'Painted Lady' for sale for $1.6 million Steiner Street Victorian even survived 1906 quake

Front entrance of the reputed to be the first "Painted Lady" on Alamo Square this Victorian is now for sale photographed on Friday, January 23, 2009. Front entrance of the reputed to be the first "Painted Lady" on Alamo Square this Victorian is now for sale photographed on Friday, January 23, 2009. Photo: Eric Luse, The Chronicle Photo: Eric Luse, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close 'Painted Lady' for sale for $1.6 million 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

Exactly how it happens, no one really knows. But it happens: A house eventually becomes something more than a home - more than a mass of carefully measured and assembled wood and glass, Sheetrock and steel. Once it has been lived in for a certain length of time, it begins to exhibit some of the human characteristics of its inhabitants.

For better or worse, it acquires a personality.

Some are welcoming, modest and comfortable. Others are smug, self-important and pretentious. A very few - abandoned and with a history as dark as their shuttered parlors - are even reputed to be haunted.

With a past as colorful as its ornate facade, the 120-year-old Victorian at 908 Steiner St. - which recently came on the market for $1.6 million - exudes a surprising mix of refinement and irreverence: like a sophisticated, elderly aunt delivering the punch line to an off-color joke with obvious relish and gusto.

"It's really one of a kind of a rare gem that comes on the market in San Francisco once every five or 10 years," says Jamie Howell. "It's a good example of pre-earthquake, 19th century San Francisco Victorian, untouched by fire."

A Realtor with Hill and Co., which has the listing, Howell - a former road manager for Natalie Cole and Hot Tuna - remembers the house during the '70s, when it was known as the "Psychedelic House." It acquired the name, along with a certain amount of fame, after its owners painted the exterior with just about every color, and combination of colors, in the spectrum. The fiberglass model of a 10-foot Nile alligator was affixed to a space between the upper-story windows. Bay Area photographer Patrick Goggins captured the image on film, which now graces the front of a very collectible postcard.

After the house was featured in this paper and several national magazines in the late '60s, it became something of a tourist attraction. Visitors from the suburbs would drive past to see the "hippie house." Tourists from abroad stopped to gawk at the riot of color on display at Alamo Square.

"Someone accused me of being a hippie," says Maija Peeples-Bright, who, along with then-husband David Zack, owned the house at the time. "I thought it was an insult. I was a bona fide artist."

Long before its days as the "Rainbow House," which is what Maija and her husband and friends called the place, it was known as the Iverson House.

Built in 1888 by contractor P.O. Chandler at a cost of $4,370, the first owner and occupant was Niels Iverson. A Danish immigrant who sailed to California via Cape Horn in 1848 at the age of 18, Iverson made a living in real estate and a Mendocino lumber business. Iverson, along with his wife, Kierstan, and six children, lived in the home until 1896, when the family moved to 1728 Page St.

The house then became the home of James McGiffin, a draper at W. & J. Sloane, and a bachelor who lived with several members of his extended family. McGiffin's sister, Maggie, kept the home until 1923, when barber John Almerico and his wife, Jennie, moved in.

After a succession of owners, the house was bought by the St. Anthony Dining Room in 1956 and used as a shelter for homeless men who worked at the dining room at Golden Gate and Jones streets. The interior was divided into single rooms with Sheetrock and lit by bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling.

Peeples-Bright was born Maija Gergeris in Latvia. She and her family immigrated to the United States at the end of World War II. She later enrolled at UC Davis to study mathematics but - entranced by an art class she took to fulfill a general education requirement - decided to become an artist. In San Francisco, she met Zack through a mutual friend. When they married in 1965, her father helped them buy the house on Steiner Street.

"It was kind of a custom in my country for the family to give the young folks a home," says Maija, "so my father gave me $5,000." The house, which sold for $17,000, became a gathering place for Maija's friends and colleagues - artists associated with the "California Funk Movement" such as Roy De Forest, Manual Neri, David Gilhooly, Robert Arneson and William Wiley. Graphic artists Robert Crumb and S.K. Wilson were also among the crowd. An English professor at the San Francisco Art Institute, Zack also worked as an art critic for KQED-TV from 1965 through 1968.

Following a backlash against the wholesale demolition of Victorians in the Western Addition, the city created a redevelopment zone and offered low-interest loans to residents interested in fixing up their homes. A representative of the agency suggested that Maija paint her home beige.

"That's not what I had envisioned," says Maija. "I liked color. I decided to paint it multiple colors."

A friend who worked in a supply store helped her find marine enamel paint in a multitude of colors. She had a painting crew erect a scaffold and prime the exterior. Then she went to work. Friends pitched in. Occasionally, passers-by did the same.

"I often found myself with someone climbing up on the scaffold saying, 'What can I do?' " recalls Maija. "I'd give them a coffee can with some paint in it, a brush and say, 'Paint that window trim blue.' "

When the exterior was done, Maija moved inside and started painting murals on the ceilings upstairs. Colorful renditions of cartoon-like figures of herself, her husband and their dog, Woof, along with fantasy creatures Maija calls "Beasties" engaged in various adventures, the murals were titled "Beast Volcano Ceiling," "Beast Rainbow Ceiling" and "Penguins Barking up an Eel Tree Ceiling."

Now 66, Maija lives in Sacramento with her husband, Bill Bright. She hasn't lost her enthusiasm for art, she says, and still works diligently in ceramics, acrylics and oils. Her work is featured in the permanent collections of a number of local galleries.

When current owners John Michaud and his partner, Douglas Bray, bought the house in 1993 for $360,000, the only work of Maija's that remained was a mural on one bedroom ceiling, an acrylic floor in an upstairs bathroom and a ceramic plaque on the side of the steps leading to the front door. There were also some empty Thunderbird wine bottles, left from the home's days as a men's shelter.

"Inside it was track lighting, shag carpet and white walls," says Michaud, a kindergarten teacher at Live Oak School. "But it was still a Victorian."

Michaud and Bray have spent 16 years restoring the home.

Longtime Alamo Square resident and local historian Joe Pecora describes 908 Steiner as a flat-roofed, highly ornamented example of the rectilinear Stick-style Victorian townhouse built in San Francisco during the 1880s.

"It has a fairly nice ornate facade that is intact, which is pretty incredible when you consider all that has gone on over there," says Pecora. Upon entering the home, there is a walnut front staircase. On the wall beside it are a pair of buttons once used to summon servants. A skylight made with colored-glass panes illuminates the area. There is a hallway, double parlor, dining room and kitchen. Much of it - including the chandeliers, carpets, drapes, original ceiling medallions, Liberty Bird wallpaper and wainscot moldings - is Victorian style.

Upstairs are four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a small deck that offers a good view of downtown. Overall, Michaud estimates the house has about 3,000 square feet of living space.

He hopes that whoever ends up buying the house will honor what he believes to be the city's first "Painted Lady," a name used to describe Victorian or Edwardian houses painted with three or more colors to highlight the home's architectural details.

"It's a piece of San Francisco history," says Michaud. "And it has really good bones. You can do anything with it. This is not a house for everybody, but for those who love these kind of homes, it's great."