Mansion for sale on San Francisco’s exclusive Presidio Terrace

Presidio Terrace is one of San Francisco’s most uncommon — not to mention controversial — streets, protected behind iconic gates that have kept most folks firmly on the outside for decades. Past and current residents represent local and national illuminati, from Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to former Mayor Joseph Alioto and even the British Consulate.

Homes rarely change hands on this exclusive street; when they do, it’s always newsworthy. 23 Presidio Terrace is a historic mansion built in 1910 that’s now for sale for $17.9 million.

The four-story, 9,504-square-foot mansion was designed by Julius Krafft, a San Francisco-based architect known for his elaborate residential homes (like the Hellman-Heller Mansion in Pacific Heights), many of which survived the 1906 earthquake.

The well-preserved Edwardian edifice has a wide brick path leading to stately columns that flank the entry. Beyond the entry, however, the interior looks nothing like a 1910 Edwardian mansion: The spaces are light-filled and open, and the shapes — such as the angular stairway that climbs between the home’s levels — are contemporary. This transformation is credited to the home’s current sellers, Gretchen and Lee Hansen. Gretchen was the founder of Decorist, a successful online design service, which sold to Bed, Bath & Beyond in 2017. 

In Hansen’s hands, this home, which she and her husband, Uphold Chief Financial Officer Lee Hansen, purchased in 2012 for $5.9 million, was “rebuilt top to bottom in 2013,” according to the listing website. Such a phrase is often used to aggrandize remodeling, but in this case, it’s literal, as the Hansens not only added a library and kitchen, upgraded the seven bedrooms (including a sprawling, luxurious primary suite) and created an executive suite on the second floor but also added the home’s entire lower level.

This change expanded the original blueprints from three floors to four, as the couple put in a new foundation and raised ceiling heights to accommodate the new space. This included the executive suite, which includes a work-from-home space with two offices, a lounge and a private terrace with a hot tub.

While the manicured grounds of Presidio Terraces’s 36 lots are undeniably gorgeous, the history of this exclusive community reflects the city’s racist past and, more recently, the rather awesome power of a well-monied homeowners association.

Presidio Terrace was the first private, gated neighborhood established in San Francisco. When it was established, one of its major “selling points” was its racist exclusivity: “There is only one spot in San Francisco where only Caucasians are permitted to buy or lease real estate or where they may reside. That place is Presidio Terrace,” a 1906 brochure distributed by the developer read. These rules stood until 1948, when the Shelley v. Kraemer case came before the Supreme Court, resulting in a national ban on the enforcement of racial covenants in housing.

But that’s not the extent of Presidio Terrace’s infamy. South Bay real estate investor Michael Cheng and his wife, Tina Lam, were able to purchase Presidio Terrace (the entire street, neighborhood, sidewalks, common areas, garden islands and even the palm trees) for just $90,000 in 2015, when the property went up for auction, due to $994 in back taxes from a stunning mixup.

When Cheng and Lam began the process of offering to sell the land back to Presidio Terrace residents, the HOA went on the defensive, suing Lam, Chang and the city “for depriving San Francisco residents of their property ‘without due process of law,’” and asking that the sale be voided. In 2017, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 to reverse the sale and revert ownership of the property to Presidio Terrace homeowners.