We first featured the vintage penthouse unit #12 atop the Art Moderne Malloch Building at 1360 Montgomery Street back in 2009. Designed by Irvine Goldstein and built as an apartment building for Jack and Rolf Malloch in 1936, the building played a role in the 1947 film Dark Passage, starring Bogart and Bacall, and was subsequently converted to twelve condominium units.
Configured as a one-bedroom, one-bath unit on the main floor, with over 700 square feet of outdoor space overlooking the bay and a 200 square foot “bonus” room, with a bathroom and upper terrace on the roof, accessed via a ship’s ladder from the unit’s main terrace, the penthouse quietly sold for $2.2 million three years ago.
Returned to the market listed for “$2,999,999” last September, reduced to $2.4 million after a month on the market and then listed anew for $2.5 million this past March, the “asking price” for 1360 Montgomery Street #12 has just been “adjusted” down to $2.0 million and the listing has been updated to note: “Seller motivated to sell! Offer Deadline is Monday 5/26 (sic, we assume).”
If you think you know the market for classic penthouse units in San Francisco, now’s the time to tell (and/or act).
At less than $1,300/SF in an inarguably great location, the price doesn’t seem terrible (includes one parking space). It could use some sensitive updating (too much shiny-white) but this is much nicer than the newer “luxury” product that we see so often on these pages. Units like this are very few in number and cannot be duplicated. Close-in with great restaurants nearby, but removed from the homelessness and grime.
Assuming that the buyer doesn’t suffer layoff or relocation away from San Francisco, I doubt they would regret buying this. The listing would benefit from better staging.
The property is listed as only 1,100 square feet. How are you getting to less than $1300/SF?
Realtor.com has a different area. $1,289/SF.
What are the great restaurants “close by”?
My recollection is that it’s quite a few blocks (horizontally) and a couple hundred feet (vertically) until you reach something. Once, of course, there were some noted places there on Montgomery – with one rigjht across the street – but they’ve been closed for a long while.
It’s one block from Filbert to Union, then one block down Union to Kearny and then it’s an easy block from Kearny to Grant. I do realize I probably walk more than most people, so I see this as a pretty easy stroll down into North Beach. Heck, I’d be going for walks along the Embarcadero as well.
Still waiting to see if Julius’ Castle ever re-opens. If my lottery numbers ever hit, I’m going to buy, restore and re-open The Shadows restaurant.
Is that Sir Francis Drake, or is it a Spanish conquistador on the front façade? I have always admired this building as an exquisite example of streamline moderne, which is relatively uncommon in San Francisco compared to LA or NY. Plus, even by San Francisco standards, it’s hard to find a more picturesque location, next to the Filbert Steps. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder now whether it’s only a matter of time before this high profile building for well heeled with a life-sized homage to colonialism gets called out for “re-evaluation” under the current zeitgeist, in similar fashion to the ordeal with the Victor Arnautoff mural at Washington High School.
Victor Arnautoff was a lefty, that beautiful mural was speaking truth to power…
Does it come with snow glasses for all that blinding white?
What does “quietly sold” mean? It wasn’t properly exposed to the market with full broker marketing campaign?
Commenters ask this question regularly around here, and it gets answered from time to time. From several years ago:
See also, pocket listing.
Seller motivated to sell!
I heard they’re moving to Peru.
🙂
This place needs paint
This place has plenty of paint. What it needs is pigment. 🙂
Begging a million pardons in advance for starting slightly off-topic here, but I promise to reel it back in…
The first time I ever visited SF was for a convention and trade show at the newly-opened Marriott, on Market Street, in late 1991. At the time, still being the stupid, blase, NYC born-and-bred 25-y/o male, even with all I had heard about “SF is really hilly blah blah blah”, I figured it was one or two big hills, and that was that.
Needless to say, I learned otherwise.
And it likely was that very visit that gave me an exquisite, near-fetish for urban-ish settings built within/upon steep and/or varied topography, an itched subsequently scratched during visits to Montmartre, Puerto Vallarta, Eureka Springs, etc.
Back to SF in 1991: I distinctly remember my awe whilst walking around up in the immediate area of this building. I couldn’t believe that Julius Castle was perched on the edge like that, I loved the split of the street at Calhoun Terrace, I loved how you walked away from busy Grant/Green/Columbus, or away from the Financial District, and here you were in a quiet oasis with all that activity just down the hill in any direction. There was even a giant, red, mid-’70’s Cadillac Eldorado parked on the street — no easy feat — which I spotted in a few later visits, before the thing got hauled to the great wrecking yard in the sky!
And yes, this building was right in the middle of it, nothing like I had seen before in NYC (though admittedly there are probably several similar examples, considering simply the size of the city). And not only do I distinctly recall seeing, but I even still possess a hard-copy photo of it, a life-size cutout of Humphrey Bogart visible through one of the windows. I never knew if there was any specific reason for that to be there.
Well, now I do.
/walk down memory lane
If I had the bucks to buy this place I would do it in a heartbeat, and I would also earmark an additional six (or seven) figures to somehow route that smokestack away from my deck, in order to vent it somewhere else. Otherwise, utterly gorgeous.
Per mls, the place is now pending. That happened either today or yesterday.
Really loved the place, though I’ll note that the listing does not mention an elevator, though the one from the movie is still physically present, behind a locked elegant metal grille. I did check out the building from the outside; I would have preferred to see some grillwork or other barrier to entry, instead one can walk in off the street and head right up the stairs. HOA of $1289 per the listing.
SOLD! $1,950,000