This is probably how he got the nickname. Mr. Clarke was considered ‘colorful’ by the police department.
he was eventually dubbed ‘The Emperor Norton’ of the police force for his eccentric behavior and ‘zeal’. He had come in search of gold to America but found his fortune by loaning money to his fellow cops and collecting the interest. So much so that he ended up making more money than the police chief! He was kicked off the force and he became a lawyer and with the money he had ‘made’ he had this beautiful mansion built. Unfortunately, it was called Clarke’s Folly by the press and citizens. his wife would not live here because it was not in the ‘fashionable’ part of town. However, the 1906 quake and fire destroyed most of the other mansions but his was unharmed. Unfortunately, Clarke had lost his mansion and all his money years before this and he died of heart failure in 1902. The mansion features dormers, cupolas, turrets and rounded windows. It’s worth the walk off 18^th if you’re in the Castro neighborhood. It is on the Historic Registry.