893 Ashbury

Behind the little brick wall up in Buena Vista Park, 893 Ashbury lies.

Billed as a “Maybeck design” versus “Maybeck designed,” the previous owners and neighborhood friends have “declared that the house was designed by renowned architect Bernard Maybeck at the turn of the century,” a claim that has yet to be authenticated or debunked.

893 Ashbury Living

∙ Listing: 893 Ashbury (4/3) 2,351 sqft – $1,795,000 [893ashbury.com]

23 thoughts on “A Maybeck Design (Versus Designed) At 893 Ashbury”
  1. Well i can debunk one myth – This ain’ t even close to Buena Vista Park, and It’s not Ashbury Heights. It’s on the west side of Ashbury St near Frederick
    The chatter is that more than one broker suggested a listing price of 1.4+ (due to the work needed to get this a garage, a foundation upgrade, and other niceties) but the seller insisted on the current list.

  2. It’s not exactly far from Buena Vista Park as well. But, I do agree it seems weird to describe this location as being in the Buena Vista neighborhood.
    The new Realtor map seems to have combined Buena Vista and Ashbury Heights into one neighborhood. Maybe that’s the guideline the editor is using.
    In any case, this house is squarely located in what has been considered Ashbury Heights for the last several decades, at the least.

  3. Augustus, that was the first question that occurred to me as well. Typically what they’ll do for a detached SFH (just going on my admittedly limited experience, I am not a licensed contractor, architect or civil engineer) is jack the house up and do some work on the foundation and put in the garage while they’re at it. But this place has attached homes on both sides. Nothings impossible with enough moolah, but definitely not for the faint of heart.

  4. pretty sure this house will not have a garage before i buy whatever house it is i end up buying. srsly, when was the last jacked-in garage built in this neighborhood?

  5. EH – 139 Downey was jacked up last year a full floor for installation of the garage you see in the Google Maps link.
    I live directly across the street. We didn’t know what was happening until they jacked the house and you could see the newly revealed siding now 6+ feet higher on the side of the building.

  6. You’d lose the two bedrooms in the basement if you add a garage. It would never really be feasible to do.
    Whenever I see “We have plans for” in a listing, it usually means, “and we looked at it and determined it wasn’t economically feasible”.

  7. Let’s see. Kitchen and baths look like something in Bernal. No garage, Visible maintenance issues even in in the realtor’s photos. $500/sf anyone?

  8. I actually looked at the pictures this time. Some kind of Z-Dwellerie-plus-midcentury schizophrenia. Hopefully it’s just the stager’s effect. It’s kinda neat in some ways. AEK, looks like.

  9. The interior looks like a Maybeck the exterior definitely does not. Maybe if you ripped out that crappy railing and tore down the brick wall you could convince me. Hard to see how this can sell for anything close to asking.
    This is going to be like another Maybeck across the bay, 2601 Derby, which has been listed and de-listed six times since 2007.
    Hard to imagine getting the SF Design Review Board to agree to any changes at all to a building by a famous architect, much less one that involves jacking it up and adding a garage.

  10. Having seen the home this weekend – and being an architect – I can tell you
    that the garage addition is very feasible without jacking up the house. A
    couple of homes on the block (same side of the street) have done just that.
    Maybeck built a home up the block on Masonic so I wouldn’t rule it out.  It
    is known that some of his work was undocumented.  The bottom line is: this
    is a very unique, stunning house.

  11. As an architectural historian/architect, the living room, dining room, stairway and balcony…and even the eclectic facade, could be a Maybeck. It would take some research…it certainly is not listed as his work, but the archives would need to be searched, stylistic flourishes compared, etc. Other than those rooms, it has been so thoroughly badly remuddled through the years there is nothing much left. A garage certainly is physically possible without raising the house since the house is set back so far from the street…but promoting the house as a Maybeck and promoting the possibility of a garage are mutually exclusive. Make up your mind. If you go to the effort of “proving” authorship, you shoot yourself in the foot to ever add a garage. The Histrionic Preservation Commission does not admit cars exist. I would make any and all changes to the exterior first.

  12. “you can now buy this very nice 4BR place”
    having been in this house several times i can tell you its a pretty good outcome. tho its technically four bedrooms the two upstairs are small with small windows and the two basement rooms suffer from low ceilings and cheapy finishing. both the baths are crapola. no view, tough garage add plus it needs system upgrades.

  13. Looks like a party beach house look — Venice, Hermosa beach. Look at it long enough – it’s dizzying. Although interior looks like a tonic to the exterior jumble.

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