How to Carve Out a Townhouse in a Four-Story Midcentury Modernist Apartment Building

Recently, we reconfigured several units in a four-story midcentury gem of an apartment building atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, an exercise that was not unlike solving a 3D puzzle. We kept the panoramic views of the Bay and city skyline while rightsizing some of the units and carving out a two-story townhouse for the owners. The project shows the adaptability of the original building’s strong modernist bones and the opportunities for adding curves to counterpoint the orthogonal nature of the modernist box.

Telegraph Hill Apartments

San Francisco, CA
Set atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, this seven-unit apartment building was originally designed in 1951 by the Bay Area firm of Hertzka and Knowles. With spectacular panoramic views of the Bay Estuary, Bay Bridge and Downtown, the project scope included a full renovation and seismic retrofit of this mid-century gem with the goal to reallocate the units’ square footages in order to create a new three-bedroom “owners” townhouse.