{"id":393912,"date":"2026-07-10T21:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/393912\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T21:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:17:14","slug":"frida-kahlos-san-francisco-apartment-building-for-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/393912\/","title":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo\u2019s San Francisco Apartment Building For Sale"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Telegraph Hill apartment building with ties to Frida Kahlo<\/a> and Diego Rivera is hitting the market for the first time in decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 11-unit property at 36-52 Calhoun Terrace is asking $8 million, the San Francisco Standard reported<\/a>. Built into a sheer cliff in 1938, the Art Moderne building is fully leased and occupies a site that likely couldn\u2019t be replicated today because of modern seismic standards, construction costs and permitting hurdles.<\/p>\n

The building\u2019s unlikely origin story dates back decades before it was constructed. The cliffside perch was created after politically connected quarry operators George and Harry Gray illegally blasted Telegraph Hill<\/a> in the early 1900s, sending boulders crashing onto neighboring homes. The quarry eventually fell into bankruptcy after George Gray was fatally shot in 1914 by a quarry worker who was owed back wages and facing eviction. Developers Ian and Rose Hoeffler turned the site into the hillside apartment complex in 1938.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey literally don\u2019t build things like they used to,\u201d San Francisco Planning Department chief of staff Dan Sider told the Standard of the building. \u201cBut also, people don\u2019t die on construction sites nearly as often as they used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were among the building\u2019s earliest tenants. The couple lived in one of the apartments while Rivera completed his \u201cPan American Unity\u201d mural for the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition. They were divorced before reuniting in San Francisco and remarrying at City Hall later that year in 1940. They moved out after Rivera finished the commission. A decade later, the apartment building had a turn in the spotlight as a filming location for the 1952 noir thriller \u201cThe Sniper.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The units themselves top out at about 950 square feet, with residents in lower units having to climb multiple flights of stairs to reach the street level. The building\u2019s quirks haven\u2019t dampened demand from tenants, as it is fully occupied with no tenants predating 2020 \u2014 unsurprising given San Francisco\u2019s rapidly tightening market<\/a> amid growing housing demand and shrinking supply<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014 Chris Malone M\u00e9ndez<\/p>\n

\tRead more
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tResidential\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Tariffs, rising costs delay construction of 20K units in San Francisco<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Marcus\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tResidential\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Belmont apartments offer bright spot for Bay Area multifamily after $21M trade<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Riaz\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Maryland investment firm takes more than $5M loss on SF apartments<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Telegraph Hill apartment building with ties to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera is hitting the market for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[158426,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-393912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-frida-kahlo-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}